Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Elder of Ziyon
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| (The entire net worth of the world is less than half this amount!) |
The controversial New Israel Fund and its social change and political lobbying organization known as SHATIL, have received more than $1 million from the State Department under a program designed to create political change, reform, and activism in the Middle East. The government program, Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), has extended more than $600 million in grants to political and social activists and reformers in 18 Middle East countries, mainly with unstable or challenged political environments in need of democratic improvement. “MEPI supports organizations and individuals in their efforts to promote political, economic, and social reform in the Middle East and North Africa,” according to the agency’s official self-description.EXCLUSIVE EXPOSE: Husband Of New Israel Fund Director Supports Boycotts Against Israel
The list of nations in which MEPI operates includes such countries as Algeria, Libya, Lebanon, and Yemen.
However, MEPI’s sphere of engagement includes Israel — ironically the only pluralistic, stable, and democratic nation in the Mideast. Among the leading recipients for MEPI grants in Israel is the New Israel Fund and its SHATIL organization. The NIF is an international, US-based 501(c)(3) charitable organization which has generated intense acrimony within the Jewish community and Israeli establishment for its highly politicized activities.
This weekend, Rachel Liel, Israel director of the NIF was featured in an article in YNET, the online version of Yediot Achronot. Using convenient half-truths, Liel discussed the importance of NIF projects which benefit minorities, benefits ultra-Orthodox women, and other fairly mainstream projects which few Israelis take offense at.UN Gaza Commissioners seek deferral of report to June
What was conveniently ignored was the fact that a significant portion of NIF’s $30 Million budget is spent on projects which directly harm the State of Israel. The New Israel Fund is a dangerous, radical organization which wraps their programs in a “respectable” package. They are rejected by the majority of Israelis across the political spectrum.
What has not yet been exposed is the fact that Rachel Liel’s husband, Alon is one of the world’s leading organizers of world boycotts against Israel. He is also a co-organizer of the campaign to call on European countries to undermine Israeli sovereignty by “recognizing” the “State of Palestine.” Alon Liel, Israel’s former ambassador to South Africa is a member of two organizations which receive large funding by NIF. He is on the management team of Ir Amin, which works against Jewish interests in Jerusalem, and is also a member of the B’Tselem Public Council.
UN Watch welcomes the news that the United Nations commission of inquiry on Gaza is seeking to defer its report to June.Pierre Rehov - War crimes- Official Trailer
“This is what I proposed to the commissioners when I met them in September,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer. “A serious report needs more time and must reflect material that has come to light from all parties.”
“Moreover,” said Neuer, “the resignation of William Schabas under a cloud of bias accusations requires a complete rewriting of the report.”
“Finally, UN Watch’s recent revelation that the Goldstone Report was drafted with the help of an anarchist law professor who devoted her life to prosecuting Israelis for war crimes requires a careful review of the staffers now drafting this report, who were hired by the same UN agency.”
Tuesday, March 10, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Lucy Aharish, Arab Israeli television host and reporter, woke up on Saturday morning and saw that someone had been trying to reach her by phone for hours.You know the haters will accuse Israel of "tokenism" for choosing to honor Lucy Aharish. But there sure are a lot of "tokens" out there - at some point they add up to a lot more than a token amount.
"I called back. It was Yitzhak Zunshine, the head of the Hasbara Center," Aharish said in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth.
"I asked what the urgency was and he responded: 'I wanted to congratulate you. You were chosen to light a torch on Independence Day.' I fell silent. I, usually very talkative, could not speak a word. Tears came to my eyes. It was the last thing I thought would happen," said Aharish.
One of the first calls Aharish made after she received the good news was to her mother. "I called her and said: 'Mom, they chose me to light a torch on Independence Day.' 'Okay, great,' she responded.
"I was surprised by her response. 'Do you fear something?' I asked her. 'It is after all the biggest ceremony at Mount Herzl.' And she answered, 'Wonderful. This is how you will hit back at all the racists who make your life hard everyday.'
"I accept what she says 100 percent. It is a slap in the face to all those racists who have no shame to post comments such as 'stinking Arab' and 'Get out of here, this is not your country' and 'who needs Arabs on their (TV) screens.'"
Aharish says she did not think of giving up the position for a second. "I'm proud of it," the television host who was born to Muslim parents and grew up in Dimona said. Aharish now resides in Tel Aviv.
