The Palestinian Authority, with direct financing of the European Union and blind acceptance of lies as facts by media, is swallowing up the southern Hevron Hills, a huge area between Kiryat Arba-Hevron and Arad-Be'er Sheva.The Truth on Susiya
The latest chapter in the Palestinian Authority's re-invention of history is taking place in Susiya (pronounced "Soos-eeya") located two miles from the old borders of Israel, on the western edge of the Judean Desert that leads to the Dead Sea, and less than half an hour from Be'er Sheva, the capital of the Negev.
The Arab strategy: An Arab family erects a tent, illegally, near the archaeological site of the ancient town of Susiya. As time passes, the tent becomes a makeshift structure, which expands into several structures. With the support of extreme left-wing activists, the 'ancient' town of 'Palestinian Susiya' is invented, reported the Tazpit News Agency.
"This makes for a great human interest story, but for one setback — the 'ancient Palestinian Susiya' never existed. It shows up on no records," Tazpit wrote.
Yigal Dilmoni, deputy director-general of the Yesha Council, told Tazpit, "Fifteen-year-old [i.e., 1998—ed] aerial photos clearly show that there was no Arab village at this site ... The Arabs have come for the village of Yatta, and ... repeatedly disseminate lies."
[Back in June 2013], the Civil Lands Authority issued approximately 40 stop-work orders against projects funded by the European Union and intended to firm up Palestinian Authority claims to land where they never lived until Jews came to the area in 1983.
In that year, for the first time in 1,500 years, Jews began living in the southern Hevron Hills, setting up a community in nearby Beit Yatir, two miles to the south, and in Susiya, where the old Jewish town existed until approximately the 6th century.
Khirbet Susiya (Susya) is a small Arab village in the South Hebron Hills. There are widely divergent narratives regarding the village and its history; according to Israeli authorities, the village’s structures have been illegally built. A protracted court battle ensued regarding the demolition of the village.International court may not reopen flotilla case, prosecutor says
The Israeli Supreme Court recently cleared the legal barriers to demolition, on the grounds that the structures were constructed illegally, entirely without permits or approved plans. (Under the Oslo framework, Israel is responsible for planning and construction in Area C, which is where Susya is located.)
A number of governments, including the U.S. and European governments, are lobbying the Israeli government to prevent the demolition. In June, “a delegation of all European Union heads of missions to the Palestinian Authority visited Susya, accompanied by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.”
As with many such contentious issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict, many NGOs are active in promoting the Palestinian narrative, which is then repeated by the European and U.S. officials. These NGOs are themselves heavily subsidized by European and U.S. entities. (h/t Bob Knot)
The International Criminal Court will not necessarily open an investigation into the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, despite a pretrial chamber ordering the prosecutor last week to reconsider her decision to close her initial probe into the case, the court’s chief prosecutor said Tuesday.
“The decision on whether to open an investigation depends on the facts and circumstances of each situation,” said Fatou Bensouda. “We are carefully studying the decision and will decide on the next steps in due course.”
In an email exchange with The Times of Israel, the Gambian-born Bensouda said she was aware of the United Nations Human Rights Council report on last year’s Gaza war and would consider “all credible and reliable sources of information.”
At the same time, she promised to conduct her own “independent analysis” of the controversial report.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Elder of ZiyonDear Ms. Weir,
Jewish Voice for Peace has chosen not to work with you because our central tenet is opposition to racism in all its forms, and you have chosen repeatedly to associate yourself with people who advocate for racism.
You have been a repeat guest of white supremacist Clay Douglas on his hate radio show, the Free American. Clay Douglas is concerned primarily with the survival of the White race and sees malign Jewish influence everywhere. His racist, anti-Jewish, and anti-gay rhetoric can be found across the front pages of his multiple websites.
In the course of your appearance with Clay Douglas on August 25, 2010, for example, you were silent when Douglas invoked the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and engaged in a racist diatribe against Jews. Your repeated appearance on this show (April 23 and August 25, 2010; February 9 and May 18, 2011) show that you knew his extremist views and chose to continue the association....
