Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 08, 2014

09/08 Links Pt1: Hamas: Give Us West Bank So We Can Destroy Israel; Brussels shooter planned Paris attack

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas: Give Us West Bank So We Can Destroy Israel

Abbas's initiative envisages the establishment of a Palestinian state within three years either through negotiations or by having the UN Security Council impose a solution on Israel.
Abbas's initiative, however, ignores the threat from Hamas and Iran to use the West Bank as a launching pad for destroying Israel. It also ignores that Hamas could easily seize control over a future Palestinian state by force or through the promised free and democratic elections, as assured by a recent public opinion poll published by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
Abbas is demanding a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines (including the border with Jordan). But he cannot offer any assurances that Hamas and Iran would not use this border to smuggle weapons into the West Bank.
In fact, Abbas is demanding from the Israelis and Americans something that would bring about his own demise. His only option for now is to hold onto power in the West Bank and continue to work with Israel against the common enemy – Hamas. The day Hamas agrees to lay down its weapons and abandon its dream of destroying Israel, he will then be able to go to the U.S. and Security Council and ask for an independent state next to Israel. (h/t IronyDome)

Why a Palestinian state is not the answer

Every once in a while I feel the need to write some form of this post to explain to Americans yet again why a Palestinian state is a bad idea.
This is not a big issue in Israel, despite the impression you may get from reading Ha’aretz’s English website. Most Israelis understand that a peaceful Palestinian state is not on offer, and that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would create a security nightmare. But a large number of Americans still think that the moderate answer to the Israel-Arab conflict is a “two-state solution.”
They think this because they hear it from liberal Jewish leaders, and because they hear it from the President, whom they by and large respect. And they hear it from the Israeli Left, which has a voice in the media that is far out of proportion to its numbers.
After all, Americans are not here in Israel to see for themselves, so they depend on ‘experts’. And who is a bigger expert than the head of the Union for Reform Judaism or the President of the US? Those who oppose the two-state idea are called ‘extremists’ or worse, and nobody wants to be an extremist.
So here are the reasons against creating a Palestinian state. See if you think I am an extremist.

‘Brussels shooter planned massive attack in Paris’

Mehdi Nemmouche, the man who allegedly shot up the Brussels Jewish Museum earlier this year, killing four, reportedly plotted a large attack during Paris’s Bastille Day celebrations.
Based on the testimony of four French reporters who were kidnapped by the Islamic State and held captive by Nemmouche, French daily Liberation reported Monday that the returned IS fighter planned “at least one attack in France, in the heart of Paris, which would be at least five times bigger than the attacks in Toulouse.” The attack would allegedly have taken place on Paris’s iconic Champs Elysees boulevard on July 14, the French national holiday marking the beginning of the revolution.
The March 2012 Toulouse attacks targeting Jews and soldiers in the southern French city left seven dead and five injured, and the suspected perpetrator, Mohammed Merah, killed himself after a 30-hour siege.

AFP reported on September 1:

After a traumatic summer of war and death, Israeli and Palestinian children squared off on Monday for games of football, just kilometres (miles) away from the devastated Gaza Strip.

The Israeli children came from villages surrounding the besieged Palestinian enclave while the Palestinians were bused in from Yatta in the southern West Bank.

The tournament was part of an initiative launched 12 years ago and aimed at bringing together Palestinians from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and disaffected Israeli youths.

Many of the boys had played together before at other such gatherings organised by the Peres Centre for Peace, which is run by former president Shimon Peres.

Initial apprehension was obvious on both sides, but the young players' enthusiasm for the game soon took over.

"It's great to come back here after weeks stuck at home during the war, and to have some fun," said 11-year-old Ofir from Sderot in southern Israel, one of the towns most hit by Gaza rocket fire.

"The Arab kids aren't mean, and there are some who want peace like me," said the curly-haired blond boy.

Eleven-year-old Qusay agreed.

"I like it when we play together. I hope one day there will be peace between Jews and Arabs, and no more war or death," he said.

Jibril Rajoub, head of the PA Supreme Council for Youth and Sports as well as president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and head of the Palestinian Federation of Football, called this friendly game to foster peace a "crime against humanity." He strongly condemned the young Palestinians who enthusiastically played soccer with their Israeli counterparts.

I guess, along with genocide and torture and enslavement and rape, we have to add "playing soccer with Israeli Jews" to the list of crimes against humanity.

Rajoub isn't only a marginal sports figure. He is one of the Palestinian Arabs' historic leaders and used to head the security forces under Arafat.

It is not too remarkable that officials from the "moderate" PA say such outlandish, insane and anti-peace statements. That has been happening for years.

But the lack of criticism from within the so-called "progressive" pro-Palestinian community against these sorts of moronic statements is very, very revealing. After all, anyone who truly wants peace should be the first ones to slam such a statement as being hateful and completely, absolutely wrong.

