Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Questionable statistic from the UN

Ma'an reports:

Israel’s military “buffer zone” along the eastern and northern edge of the Gaza Strip eats up 30% of the territory’s arable land, the United Nations said this week.

Fieldworkers with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) told the Christian Science Monitor that they have been unable to verify conditions in this 300-meter-wide band of land along the Green Line.

A quick calculation shows that 300 meters along a border 6 miles wide and 25 miles long is roughly 10 square kilometers. Gaza itself is 360 square kilometers. This means that Israel's buffer zone takes up less than 3% of Gaza land.

If that is 30% of Gaza's arable land, that means that Gaza has really very little arable land to begin with - some 33 square kilometers, less than 10% of the area. Satellite pictures of Gaza look like at least half of Gaza is "green," however.

This statistic seems unreliable, to say the least.

Moonbattery masqerading as statistics - 2009 edition

Yesterday a group called the "Economist Intelligence Unit" came out with a ranking of world countries based on how "peaceful" they are The US came in 83rd out of 144 countries, and Israel came in 141st. (Libya was #46, Egypt #54.) It was heavily covered in newspapers worldwide.

They have a very elaborate methodology, taking into account many different factors. The factors themselves seem to be the product of an interesting mindset. First they try to make it sound like it is entirely the result of rigorous statistics, but then they go into the specific indicators, which sound sort of reasonable until you dig in a little bit. They measure things like:

Number of external and internal conflicts fought: 2001-06
Estimated number of deaths from organised conflict (external)
Number of deaths from organised conflict (internal)
Level of organised conflict (internal)
Relations with neighbouring countries
Level of distrust in other citizens
Number of displaced people as a percentage of the population
Political instability
Level of disrespect for human rights (Political Terror Scale)
Potential for terrorist acts
Number of homicides per 100,000 people
Level of violent crime
Likelihood of violent demonstrations
Number of jailed population per 100,000 people
Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people
Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP
Number of armed services personnel per 100,000 people
Volume of transfers (imports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
Volume of transfers (exports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
UN Deployments 2007-08 (percentage of total armed forces)
Non-UN Deployments 2007-08 (percentage of total armed forces)
Aggregate number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people
Ease of access to small arms and light weapons
Military capability/sophistication

Then they weight it according to various factors.

The problem is that many of these "indicators" are purely subjective, and when subjective criteria are used to come up with objective data, the results are anything but objective.

In the case of Israel, their breakdown shows exactly where they go wrong. For example, here are some rankings where Israel did poorly according to the EIU:

Perceptions of criminality in society
Qualitative assessment of level of distrust in other citizens. Ranked 1-5 (very low-very high) by EIU analysts

Israel got a 4, on a purely subjective guess based on little knowledge.

Similarly:

Ease of access to weapons of minor destruction
Qualitative assessment of the ease of access to small arms and light weapons. Ranked 1-5 (very low-very high) by EIU analysts.

Israel got a 3 (out of 5). Unmentioned are any controls around the access to these weapons or training in their use, as Israel's handgun deaths are quite low.

Level of organised conflict (internal) - 4
Qualitative assessment of the intensity of conflicts within the country. Ranked 1-5 (very low-very high) by EIU analysts

Respect for human rights - 4
A qualitative measure of the level of political terror through an analysis of Amnesty International's Yearbook.

Potential for terriorist acts - 3.5
Qualitative assessment of the potential for terrorist acts. Ranked 1-5 (very low-very high) by EIU analysts

Political instability - 2.25
Qualitative assessment of level of political instability. Ranked 1-5 (very low-very high) by EIU analysts

Any time it says "qualitative assessment" it is using a fancy word for "guesses based on reading newspapers and Amnesty International reports."

Number of armed services personnel per 100,000 people - 5
Active armed services personnel comprises all servicemen and women on full-time duty in the army, navy, air force and joint forces (including conscripts and long-term assignments from the Reserves)

Aggregate number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people - 5
Source: Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC)

Military capability/sophistication - 5
Qualitative assessment of the grade of sophistication and the extent of military research and development (R&D) Ranked 1-5 (very low-very high) by EIU analysts

See the problem here? This august group makes an assumption that any country that has a large and sophisticated military must be, inherently, non-peaceful. The logical fallacy of these assumptions are staggering, yet escape this think-tank.

