Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 02, 2010

You mean Turkish goods can get into Gaza?

Trucks carrying supplies are pictured at Kerem Shalom crossing, just outside the southern Gaza Strip, before the shipment's transfer to Gaza June 30, 2010.

Does this mean that there is a way for Turkish goods to get into Gaza?

Or is this from the flotilla?

Hascelik makes steel cables.

Egypt puts police killers of Khaled Saeed in custody

From Gulf News:

Egyptian authorities' decision to jail two policemen accused of "using harsh treatment” to an activist is a victory for protest groups, activists said on Friday.

"Jailing the two detectives accused of beaten Khaled Saeed to death is a victory for the pressure mounted by the protest groups, who have called for uncovering the truth in this case through street and Internet protests,” said the opposition movement April 6 Youth.

The death of Saeed, 28, due to alleged torture by two plainclothes policemen in the Egyptian port of Alexandria on June 6 has angered opposition and human rights groups who accuse police of abusing the 29-year-old Emergency Law to stifle freedom.

On Wednesday, prosecutors ordered the jailing of the two detectives Mohammad Salah and Awad Esmail for four days pending further questioning.

I found this part interesting:

The European Union has expressed concern about Saeed's death, a move that drew an angry response from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry that denounced it as an "unacceptable interference” in the country's affairs.

Unlike Israel when it is accused of various crimes, Egypt didn't try to explain, apologize, offer concessions, send out PR ambassadors, create YouTube videos or contextualize. They just told their critics to butt out. In fact, they told it to them very emphatically:

Egypt Wednesday summoned ambassadors of the European Union countries to protest against a recent statement, which expressed concern about the death of a young Egyptian whose family say was beaten to death by police.

"Regardless of the content of the statement, this move constitutes a glaring violation of the diplomatic norms and an unacceptable interference in Egypt's internal affairs," said the spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, according to the official Middle East News Agency.

And you just know that the EU didn't push back on this criticism.

You also know that if Israel would act like Egypt did, it would be the subject of withering diplomatic and media attacks for weeks thereafter.

Pro-Israel Latino video a hit on YouTube

From Tablet:

The music video appeared, without much fanfare or explanation, in April. Its three stars—La Tigresa del Oriente and La Pequeña Wendy, both from Peru, and Delfín Hasta El Fín, from Ecuador—all populist specimens of unironic camp, were already YouTube stars. Maybe that’s why “En Tus Tierras Bailaré,” an inexplicable, Spanish-language musical tribute to the beauties of Israel, with a title that translates to “In Your Lands I’ll Dance,” has effortlessly racked up nearly 4 million views and spawned countless tributes and parodies. But where did it come from? Why did three South Americans team up to sing about their love for Israel and their plans to dance in Jerusalem? And why does the video superimpose their dancing on shots of the Tel Aviv skyline and—of all things—Hamantaschen?

“It’s not a song in favor of Israel,” said Gastón Cleiman, an advertising man in Buenos Aires who wrote the song’s lyrics and who, along with Sebastian Muller, dreamed up the idea. “It’s a song against prejudice.” Cleiman is freelancer; Muller works for an interactive firm in Madrid whose clients include Nike and Coca-Cola. Both men swear the project was their own initiative, with neither official money nor messaging. The music was written by Gaby Kerpel, another Argentine Jew, who also scored De La Guarda and Fuerza Bruta and is part of a Latin electronic collective known as Zizek and performs reinterpreted Colombian cumbia under the alter ego King Coyo, and the video was directed by Picky Talarico, better known for directing Latin mega-stars’ videos and high-profile commercials.

It started with Muller and Cleiman, who were channeling their mutual obsession with the millions-strong YouTube sensations Wendy (who, at 8, recorded sugary-voiced videos about her thirst for breast milk andbeer), La Tigresa (a surgically enhanced hairdresser from the Peruvian Amazon fond of leopard print andreborn as a singer at 65), and Delfín, an amiable but stone-faced Ecuadorean whose first rise to his feet in indignation had been for a disco-beat ode to 9/11.