"I know that a lot of people will have something to say, but the moment my parents are proud – I am happy."
Tuesday, March 10, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Erekat, J Street, Saeb Erekat
Tuesday, March 10, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Task Force Chair Former Deputy Commander of United States European CommandIn 1999, two Chinese People’s Liberation Army officers asserted that the ability to blend technologies with military actions and political-influence activities, a technique they dubbed “unrestricted warfare,” signifies a new type of war, in which a key principle is “no longer using armed force to compel the enemy to one’s will, but rather, using all means, military and nonmilitary, lethal and non-lethal, to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.”97 In the 2014 Gaza War,The generals also directly criticize NGOs for their ignorance of the laws of armed conflict:
Hamas appears to have pursued precisely such unrestricted warfare. Their concept of operations aimed to force Israel into making concessions – such as reopening Gaza’s borders – as a result of political pressure. What was novel about Hamas’s approach, however, was where and how they sought to create that pressure. A key vulnerability for liberal democracies, such as the United States or Israel, is their citizens’ aversion to excessive or unjustified casualties. Though voters are willing to support wars – and casualties – that are perceived as legitimately defending the homeland or securing vital national interests, popular support for military operations can decline when these goals begin to be doubted or overshadowed by deaths of civilians from the opposing side and, especially, of their own soldiers. ...
Hamas certainly engaged in such classic irregular warfare, and utilized its enhanced arsenal and conventional military structure to inflict greater casualties among the IDF. Hamas’s infiltration tunnels, dug into Israeli territory, were particularly effective for striking at the rear of IDF formations, fundamentally transforming the location and definition of the “frontline” of the conflict. Hamas’s greater focus, however, was on the exploitation of the presence of civilians in the combat zone. It used unlawful concealment among civilians to constrain and blunt the effectiveness of IDF military operations. It sought to neutralize the IDF’s precision-guided munitions by covering and concealing its leadership and military forces amid and often below civilian infrastructure.99 It utilized its expanded tunnel networks to maneuver and supply its forces while limiting the likelihood of being detected or targeted.100 And it deliberately and unlawfully placed command and control, firing positions and logistical hubs underneath, inside or in immediate proximity to structures it knew the IDF considered specially protected, such as hospitals, schools and mosques, in full knowledge that this would substantially complicate IDF targeting decisions and attack options.101
But Hamas did not just stop with using civilians as a passive defense tactic. Its contribution to unrestricted warfare doctrine was to ensure maximum political pressure would be exerted on Israel by, at best, acting in reckless disregard of civilians’ safety or, at worst, consciously and actively provoking IDF fire on Gazan civilians. It did so in part simply by virtue of embedding itself among the surrounding civilian infrastructure.102 Simultaneously it launched rockets and attacked IDF forces from within or in direct proximity to international safe havens – especially UNRWA facilities – and from civilian buildings, often forcing civilians to congregate in these areas immediately afterward. Further, Hamas reportedly discouraged or actually prevented civilians from leaving buildings after the IDF targeted them with warning communications and munitions.103 Hamas’s strategy for victory depended on incurring civilian casualties among its own people.
The public that Hamas sought to sway with these casualties, however, was not that of its opponent. Rather, its strategy appears to have been to discredit Israel in the international community more broadly, by portraying the IDF’s military operations as indiscriminate and disproportional.104 This would subsequently create pressure from Hamas’s regional supporters and others against Israel to agree to a ceasefire on Hamas’s terms. Most remarkably, Hamas undertook this effort in earnest despite intentionally and egregiously violating the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) through its targeting of Israeli civilians and its exploitation of Gazan civilians to shield its military activities (as we discuss below).105 By shrewdly controlling access to much of the Gaza Strip by media and international organizations, Hamas was also able to portray collateral damage caused by its own strategy and actions as illegal IDF conduct.