The basic thinking of this group is that armies are inherently evil. This is breathtakingly stupid.

But there is a patina of objectivity around this extraordinarily flawed, and simply wrongheaded, analysis. The media is quick to lap these sorts of things up as if they have any real value.

Even more ironically, the EIU says that one of the biggest reasons for having such an index is to help businesses decide where to set up shop:

Business benefits greatly from an environment of peace. Understanding the attributes of peace allows governments to better understand what they can do to improve the business environment This knowledge allows business to make more confident investment decisions on the basis of actual and predicted stability in a community or nation.

They are pretty clearly saying that companies that choose to do business in Israel are idiots, because of their pseudo-scientific rankings.

Now, who do you trust more to make business decisions: a group that includes Google, IBM, Motorola, Microsoft and Warren Buffet, or the EIU?

The EIU has been doing this sham for a few years now, and one would think that they would adjust their sacred methodology to account for what is obviously a ridiculous conclusion, that Israel is less peaceful than most African nations where tens of thousands die monthly. But they get lots of press, and no one calls them on their basic methodological flaws, so why not keep it going?

(This post is an update of one I wrote last year on the same topic.)

Early "Palestinian" nationalists for a Greater Syria

L. King alerted me to an quote from James Gelvin's "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: 100 Years of War" of a pamphlet from 1920:

"The Decision of the Palestinian General Congress ( Feb 1920)

1. We confirm what we have always said, that Palestine is an integral part of Syria. We demand that it remain so, and shall use all measures to the last drop of our blood and the last breath of our children to achieve this end.

2. Because we come from all parts of Syria, we consider the Zionist danger to be directed against us and against our political and economic existence in the future. We shall therefore throw back the Zionists with all our force. If the allies continue to let them pursue their activities we shall oppose them by all means possible...

O Arab sons of Palestine:

The Syrian nation and the Palestinian associations are incensed that the [allies] would seek to detach Palestine from its motherland Syria, under the guise of establishing a national government. How can we accept the life of slaves to the Jews and foreigners and not defend our political and national rights? Raise your voice, protest this treachery and never fear threats of intimidation... If there exists a man among you who, bribed by gold or honors, rallies to the occupation government, stay away from him, boycott him, and show him your scorn, for he is a traitor to his country and his nation. Likewise, boycott the Jews, sell them nothing and buy nothing from them. Boycott those who sustain them and serve as underlings..."

Gelvin goes on to describe how most Arabs in Palestine preferred Syrian nationalism to Palestinian Arab nationalism, until France effectively shut down that possibility by separating Syria from Palestine (yet some still fought for Greater Syria even after that.)

The portions of the book that are available on Google Books are quite interesting.

L. King reviewed the book for Amazon here.

An earlier article on the pan-Syrian movement and the origins of the term "nakba" here.

Egyptian dissident: "Arab leaders want conflict"

A very interesting interview with Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a prominent Egyptian dissident, by Jeff Jacoby (h/t Soccer Dad), where Ibrahim talks about hwo Arab regimes use the Palestinian issue to avoid democratization. Here are some excerpts:

should Obama say something about freedom and human rights?
A: Yes. Even when he talks about Palestine, he can help the cause of democracy and human rights, because that issue has been used by all the authoritarian rulers to postpone democratic reform. They say: "Oh, we have a bigger issue: the issue of Palestine."

Q: Do you agree with those who say that what Arab leaders want isn't a Palestinian state, but a Palestinian struggle?

A: Yes, there are vested interests in keeping the Palestinian conflict going. So if Obama's speech will really be a breakthrough for peace, it will also be a stepping-stone to genuine democratization. Peace will take away the excuse that the authoritarian regimes use to justify their own hold on power.

Q: Do you see any Middle East leaders today as visionary peacemakers?