“One sees them and is seduced,” Cleiman said, speaking in Spanish. “These are things upon which you cannot force reason, because then surely you will find defects. But the truth is, you cannot stop watching them.”

The video is incredibly cheesy:

The lyrics, for those who speak Spanish, are:

- Israel me da un sentimiento de tristeza.

- Me nombrás Israel y se me viene la guerra el caos

- Me da mucho miedo que por la calle pueda haber explosivos

- Gente muy resignada

- Un pueblo...

No puede ser, ¡no!

Con mucho cariño para todos los hermanos Latinoaméricanos.

Las superestrellas de la canción popular, juntos por un mensaje de amor e igualdad, la pequeña Wendy, Delfín hasta el Fin y la Tigresa del Orienteeeeeee.

Caminando por Israel,
Un amorsito encontraré
Cariñito, amorsito, vamos, vamos a cantar.

¡Israel yo te quiero conocer.!

Gracias vida mia
al enseñarme este lugar
ay, ay, ay, que bonito este lugar.

En Jerusalém, yo bailaré.
Oh, amorcito en Jerusalém,, me, me, me, me, me
yo te amaré.

Y ahora el pasito de Delfín

Coro

Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,
Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,
Israel , Israel, en tus tierras bailaré.
Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,

Eso papi.

grrrrrr.

Madrecita, madrecita,
que bonito es Tel Aviv,
con sus estrellas y su lunita
en Tel Aviv yo bailaré

Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,
Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,
Israel , Israel, en tus tierras bailaré.
Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,

Ay papito, si tan sólo pudiera ver este lugar, esta gente estos sabores ( llorando).

Cantemos juntos, bailemos juntos
Y mi pueblo como el mar rojo se dejará
todos los hombres y las mujeres en el a a a a a bailarán

No puede ser. Dios mío, que bonito es Israel.

Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,
Israel , Israel, que bonito es Israel

Para todo el mundo, niños ancianos, maestros, pescadores y futbolistas
estrella, famoso, panadero o agricultor. Sin prejuicios, el amor fluye por las venas
de todos , acércate Israel a Latinoamerica, acércate a Latinoamérica Israel

Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,
Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel,
Israel , Israel, en tus tierras bailaré.
Israel, Israel que bonito es Israel, (bis)

Or,

I want you to know Israel.!

Through my life
to teach this place
ay, ay, ay, how beautiful this place.

In Jerusalem, I will dance.
Oh, sweetie in Jerusalem, I, me, me, me, me
I love you.

Israel, Israel Israel is beautiful,
Israel, Israel Israel is beautiful,
Israel, Israel, dance on your land.
Israel, Israel Israel is nice,

Mama, Mama,
how beautiful it is Tel Aviv,
with its stars and its little moon
I will dance in Tel Aviv

Let us sing together, dance together
And my people as the Red Sea will be left
all men and women in the dance aaaaa

My God, how beautiful it is Israel.

Israel, Israel Israel is nice,
Israel, Israel, that Israel is beautiful

For everyone, children elderly, teachers, fishermen and footballers
star, famous, baker or farmer. Without prejudice, love flows through the veins
of all Israel come closer to Latin America, come to Latin America Israel

Israel, Israel Israel is beautiful,
Israel, Israel Israel is beautiful,
Israel, Israel, dance on your land.
Israel, Israel Israel is nice...

Perhaps the most bizarre part is that there are numerous spoofs of this video on YouTube, with ordinary (and weird) people singing about how great Israel is.

Did a senior Hamas member defect? (updated)

A number of Palestinian Arabic media are publishing an identically-worded story.