These statements suggest a concerted strategy on the part of Hamas to exploit misunderstandings of LOAC to gain international condemnation of Israel. Such attempts to move the conflict from the battlefield, where Israel enjoyed military and technological superiority, to the court of international opinion appears to have been part of Hamas’s concept of operations in the 2014 Gaza War. 42 This strategy depended not just on distorting the principles of LOAC to assert claims of unlawful conduct against Israel but also – and more disturbingly – on ensuring Gazan civilian casualties to support Hamas’s assertions of Israeli legal violations.Ironically, the authors criticize Israel for going beyond the laws of armed conflict in protecting civilians - which could hurt Western armies in future wars:
Unfortunately, it appears to have been a successful strategy. Numerous individuals claiming to be experts in the relationship between law and military operations quickly seemed to accept Hamas’s assertions of unlawful IDF operations. On July 23, 2014, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, stated: “There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.” The U.N. Human Rights Council subsequently issued a resolution condemning “in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations” in Gaza.125 In September, Human Rights Watch issued a report declaring that “three Israeli attacks that damaged Gaza schools housing displaced people caused numerous civilian casualties in violation of the laws of war.”126 And, in November, Amnesty International concluded that the IDF’s “use of large aerial bombs [to attack civilian homes] suggests that these attacks either were intended to cause the complete destruction of the targeted structure or a determination to ensure the killing of targeted individuals without due regard to the killing and destruction to those in their immediate vicinity,” which would constitute “prima facie evidence of serious violations of international humanitarian law.”127
These condemnations were premised on premature, effects-based assessments of military operations, or on the same flawed understandings of the law that Hamas was promoting, while refusing to apply that same law to its own actions. These routine distortions of the actual law applicable to military operations produced a fundamentally false narrative of legal compliance and non-compliance during this conflict, one that misrepresented Israeli attempts to minimize civilian deaths and the legality of their targeting Hamas and other factions engaged in military operations.
An accurate understanding of LOAC is essential to properly and credibly assess the legality of combat operations. Unfortunately, it is poorly understood, allowing it to be easily distorted to present a false narrative that combat operations producing civilian casualties are inherently unlawful. Such distortions are further enabled by the almost instinctive, but legally invalid, tendency to judge military actions based on effects of combat operations.
Effects-based critiques distort this equation by relying on post hoc consequences as the sole indication of LOAC compliance. However, the legal standard for compliance turns on the reasonableness of the attack decision at the time it was made based on available information. For example, a commander may launch an attack on an identified enemy command and control bunker or tunnel, having made good faith efforts to identify all available intelligence related to the target, based on the conclusion that the bunker is used exclusively for military purposes. However, it may turn out that the enemy had encouraged civilians to shelter in the bunker, with the attack producing the effect of civilian casualties. This effect is not sufficient to conclude the law was violated. Instead, as clearly established by LOAC, compliance must be assessed on the totality of the military situation at the time the decision was made.132
In the first instance, it may seem that the appropriate response to such distorted analyses is for militaries to go to even greater lengths – above and beyond LOAC requirements – to demonstrate their respect for innocent life and avoid condemnation. Indeed, such was Israel’s approach the 2014 Gaza War. Based on this Task Force’s observation, however, this is not necessarily an effective response to offset this distortion. What may appear at first glance as a rush to defend civilians actually enables a race to the bottom, empowering those who would exploit efforts to mitigate civilian risk while gutting existing legal principles – all to the detriment of civilians’ safety.
The abusive use of law to gain tactical and strategic advantage by hybrid enemies, and to discredit lawful conduct of professional military forces, must be countered by defending – rather than abandoning – those legal principles. Military restraint beyond the carefully developed and time-tested boundaries of LOAC should be imposed only when it is perceived to produce a tactical, operational or strategic advantage, and not merely in response to anticipated improper invocation of inapposite legal standards. Furthermore, policy-based constraints should be clearly demarked from legal obligations, so that raising standards in one instance does not set a precedent to which a military force will be expected to adhere in the future. Otherwise, any constraints beyond LOAC adopted by one country will submit others to great pressures to conform similarly. Once this becomes entrenched, it will be difficult to walk back. The result of conflating policy and law, and of attempting to apply legal standards other than LOAC to armed conflicts, will not only be a greater danger to national security – as armed forces will become much more limited in their ability to respond to and counteract threats from unconventional adversaries operating among civilian populations – but an increased risk to civilians as well. The application of standards more exacting than LOAC to armed conflicts may produce the perverse effect of incentivizing unconventional adversaries to dress as civilians, hide among civilians, launch operations from civilian areas, use civilians as human shields or even (as Hamas did) deliberately seek to instigate civilian casualties, since any civilian deaths could be considered a legal violation. If such an approach to assessing legality in warfare becomes the norm, the combat power and initiative of military force will be functionally neutered. Even reasonable targeting errors resulting from the inevitable “fog of war” would subject service-members and commanders to criminal responsibility based on distorted legal principles, establish a standard that no military could reasonably meet, delegitimize and constrain the U.S. military, embolden potential adversaries and, therefore, increase the risk to civilian populations unable to defend themselves against terrorist entities.