Statements like Rajoub's are taken in stride and condoned. No Palestinian NGOs will dare speak out, no European newspapers will publish an op-ed about Palestinian intransigence, no condemnations from "human rights" NGOs on what is obviously a complete rejection of any sort of actual, real peace. If the news gets out at all it will be buried with a sort of sheepish embarrassment and the knowledge that, yeah, sometimes they say stupid stuff but there is no value in publicizing it, unlike any statements by an unimportant fringe Israeli rightist whose statements would be distorted and become headlines for weeks.

To the far Left, Palestinian Arab hate must at all costs be hushed up. Because they know that they are really peaceful, and hundreds of crazed hateful statements by their leaders in Arabic must not be allowed to cause people to think otherwise.

(h/t Khaled Abu Toameh)

Hamas TV: "The Jews are the enemy of mankind, killing children brings them joy"

From MEMRI:

In an August 31, 2014 TV interview broadcast from Gaza, Palestinian preacher Bahsir Al-'Ashi said: "The Jews are the enemies of all the nations... The Jews are prepared to sow corruption in the world, and to ignite strife and wars between the nations." Al-'Ashi further said: "The killing of children brings joy to the Jews."

Following are excerpts from the interview, which aired on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV.

Bashir Al-'Ashi: The people occupying Palestine are the enemies of Mankind. The Jews are not the enemies of the Palestinians alone. If I could, I would say this in English, so that the people of the whole world would understand that the Jews are their enemies.

The Jews are the enemies of the Christians worldwide. They are the enemies of the Americans and of all the nations, not just of Palestine and of the Arab and Islamic nation. The Jews are prepared to sow corruption in the world, and to ignite strife and wars between the nations.
[...]
All the nations need to understand that the most important thing for the Jews and their leaders is to appeal to the sentiment of their people by quenching their thirst for sucking the blood of others. This is what happened [in the war].

The killing of children brings joy to the Jews. The killing of children brings joy to the Jews. The Jewish people rejoice at the killing of children, women, and the elderly, at the uprooting of trees, the plundering of money, and the burning of lands. This is true of all of the Jews, of the entire Jewish people.

All the nations of the world should know that sucking the blood of non-Jews and killing them is in the very nature of the Jews. After all, they are the slayers of the prophets. It is a war of Truth against Falsehood, and both sides have supporters.

It is sort of refreshing when they tell the truth and don't pretend that they are only talking about "Zionists."

Iran continues to hide its nuclear weapons program from the IAEA

From Reuters:

Iran has failed to address concerns about suspected atomic bomb research by an agreed deadline, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday, a setback to hopes for an end to an international stand-off over Tehran's atomic activity.

The lack of movement in an inquiry by the International Atomic Energy Agency will disappoint the West and could further complicate efforts by six world powers to negotiate a resolution to the decade-old dispute with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

An IAEA report obtained by Reuters showed that little substantive headway had so far been made in the U.N. agency's long-running investigation into what it calls the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program.

The Islamic Republic has implemented just three of five nuclear transparency steps that it was supposed to by Aug. 25 under a confidence-building deal it reached with the IAEA in November, according to the quarterly report.

Crucially, it has not provided information on the two issues that are part of the IAEA's investigation: alleged experiments on explosives that could be used for an atomic device, and studies related to calculating nuclear explosive yields.

The report said Iran, where a president seen as pragmatic took office in 2013 and revived diplomacy with the West, told the IAEA last week that most suspicions over its program were "mere allegations and do not merit consideration".

A Vienna-based diplomat called that statement "worrying".

The IAEA had also observed via satellite imagery "ongoing construction activity" at Iran's Parchin military base, the report said. Western officials believe Iran once conducted explosive tests there of relevance in developing a nuclear weapon and has sought to "cleanse" it of evidence since then. Iran has long denied U.N. nuclear inspectors access to the base.

The actual report is here, but the Reuters summary is pretty good. Here are the relevant parts:

The Agency remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. Iran is required to cooperate fully with the Agency on all outstanding issues, particularly those which give rise to concerns about the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme, including by providing access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the Agency.

The Annex to the Director General’s November 2011 report (GOV/2011/65) provided a detailed analysis of the information available to the Agency at that time, indicating that Iran has carried out activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. This information is assessed by the Agency to be, overall, credible.57 The Agency has obtained more information since November 2011 that has further corroborated the analysis contained in that Annex.

In February 2012, Iran dismissed the Agency’s concerns, largely on the grounds that Iran considered them to be based on unfounded allegations.58 In a letter to the Agency dated 28 August 2014, Iran stated that “most of the issues” in the Annex to GOV/2011/65 were “mere allegations and do not merit consideration”.