1. Ms. Weir posted a blog on her personal website that references Jews as a race being “an object of hatred to all the peoples among whom it has established itself,” effectively blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. (See Section 1 of Part 3)In response, the Free Palestine Movement defended Weir and publicly withdrew from the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (received via email):
2. In writing about a controversy surrounding allegations of the Israeli military harvesting the organs of Palestinians in 2009, Ms. Weir responded to supporters of Israel claiming this was a new “blood libel” by citing the research of Ariel Toaff, who purported to have uncovered ritual murder of Christian children by Jews in medieval Europe (the very definition of “blood libel”). (See Section 2 of part 3)
3. Ms. Weir has appeared at least five times for hour-long episodes on notorious white supremacist and militiaman Clayton Douglas’s radio show, the “Free American Hour,” between 2010 and 2012. A cursory glance at Douglas’s homepage would raise concerns about the host and program’s political content. Douglas’s homepage features the confederate flag, a video that opens with the title “9/11 Brainwashing and the Holohoax,” and numerous references to the “Jew World Order” and its “war on Adolph Hitler,” as well as claims of “ritual murder of Christians and Children by Jews.” While interviewing Ms. Weir, Douglas:
a. made derogatory remarks about Arabs (See 3.a and 3.d of Part 3)
b. repeatedly asserted Jewish control of the world (3.b, 3.g, 3.h, and 3.j)
c. quoted and played speech by the former head of the KKK, David Duke, proclaiming a war on Christianity (3.c, 3.e)
d. demonized adherents of communism, insinuating it is a Jewish conspiracy (3.h)
e. downplayed or denied the existence of apartheid historically in South Africa, analogizing criticism of white South Africans during apartheid, which Douglas sees as unfair, to the treatment of white Americans today. Similarly, Douglas analogizes the average German between WWI and WWII and average white American today (3.f 3.j)
...
Taken as a pattern, we concluded that Ms. Weir’s views and actions, on behalf of If Americans Knew, contradict the US Campaign’s anti-racism principles.
Please be advised that the Free Palestine Movement resigns from the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, effective immediately.Gives the word "solidarity" a whole new meaning!
We resign because of the disgraceful, disrespectful and unjust treatment of Alison Weir and her organization, If Americans Knew, in the procedures to expel her from the Campaign on the spurious grounds of insufficient avoidance of anti-Semitic persons and institutions.
We resign because it is clear that the decision had been made to expel IAK before the proceedings to do so had ever begun.
We resign because, in defiance of the most basic principles of justice, Ms. Weir was not given the opportunity to confront her accuser.
We resign because no evidence was presented that she herself is anti-Semitic.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015Elder of ZiyonThe Obama administration and European Union agreed as part of the accord last week to lift sanctions over eight years on a network of Iranian scientists, military officers and companies long suspected by the U.S. and United Nations as central players in a covert nuclear weapons program.
The U.S. also agreed to remove a German engineer from its financial blacklist by late 2023 after he was targeted by sanctions for his alleged role in a global black market in nuclear weapons technology run by the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Obama administration officials said the U.S. was required under the Vienna agreement and U.N. resolutions to lift sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities for their role Tehran’s nuclear program.
Lawmakers and nuclear experts were also puzzled by the Obama administration’s decision to remove Gerhard Wisser from its sanctions list by 2023. The German engineer was convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison by a South African court in 2007 for his role in supplying centrifuge components to the A.Q. Khan black market network.
The U.S. and IAEA accuse Mr. Khan and his associates of facilitating the sale of nuclear equipment to North Korea, Iran and Libya during the 1980s and 1990s.
The senior U.S. official didn’t provide specifics about why Mr. Wisser was granted sanctions relief as part of the Iran deal. Mr. Wisser could not be located. He pleaded guilty in 2007 in South Africa to manufacturing components that could be illegally used in nuclear technology.
A South African court sentenced a German man to 18 years in prison on Tuesday but suspended the jail term after he pleaded guilty in a case involving a global black market in atomic weapons technology. Gerhard Wisser, an engineer living in South Africa, was accused of having ties to a network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan.Wisser was also suspected of providing nuclear weapons components to Al Qaeda!
Wednesday, July 22, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Unfortunately, while eminently reasonable sounding, Ignatius’s analysis is incorrect. Kerry’s details of the deal are beside the point. The big picture is the only thing that matters. That picture has two main points.Alan Dershowitz: US gave away better options on Iran
First, the deal guarantees that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. Second, it gives $150 billion to the mullahs.
The details of the deal – the number of centrifuges that keep spinning, the verification mechanisms, the dispute resolution procedures, etc. – are all debatable, and largely irrelevant, at least when compared to the two irrefutable aspects of the big picture.
According to the administration, today Iran needs a year to use the nuclear materials it is known to possess to make a nuclear bomb. Other sources claim that Iran requires several months to accomplish the task.