A: Not yet. You don't have a Sadat; you don't have a Rabin; you don't have a Begin.

Q: If Anwar Sadat could return and see what has happened in the Middle East in the last 30 years, what would he think?

A: You know, Sadat is the one who alerted me.

Q: Alerted you to what?

A: That the Arab regimes are living off the continuance of the conflict. He summoned me one day to the presidential palace.

Q: When was this?

A: In 1981; five weeks before he was assassinated.
Q: What happened?

A: I traveled to his compound and Sadat said to me: "I know you hate us." I was dumbfounded. I said, "Mr. President, why would I hate you? I just disagree with some of your policies." This was after the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor, and I had written that Sadat met with Begin three days before that attack. There were a lot of questions.

Q: About whether Sadat knew the attack was coming?

A: Exactly. If he did, it would be considered collusion with Israel against an Arab country. Remember, the whole Arab world had severed relations with Egypt [over Sadat's peace treaty with Israel]. Then Sadat said, "Do you think any of these guys really want to end the Arab-Israeli conflict?"

Q: Which guys?

A: The other Arab rulers. He said, "These guys do not want to solve anything. They want the conflict, because that's what justifies their continuation of power." He used an Arabic expression: "I will cut off my arm if 10 years from now any of them has made peace."

The exact same logic applies to the Palestinian Arab leadership today, a set of thugs who have consistently made decisions to extend their people's misery, year after year after year.

The entire interview is very good. Ibrahim is not as pessimistic as Westerners about the chances that democratic elections will put Islamists in power for any real timeframe, but he also realizes that Arab nations would need a number of years of freedom before being able to have real democratic elections - a point that I have made a number of times in the past, in eerily accurate postings about the Gaza elections from three and even four years ago.

Arab nations not paying pledges to PA

From AP, in a story I only saw picked up by two media outlets:

The Palestinian Authority faces a serious cash crisis after receiving only half of the aid money it needs to function every month, the International Monetary Fund said Monday, blaming delinquent Arab donors.
At risk are the salaries of around 150,000 Palestinian civil servants, who support most families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Many economic analysts say Arab donors are reluctant to pay up because of Palestinian infighting between Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and the Islamic militant Hamas, which overran Gaza two years ago.
Arab donors believe if they withhold cash, it will pressure the two parties to reconcile, said Samir Hazboun, head of the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce.

Um, not quite, Samir. Arab donors don't want to waste their money.

But IMF official Oussama Kanaan warned that everyday Palestinians are getting caught in the middle.

"Arab donors should be aware that if they don't pay, they are not punishing one party or another. The average Palestinian will be hurt," he said.
The Palestinian Authority needs around $120 million dollars in aid to balance its monthly budget, but is receiving only around $66 million.
At a summit in 2000, Arab countries pledged to give around $50 million a month to the Palestinian Authority, but they have sent only $77 million altogether this year, Kanaan said, or a little more than a quarter of the amount they promised.
European countries and the United States have largely fulfilled their aid pledges, economists said.
The Palestinian Authority owes around $530 million to local banks in loans to make up the shortfall, said Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in a statement.
Kanaan said it was unlikely banks would keep extending credit to the Palestinian Authority.

Arab countries talk big about how they want to help their poor, oppressed Palestinian brethren. Every time the West suggests that perhaps they act like adults - silly little things like human rights and fighting terror - they respond that they can't do anything as long as the Palestinian issue isn't resolved.

Yet, when it comes to actually doing things to help the Palestinian Arabs themselves, all they have is words. They will give high-profile donations of ambulances to Gaza that cost little, but real economic help is left to the West.

The reasons remain the same as they were last year - the Arabs don't consider the Palestinian Arabs to be a good investment.

They value the PalArabs for their propaganda value and their ability to keep the heat off of their own regimes; a way to distract their own people from real problems, a way to blame Israel for all of their own shortcomings.

But they have zero incentive to actually help Palestinian Arabs live their lives in peace and prosperity. In fact, they have a incentive to keep Palestinian Arabs stateless and miserable.