Therefore, proper adherence to LOAC entails stringent observance of LOAC requirements and imposition of additional policy-based constraints only when they serve the interests of mission accomplishment. The United States and its allies should devote resources to countering existing misunderstandings of LOAC. When restraint is exercised for reasons other than legal obligations, the United States should also explain its motivations and reasoning, lest it contribute to further misunderstanding of LOAC requirements.
Monday, March 09, 2015Elder of Ziyon
So Moussa Abu Marzouk, Hamas leader who lives in Cairo, blamed Israel for the bomb, saying that they are the ones who gain from killing Egyptian soldiers because attacks like that often prompts Egypt to close the crossings.
In January 2003, the Israeli human rights organization Btselem, which receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from its sponsor The New Israel Fund, posted on its official website the testimony of Bilal Murtada Muhammad Hafnawi, a 16-year-old high school student from Nablus who accused the Israeli Border Police of extreme brutal behavior against him and his friend, Khaled Hashash.My Schabas Dinner
In his testimony, which was taken by phone by Btselem’s field researcher, Ali Draghmeh, Hafnawi argued that Border Police operatives beat him severely with no reason for a prolonged period of time.
Btselem considered Hafnawi’s account indisputable facts. The damning title of the Btselem report reads, “Nablus: Border Police officers beat medical personnel, preventing medical treatment, January 2003.” Btselem did not post any comment of the Police Internal Investigations Department referring to this case or any updates on Bilal Hafnawi that might be relevant to evaluate his credibility.
Btselem described Hafnawi as “a high school student,” and added no further information about him or his political affiliation and connection to terrorist organizations.
During the years 2002-3, Hafnawi the “high school student,” as portrayed by Btselem, was in fact an operative of the Hamas terrorist organization. A year later he changed allegiance to the terrorist organization Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (Fatah). During this time Hafnawi threw on three occasions Molotov cocktails at military vehicles and a tank, possessed an M-16 assault rifle that was used by senior operatives of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and facilitated the manufacturing of IEDs and pipe bombs in his home.
Hafnawi joined the al-Qaeda network in Jordan in 2005, and participated in the planning of a double mass-murder attack in Jerusalem. He was convicted on security charges and served eight years in prison.
This case illustrates once again Btselem’s flawed research methodology and its one-sided and anti-Israeli approach, which cast a dark shadow on its credibility.
“You really do? The last time we tried to outlaw war was the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and that didn’t go very well.”Book Review: A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide
“We outlawed it,” Schabas replied. “The Kellogg-Briand pact was the beginning. And then the Nuremberg trial. And the Charter of the United Nations. And it’s prevented global war.”
Attributing the failure thus far of World War III to launch to the niceties of the U.N. Charter and not, say, to the terrors of Mutually Assured Destruction, is the hallmark of a Model U.N. participant, not a serious scholar of global history. Neither the U.N. Charter nor the countless other treaties and legal instruments devised after World War II did anything to prevent the proliferation of incredibly bloody conflicts across the Third World (Korea, Vietnam, Angola, etc.) that functioned as Cold War proxy battles, nor the many small wars that have collectively claimed the lives of millions (Rwanda, Sudan, the Balkans, etc.) since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Budapest Memorandum has not stopped Russia from waging war on Ukraine. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1559, 1680 and 1701 have not led to Hezbollah’s disarmament. The Convention on the Rights of the Child has not stopped Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and a host of other nations—all signatories to the document—from exploiting children as soldiers.
Later in the evening, Schabas was asked to address a problem inherent in the practice of international law, specifically as it applies to Israel and its adversaries—namely that the latter groups, in their conduct as belligerents, make no pretensions whatsoever to abide by any norms, legal or moral. “I think that they have their own rule book,” Schabas replied.
“What is it?” someone else at the table asked.
“I don’t know what it is exactly. I think everybody involved in combat plays by rules. They just disagree about what the rules are and we may not agree with the rules that they’re playing by … I don’t know that the Hezbollah fighter faced with a school filled with children is going to say, ‘let’s go and kill them.’ ”
It is all well and good that William Schabas recused himself from an enterprise that was corrupt from the beginning. But the explanations cited for his unsuitability are comparatively minor and tawdry next to the fact that he is a fool.
