Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Open thread

It's been a busy week. Let's talk about something else.

Speaking of weeks, on August 1, 1971, Richard Nixon declared that week to be National Clown Week.

Palestinian Arabs fleeing West Bank

Firas Press reports on a huge number of young Palestinian Arab men who have been emigrating from the West Bank.

According to a new report by the Palestinian Economic Policy Research Institute in cooperation with the Central Bureau of Statistics,

There are surprising statistics about emigration in the Palestinian territories, which have been exacerbated in recent years, causing a "brain drain" to other countries.

The studies agreed that emigration, both domestic and abroad, has had negative effects on Palestinian society, in social, economic and political arenas.

The study revealed that the Palestinian territories is third in the Middle East in terms of migration rates and ranks sixth among middle-income countries, in addition to being a major part of the most vital migration corridors in the world.

The study said that the number of Palestinians who fled to Jordan since the beginning of this year exceeded 260,000, but during the same period, only 197,000 returned.

This has been a consistent pattern throughout the short history of Palestinian Arabs. The young, smart and ambitious have always sought to leave. These are the hundreds of thousands who emigrated en masse to Kuwait and Iraq in the latter half of the 20th century, the ones who refused to be stuck in "refugee" camps and fed by UNRWA for their entire lives. These Palestinian Arabs - including a large number in Europe and the Americas - represent the best and the brightest of their people, because they were they refuse to live on handouts and in a dead-end situation. While they are proud of their heritage, they really have little desire to live in a Palestinian state themselves. An additional 63,000 emigrants this year is not to be considered unusual.

Half of younger PalArabs want to emigrate. Apparently they don't care about living in "their" land all that much, and the enforced nationalism has not penetrated their psyches a great deal. They just want to live somewhere without worrying about war or the terrible PalArab economy, where they can get real jobs and support their families in honor. Building up a Palestinian Arab state is not a romantic notion to them - it is a bitter joke, as they have seen better than anyone how corrupt the legacy of Arafat has been, how their leaders are more interested in self-preservation than in real progress and how divided their people really are.

If the Arab world was smart, they would welcome these educated and motivated young men as citizens, rather than risk them going to the West. But unfortunately the Arab world is more fixated on keeping these people stateless - in the name of "Palestinian unity" - because of hatred of Israel as well as fear of the changes that an influx of hardworking, smart men could effect in their dictatorships.

So instead we see them leave whenever and to wherever they can. And the ones they leave behind are the lazy ones, or the ones who are attracted to terror, or the ones who just gave up.

The principles of a Nobel Peace Prize winner

JPost reports:

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire says the United Nations should suspend or revoke Israel's membership.

Maguire says Israel should be punished for ignoring a series of United Nations resolutions over the years. Maguire won the 1976 peace prize for her work with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Maguire told a news conference Thursday that it's time for the international community to take action against Israel.

Such noble words from the laureate! Such high-minded principles she has! Such a wonderful use for her prestige!

It almost seems a shame to point out that she thinks that terrorists are just wonderful people:

The keffiyeh, which Palestinian Arabs consider to be a symbol of "violent resistance" (=terror attacks against Jewish civilians), is an appropriate fashion statement for this clown.

Notice also that the flag on the commemorative plate that Maguire is smilingly accepting from an unrepentant mass murderer shows that Israel doesn't exist.

You can have your own Fatah blog!

Yes, you too can have a blog with a terrorist domain!

Check out this new one, Am Yisrael Chai at http://amyisraelchai.fateh.net/

To add your own Wordpress blog, just go to http://fateh.net/wp-signup.php and have fun!

(Just be careful about your own Internet protection...your IP address will be visible to the hosts.)

Today's PalArab news

A Hamas member was killed in a "work accident", which pro-Hamas Arabs blame on "shrapnel" from an Israeli tank missile but which more objective Arabs note was one of those "mysterious explosions." Hamas noted that the terrorist was in the midst of a jihad task.

Hamas officials in Gaza are now claiming that hundreds of thousands of chicks were euthanized because there was no fuel to keep them warm, and two million more are in danger of being killed. Which makes one wonder how farms managed to work before the 20th century, as well as why aren't the chicks being fed to "starving" Gazans?

Hamas is trying to force a family from Gaza to leave their home. It seems that they live near Hamas leader Haniyeh; maybe it is one of those "land grabs" that Arabs always complain about.

Hamas attacked a wedding on Tuesday night, because the members were singing Fatah tunes. They broke chairs and sound equipment and abducted a number of celebrants.