It would behoove President Obama not to listen to the words of the Arab regimes when he visits Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but to look at their actions on behalf of Palestinian Arabs. Perhaps then he would realize that "settlements" is hardly the obstacle to peace - it is the Arabs themselves.

An illusion of free speech in Saudi Arabia

The Saudi Gazette did end up posting my reply to their article from last week.

However, they waited for a number of days before doing it, ensuring that essentially no one would ever read it, as very few people would stumble onto that article after it falls off the front page of their website.

This way, they can claim that they welcome all viewpoints and still practice censorship at the same time.

Late night open thread

As time available for blogging continues to dwindle, I have to create more and more open threads to pick up the slack...

Feel free to post any cool links or messages. Here's one from yesterday.

Abbas happy Obama pressuring Israel

An incredibly depressing editorial in the Washington Post sheds light on Obama's New Middle East, where old agreements are scuttled and ignored, and where America pressures Israel while Palestinian Arabs have no responsibilities:

On Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula.

Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations. He won't even agree to help Obama's envoy, George J. Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building measures. "We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution," he insisted in an interview. "Until then we can't talk to anyone."
What's interesting about Abbas's hardline position, however, is what it says about the message that Obama's first Middle East steps have sent to Palestinians and Arab governments. From its first days the Bush administration made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East was on the Palestinians: Until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel.

Obama, in contrast, has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a West Bank settlement freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has shifted the focus to Israel. He has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud. "The Americans are the leaders of the world," Abbas told me and Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt. "They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions.' "

Of course, Abbas did close to nothing that was required from him while the US leaned on him. Even then, his strategy was to wait - until Bush was gone.

He's excellent at doing nothing and being praised for it.

In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank -- though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees -- something no previous Israeli prime minister had done -- and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.
Abbas turned it down. "The gaps were wide," he said.

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze -- if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. "It will take a couple of years," one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession -- such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.

Instead, he says, he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian.

You mean, Israel hasn't choked the Palestinian Arab lives in the West Bank? The settlements haven't caused them to be squeezed out of life? The roadblocks haven't forced thousands of people to die trying to get to hospitals? Israel's oppressive policies are having no effect on their daily lives? They can go to work and raise their families and go out to eat and visit other countries even though they don't have their own state? Those years of pressure by the US didn't hurt their people? People living under the dreaded "occupation" are living normal lives??

It's almost as if years of articles by Palestinian Arabs about their horrible plight were all a bunch of lies! Say it ain't so, Mahmoud!

Doonesbury treats Obama better than God

For reasons I cannot fathom, I still read Doonesbury some thirty years after Garry Trudeau stopped being funny.

Last week, he finally answered the question of how a legendary satirist and dedicated liberal could make fun of the most liberal President in history - and the answer is, he cannot (click to enlarge):

The entire week of strips was about Obama's inability to be funny.

He has no problem making fun of the Jewish God (click to enlarge):

...but some things are sacred!

One reason the PA cannot survive

Yesterday, the Palestinian Authority sentenced a man to a lifetime of hard labor for "collaborating" with Israel:

A Palestinian Authority court of first instance in Ramallah sentenced a man to lifetime penal servitude after he was found guilty of treason on Monday.

Knowledgeable sources told Ma’an that the convict, who was referred to only by the initials “HA,” was found guilty of violating articles 11 and 112 of Palestinian penal law number 16 of the year 1960. He was told he could appeal the verdict.

...Israeli intelligence appointed him to spy on several wanted Palestinians including Naji Arar from the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, helping Israeli intelligence to capture Arar and others.

The convict also admitted in court that he reported to Israeli intelligence about Palestinian resistance fighters either by mobile phone or through a woman from Ramallah, or by meetings held with intelligence officers at a military base near Ar-Ram checkpoint, or another near the Israeli settlement of Bet El.

Also yesterday, in the wake of the gun battle where the PA police were trying to arrest Hamas terrorists in the West Bank, killing two of them, Hamas issued a statement:

Mushir al-Masri of the Hamas parliament made an unprecedented attack on President Mahmoud Abbas and called him a "Zionist" and "American," asserting that Fatah does not have a genuine will for dialogue.