Since the Director General’s previous report, at a particular location at the Parchin site, the Agency has observed through satellite imagery ongoing construction activity that appears to show the removal/replacement or refurbishment of the site’s two main buildings’ external wall structures. One of these buildings60 has also had a section of its roof removed and replaced. Observations of deposits of material and/or debris, and equipment suggest that construction activity has expanded to two other site buildings. These activities are likely to have further undermined the Agency’s ability to conducteffective verification. It remains important for Iran to provide answers to the Agency’s questions and access to the particular location in question.

But...but...Rouhani is so moderate!

The NYT doesn't ask the basic questions about West Bank "refugees"

The New York Times has a decent story of how Palestinians in West Bank "refugee camps" are ambivalent bout something as simple as building a small town square or a soccer field. But it doesn't bother to ask some basic questions.

Public space like the plaza in Al Fawwar is mostly unheard-of in Palestinian camps across the West Bank. Architectural upgrades raise fundamental questions about the Palestinian identity, implying permanence, which refugees here have opposed for generations. The lack of normal amenities, like squares and parks in the camps, commonplace in Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank, was originally by design: Camps were conceived as temporary quarters. The absence of public space was then preserved over the years to fortify residents’ self-identification as refugees, displaced and stateless.

So construction of even a small public square is something unusual — a sign of change in a region of fierce, escalating tension, lately exacerbated by the war in Gaza and Israel’s newest claim to another nearly 1,000 acres of West Bank land near Bethlehem, a move swiftly denounced by United Nations officials and others in the international community as undermining prospects for peace.

...The square has altered the sense of being vested in the camp — a change, partly generational, that challenges core ideas among refugees about keeping Al Fawwar a way station and temporary shelter.

...That is a provocative concept in the camps — questioning an age-old strategy of dignified self-deprivation, reframing the right of return for Palestinians as something other than simply waiting to reclaim ancestral land. Mohammad Abo Sroor, a young man who grew up in Dheisheh, a camp near Bethlehem, participates in Campus in Camps, a new university devoted to investigating the life of refugees and the design of camps. He told me he had the key to the farm near Jaffa that his grandfather lost in 1948. But for him, as well, the right of return does not necessarily mean moving into that farm. It means “the right to live where I wish,” he said, which could include Dheisheh.

The NYT doesn't ask why these people, living in their own homeland under their own leaders, are considered "refugees."

The NYT doesn't bother to ask why the false hopes of "return" are being taught to generations of people, forcing them to stay in stateless limbo in what is clearly a strategy.

The BYT doesn't ask why the PA hasn't demolished these camps. After all, aren't they living in "Palestine?"

The nYT doesn't ask why Mahmoud Abbas treats some of his own people like second-class citizens.

The answer to these questions is what the Times doesn't want to say explicitly. Arab leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, are the ones who purposefully keep these people in misery. The residents are pawns who have been brainwashed over decades to believe that one day they will "return" to homes that they never lived in - after Israel is destroyed.

The answers prove that Mahmoud Abbas isn't a moderate who accepts Israel's right to exist. He subscribes to the idea that Iarael is a temporary blight in the Middle East and he is working to erase that mistake while saying what the West wants to hear.

Because if he truly wanted a two-state solution, he wouldn't be investing so much energy into keeping so many of his own people in camps.

The NYT also doesn't ask why "human rights" organizations go along with this clear discrimination and have nothing bad to say about using thousands of people as symbols instead of treating them as humans.

(h/t EBoZ)

Fake Palestinian Civilians of the Day

PCHR said on July 27 that Mohammed Mahmoud Rajab Hajjaj, 34, whose body was found in the Shuja'iya neighborhood, was a civilian.

Hamas disagrees:

Also, on July 25, PCHR said that "an Israeli warplane launched a missile at a house belonging to Nasser ‘Abdu Shurrab in al-Manara neighborhood in the south of Khan Yunis. The house was destroyed."

On July 26, it said that "civilian" Eyad Nasser ‘Abdu Shurrab was found in the rubble. And on the 27th, it added the name of his "civilian" brother, Wassim Nasser 'Abdu Shurrab, 22.

They were both members of Islamic Jihad's Saraya terror division.

The ever-expanding collection of fake Gaza civilians is here.

(h/t Bob Knot)

PART 2

(Part 1 here.)

July 22: Palestinians killed: more kids (129) than militants (86). 4.7x as many civilians as militants. http://trib.al/LJpSpe1 pic.twitter.com/NeJahDfiTh

Truth: Even his source, the Washington Post, says "These numbers are often not complete, but represent the best available data and do tend to clarify over time. Israel disputes the numbers provided by the United Nations, saying that a large number of those killed, particularly males over 18, were armed terrorists and not civilians." Roth doesn't care, he reports the numbers without caveats - but only when they make Israel look bad.