Since these materials will remain in Iran’s possession under the deal, if Iran abandons the agreement, it will need at most a year to build nuclear weapons.
Then there are the unknown aspects of Iran’s nuclear program. We must assume that Iran has ongoing covert nuclear operations in unknown installations through which it has acquired unknown capabilities.
These capabilities will likely reduce the time Iran requires to make bombs.
Under the deal, the US and its negotiating partners are required to protect Iran’s nuclear assets from sabotage and other forms of attack. They are required as well to teach Iran how to develop and use more advanced centrifuges. As a consequence, when the agreement expires, Iran will be able to build nuclear bombs at will.
If Iran remains a threat, the deal bars the US from taking any steps to counter it aside from all-out war.
The agreement ends the international sanctions regime against Iran. With the sanctions goes any prospect of an international coalition joining forces to take military action against Iran, if Iran does walk away from the deal. So sanctions are gone, deterrence is gone. And that leaves only war.
In other words, far from diminishing the chance of war, the deal makes it inevitable that Iran will get the bomb or there will be a full scale war, or both.
The most compelling argument the Obama administration is offering to boost what it acknowledges is a compromise nuclear deal with Iran is this: it’s better than the alternatives. That sort of pragmatic point is appealing to members of Congress, particularly skeptical Democrats who are searching for ways to support their president and who are accustomed to voting for the lesser of evils in a real-politick world where the options are often bad, worse, even worse, and worst of all.Moynihan’s message on BDS and Iran appeasement: We’ve got to stop this
But the question remains: How did we get ourselves into the situation where there are no good options?
We did so by beginning the negotiations with three important concessions. First, we took the military option off the table by publicly declaring that we were not militarily capable of permanently ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Second, we took the current tough sanction regimen off the table by acknowledging that if we did not accept a deal, many of our most important partners would begin to reduce or even eliminate sanctions. Third, and most important, we took off the table the option of rejecting the deal by publicly acknowledging that if we do so, we will be worse off than if we accept even a questionable deal. Yes, the president said he would not accept a “bad” deal, but by repeatedly watering down the definition of a bad deal, and by repeatedly stating that the alternative to a deal would be disastrous, he led the Iranians to conclude we needed the deal more than they did.
These three concessions left our negotiators with little leverage and provided their Iranian counterparts with every incentive to demand more compromises from us. The result is that we pinned ourselves into a corner. As Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute put it: “The deal itself became more important than what was in it.” President Obama seems to have confirmed that assessment when he said: “Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.”
Only time will tell whether this deal decreases or increases the likelihood of more war. But one thing is clear: By conveying those stark alternatives to Iranian negotiators, we weakened our bargaining position.
The consequences will be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and a greater likelihood of war.
Forty years ago, in July 1975, America’s new UN ambassador heard how American diplomats at the first International Women’s Conference in Mexico City tolerated Third World insults. Banging his fist on the table, Daniel Patrick Moynihan exclaimed: “We’ve got to stop this!” These are sobering times. The international threats are daunting – and leadership is wanting. Whatever you think of the Iranian agreement, the image of the great, virtuous United States of America negotiating with Iranian diplomats in exclusive European hotels while Iranian thugs yell “Death to America” on Teheran’s streets diminished all democracies. And whatever you think of Israel’s particular policies, the fact that many Progressives consider democratic Israel public enemy number one, not Iran, North Korea or other truly evil regimes, demeans liberalism.
This topsy-turvy world needs some history lessons and inspiring role models. With liberal Democrats dominating the American government and media, let’s remember muscular liberals who defended America proudly. Forty years after he became US ambassador to the UN, while building toward the fortieth anniversary of his denunciation of the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution in November 1975, we should echo the great liberal statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan, vowing: “We’ve got to stop this!” Moynihan refused to be an appeasing diplomat. Diplomats should deploy many tactics, he said, not just negotiation and compromise. Occasionally, diplomats had to defend national dignity, courageously, aggressively.
Accused of picking a fight over the Zionism-is-racism resolution, he replied, “Damned right we did!” Moynihan’s vigor stemmed directly from his liberal belief in an activist government operating intelligently, creatively and proactively, both domestically and internationally.