Mushir al-Masri said to President Abbas, "You are more Zionist than the Zionists, and you are more American than the Americans."

Now, who sounds more like a "collaborator" - the PA police or the man sentenced for treason? What argument does the PA have to answer when Hamas accuses them of collaborating with Israeli intelligence, the Americans and the IDF as they clearly have been?

The hypocrisy of taking a tough line against people who do exactly the same thing that the PA does does not go unnoticed by Palestinian Arabs. All political groups tend to allow their agendas to be set by those who are tone deaf to nuance, but Arabs more so than most - and the nuance of public denunciations of "collaboration" while engaging in much more explicit forms of the same "crime" is lost on practically all Palestinian Arabs.

When the ultimate battle between the PA and the Islamists occurs, only one side will have a consistent and defensible position that would appeal to the excitable masses. This is what happened in Gaza and this is what will happen in the West Bank, no matter how much Western money is brought in to prop up the PA.

Many or most Palestinian Arabs just want to live their lives and raise their families in peace, with the Islamic extremists probably still a minority. Yet it is exactly that attitude that causes them to not be passionate about the PA. Passionate people are targets, passionate people get killed, passionate people cannot be expected to become grandfathers. Pragmatic people play it safe and keep their heads down. As a result, the passionate people will win the battle between Hamas and the PA - the people who care most about their families are the ones who will stay out of the fight.

And they are the PA's base.

Of the rest of the people, Hamas' positions are clear, mostly consistent and attractive. Those are the people who are willing to die for their positions. No amount of money can alter that fact.

UNRWA chief slanders Israel

From Ma'an:

The UN’s director of relief operations in Gaza told Palestinians in Gaza that they had not been defeated by the Israeli military on Sunday.

“The Palestinians were not defeated by Israeli army in its latest offensive against the Gaza Strip, and they proved to be capable of resuming their life anew despite all their hardships,” said John Ging, the director of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which serves hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Gaza.

This means that the official UNRWA position is that Israel's goal in Gaza was to defeat the "Palestinians," not to stop rockets or deter Hamas.

The only way to interpret Ging's statement is to say that he believes that this was a war whose goal was genocide, and the Israelis failed in their attempts to eradicate all Arabs from Gaza.

This is a slanderous and sickening statement. But it is not a surprising one.

Every Israeli town is a "settlement"

This cartoon from Palestine Today shows what Palestinian Arabs really consider to be "settlements."

And it is hardly limited to the West Bank.

And here is how "moderate" Firas Press looks at "settlements:"

The clear implication is that the idea of Jews living in supposedly Arab territories is inherently aggressive. The logical conclusion of that mindset is that to kill all Jews in the territories is considered "self defense."

Put the two cartoons together and you have the Arab justification for genocide against all Israelis.

Another sighting of Zionist Pigs

This Zionist Pig article from Palestine Today is notable because it doesn't merely accuse "settlers" of unleashing these wild boars on Palestinian Arab crops, but now the IDF and the Israel Nature and Natural Parks Protection Authority are part of the conspiracy!

And they have "witnesses!"

Wild pigs spread in the territory of the town of Arraba, south of Jenin in the northern West Bank, and caused serious damage to agricultural crops.

...Witnesses in the town of Arraba affirmed to the news agency that the Israeli occupation forces and the so-called Israeli Nature Protection Service brought a tanker full of pigs inside the town, under the protection and guard of military patrols of the army of occupation, and placed them on Arraba-Ya'bad street in a garbage dump near the town of Arraba.

Ya gotta love Arab witnesses.

Click to read previous Zionist Attack Zoo postings.

Hamas, PA forces battle; 6 dead

From Ma'an:

Six Palestinians were killed on Sunday morning in clashes between Palestinian Authority security services and gunmen affiliated to Hamas in the northern West Bank city of Qalqiliya.

According to the medics, three security officers and two Hamas fighters were killed, in addition to the owner of the building where the Hamas men had stationed themselves.