July 24: Good that the commission of inquiry launched by UN rights council is authorized to investigate both Israel & Hamas. http://trib.al/PlOQaBZ

Truth: Even the article he linked to - from The Guardian - doesn't say this. It says:

The resolution called for the urgent dispatch of "an independent, international commission of inquiry" to investigate "all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip".

Which means it is only looking for Israeli crimes in the territories, not Palestinian crimes against Israel.

Notably, the timeframe that the UNHRC chose for its inquiry does not include the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens - which is a clear violation of IHL against Israelis in the territories - but it chose to start the probe from the the day after they were kidnapped and murdered. The only possible reason is to ensure that only Israeli actions would be investigated, not those of the terrorists.

Roth completely made this up.

July 24: #Hamas is putting civilians at risk but "no evidence" it forces them to stay--definition of human shields: @NYTimes. http://trib.al/61iwSoM
and
July 25: Hamas must as feasible not fight in populated areas http://trib.al/CA94avT but no human shield unless coerced to stay http://trib.al/YQwIIau

Truth: The definition of "human shield" according to IHL says nothing about the civilians being forced to stay. The official ICRC definition does not mention anything about being forced. Simply placing weapons and other military objects into a civilian area with the intent to have the civilians deter attack is the very definition of human shielding.

Beyond that, Hamas has instructed people to stay in their homes when Israeli leaflets urged them to leave; it has forced Fatah members and other enemies to stay in their homes under threat of gunfire, it has kept journalists in Gaza against their will, and it has prevented buses from evacuating people from shelters after Israeli warnings. Some of this was known at the time of the tweet. So even according to Roth's erroneous, narrow definition of human shields, Hamas is guilty - but not once did he say anything about that.

July 26: Remember when #Israel insisted Hamas was behind kidnap-murder of three West Bank teens. Oops, turns out it wasn't. http://trib.al/BcbP0s8

Truth: As Hamas admits now, it was. Roth reported that news skeptically, not with the cocky assurance that he reported the lie.

Roth also ignored the update that New York Magazine added two days later where the Israeli police spokesperson said he was misquoted - which was the linchpin of the entire false story. Roth didn't bother to correct his tweet then.

Because the truth is not as important as the propaganda Roth prefers to push.

09/07 Links: Everything You Know About Israeli Settlements Is Wrong; ISIS: foreign legion for losers

From Ian:

Elliott Abrams: Everything You Know About Israeli Settlements Is Wrong

So is Israel vastly increasing the pace of settlement activity, making the establishment of a future Palestinian state less and less likely?
The short answer, and the right answer, is no. Just as Israel was being denounced far and wide for settlement expansion, Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics released one of its regular reports on settlement activity. What it reveals is that Israel's actual settlement construction pace has reached a historical low. Only 507 housing units were approved for construction by Netanyahu's government in the first six months of 2014, a 71.9 percent decrease from the same period in 2013, with about one-third of those being built inside the major blocks that it is understood Israel will keep in any final status agreement. For a population of over 300,000 Israelis living in the West Bank, that pace of construction does not even allow for natural population growth, much less rapid expansion.
Only in 2010 did Israel build at a slower pace -- 738 units for the whole year -- and that was the year of a nine-month construction moratorium imposed by Netanyahu at the request of the United States. This partial freeze, by the way, produced no Palestinian concessions and no progress in the "peace process" whatsoever.

Palestine –It’s Not Worth the Effort

One of the most alarming experiences as a European is to see how our politicians and the media continue to criticize Israel but not the murderous Palestinians, whose pseudo-national aspirations garner more attention than Syrian war casualties, Chinese human rights abuses and the plight of women and girls enslaved by Islamic terrorists.
It is strange that the Palestinians – who have no historical, cultural or legal rights to the land of Israel – are endowed with international and economic patronage by the US, the EU and the UN. How did the Palestinians and their Arabist-Islamist backers manage to achieve such a feat?
Firstly, the Palestinians have learnt that violence is rewarded. Acts of terror against Israelis have only strengthened the West’s belief that a Palestinian state is of paramount importance. The latest round of fighting in Gaza confirms this.
Secondly, the Palestinians have managed to convince most of the world that they are a landless and suffering people, whose plight is equal to that of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. This is has to be one of history’s biggest hoaxes. And it is a very dangerous hoax indeed. Why? Because the “Palestinian issue” has enabled Europe to reconnect with its Jew-hating past by blurring the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Yishai Fleisher with Matti Friedman

Operation Protective Edge is apparently over.

Terrific.

In a recent piece for Israel Thrives and Jews Down Under entitled, Netanyahu and the West Doom Israel to Perpetual War, I argued that US and western pressure to let up on Hamas in Gaza inclined Netanyahu to accept limited war aims in this most recently concluded spasm of hatred and blood.