Historian David Cesarani hails Alon Confino’s triumphant demonstration that anti-Jewish policies are within the realms of comprehension and that it is possible to find the words to explain them accessibly, two qualities we badly need today.
At a time when we are told that a ‘wave of anti-Semitism’ is sweeping Europe and that Jews face a threat comparable to the menace of the 1930s, it is good to be reminded of what Nazi anti-Semitism was like and what it was about. Alon Confino’s subtle and elegantly written study obliges us to confront the ways in which the Nazis imagined the Jews and the emotions which these fantasies stirred in the minds of ordinary German people. Confino boldly rejects the interpretations of Nazism that currently dominate scholarship, asserting that these offer a rather too comforting explanation. He argues that Nazi anti-Jewish policy cannot be reduced to racism, and certainly not to perverted scientific thinking. Rather, ideas of race and scientific practices were warped to provide the right answers to a pre-determined ‘Jewish question’. Nor did the persecution of the Jews represent a ‘radicalisation’ of anti-Semitism or metastasise due to the brutalisation of a regime and a people that were in a virtually constant state of imagined or real warfare. On the contrary, the Nazis drew on traditions of Jew-hatred and the violence they practiced evoked patterns which were rooted in the German past and in Christianity. Crucially, Confino situates Nazi anti-Semitism within the Christian tradition of anti-Judaism. Although many scholars (and theological apologists) have maintained that National Socialism was anti-religious, Confino states that, ’Their aim was not to eradicate Christianity but to eradicate Christianity’s Jewish roots; not to replace Christianity with racism but to blend the two.’
Monday, March 09, 2015Elder of ZiyonTreasury officials are preparing bullish new estimates for economic growth this year as data coming in for the final part of 2014 and early 2015 show growth rebounding at a faster pace than anyone predicted just a few months earlier.
A final estimate is still being calculated, but Finance Ministry officials said they are now expecting Israel’s gross domestic product to expand 3.5% this year. That would mean a much faster pace of growth than the 2.8% officials were talking about last summer when they provided the first estimate ahead of the 2015 budget.
Behind the new optimism is preliminary data for the fourth quarter of 2014, which showed GDP surging ahead at a 7.2% annual rate, it fastest since the first quarter of 2008. That raised growth for all of 2014 to 2.9%.
Meantime, Israel’s unemployment rate fell to 5.9% last year from 6.2% in 2013 even as the percentage of the working age population grew to a very high 64.2%. The economy bounced back quickly from the effect of last summer’s Gaza war while a weaker shekel has been spurring higher exports, mainly to North America and Asia.
With the opening of Amazon’s research and development center in Israel this year, each of these Internet giants [Apple, Google, Facebook] now has an R&D presence in the country. But it is the veteran technology company Cisco that most varied activity here. In addition to an R&D center that employs about 1,800 workers, it established in 1998, Cisco has acquired 10 Israeli startups for a total of more than $1.5 billion. In addition, it has invested in close to 25 others, not including its acquisition of NDS – which was long past the startup stage when Cisco bought it and had changed hands several times before the acquisition – for $5 billion three years ago.Intel also chose Israeli technology for 3D chips.
Trade between Israel and China has been steadily increasing in the last three years, with trade doubling between 2010 and 2014. Trade in 2010 was about $5 billion, with Israeli exports to China amounting to $1 billion. 2014 fared better than 2013. In 2014, trade value approached $11 billion and I think Israeli exports to China accounted for nearly 30 percent of that amount. While it's a positive development it's nothing compared to the potential of the Chinese market. China also invested $300 million in Israeli high technology in 2014.Even Ha'aretz' business column says that Palestinian boycotts of Israeli goods are only hurting themselves.
In Europe and America, politically engaged college students, performance artists and cooperative-grocery-store activists – the kind of people who form the core of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, movement – may find it personally gratifying to swear off Israel. It costs them nothing: none are likely to have ever knowingly bought an Israeli product, held shares in an Israeli company or been invited to Israel to perform or exhibit. They can take the politically correct stand by signing a petition or voting on a resolution at no personal cost.
That’s not the case for the Palestinians, who depend on Israel for goods, services and employment. By one estimate, 70% of the processed food Palestinians consume comes from Israel, so boycotting even some products entails a huge personal sacrifice.