A couple of observations:

The PA police are incredibly incompetent, even after months of US-backed training, to lose three policemen in a gun battle with only a handful of Hamas terrorists.

While the PA has all but given up on controlling Gaza again, Hamas has clearly not given up on controlling the West Bank. One must look at the "unity talks" in that context.

When Ma'an talks about PA officers killing Hamas terrorists, they are "killed." When the IDF kills a single Hamas member while trying to arrest him, it is an "assassination."

In other Hamas/Fatah news, Hamas arrested a Fatah-leaning reporter in Khan Younis. These arrests have been increasing on both sides, with each side accusing the other of torture.

Together with a four-year old boy who was killed by "his father's weapon," the 2009 PalArab self-death count rises to 92.

Arab deja vu

Here is a report from AP, showing Arab displeasure at US arms supplies to Israel as well as Israel's declaration of Jerusalem as its capital.

Guess when this happened?

The report is dated September 12, 1966. Yes, the Arabs were complaining then that the US was not being fair in its policy of maintaining a balance of power between Israel and the Arabs. To them, the US should have allowed them to obliterate Israel.

Even more interesting is their statement on Jerusalem. Israel declared western Jerusalem to be its capital - and even though there are no Muslim or Christian sites of any import in the western part of Jerusalem, the Arabs still said that this was a threat to the holy sites - that they still controlled! (And that they banned all Jews from visiting!)

Chag Sameach!

Tonight starts the holiday of Shavuot, so I will not be blogging until, probably, Sunday.

And my blogging will be lighter than usual for the next few weeks as I have major projects both at work and at home that need to get finished.

I wish all my Jewish readers a Chag Sameach!

The 500-character challenge

I just saw yet another article in the Saudi Gazette about how important it is for other Arabs to feel sympathy for Palestinian Arabs and to boycott Israel.

The feedbacks for the article are limited to 500 characters, so as a personal challenge I wanted to craft a response that fit within those limits.

Here's my reply (not yet posted):

It is interesting that Arabs don't seem to notice the institutionalized bigotry that they have against Palestinians - namely that they do not, by law, allow Palestinians to become citizens of their countries.

It is much easier to blame Israel for all the Palestinians' problems rather than notice that Arab policies have left them stateless and miserable for 61 years.

And this bigotry is justified in the name of "unity."

Why not give the Palestinians the option to become citizens if they want?

Maybe I'll work on a 140-character tweet, next....

Terrorists getting money

Creeping Sharia noticed that Congress has just allocated billions of dollars to, shall we say, questionable "allies."

Anne Lieberman emailed many bloggers and journalists about these stealth appropriations:

I would wager that few among you know - I certainly didn't - that Congress appropriated almost a billion dollars to the Palestinians last week. And what's worse is that they specified about a third of it to go to Gaza (Gaza = HAMAS).

I thought it was illegal to fund terrorists.

These expenditures were in that Supplemental Appropriations bill where Congress didn't give Obama the money he wanted for closing Gitmo since he didn't have a specific plan (big news for a day or two). So I guess they did read this bill, some of it anyway.

It was passed in the House May 14, and the Senate passed it a week later... a week ago today, May 21 (my fellow West Virginians will note that Senators Byrd and Rockefeller didn't vote).

So when you see Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) coming to the White House today, just know that he's picking up a big fat check. Know also that he is a terrorist, Arafat's right-hand man for decades and the financier of the Munich massacre (when Palestinians murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympics in 1972). He's also a Holocaust denier and his term in office at the so-called "Palestinian Authority" ran out in January. So he has no real position and leads a country that doesn't even exist. But now I'm nit-picking. What's a billion dollars, one way or the other?

The money, much of which is above and beyond what Obama requested, includes:

•West Bank and Gaza: $665 million in bilateral economic, humanitarian, and security assistance for the West Bank and Gaza.

•Jordan: $250 million, $250 million above the request, including $100 million for economic and $150 million for security assistance.

•Egypt: $360 million, $310 million above the request, including $50 million for economic assistance, $50 million for border security, and $260 million for security assistance.