In my estimation the main thing that the Netanyahu government accomplished is merely kicking the proverbial can down the proverbial road. So long as Hamas remains intact in the Gaza strip then violence and war remains inevitable. Degrading Hamas's ability to shoot rockets at Israeli civilians such as those that lived in kibbutz Nir Am, just west of S'derot, was an exceedingly important war aim that was only partially met. The destruction of dozens of terror tunnels was also an exceedingly important war aim and we can only hope that the great majority of those tunnels have been destroyed.

But we do not really know, now do we?

Something over 2,000 people were killed in this latest operation and the great majority of those dead are Arab dead. Well over 2,000 Arabs gave their lives so that Hamas could gain a PR victory over Israel. I cannot believe that their families would think it was worth it, but I also do not believe that their families are likely to blame anyone for this most recent catastrophe on anyone but the Jews.

Furthermore, according to the reports that I have read, the areas around S'derot and Ashkelon have been cleared out. The region is devastated and who knows when, or if, it will recover? Will Dana Bar-on and her family return to kibbutz Nir Am? And if they do not, who could possibly blame them?

Whatever the harm to southern Israel and the absolute devastation of parts of the Gaza Strip, the fact of the matter is that Hamas "won" this recent encounter in at least two ways.

The first is that they created true fear in the Jewish minority in the Middle East.

Not only was kibbutz Nir Am hit with rocket fire, so was Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Jewish minority in that part of the world has ensconced itself into Fortress Israel and now is obligated to constantly defend itself from the Arab-Muslim front-line troops in places like the Strip. This has the effect of forcing people, both Jewish and Muslim, who live within Israel near the Gaza border to move elsewhere, thereby making a large part of that small country essentially defunct and unlivable.

Making Jews uncomfortable on historically Jewish land has been an Arab war aim at least since the rise of Zionism in the nineteenth-century and it works. Of course, the tiny Jewish minority, despite Israel's military strength, can be made to feel exceedingly uncomfortable in their own homes. Take a moment to listen to Dana Bar-on talk about what life is like under all those "toy bottle rockets" that Leftists mock as a weak "indigenous" response to alleged Jewish atrocities. Presumably they would prefer it if more Jews were killed so that hostilities could be more "proportionate" as they sit on the sidelines and eat popcorn.

Dana Bar-on was there when these vicious Jihadis jumped out of the ground within sprinting distance of her own house. She heard the rifle fire as the IDF confronted and killed a number of these Islamist head-choppers and then she and her family subsequently moved away from the home that she was born into.

Of course, if kibbutz Nir Am had a problem from Jihadi terror, just take a gander at the devastation the IDF gave to parts of Gaza.

People look at this image, and all the thousands of similar images put out by the general media - not to mention all the photos of dead or crying children and weeping old women in black - and naturally develop feelings of loathing and disgust for Israel, if not for Jews, more generally. And that, my friends, represents Hamas's other victory in this recent upheaval of stupidity and violence.

Hamas was more than willing to sacrifice thousands of its own people for the purpose of whipping up hatred toward Jews and it worked magnificently. It worked like a charm. It worked despite the fact that many of us warned the west that they were willfully playing a roll in an anti-Jewish deception. We told them that Hamas was putting innocent women and children into harms way for the specific purpose that they would be killed by Israelis seeking to degrade Hamas rocket-fire on their own civilian population. This is not even disputed by the United Nations. We told them that the reason that Hamas does this is to create more hatred toward Israel and Jews in the West.

Nonetheless, what did Protective Edge create?

More hatred toward Israel and Jews in the West.

There was only one, real, long-standing possibility within Operation Protective Edge and that was in the possibility that Israel would finally take out Hamas entirely. Short of that, all Israel did was bolster Hamas's prestige throughout the Middle East and throughout the sensitive, soft-hearted, caring West, while allowing perhaps one-quarter of Israel to be rendered something near unlivable.

Ultimately Netanyahu caved to western pressure, or so I suspect. I do not believe that the west will ever allow a real Jewish victory over never-ending Arab aggression. The conflict will continue, year upon year and decade upon decade, because the west - in its alleged desire to be balanced and fair - throws much of its weight behind the enemies of the Jewish minorty. If the EU and the UN and the US did not fund Arab aggression against the Jews of the Middle East then that aggression would eventually dry up and blow away.

What keeps the hatred and the fear going is western funding of that hatred and fear and what keeps the blood flowing is the hatred and fear, itself.

If the West honestly cared about ending the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict then it would stop consuming the conflict, it would stop pouring money into Hamas and the PLO / Fatah and UNRWA, and it would stop hounding the Jewish minority for daring to live in Judea and Samaria, the land where Jewish people come from, and would start pressuring the hostile Arab majority to leave the Jews the hell alone.

And if you are concerned about alleged Jewish-Israeli abuse of power toward the local Arabs, perhaps you should consider speaking out against the absolutely blood-curdling messages screeching from the mosques throughout the entire region.