The Saudi Committee for the Relief of the Palestinian People somehow sent a convoy of trucks filled with rice to Gaza. Last week they brought flour, next week they plan to bring dried milk. In the past they have worked with UNESCO and UNICEF, so apparently this convoy came through Israeli territory, but I cannot find any other story about this.

An Islamic Jihad leader predicts that Hamas will declare a new Palestinian Arab president in January, further pushing the division between Gaza and Ramallah.

Tunnel builders in Rafah are increasing the amount of fuel smuggled into Gaza from Egypt, building new pipelines. They expect to have completed a real pipeline, as opposed to the hoses they use now, in the next week or so, and they hope to be able to transport natural gas as well.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 214.

"Rationality" and Reuters' obscene bias

Reuters looks at the Jewish residents of the West Bank, and doesn't like what it sees:

When God ordered Abraham to slaughter a son, the angel of the Lord stepped in at the last minute to stay his hand. Was it a test of faith, or had Abraham's imagination simply run away with him?
Scholars may differ, but to many Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, the story is as real as the airy heights and rocky slopes where Hebrew and Philistine armies clashed in biblical times, and where they live today.

This makes it hard to discuss rationally a resolution of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel over its occupation of West Bank land since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

I the Reuters universe, there is only one "rational" resolution: to forcibly remove Jews from homes they lived in for decades, and that their ancestors lived in for millenia. It is so obvious to these smug, condescending journalists to look down upon people who live there today, who have a real and undying love of their land that has lasted for thousands of years, and airily declare that their desires and beliefs and lifestyle is "irrational".

Never will you hear Reuters declare Islamic beliefs as being so weird as to make it impossible to speak rationally with a Muslim. For Reuters, peaceful religious Muslims are worthy of praise and will not be questioned; but peaceful religious Jews are inherently irrational and suspect.

Settlers deny their towns are an illegal obstacle to peace. On a tour they organized this week to redress a negative image in foreign media, they cited scripture going back 3,500 years to explain why a land-for-peace swap was out of the question.

Yehudit Tayar talked about what "we" did in ancient times, as if recalling recent family history. "When we were crossing the desert," she says. "When we first came back to Shilo" to worship the Holy Tabernacle "which our families did three times a year" back in the Iron Age.

It's as if the intervening 3,000 years never happened.

No, it is as if they feel a connection to their ancestors.

Would Reuters ever tell Palestinian Arabs, the vast majority who never lived in Palestine, that it is irrational for them to want to live there, or that it would be an obstacle to peace? Or would it trot out another story with somoene pointing to a key that supposedly opens a door to a house that a Jew lives in? Why are Palestinian Arab aspirations to return to land they believe is theirs - and whose return would lead to conflict - any more rational than Jews' desire to do the same?

Visitors to divided Jerusalem, only a half hour drive away, see checkpoints, watchtowers, teenagers with combat rifles and other daily manifestations of the occupation that might be removed almost overnight, if there was a peace deal.

But looking at the reality of the settlements, their tended gardens and schools, and listening to the passions that gave rise to them, makes it plain that persuading -- or even forcing -- Jews to give these up will be a far bigger challenge.

Not "would be" but "will be." Reuters knows how peace will be achieved, and it is by uprooting hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes - where they have been living peacefully, where the vast majority are in communities on land that was completely empty and never inhabited, and where many of them even have good relations with their Arab neighbors until the "peace activists" pour in to incite hate.

The idea of Jews living in land that they feel a deep spiritual connection to is not irrational. On the contrary, the idea that such a land should be Judenrein is what should be setting off alarms in the heads of the Reuters writers.

If they were rational.

(h/t Snapped Shot for the original quote)

YouTube's anti-semitism in Arabic

While YouTube tries to remove offensive videos in languages they understand, it remains a haven for anti-semitic videos in Arabic.

Here are some titles, autotranslated, with links:

Jews cowards

Jewish history and the dream of a false Asif (1-10) - A documentary film about Jews were God's curse

Even camels hate Jews (which is actually pretty funny)

The stormy history of the Jewish dream of a false (4-10) A documentary film about Jews were God's curse

Incest Jewish

Children who humiliated the Jews - Apparently, the Jews wouldn't be humiliated if they fired tanks at young rock throwers

Jewish history and crimes

The film documentary about Jews and their plans

(The Jews God's hands tied) - This is the Brotherhood of apes and pigs Bastards say God's hands tied by a stingy their hands tied, and cursed including

Jews saw terrorism - A sequence of scenes of Jews praying juxtaposed with dead Arabs

Martyrdom operations in Palestine against the Jews - apparently praising killing Jews - not Zionists.