And to what avail? Only about 3% of Israeli food sales come from the West Bank, and most of that is for basic, low-margin products. The CEOs of Israeli food companies won’t be lobbying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to transfer the Palestinian tax receipts he has frozen, which is the ostensible reason for the boycott.
The latest PLO and Fatah campaign is not directed only against settlement products. Rather, it is targeting anything made in Israel, as a part of an "anti-normalization" movement, whose goal is to thwart any encounters between Israelis and Palestinians, including peace conferences.JCPA: Is the PLO Threat to End Security Coordination with Israel an Empty Threat?
While some Israelis, Americans and Europeans are talking about the need to revive the peace process after the March 17 elections in Israel, the Palestinians are clearly moving in a different direction.
"We are headed for confrontation with Israel." — Mahmoud Aloul, senior Fatah official.
The Palestinian Authority's strategy now is to intensify its campaign to isolate and delegitimize Israel in the international community, and promote all forms of boycotts of Israelis and Israeli goods; to force Israel to make concessions through international pressure and through campaigns of boycott and divestment.
These campaigns are further radicalizing Palestinians, driving many of them into the open arms of radical groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
If Abbas is interested in returning to the negotiating table (as he sometimes declares he is), then he needs to prepare his people for that and not incite them even more against Israel.
Those who are opposed to the presence of Israeli products in their villages and cities will be the first to oppose the resumption of peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.
It is now clear that Abbas’ threats are empty; they were an attempt to pressure Israel to free the frozen tax revenues. The PLO Central Committee’s decision was also aimed at containing popular rage over the freezing of the revenues and at showing that the PA is not prepared to submit passively to the Israeli sanction.Hamas offers long-term calm in exchange for end of blockade
In reality, Abbas knows that ending security coordination with Israel will harm the Palestinians most of all. Just a few months ago, Israel rescued Abbas’ rule when the Israel Security Agency (Shabak) apprehended an extensive Hamas network in Judea and Samaria that had planned to destabilize the PA with a series of attacks.
The security coordination is an inseparable part of the Oslo agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in 1993. Although the PA has violated numerous clauses of the agreement, so far it is refraining from violating this particular clause.
Fatah sources claim that the large-scale exercise conducted by the IDF in Judea and Samaria a few days before the PLO Central Committee met in Ramallah was meant to signal to the Palestinians that Israel will not hesitate to reconquer all of the West Bank if it needs to do so.
An escalation of the conflict between Israel and the PA has been deferred for now. Nevertheless, the Palestinians have not withdrawn their application to join the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
Hamas recently sent a series of messages to Israel indicating interest in a long-term ceasefire lasting for several years, in exchange for an end to the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, sources told The Times of Israel.The inevitable Hamas retraction
Senior Hamas officials met with Western diplomats about the ceasefire, and also reached a number of understandings about the character of the ceasefire, also known as a tahdiyya.
During the talks, Hamas officials emphasized that they were willing to agree on a ceasefire of at least five years (though some sources said the offer was for 15 years), during which time all military activities “above and below ground” from both parties would end. At the same time, the blockade on Gaza would be removed, including restrictions on exports, and Israel would allow the construction of a seaport and an airport.
The Western diplomats included Swiss Consul Paul Garnier, who has become the key figure in maintaining contacts with Hamas.
Garnier visited Gaza a month ago, and met with several Hamas leaders, including Moussa Abu Marzouk, Bassem Naim, Ghazi Hamid, and others.
Garnier presented these conditions to senior EU officials who are in touch with Israeli leaders.
Monday, March 09, 2015Elder of Ziyonconspiracy theories
Monday, March 09, 2015Elder of Ziyonrogel alpher |
| Look at that hair! |
I saw you during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, Elie Wiesel. You were there, in the gallery, next to Sara Netanyahu. Your appearance was impressive and powerful, leaving its mark on everyone who saw it.Rogel Alpher has created a new moral rule for the world.
...Your thin, elderly body hardly filled the suit you wore for the occasion. It is obvious you are accustomed to such suits. They are your natural clothing. Their touch is familiar to your skin. You looked like you were completely in your element when Netanyahu pointed you out – the most famous Holocaust survivor today, a Nobel laureate, an admired author – to illustrate his commitment to stopping the fulfillment of the Iranian threat to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. Never again, and all that Holocaust jazz. You stood and thanked all the members of Congress, who gave you a standing ovation. You sat down, but they would not stop.