Supposedly, a Hamas member named Yusuf Fayez Abu Hussein (Nassar) was sent by Hamas on a mission to Dubai, after which he was to go to Syria and then back to Gaza. Instead of Dubai, however, he went to the Ukraine, where he he had a dispute with a neighbor also from Gaza whose relative was killed by Hamas, and he was afraid he would be killed.

Then, after the police arrived he surrendered himself to the Israeli embassy in the Ukraine - where he had a girlfriend (pictures of him with her accompany the article, including him kissing her.)

The article goes on to say that he is really a member of the Mossad, and he has sex tapes of four other Hamas members for the purposes of blackmail - and the article names them.

Since this is being published mostly in pro-Fatah media, the entire story is suspect, but it is a good tale, nonetheless.

(UPDATED: I got a better translation thanks to reader Ali, updated it to reflect that.)

The Death-Owl (Zvi)

A few months ago, a columnist at Asharq al-Awsat mentioned an interesting Arab myth:

"Back in the old days, the Arabs used to believe that the spirit of a murdered man continues to wail and weep until his death is avenged. They believed that a bird that they called “al Sada” [or the death-owl] would continue to hoot over the grave of a slain man whose death had not been avenged. The bird would continue to hoot endlessly until the slain man’s death was avenged."

The honor/shame dynamics that are so active in the region are driving forces behind the conflict on the Arab side - driving forces that even many Israelis, and certainly most westerners, fail to understand.

These dynamics are certainly the driving forces behind the most pointlessly sadistic, irrational and self-destructive attacks on Israelis. They also contribute, albeit as one set of factors among many, to the treatment of Palestinians in various Arab countries, and they contribute very heavily to the vicious anti-Semitism that blights the region and which motivates some of its emigrants.

These dynamics are not always conscious. When they are subconscious, they are even more dangerous for everyone involved.

The core Palestinian objection is not the occupation of some land in the WB. The basic Palestinian objection is that Israel exists, period. Palestinians, and Arabs in the Middle East in general, have been taught for decades that the presence of Jews in an Israeli state (not just Israel's presence in the WB) is a deliberate and malicious humiliation of all Arabs, an injustice that cries out endlessly for redress. To understand what that means, and the obligation that many Arabs feel that this places upon the Palestinians in particular and on the Arab world in general, you need to understand the culture in more depth.

Obviously, the situation is more complex than we can deal with in a small space. But the story of the Death Owl illustrates the obligation that many Palestinians feel. It is not the obligation to build a state that shows the world how successful they can be. And it is not an obligation to make peace so that their children's children are not sitting in the same figurative place, making the same stupid mistakes and being used by the grandsons of today's foreign dictators. The obligation that they feel, and the obligation to which much of the Arab world tries desperately to hold them, is the obligation to take revenge on the Jews.

Hamas distinguishes itself by the obsessive zeal with which it pursues this revenge - regardless of the stupidity and waste, the destruction of civilian lives and hopes, the warping of generations of young people and the degree to which its pursuit destroys the dreams of those Palestinians who actually do understand what an independent state means and want it. Fatah, over the years, has been little better; it has only been more circumspect.

The impact of this imposed obligation is also one of the factors driving the treatment of 3rd-generation Palestinian "refugees" in Arab countries. They are thrown against Israel again and again by every demagogue who wants to influence the Arab street. They are denigrated as weaklings if they compromise, they are locked in camps when they remain in the only homes they have ever known, and they are feted as heroes when they blow themselves up and kill Jews. The 3rd-generation "refugees" are despised not only because their leaders have always been incompetent, corrupt and violent idiots who know how to pick the losing side in every conflict, large or small, but also because they are not playing the role that they are supposed to play. They are not supposed to be causing problems for people in other Arab countries. They are supposed to be taking revenge on the Jews. And no revenge is ever enough, because the Arab world has been convinced through propaganda that Israel has committed a Holocaust. Until the Palestinians do the same thing, there is always an Arab demagogue or dictator who will impose the obligation for revenge - and the promise of aid in that quest - to draw them into his orbit. And he will get some more of them killed, and extend the misery of the rest.