Nah, they're not anti-semitic

We know that Muslims respect Judaism as a religion and only hate Zionism, as we've been told countless times.

From The MEMRi Blog, quoting Akhbar Al-Arab, November 18, 2008:

But I'm sure that waves of outraged Muslims who respect Judaism will be writing letters to the editor complaining about this bigotry, and pundits and politicians will appear on TV to condemn it, and the editor of the newspaper will issue a formal apology and fire the cartoonist.

After all, this is what would happen in the West, and they are just like us, right?

Firas Press has a feature in its Arabic website of pictures of Palestinian Arab children.

Normally they are just cutesy pictures, but sometimes you will see something like this one.

Name: Ahmed Hossam Attia Muslim
Age: 7 years
Address: Rafah, Gaza Strip _ _ Tel Sultan

Look how adorable his smile is!

One of the commenters writes:

Ikhalih protected by God and to his family and is commander of Abu Ammar and uniforms free-Aqsa and liberate all of Palestine

Clearly, when readers of Firas see this picture they see someone who will be using such a weapon against Jews when he is a bit older.

And when they say "all of Palestine" I somehow don't think they mean the Green Line.

Jerusalem in Jewish and Islamic Culture [Video]

Enjoy:

O.T.

Does it mean overtime, off-topic or open thread? You decide!

A headline you'll never see

First, the ones you have seen:

Haim Ramon: "Israel is ready to make painful concessions for peace."

Ariel Sharon: Israel is "ready to make painful concessions" for the
sake of "genuine, durable, real peace."

Ehud Olmert: "We want peace. We are prepared to make a painful compromise, rife with risks, in order to realize these aspirations."

Ehud Barak: "Both sides must make painful concessions for peace."

Shimon Peres: "Israel is ready to make painful concessions for peace."

And the one you will never see:

Mahmoud Abbas: "We are prepared to make painful concessions for peace."

Why exactly does only one side keep telling the world that they are willing to make concessions while the other side only makes demands?

It is almost as if only one side is serious about wanting peace....

The ironic part, of course, is that the person who makes demand after demand is considered the "moderate peace partner" and the side that keeps making goodwill gestures and giving up real, strategic assets is considered an intransigent warmonger.

Bahrain freaks over Gulf Air website mentioning Israel

The Arab world's irrational hate often rises to absurd levels.

MPs are threatening to take action unless Israel's name is removed from Gulf Air's website among a list of countries under its frequent flyers services.

The parliamentary Palestinian Support Committee plans to send a letter to the airline on Sunday demanding answers.

Under the scheme, passengers from any nationality can apply for frequent flyers membership stating their country of origin.

Committee chairman Nasser Al Fadhala said that the airline had been alerted previously on the issue, but they never responded.

"We don't normalise ties in any possible way with Israel and the inclusion of Israel as one of the countries, in which its citizens are allowed to benefit from the scheme, implies the opposite," he said.

"Bahrain is a country that refuses to accept any normalisation with Israel, especially with the Palestinians being evicted from their homes, tortured and killed."

"Gulf Air and officials behind it will pay the price heavily if they insist on not having Israel's name removed," he said.

"We plan to start using our monitoring tools, which will certainly enable us to reach the bottom of this issue.

"The minister is not responding, but maybe if we take a tougher approach, he will take action, or else we will force him to do so."

A Gulf Air spokesman said the reference to Israel on the website was merely in a dropdown menu so passengers registering for the frequent flyers offer could enter where they live.

"In fact, we have a number Israel-based Arabs in our programme already and it would be a pity to deny future passengers the opportunity to join our programme," he said.

In the end, the people who they are hurting are the Arabs who have the audacity of living in Israel. You know.... the very "Palestinians" whom they claim they are doing this for.

Here is the outrageous webpage that is causing members of Bahrain's parliament to spend hours of their time seething, with a visual aid so you can find the problem yourself. Israel is listed in the drop-down menu along with some 200 other countries:

Just in case anyone is still wondering how much the Arab world really cares about "Palestinian" rights, as opposed to destroying Israel, here's a little clue:

"Palestine" is not mentioned in Gulf Air's list of countries for "nationality." But the MPs are not complaining about the absence of "Palestine" on the website, but the existence of "Israel."