USAID goes into detail of where the money for the PA is allocated. Here's a small part:

Peace and Security ($109 million)

This supplemental request fulfills existing security assistance requirements and responds to new
opportunities in the Palestinian Territories, supporting efforts by the Deputy Envoy for Security,
LTG Dayton. The bulk of the request is to sustain and accelerate the critically important and
effective effort to train, equip, and garrison the Presidential Guard and Special Battalions of the National Security Forces to crackdown on terrorism and bolster and backstop the efforts of the Palestinian Civilian Police to maintain law and order. In addition, the request contains funds to begin developing new programs that the European Union and other donors are not supporting, but have been identified by the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, Senator Mitchell, as critical to the overall effort to create a competent and professional Palestinian Authority Security Force. Accordingly, the principal areas of focus for supplemental security assistance will be to fully develop two more National Security Force Special Battalions; train a second Presidential Guard battalion; train, equip, and support civil defense first responders; sustain and expand security and law enforcement-related specialized training; develop a border integrity capability; and augment program development and support funding to address expanded logistical, administrative, and related requirements of the program.

This supplemental request also provides law enforcement-related training and equipment to enhance border integrity along the Gaza border. This assistance is intended to help further stabilize and control this border following the Gaza conflict. Funding would be used for training in a full range of border integrity disciplines and will provide non-lethal equipment to these trained forces.

I don't understand the last paragraph at all - who exactly from the PA is controlling the Gaza border? Or is this for Egypt?

I wish I had known about this when I went to Washington last week....

Moving the red lines

Binyomin Netanyahu has, apparently accidentally, stumbled upon one of the best political weapons Israel has. And even he doesn't realize it.

When he took office, the Western press started obsessing over his non-use of the words "two state solution." The world made the assumption - despite "Ultra-Rightist Avigdor Lieberman's"' acceptance of the Roadmap - that Netanyahu was a super-hawk whose proposals for peace were smokescreens for his real desire to annex the entire Arab world and perform a genocide on all Palestinian Arabs. The pressure started to build and Netanyahu, like all recent Israeli leaders, buckled a few days ago when he tacitly seemed to accept "linkage" despite explicitly renouncing it:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to tear down settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank in return for US backing on its stance on arch-foe Iran, local media reported on Tuesday.
Netanyahu told his right-wing Likud faction on Monday that Israel would have to dismantle what it considers illegal outposts, as demanded by Washington, since the issue of Iran was more important, newspaper reports said.
"I identify the danger and that's why I am willing to take unpopular steps such as evacuating outposts. The Iranian threat is above everything," the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot quoted Netanyahu as saying.
"There are things on which you have to compromise."

Despite the seeming waves of pressure on Israel in reaction to Bibi's "intransigence," however, there has been an undertow in the opposite direction from his perceived lack of support for a two-state solution.

His reticence to say the magic words "Palestinian state" are causing people to openly wonder whether a such a state is desirable or feasible.

Canada's National Post has always been on the right wing in the Middle East conflict, but the following article (republished in the Vancouver Sun) would have been inconceivable a few months ago:

The two-state solution illusion

...A two-state solution sounds pleasant to Western ears. It seems the proper thing for Canadian politicians to say. Certainly the media would pillory Harper and Ignatieff were they to refuse to play along. But were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to endorse the plan tomorrow—as Barack Obama wants as precondition to helping Israel resist Iranian nuclear agression—it would be utterly meaningless. “There is no partner on the Palestinian side,” [Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled] Toameh says. Israel's West Bank settlements are no obstacle, he adds; they are a red herring: a minor issue that Jerusalem will easily handle—based on its readiness to dismantle its settlements in the past—when the moment is right. That time is not now, and is not coming soon. Because, in today's environment, whatever proposed peace agreement is backed by Abbas would only be instantly rejected by Hamas, and any deal with Hamas—were any possible—reflexively rejected by Fatah. And neither group has much validity in citizens' eyes, he reports. In fact, Toameh mischievously suggests Netanyahu might be clever to try what Obama wants and publicly back a two-state plan immediately, if only to put the Palestinians and international peace-plan backers “in a corner” by revealing to all how truly impossible implementing anything of the sort would be under the current circumstances.