The left-wing demagogues in the West will follow along, taken in or not caring at all, because the Jews represent the privileged class, and the Palestinians the underprivileged workers, even those who live in mansions. And the far left sees revenge as a motive that it can use.

Until the West understands the real problem, it will continue to make foolish mistakes in the Middle East, mistakes that will get thousands of people killed.

The Arab world needs to come to grips with the fact that Israel is not the Great Humilation of the Arabs, but simply a country among countries - like Egypt, and Morocco, and Iran, and Pakistan, and Japan. It needs to come to grips with the reality that there is, in fact, no humiliation at all other than the humiliation that they themselves create by insisting that it must exist. Until this happens, the sorry, bloody, stupid, pointless and tragic situation will not change, and the hopes of peace-wishers will be violently destroyed again and again.

What the Dubai police have been ignoring

From YNet:

United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency Hamad al-Kaabi has confirmed reports that Iran is using Dubai ports to smuggle equipment needed for its nuclear program, but noted the steps his country had taken to clamp down on blacklisted companies.

This is the first official acknowledgement from the state that it is a popular transit point for smuggling.

The UK newspaper Telegraph last month revealed the existence of a deal made by an Iranian company with links to the nuclear program. The company bought control systems from a German electronics manufacturer via trading firms from Dubai. The UK paper reported Thursday that al-Kaabi had confirmed the previous reports.

Computers and control systems are among the forbidden goods reaching Iran, as well as cables and communication equipment. The goods were sold to Iran without the German producer's knowledge using fake purchasing certificates.

I guess this is what happens when your entire police force spends months dedicated to finding out who killed a terrorist.

(I forgot who first mentioned this to me, so h/t to an EoZ reader.)

"Fayyad is not building a state" - Nathan Brown vs. Thomas Friedman

Right on the heels of my post about how the vaunted Palestinian Arab state building is really an illusion comes a much more authoritative article saying the same thing.

Nathan Brown, writing in Foreign Policy magazine a shortened version of a paper he wrote for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, shows in detail what is happening on the ground in the PA. He analyzes both the successes and failures of the PA in building a state - and the failures outnumber the successes. To be sure, most of the failures are due to the difficult political environment in which Fayyad is working - often against Fatah.

A quote from the paper:

A dispassionate analysis reveals that rather than building institutions, Fayyad’s cabinet is reviving some of them and attempting to inject elements of greater competence and efficiency in selected bureaucratic locations. This is then a program of improved public administration rather than a statebuilding effort.

But is there any harm in the boosterism about “Fayyadism?”

Yes. The international infatuation with the effort obscures two extremely unhealthy developments, both of them tied to the schism in Palestinian politics—the effort is predicated on the denial of democracy and human rights, and it is bypassing (and perhaps even enabling) the further deterioration in Palestinian institutions that lie outside of the realm of government. The Palestinian political system is deeply troubled; Fayyadism does not address the crisis. At best it manages administration in the face of crisis; at worst it allows international and domestic actors to ignore it—for now.

His conclusion from the FP article:

Fayyad is not building a state, he's holding down the fort until the next crisis. And when that crisis comes, Fayyad's cabinet has no democratic legitimacy or even an organized constituency to fall back on. What he does have -- contrary to those who laud him for not relying on outsiders -- is an irreplaceable reservoir of international respectability. The message of "Fayyadism" is clear, and it is personal: if Salam Fayyad is prime minister, wealthy international donors will keep the PA solvent, pay salaries to its employees, fund its infrastructural development, and even put gentle pressure on Israel to ease up its tight restrictions on movement and access.

Fayyad may be a good person, but finding a good person is not a policy. If he is making mild administrative and fiscal improvements in some areas, this cannot obscure the deeper problem that most Palestinian political institutions are actually in deep trouble and the most important ones are in a state of advanced decay.