Palestine Press Agency: Hamas manufacturing electricity crisis

The Palestine Press Agency mentions that when Hamas is telling the world that 70% of Gaza is dark because of a shortage of fuel, it is lying.

The source pointed out, as is well known to all that the Gaza Strip .... gets 70% of its electricity supply from the Israeli and Egyptian lines.

The source of electricity that comes from the Israeli company and the electricity that comes from Egypt has not been affected and never stopped.

...Where [Hamas] cuts electricity off for long periods of time for most of the areas of the Gaza Strip, especially Gaza City, knowing that the Hamas leadership' homes and neighborhoods where they live do not suffer from the disruption of electricity like the rest of the regions.

UPDATE: The Gazans claim that the extra 40% electricity shortfall came because of overloading the power from Israel, causing transformers to be burned out.

Quick links plus

AINA: How Sharia law punishes raped women

Melanie Philips: Another banana moment?

MEMRI TV: The Mickey Mouse cleric clarifies his position on cartoon characters:

Muhammad Al-Munajid: I never issued a fatwa about the killing of Mickey Mouse. Nobody asked me for a ruling with regard to Mickey Mouse, and I did not say that it is permissible or necessary to kill Mickey Mouse. None of this ever happened. I was talking about the effect of films on people, how they are used for Christian proselytizing, for spreading atheism, for spreading witchcraft, like in the case of Harry Potter, and for arousing urges, which make people dissatisfied with their spouses. One thing led to another, until we got to the issue of cartoons and their effect. I said that some cartoon characters, such as dogs, pigs, and mice – reprehensible animals according to the Shari’a - are glorified in animated films. I said that it is inappropriate to show such things to people, and that a mouse is a “little corrupter,” which should be killed in all cases. I mentioned Mickey Mouse, or that Jerry, by way of example only. Nobody who knows Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character would ever issue a fatwa that it should be killed. It can only be killed in the world of fantasies, movies, and dreams.

And Barry Rubin: Welcome to MEWorld. The link is down now, so here is the article from his mailing list:

MEWorld stands for Middle East world. It is a realm with its own ideas where the scientific laws of the rest of the world might stand but the political and intellectual standards applied elsewhere just don't happen that way.
Let's begin your visit with a very mild example of what happens when tourists encounter MEWorld. Here is a quote from the New York Times of November 12, 2008, chosen pretty much at random. The author is one of the better reporters covering the region; the topic is the Israeli mayor's election in Jerusalem. See if you can spot the problem:

"Palestinians in East Jerusalem have consistently boycotted city elections in the belief that participating would be tantamount to recognizing Israeli sovereignty.''

If you can understand why this sentence is off it is possible that you might comprehend the Middle East.

The assumption in the sentence is that Palestinians are, like the Western readers, people who live in a social and intellectual atmosphere of free will in which individual decisions are made on the basis of rational calculation. The process goes something like this:

Version A: Khalid: "I'm thinking of voting in the election because I want better schools and roads."

Version B: Khalid: "I'm thinking of voting in the election because I want a candidate to win who will be more dovish and will favor giving this part of the city to a Palestinian state as part of a comprehensive two-state solution."

This is the kind of process which a Western reader would expect. It implies massive voluntary action on the basis of choice. After all, the individual "Palestinians" have a "belief."

In practice, the real issue is that before the decision not to vote is made the Palestinians in east Jerusalem are told:

"Anyone who votes is a traitor. If you vote it is against Islam and you are a heretic; it is against our people, and you are a monster. And if you do vote and we find out about it we will boycott your business, shun you personally, and perhaps someone with a big club will smash down your door one night and hit you upside the head until you pass out or die."

In MEWorld, every Palestinian knows this and the message is repeated before each election. Of course, even without threats not all the Palestinian residents would vote but perhaps, 20 or 30 or 40 percent would.

After I wrote this article I came upon Khaled Abu Toameh's piece on the same story in the Jerusalem Post. After making the same point the Times did, he added--which the Times did not mention--the following:

"The PA issued several warnings to the Arab residents not to participate in the election. Issam Abu Rmaileh, a shopkeeper, said he didn't vote because he was afraid that PA activists would harm him. `I heard that they were standing outside the voting centers and threatening people who wanted to come and vote,' he said. `I would have liked to vote because it's in our interest, but who's going to protect me and my family afterwards?'...

"Graffiti painted overnight on the walls also warned the Arabs against participating in the election. The warnings were issued by masked men belonging to various Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah."