The international community’s error, says Toameh, is that it seems to think statehood is something to be handed to Palestinians, like a gift. It is, he believes, an undeserved one. “I believe a state is not something we should be given, it is something we should earn,” says the West Bank-born journalist. Far from demonstrating a capability to create a functioning, responsible civil society, he says, Palestinians have only proven their willingness to tolerate chaos, mob-rule and terror. They watched as, instead of building hospitals and schools and infrastructure with the billions sent to Ramallah and Gaza, Arafat lined his own pockets, Fatah fattened its cronies, and Hamas purchased weapons. On the one hand, Palestinians have fallen again and again for rotten leadership, which in turn, do their best to suppress the emergence of more responsible alternatives. On the other, Toameh seems to suggest that the Palestinians are getting the government they deserve. “Everything is going in the wrong direction, largely because of the failure of Palestinians to hold [their] government accountable,” he says.

Bibi has moved the very parameters of the debate, and that points to incredible political power.

The Arab/Israeli conflict is, ultimately, binary. There might be 22 Arab nations, 57 Islamic nations and an entire building of diplomats in New York's East Side who love to dump on Israel, but in the end Israel does not have to go along with anything that compromises its own red lines. Unfortunately, those lines have become fuzzy, to put it mildly, and each time Israel's leaders retreat from one of them the vacuum is instantly filled with more pressure to bring the lines in ever closer.

What Bibi has inadvertently proven is that the opposite is still true. If Israel's leaders stake out an uncompromising position that pushes the lines outward, even at this late date, there will be a perceptible shift in the world's reaction, even amongst the predictable criticism.

While previous Israeli governments have effectively ceded parts of Jerusalem, Bibi is at least publicly moving that line back outward. If he doesn't yield, the net effect would be to change the very discourse from "how much of Jerusalem should Israel give away" to "should Israel give any away." Similarly, his public statements on natural growth in the settlements would also change the very terms of the debate from "Israel should return all of the West Bank" to "How much should Israel return?"

When all is said and done, the resolution to the problem is not to be found in legal or historic or religious arguments - it will be the result of negotiations. Netanyahu has the potential to strengthen Israel's negotiating position immensely, if he chooses to, by simply being strong in his convictions.

As one of the sides in this lopsided conflict against her, Israel holds some impressive cards that cost little to show. And if Israel is to learn anything from its Palestinian Arab neighbors, it is that the consequences of saying "no" often end up being rewards.

CAMERA picks up on EoZ PCHR research

From CAMERA's blog:

Elder of Ziyon blog's investigation of a list of Palestinian dead during the Israeli military operation in December and January reveals that hundreds who were reported to be civilians were in fact militants. The list of 1417 Palestinian victims was published in March by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based organization. By cross-checking the names on the list with other Palestinian sources, including Hamas-affiliated web sites, Elder of Ziyon was able to compile the names of 286 militants who PCHR misidentified as civilians.
Media coverage of the Israeli operation in Gaza prominently featured the accusation that Israeli forces engaged in indiscriminate and excessive violence, in some cases intentionally targeting civilians. PCHR's reports of civilian fatalities were frequently cited to substantiate this accusation. As CAMERA pointed out as early as January 21, scrutiny of PCHR's own data cast serious doubts about its accuracy. The CAMERA analysis pointed out over 20 cases of mislabeling militants as civilians and noted that 75 percent of the fatalities were young males of combat age.

The recent analysis by Elder of Ziyon delves further into PCHR's data and debunks PCHR's assertion that most members of Hamas internal security forces (policemen) were civilians. It also reveals that a number of children (aged 17 or under) were Hamas combatants - a point initially suggested in the CAMERA analysis.

While these revelations come too late to impact coverage of the fighting, it can only be hoped that responsible journalists will be less inclined to accept without scrutiny the casualty statistics and claims made by PCHR and other groups that most of the casualties caused by Israeli military action are civilians.

The research has slowed down but it is not finished yet.