This is real research, of someone spending significant time on the ground in the West Bank and talking to a wide variety of people about the details of the PA's performance.

This is in stark contrast to the the facile cheerleading of NYT's Thomas Friedman who wrote this week:

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the former World Bank economist ...has unleashed a real Palestinian “revolution.” It is a revolution based on building Palestinian capacity and institutions not just resisting Israeli occupation, on the theory that if the Palestinians can build a real economy, a professional security force and an effective, transparent government bureaucracy it will eventually become impossible for Israel to deny the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Brown's analysis is methodical, Friedman's is wishful. It is a shame that so many in the West rely on Friedman for their facts - oblivious to the danger of making policy decisions on the basis of his vaunted expertise.

Extremists vs. moderates

Five years ago, I did a Google News search of the phrases "extremist settlers," "extremist Palestinians," "moderate settlers" and "moderate Palestinians."

At the time, the ratio of extremist settlers to extremist Palestinians was 106-1 and for moderate settlers to moderate Palestinians, 0-125.

Over the years, the routine use of those phrases in the media has diminished, but the ratios haven't changed that much.

Here is an expanded survey from today's Google News that explains a lot about subconscious media bias and its long-term effect on ordinary consumers of the news:

"Extremist Arabs" - 0
"Extremist Palestinians" - 0

"Extremist Settlers" - 11

"Extremist Israelis" - 3

"Moderate Arabs" - 7
"Moderate Palestinians" - 7
"Moderate Settlers" - 0
"Moderate Israelis" - 4

And, just for kicks...

"Extremist Muslims" - 15
"Extremist Jews" - 3

"Moderate Muslims" - 57
"Moderate Jews" - 1

Over years, the effects of constantly seeing the loaded phrases consistently used together must have a cumulative effect on the readers. And the result is that, subconsciously, many people automatically assume that Israelis are more extremist and intransigent than Palestinian Arabs are - a complete 180 degrees from the truth.

Kristof's myopia (Zach)

Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed in the NYT slamming "occupation":

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable and costly to the country’s image. But one more blunt truth must be acknowledged: the occupation is morally repugnant....Our ally, Israel, is using American military support to maintain an occupation that is both oppressive and unjust. Israel has eased checkpoints this year — a real improvement in quality of life — but the system is intrinsically malignant.

EoZ reader Zach has written a response:

Nicholas Kristof, in his article, Two-Sides of a Barbed Wire Fence (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/opinion/01kristof.html?_r=1&hp), offers one of the most simplistic and wrongheaded op-eds the New York Times has seen since Roger Cohen's columns on Iran before the recent, stolen elections. So simplistic and wrongheaded, that I want to dissect it piece by piece. I think this article grew out of Kristof's anger to the flotilla incident, because he generally stays away from discussing Israel, but this article is symptomatic of a greater malady plaguing journalism generally - writing emotional articles, devoid of facts, in order to be headline grabbing and ensure popular appeal.

Kristof begins by calling Israel's military occupation, "morally repugnant." This is not a legal statement, but a moral one. Unfortunately, the morality of occupation, that is, as a philosophical study, is largely unstudied. However, one prominent moral philosopher (one of the greatest living experts on Just War Theory, second only to Michael Walzer, but also a serious critic of Just War Theory), Jeff McMahan, wrote an essay on the subject in 2009 for the Loyola International and Comparative Law Review, called, "The Morality of Military Occupation" (which can be found here in full: http://tinyurl.com/24m3npt). The whole essay is worth reading, but here are three relevant and notable excerpts:

(1) "As in the case of a just war, the most important condition of a just occupation is that there should be a just cause—not, of course, a just cause for war, but a just cause for occupation. As I understand it, this is not merely a requirement that there be some significant good to be achieved by the occupation. It is, rather, the requirement that there be a wrong, or set of wrongs, that the occupation would prevent or correct, and for which the occupied people are sufficiently responsible to make them morally liable to suffer the effects of occupation. To say that the people occupied are liable to occupation is to say that because of their responsibility for the problem that the occupation addresses, they are not wronged by being subject to occupation, or have no valid complaint about being occupied."