If you don't understand the reality of dictatorial behavior, threats of violence, and a social pressure that forces conformity, anything else that happens in the region is a mystery to you.

Now you are ready for a more advanced course in MEWorld. Let me stress that the following is not typical but it is revealing. On November 12, 2008, MEMRI published its video clip No. 1903 which you can see here: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1903.htm. It is from a television show aired on October 31, 2008. First, I will tell you what it says which is profoundly shocking. But then I will give you seven reasons why it is far more shocking than you thought.

The person being interviewed proposes that Arab men sexually harass Israeli women as a new means of resistance against Israel. "They are fair game for all Arabs," the interviewee explains, because they "rape the land" by their very existence.

Might this cause a legal problem if an Egyptian or Jordanian rapes an Israeli tourist? No problem, the interviewee explains, "Most Arab countries do not have sexual harassment laws. Therefore, if [Arab women] are fair game for Arab men, there is nothing wrong with Israeli women being fair game as well."

If an Israeli woman is threatened, abused, or harassed, she has no right to defend herself. They are merely being given a choice: "Leave the land so we won't rape you."

Now you might say that is pretty shocking. Even in the context of Arab political discussion, the above-quoted position is very different. There are many Arabs who would disagree and even ridicule such an idea.

And yet it still tells us a great deal about mainstream thinking and the weakness of moderation. Consider these points:

The person saying this, Nagla al-Imam is a woman. She obviously has no idea of women's solidarity. Nationalism and religion come first. Her priority is not to demand stronger laws in her country to protect women but the exploitation of such law's absence to lower the level of treatment for all women. The philosophy is: It doesn't matter if you abuse me if you treat the Israelis even worse. Don't take that idea lightly, it defines how millions of people behave.

She is a young woman. The optimistic idea that time is inevitably bringing about moderation is just plain wrong. All too often, the younger generation--especially since it is imbued with Islamist ideas and much more intensively propagandized--is more extreme than its parents. I remember here the anecdote, and this is not a joke but a real story, in which a Saudi girl pretended to play Brittany Spears records to appease her wealthy, educated parents but when they weren't around put on radical Islamist diatribes about martyrdom by becoming a suicide bomber.

She is a secular young woman, obviously not, judging from her rhetoric and clothing, an Islamist or even a traditionalist living in a previous century. Thus, while Islamists are most radical, their basic thinking is often duplicated by Arab nationalists and permeates among the less pious as well.

She is a lawyer, meaning she has a high level of modern education and intelligence. She is of the middle class at least and not an illiterate peasant or fanatical cleric. While people in the West are still babbling that poverty causes terrorism, the most extreme are often the best-off and most-schooled. Being poor usually requires spending most of your time in the practical pursuit of economic survival. Education does not necessarily mean discovering the wider world and the humanity of the "other." It teaches people to hate systematically and justify their inner beast with an ideological gloss.

She is from Egypt, not Saudi Arabia. Egypt is a country which has been formally at peace with Israel for almost thirty years and an ally of the United States. Extremism is found in all Arab states. Even the most moderate either refrain from opposing such ideas to avoid confrontation or--more often--actively fomenting them to muster popular support and a blind eye toward their own failings.

The interview appeared on al-Arabiyya, arguably the most moderate of the main Arab satellite television stations. The opinion spectrum is much skewed to one side. This is clear on al-Jazira television programs where there is a moderate and a radical speaker, followed by phone-ins during which every single caller favors the extremist position and the host insults the moderate to side with the radical guest.

The interviewer asked reasonable questions but did not seem to find this suggestion shockingly extreme or something that had to be angrily rejected. People are not signaled toward moderation by their political leaders, teachers, clerics, intellectuals, and other authority figures. On the contrary, these are often sources for the most violent, hate-filled, and anti-reality ideas.

Now, if you believe that MEWorld is going to make peace with Israel, love America, and become democratic or moderate in the near-term future--even to please President Barry Obama-- consider the intellectual, political culture, and social atmosphere that breeds Nagla al-Imam as a person who thinks as she does even though she fits the profile of someone who should be, according to the conception of reality held in WestWorld, a booster of the opposite worldview.

The same applies if you think you are going to win over such people and their societies by kind words, apologies, concessions, appeasement, confidence-building measures, or even dramatic policy shifts.

"Oh you, who philosophize disgrace/And criticize all fears/Take the rag away from your face/Now ain't the time for your tears." --Bob Dylan