Moynihan mocked diplomats who believed their mission was to woo the enemy rather than defend America.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015Elder of ZiyonWe have intervened in the anti-Israel struggle, and the results have been the victories in the 33 days war [the 2006 war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon] and the 22 days war [Israel’s attacks on the Gaza strip in December 2008]. From now on we will also support any nation, any group that confronts the Zionist regime, we will help them, and we are not shy about doing so. Israel will go, it must not survive, and it will not.
Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. If the Palestinians in Palestine—in all of Palestine—form a government, peace will prevail. If you [Israel’s supporters] are truthful [about wanting peace], and if you have not conspired against the Palestinian nation, Islamic nations, and Islam, that is the solution.Nothing about democracy then either. But then he refined the message:
The solution is for the millions of the Palestinians to return to Palestine, the several millions that live away from home to return to Palestine. The indigenous people of Palestine—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—should hold a referendum to decide what kind of a regime they want. The vast majority are Muslims. There are also Jews and Christians that belong there, as their parents also lived there. They can decide the political system that they favor. Then, that state would decide what to do with the people that have moved there over the last forty to fifty years. Keep them there, return them to their original country, keep them in a special part, whatever decision the new Palestinian government makes should be respected. This is the solution to the crisis. So long as it is not implemented, no other solution will be effective.Khamenei isn't saying that the people who live in the arbitrary boundaries of British Mandate Palestine should be allowed to vote, as Azkaria implies. Jews are a majority there. Khamenei is saying that all Palestinians whose ancestors lived in Palestine at any time should be given the right to vote, but the only Jews who have that right are the ones who lived there before Israel existed. Any Jews who lived in Israel for decades have no say. And then, the resulting nation has the right to expel those Jews if they decide to do so "democratically."
Wednesday, July 22, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Amnesty, Gaza PlatformOf course, this was an Islamic Jihad rocket that killed those kids.At approximately 16:45 on Monday, 28 July 2014, a projectile landed near a number of Palestinian children were playing and celebrating the Eid al-Futur in the northern part of al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. As a result, 10 children and a passing old man were killed: Yousef 'Abdul Rahman Hassouna, 11; Mahmoud Hazem Shubair, 12; Ahmed Hazem Shubair, 10; Jamal Saleh 'Olayan, 8; Baraa' Akram Miqdad, 7; Mohammed Nahidh Miqdad, 13; Mohammed Mahmoud Abu Shaqfa, 7; Mohammed 'Emad Baroud, 10; Ahmed Jaberr Wishah, 10; Mansour Rami Hajjaj, 14; and Subhi 'Awadh al-Hilu, 63. A PCHR field worker arrived at the scene 20 minutes following this incidents, while ambulances were completing the evacuation of the wounded persons and the bodies of victims. She reported that the projectile landed on the street near a grocery shop as a number of children were playing in the area. She further reported that the high number of casualties and the extensive destruction in the area are not different from the outcomes of Israeli attacks over the past days.
The commission received information from NGO’s who conducted field research and a UN source who collected information indicating that the explosion had been caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket. One of them inspected the site after the attack and concluded that the impact of the explosion on the ground could not have been caused by an Israeli missile or artillery shell; the NGO also indicated that eyewitnesses had reported seeing a rescue team go to the place just after the attack, whose members did not collect the wounded but cleared and collected the remnants of the weapons. In addition, two journalists who spoke to the commission also suggested the attacks had been caused by Palestinian rockets misfiring. One of them said that Hamas members had gone to the site immediately after the events and cleared away the debris. The other said he had been prevented by local authorities from going to the site of the attack.
The commission found there was credible information pointing to the conclusion that a misfired Palestinian rocket was the source of this explosion. Given the gravity of the case, in which 11 children and 2 adults were killed in a place crowded with civilians, and the allegations that local authorities may have attempted to hide evidence of the cause of the incident, all relevant Palestinian authorities should conduct a thorough investigation of the case to determine the origin and circumstances of the attack.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Salafi groups in the Gaza Strip threatened on Monday to fire rockets at Israel in response to what they called “Hamas crimes and conspiracies” against Salafis living in the strip.The weird thing is, from the Salafi viewpoint, this makes perfect sense.
The threat came in reaction to the arrest of militants suspected of targeting members of the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad Sunday with a series of bombings on Sunday.
The Salafi groups argued in a statement that Hamas' security services were utilizing the recent attacks "to justify its arrest campaign” as an excuse for disproportionate targeting of Salafis.
"The Salafis have decided to respond to these crimes and these blows dealt by Hamas by pointing rockets towards the occupation (Israel) and carrying out reprisals," the statement read.