The Jews of the Middle East are a small people under perpetual siege in a region in flames and until you understand that then you do not begin to comprehend the problem.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

Gaza imam pulls out assault rifle during sermon (video)

August 29, 2014, at the Al Huda mosque in Gaza, with Sheikh Iyad Abu Mujahid Funoun:

He was imprisoned in Israel in 2003 and sentenced to 29 years but was released in a "goodwill gesture" in 2011. He was re-arrested and then deported to Gaza after a trial in 2013. He is associated with the ("secular") Popular Resistance Committees.

(h/t Bob Knot)

In 2010, the PA cabinet reclassified "honor killings" to be considered murder. It is unclear if this made any difference in the actual law.

In 2011, to much fanfare, Abbas claimed to remove the leniencies in existing PA law (based on Jordan's penal code) that would make "honor killing" a reason for a lighter sentence when killing a family member. Significantly, it still allowed leniency in sentencing if the victim had committed adultery or "other acts of sexual impropriety." It merely removed the leniency if the killer claimed he or she did it for "honor" reasons.

In other words, Palestinian Arabs who killed their sisters and daughters and wives could get shorter sentences as long as they claimed that the victims deserved it.

In 2012, it was revealed that the law that Abbas had modified was not the one that lawyers had used to get leniency for "honor killings" anyway. In fact, any attempt to repeal the real laws would have caused serious domestic problems among the people who support the barbaric law.

Now, it is proven that Abbas' PR stunt has done literally nothing to stem "honor killings" in the PA:

Despite a 2011 decision by Abbas to end the practice, the director of a major Palestinian forensic institute told Ma'an in a recent interview that killers were receiving leniency by claiming reasons of "honor" in the slaying deaths of young women.

Dr. Sabir al-Aloul, director of Al-Quds University's Institute of Forensic Medicine, said that examinations of the bodies of the vast majority of women who were slain by family members in so-called "honor crimes" showed no signs of previous sexual activity.

"It seems the killers use family honor as a pretext to benefit from an article in the Palestinian laws that suggests leniency for men who kill to protect their family honor," al-Aloul said.

In 2011, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas ordered a legal amendment to end leniency in courts for men who kill women from their families under the pretext that they "dishonored" their families, presumably through sexual activity.

Abbas' announcement was made by his secretary-general al-Tayyib Abd al-Rahim during a live talk show on satellite channel Palestine TV to discuss the murder of 20-year-old university student Ayah Barad'iyya from the southern West Bank town of Surif by her uncle.

However, legal experts say Abbas' move was not enough to prevent the killing of women over issues of so-called family "honor." They say that there are other gaps in the law through which killers have managed to gain leniency by claiming reasons of honor.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 37% of Palestinian wives - and over half of those in Gaza - had experienced physical violence by their husbands in just the year 2011. Yet NGOs, the UN and even The Lancet have placed the blame for Palestinian men beating their wives on - Israel!

As long as the irrational hate for Israel is considered mainstream, real problems in Palestinian society can be swept under the rug. And indeed they are. Which goes to show that the reflexive, and unthinking tendency by so many to blame Israel for everything is not only stupid, but it actually contributes to violence against Arab women.

Abbas says Hamas killed 150 Gazans for "breaking curfew" and collaboration

Mahmoud Abbas, speaking to journalists in Egypt, issued a scathing attack on Hamas, blaming them for the war with Israel and for all of Gaza's casualties.

Many of his statements were a repeat of what he said in a televised interview a week ago - that Hamas lied to him about them not being involved in the kidnapping of the Israeli teens, and that Hamas ended up accepting a ceasefire that they could have accepted on the first days of the war saving 2000 lives and much property damage.

But Abbas added a new accusation. He said that Hamas committed atrocities during and after the war in which they executed many without trial, and that Hamas killed 120 youths in Gaza under the pretext of them breaking curfew, in addition to executing between 30-40 alleged "collaborators."

Abbas also claims, unconvincingly, that only 50 Hamas members were killed in Gaza during the war, as opposed to 861 Fatah members plus their families.

Abbas' claims must be taken with a large grain of salt, because there is no reason to believe that he is any more truthful talking about his Hamas enemies than he is when speaking about his Israeli enemies. We know that some Fatah members were killed as "collaborators" and it seems likely that many Fatah members were held under house arrest, and were shot in the legs if they tried to leave - making them human shields. The rest of the accusations need more corroboration.

But his statements do show that the heralded "unity" government is fictional. Abbas is clearly also feeling the heat of the immense popularity Hamas is enjoying after the "victory."

Interestingly, while his remarks are on the Arabic section of the official Wafa news agency page, they have not been translated to English, because Abbas wants to keep his criticisms of Hamas out of the Western media and to show a united front against Israel. However, at least one Jordanian report says that Abbas will publicly break with Hamas on Sunday during an Arab League meeting.