There is an intolerable ease in the applause you receive. It is automatic. Applauding you is the easiest, safest thing to do. And how they applauded. You sat down and stood up, modestly, to receive their overflowing esteem. You gave Netanyahu your symbolic and moral support. It is obvious you are well aware of who you are. You are Elie Wiesel. You are 86 years old. And for you, I count for nothing.
What were you doing there, Elie Wiesel? Netanyahu is my prime minister. You are not an Israeli citizen. You do not live here. The Iranian threat to destroy Israel does not apply to you. You are a Jew who lives in America. This is not your problem. By what right did you stand there, using your reputation and your prestige, to try and influence the members of Congress to accept Netanyahu’s position on an issue that has nothing to do with you?
If Israel’s future is so important to you, if the fate of Jerusalem matters so much to you, why do you not live here? Do you think that you and I have some shared fate because we are both Jews? Think again. Everything that happens to me here in Israel does not happen to you there in New York. Where do you get the right to interfere in my affairs? You have some nerve.
It is impossible to ignore your white hair, visible from afar, parted by a deep gulf on the slope of your high forehead and dividing into airy stalks of a fluttering, almost youthful, forelock with something Parisian about it. The professorial hairdo of an esteemed intellectual, the kind that characterizes a creative, instinctive and turbulent sort of person. You carry it with open self-awareness, a bit like a preening peacock, a hallmark of the icon you have become. It flew over your elongated head, your beneficent and wise eyes. The feeling was that your very hair carried something of the victory of the human spirit. That is how the hair of a distinguished humanist looks.This photo of Alpher may explain his obsession with the hair of an 86-year old man.
Monday, March 09, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, March 08, 2015Elder of Ziyon
The five largest European Union members - Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain - protested to the Palestinian Authority last week that it was not doing enough to rebuild the Gaza Strip, according to European diplomats and senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials.
Envoys from the five nations met last Thursday with Alon Ushpiz, a senior diplomat in the Foreign Ministry, for talks focused mainly on the situation in Gaza. During the meeting, which took place at the Foreign Ministry office in Jerusalem, the European representatives surprisingly praised Israel's actions over the past few months to promote reconstruction in Gaza and ease the humanitarian crisis in the Strip.
The Europeans complimented Israel's cooperation with the reconstruction apparatus that the United Nations is operating, Israel's doubling of the water supply to Gaza and the ease on export restrictions from the Gaza Strip to Israel, the West Bank and abroad. The European representatives also requested to increase the scale and pace of transferring goods from Israel to the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza.
The diplomats mentioned they had also met with the PA leadership in Ramallah, the Egyptian leadership in Cairo and a number of Arab governments.
According to a senior official in the Foreign Ministry, the European diplomats remarked the consuls general of their nations held a meeting with senior PA officials several days earlier, in which they conveyed a sharp protest to the PA leadership over the lack of sufficient cooperation in everything regarding reconstruction in Gaza.
A European diplomat familiar with the details of the meetings confirmed that such protest was conveyed. He spoke on condition of anonymity. "They conveyed an unequivocal message that the PA can do more to promote reconstruction in the Strip, and that continued internal political squabbling between Fatah and Hamas are adversely affecting the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the pace and scope of reconstruction," the European diplomat said.
The European diplomat said that in a meeting between representatives of the five EU states and senior officials from the Egyptian foreign ministry in Cairo, the Europeans expressed concern that Egypt is not assisting the reconstruction process in Gaza and is continuing to close the Rafah crossing for extended periods of time.
"They told the Egyptians that we need their cooperation to help bridge the gaps between Fatah and Hamas, and that they are delaying the reconstruction process," the EU diplomat said. At the same time, it is hard to see the Egyptians responding positively in light of the fact that just last week the state court ruled that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Likewise, diplomats from the five EU powers held talks with a number of Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar, to complain that those countries have yet to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars pledged for Gaza reconstruction, further delaying resolution to the crisis.
"There is positive movement on the Israeli side in everything regarding Gaza," the EU diplomat said. "While you always need more, the Israelis are removing hurdles and assisting reconstruction. At the same time, reconstruction is still stuck because of the internal fights on the Palestinian side, Egyptian behavior and failure to deliver funds pledged by the Arab states. We fear that if nothing will move on Gaza reconstruction, we will find ourselves facing another round of violence in Gaza."it is 100% accurate, but still unexpected.
Sunday, March 08, 2015Elder of Ziyon
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PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
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