Palestinian Media Watch has prepared a comprehensive report on Palestinian Authority education. It includes chapters on names of schools (dozens named after terrorists), school activities (e.g., visiting homes of terrorists), statements and activities of educators (e.g., presenting murderers as role models and promising a world without Israel), schoolbooks, informal education (children reciting poems on kids' TV programs: e.g., Jews are monkeys and pigs; Tel Aviv is "occupied Palestine"), and a chapter with examples of honoring Hitler.French prosecutor closes case on suspected Arafat poisoning
The report was prepared for and will be presented today at the 7th World Congress of Education International (EI), the international organization of teachers' unions, which is meeting this week in Ottawa, Canada. PMW was invited by the Association of Secondary School Teachers in Israel, after the association was notified that the congress, which brings together nearly 2,000 teachers and educators from all over the world, is planning to vote on several anti-Israel resolutions that include calls for boycott of Israel and support for BDS.
PMW has prepared this report documenting that hate, Antisemitism and honoring of murderers are fundamental elements of PA education, and showing the PA's central role in undermining peace. When then Sen. Hillary Clinton joined PMW to release PMW's report on PA schoolbooks in 2007, she said the PA education "profoundly poisons the minds of these children" and called some aspects of PA messaging "child abuse." This report documents that nothing has changed since then. The PA continues to poison the minds of its children. (Click to view the report in PDF)
A French prosecutor on Tuesday said there was no need to pursue an inquiry regarding the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose widow alleges he was poisoned.Who are the ICC judges who ruled against Israel on the ‘Mavi Marmara’?
“The prosecution gave the opinion that the case should be dismissed,” the prosecutor’s office told AFP.
Arafat died in Percy military hospital near Paris at the age of 75 in November 2004 after developing stomach pains while at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
His widow Suha filed a case in 2012 at a court in Nanterre, north of Paris, saying he was murdered.
The same year, Arafat’s tomb in Ramallah was opened for a few hours allowing three teams of French, Swiss and Russian investigators to collect approximately 60 samples.
Three International Criminal Court judges who were not household names probably anywhere but in their home countries gained fame or infamy last week.
Judges Joyce Aluoch of Kenya and Cuno Tarfusser of Italy voted 2-1 against Peter Kovacs of Hungary to order ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to seriously consider reopening her file on the May 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla, a file which she had closed saying that the case was not grave enough for the ICC.
The focus of the file was the country of the island of Comoros, functioning according to many as a front for Turkish IHH activists, asking the Bensouda to open a full criminal investigation against IDF personnel and potentially security cabinet decision-makers.
The charges: alleged war crimes related to the IDF’s killing of 10 passengers (it has maintained in self-defense) aboard the Mavi Marmara ship which was part of a flotilla which tried to break the Gaza blockade.
Who are these three judges and what might have brought them to bring the ICC closer and deeper into the Israeli-Arab conflict than at any prior point?
Tuesday, July 21, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, July 21, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Following the Security Council meeting on Non-proliferation (Iran), Israel`s ambassador to the UN, Prosor held a press briefing:Amb. Prosor's Press Statement on Iran
Ladies and Gentleman,
Today, you have awarded a great prize to the most dangerous country in the world.
I hate to be the one who spoils the party, but someone has to say that the emperor has no clothes. Today is a very sad day. Not only for the state of Israel, but for the entire world, even if at this moment, the international community refuses to see the tragedy.
It is a sad day because the international community is taking steps to lift the sanctions on Iran without first waiting to see if Iran complies with even a single obligation in the agreement.
It is a sad day because this agreement gives Iran a seat on the commission which will decide whether or not it has violated the agreement. This is like allowing a criminal to sit on the jury which will decide his own fate.
You haven’t changed Iran’s destructive ideology, which goes beyond proliferating deadly weapons and funding terror.
The United Nations Security Council voted 15-0 on Monday to pass Resolution 2231, which endorses the Iran nuclear deal–“the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] signed in Vienna by the five permanent members of the Council, plus Germany, the European Union and Iran.” However, there are already sharp disagreements between Iran and the rest of the world as to what that deal actually means.Mudar Zahran: Will Israel save the world a third time?
Iran’s Foreign Ministry claims, for example, that the deal does not actually cover its ballistic missile program, as advertised. Restrictions on ballistic missiles are to be ended after eight years, according to the JCPOA. However, Iran says, according to the Times of Israel, that the UN Security Council resolution and the deal do not apply to its own missiles because they “have not been conceived to carry nuclear weapons.”