(h/t Khaled Abu Toameh)

09/06 Links: Remembering the Munich 11; Anti-Semitic French Comedian Mocks Foley Beheading

From Ian:

Remembering the Munich 11

Forty-two years ago today, the Olympic games took place in Munich, Germany. The games were meant to mark the change an an era; the transformation of Germany from the birthplace of Nazism, hatred and intolerance to a place of international unity and cooperation. Until it wasn’t.
The 1972 Olympic games in Munich, were tainted by a Massacre which went on to define the history of the Olympic games, the history of the Jewish people, and the history of the human race until the end of time.
On September 5th, two weeks into the games, while the athletes were asleep, 8 members of the Palestinian terror group Black September broke into the dormitory in which the Israeli athletes and coaches were staying. In taking hostages, the terrorists killed Moshe Weinberg and Yossef Romano, leaving them with 9 hostages, or 9 potential “bargaining chips” with which they hoped to negotiate, with Israel, the freedom of convicted Palestinian terrorists.

EU Considers Pulling the Plug on Aid to Palestine

European frustrations with the lack of progress towards a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinian territories have prompted comments from officials that EU aid to Palestine could diminish substantially within the next three to four years.
"It is clear that our policy is not sustainable in the medium-term without some form of political breakthrough and money alone has not succeeded in producing that," an EU official told EurActiv. "It was meant to accompany a political process, but that’s not really happening."
The move would be a major blow to the Palestinian Authority, as the EU is currently its biggest donor, contributing some €500 million per year. A number of Palestinian functionaries in Ramallah are paid from EU funds.
The Commission has recently completed an in depth review of aid spending in the Palestinian Territories between 2008 and 2013, interviewing some 150 stakeholders in Brussels, Israel, Palestine and Washington. Numerous documents were also scoured by the team.

Suspect in Brussels Jewish Museum shooting was IS member who tortured prisoners in Syria

Prior to the fatal attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014, the main suspect in the shooting, Mehdi Nemmouche, was an ISIS member in Syria where he tortured both Syrian and foreign captives, the French newspaper Le Point reported on Saturday
The Le Point report is based on the testimony of its journalist, Nicholas Henin who was released from IS custody in April of this year.
"When he [Nemmouche] was not singing, he was torturing. He was a member of a small group of French nationals whose arrival used to terrify about fifty Syrian prisoners in cells near ours," Henin said, adding, "I myself had been interrogated... the torture went all night long, until the dawn prayer."
"For one month and a half, we were chained up together."
Henin was among four French journalists held hostage in Syria since June of 2013 and was found by Turkish soldiers on its border with Syria in April.
The Le Point journalist, Pierre Torres, Edouard Elias and Didier Francois were found in April in Sanliurfa province in Turkey blindfolded with their hands bound.
Between July and December 2013, Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French citizen, was in charge of Western hostages then held in a former hospital in Aleppo that was converted into a prison, Le Point reported.
In the attack in Brussels an Israeli couple a French woman, and a Belgian man were shot dead.

South Africa Denies Dalai Lama Visa Again

South Africa has denied a visa to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, for the third time in five years, one of his representatives said on Thursday, intensifying speculation about the extent of Beijing's sway over Pretoria.
The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India and is at loggerheads with China over Tibet, had been hoping to join a Nobel peace conference in Cape Town next month but withdrew his visa application after being told it would be unsuccessful.
"We have informally received contact His Holiness won't get his visa," Nangsa Chodon, the Dalai Lama's South Africa-based representative, told Reuters.

09/05 Links Pt2: Glick: The dilemma of the Jewish leftist; Will Fact Ever Displace Anti-Israel Fiction?

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The dilemma of the Jewish leftist

Freedland argued that as the two-state solution becomes more and more remote, liberal Zionists “will have to decide which of their political identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a Zionist.”
But this is of course absurd. The only way a person can uphold liberal values is by being a Zionist. Israel is the only country in the region that is a human rights-respecting liberal democracy that is governed by the rule of law.
What is becoming more and more difficult is being a Zionist while being a leftist. As the Left becomes more and more tied to Islamic fanatics, anti-Semitism is going to become more and more of a staple of leftist dogma. And that anti-Semitism will express itself first and foremost as a virulent rejection of Israel and of Jews who refuse to disavow and condemn the Jewish state.
Sotloff reportedly maintained faith with his Judaism in secret while in captivity. He refused food on Yom Kippur and secretly prayed toward Jerusalem.
In so doing, he showed that the evil that controlled him physically, could not penetrate his soul. For this he died a Jewish hero.

Is the Boycott Movement Anti-Semitic?

Ever since Lawrence Summers asserted that the divestment movement proposals were “anti-Semitic in their effect, if not in their intent,” we have had a model to use in examining the prejudicial implications of BDS in a more thoughtful way. That does not mean that every divestment proposal is anti-Semitic, but it does help us see why people who advocate the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state are promoting a goal that has anti-Semitic effects.
Arguments that Jews have no ancient connection to the land, that Israelites and Hebrews never existed — positions that some academic BDS advocates promote — also have an anti-Semitic component. The demand that the citizens of Israel give up their right to political self-determination and the unsupportable assertion that the Israeli government is an exceptionally egregious human rights violator are also consciously or unconsciously underwritten by the long-term history of anti-Semitism and the history of efforts to isolate and “other” the Jewish people.

Elliott Abrams: What Now for Israel?

“The status quo is unsustainable,” President Obama said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon after taking office in 2009. “The status quo is unsustainable,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told AIPAC in March 2010. “The status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon averred in 2013. This year, Secretary of State John Kerry, with his customary light touch, informed the Munich Security Conference: “Today’s status quo absolutely, to a certainty, I promise you 100-percent, cannot be maintained. It’s not sustainable.”
What is usually meant by this assertion is something quite specific: that in the “occupied territories” of Gaza and the West Bank, a Palestinian state must very soon be erected—or else. “It is critical for us to advance a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side in their own states in peace and security,” Obama added in that 2009 statement. He has repeated the line endlessly, and so has every world leader except for Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei (who has a rather different objective in mind).
But 66 years after the founding of the state of Israel, and 47 years after Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, the status quo has once again confirmed its (relative) merits, while a history of repeated efforts to upend it precipitously has once again exposed an often reckless folly. The status quo has outlasted the cold war, the Oslo-fed dreams of a “new Middle East,” and the hopes for an Arab Spring; it has endured decades of war and intifada, and has proved more durable than many of the leaders and regimes who have insisted that it cannot and must not be sustained. Israelis who spent this past summer dodging Hamas rockets and sending their sons to fight in Gaza must wonder, not for the first time, why it is “critical” to implement Obama’s solution to their problems rather than to defeat terrorism and more broadly the ceaseless Arab and Muslim assaults on the Jewish state. Why are these not the status quo that the whole world agrees is unsustainable?

Melanie Phillips: The false equation of Jew-hatred and Islamophobia

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main representative body of the Jewish community in the UK, managed last week to get itself into a terrible mess.
It issued a joint statement with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which not only stated that the Middle East conflict must not poison community relations but also condemned “the targeting of civilians” which was “against our religious traditions.”
This unspecific formulation implied the Board was condemning Israel as well as Hamas for having targeted civilians in Operation Protective Edge. In the row that then erupted, the Board protested that the phrase could only relate to Hamas since Israel never targeted civilians.
But the MCB claimed the Board had agreed the phrase covered both sides. So the Board enabled the MCB to crow – falsely but plausibly – that the Jews had condemned Israel for war crimes.
People were left scratching their heads at how the Board could have been quite so foolish; indeed, how it could have collaborated at all with the MCB which, along with its affiliates, has links to Islamic extremists, a history of support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and whose past leaders have described Israel as “the Zionist terrorist state.”
The explanation lies at root in the UK Jewish leadership’s misguided and dangerous strategy for dealing with Britain’s Muslims.

Jordanians rally: "We are all Hamas" (update)

There was a demonstration in Irbid, Jordan, to celebrate Hamas' "victory" in Gaza.

Organized by the Islamic Movement, thousands attended. They chanted "We are all Hamas! We are all resistance!"

There were "fireworks, cheers and demands for the resistance to prepare for the next chapter in battle with the Zionist enemy to liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque from the clutches of the Jews."

One speaker, Dr. Hammam Said, saluted the Qassam terror brigades, criticizing what he said was "a conspiracy of Arab rulers against our people in Gaza."

UPDATE: From the comments.

We call on this blog to observe accuracy and not to buy into Jordan's king's propaganda games. The rally above was held under the supervision, facilitation and encouragement of the Jordanian king's intelligence. The purpose of such rallies is to play the boogieman game against Israel and play on Israel’s fear factor, and this tactic has worked with well-intended people, such as many from AIPAC for example, who blindly believe that the minute "the king goes, the Islamist will take over". This is not true, the rally above was held in a Bedouin-dominated area, no Palestinians in Irbid, the rally was attended by less than a thousand people, and such rallies in Amman almost failed and the Jordanian media even reported it. Get the facts, the fact here is: the Palestinian majority in Jordan still hates Israel, nonetheless, it hates Jordan's king even more and hates the Islamists because they are his shameless ally in the open, he himself said: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a part of my regime". Also, worth noting, why does Jordan king ban any secular rally or protests in Jordan, yet allows and facilities all Islamist rallies in Jordan?

Sincerely

Mudar Zahran
Secretary General
The Jordanian Opposition Coalition.