Similarly, there is confusion as to whether the deal prevents Iran from accelerating its nuclear program after the deal expires, or whether that is just an option. Such (voluntary) restrictions would have to be approved under the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the Iranian parliament is supposed to ratify, but there is no deadline for it to do so; it could wait until deal expires, in theory.
Alan Dershowitz, who has worked on UN resolutions on the Middle East, suggests there may not have been a “meeting of the minds” on the Iran deal at all: “Is it a postponement for an uncertain number of years — 8, 10, 13, 14, 15 — of Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon? Or is it an assurance that ‘Iran will not be able to develop a nuclear weapon?'”
As a Jordanian-Palestinian politician, I and many other Arab politicians and decision-makers have come to learn that Israel is vital for our own existence. In fact, Israel has saved us, and the world, from two global disasters.
The first time Israel saved us all was at the beginning of the 1980s, when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was one of the West's strongest Arab allies. He was against the Islamic Republic of Iran and was viewed as a necessary asset for Western governments and as a regional balance against Iran's might. The West was in love with Saddam to the point of allowing him a nuclear program, which he obtained with France's help.
Just as Iran does today, Saddam said his nuclear program was for "peaceful and civilian use." Saddam's nuclear reactor was built with the approval of the United States. Israel, however, did not buy Saddam's claims, and in 1981 sent its pilots on a mission -- which they were unlikely to return from -- to destroy Saddam's nuclear reactor. As reports confirmed, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was enraged by Israel's actions while President Ronald Reagan's first reaction to the news was, "Boys will be boys." Arab and Western governments condemned Israel's strike and some even spoke of action at the U.N. Unsurprisingly, Western media outlets grilled Israel.
Just nine years later, Saddam occupied Kuwait, threatened the entire Gulf region, and openly spoke of controlling "the Arabs' oil wealth," which could have brought the West to its knees. The U.S. and many Western states had to risk blood and money to get Saddam out of Kuwait, but they did not fear a nuclear attack from him or that he might use dirty bombs. Therefore Operation Desert Storm went smoothly. Had Saddam still had his nuclear program, the entire situation and its outcome could have been different. In fact, Saddam might have stayed in power until today were it not for Israel taking the risk of destroying his nuclear program.
In short, Israel saved the world from a power freak who came close to getting nuclear weapons.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, July 21, 2015Elder of Ziyon
Gaza's sole power plant will stop running Monday evening asit is unable to cover taxes imposed by the national unity government, Gaza's energy authority said.But they still have to lie:
The unity government waved the tax in a show of good will in the four months to the end of Ramadan, but the Gazan energy authority said in a statement Monday that since the tax has been reinstated it can no longer afford to keep the plant running.
The energy authority added that it had only been able to cover the cost of maintaining the plant during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan and the Eid holiday by borrowing from local companies and taking loans from banks.
The tax imposed on fuel before it is sold to Gaza amounts to a 50 percent price hike on the price of fuel per liter, or 3.5 shekels ($0.91), the statement said.
Although the power plant inside Gaza has a potential output of 120 MW, it has been unable to produce that much due to Israeli restrictions on fuel imports as part of an eight-year blockade.Wrong. There are no Israeli restrictions on fuel. None at all.
When I asked [Amnesty researcher Deborah Hyams] specifically about why Amnesty was calling for Israel to lift restrictions on fuel when there are in fact no restrictions, she said that there are restrictions on some types of fuel. In fact, she told me, it was because Israel refused to provide industrial fuel for Gaza's power plant that Hamas was forced to smuggle regular diesel from Egypt. She did admit that price was a factor.
I explained to her my understanding that Hamas actually retooled the power plant to handle regular diesel smuggled from Egypt because they didn't want to pay Israel and they felt that with the Muslim Brotherhood in power they would have an unlimited supply of subsidized, cheap fuel from Egypt.
Hyams insisted that Israel has restrictions, today, on industrial diesel to Gaza. That is not my understanding and I told her that I've read COGAT reports since at 2009 where they said that they can pump heavy duty diesel for the power plant and Hamas has refused.
Immediately afterwards I called up Guy Inbar from the IDF COGAT unit and asked him if there were any restrictions on any specific type of fuel to Gaza - industrial, petroleum, cooking gas, anything. His answer was an unequivocal "no." The reason Gaza has no fuel is the PA/Hamas disagreements, not because of Israel.
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