(2) "Consider, for example, the occupation of a country whose unjust war of aggression has just been defeated. If the unjust war was a natural and predictable consequence of the culture that the citizens themselves had contributed to creating and sustaining, and if the war enjoyed significant popular support, as was true of the unjust wars fought by Germany and Japan in the middle of the twentieth century, then the principal justification for a post bellum occupation is that most of the people occupied have made themselves liable to occupation until the relevant features of their culture and political institutions can be sufficiently altered to ensure that their society will not again erupt into aggressive war."

(3) "In a just occupation following a just war, what the occupiers owe to the occupied people may be different depending on what the just cause for the war was. For example, what the occupiers owe may be different in the aftermath of a war fought to defeat unjust aggression from what they owe after a war of humanitarian intervention."

Elsewhere, Kristof chooses to speak in legal terms and calls Israel's occupation, "both oppressive and unjust," as if to suggest that not all occupations are 'oppressive.' Yet, as we saw above, some occupations are legal, others are illegal, and whether Israel's is just or unjust, legal or illegal, I leave unspecified because I think a good case can be made that it is both legal and just. But Kristof would rather summarize Israel's occupation in two emotionally-heavy words, rather than examine the nuance that should be required when discussing complicated conflicts like the Israeli-Palestinian one. When simple answers are presented to complicated problems, you can be sure that the author knows not what he speaks of.

Kristof proceeds to examine the living conditions around Hebron, arguably one of the most divisive and politically sensitive cities in all of Israel/Palestine (this is similar to when the New York Times went looking for American Jews' opinions of Israel and found them in Alabama). He also adds that Israeli soldiers rip down Palestinian structures, but of course fails to mention that Israeli soldiers rip down any illegal building structures, including (and it happens often), Jewish ones. But again, let's ignore the nuance because nuance makes for bad op-eds.

Let's continue our journey, says Kristof. On the other side of the barbed-wire fence, there is a "lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb," "lush gardens," "kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes," and so we are introduced to the Jewish community of Carmel. This would be like going to the projects in New York City and then comparing them to Michael Bloomberg's townhouse, or better yet, it would be like saying that Israeli settlers in the West Bank swim in pools while Palestinians do not even have water to drink. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what Amnesty International said, but fortunately, this is not true. Palestinians in the West Bank also have their pools (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=890972) and have plenty of water to drink, well above the unsourced claims of Amnesty International (http://tinyurl.com/2e5lpt4). As if echoing the Amensty report verbatim, Kristof quotes Elad Orian, "an Israeli human rights activist," who "nods toward the poultry barn and [says]: 'Those chickens get more electricity and water than all the Palestinians around here.'" Yes, indeed.

But here comes the revelation, that should have been prefaced in a disclaimer: "B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that I’ve long admired, took me to the southern Hebron hills to see the particularly serious inequities Palestinians face here." B'Tselem is a politically motivated human rights group, as are all human rights groups. But B'Tselem is notorious for their 'Hebron tours' and casting a particularly damning picture of Israel generally, from this specific little area. On this subject, Yaacov Lozowick has documented his trip with B'Tselem quite extensively. Here is his conclusion, though his story is worth reading in full:

"The small group of Israelis who populate the dozens of so-called "Israeli Human Rights Groups" insist their positions are not politics. True, they all congregate on the political Left, mostly at its far edge, but this is coincidence. Their agenda is human rights, and they call on Israel to preserve the human rights of the Palestinians no matter what form the conflict may be taking.

I know many of these people personally, and have never accepted their conceit. Oren of B'tselem was one of the least strident I've encountered, to his great credit. Yet his gentle and moderate demeanor couldn't hide the fundamental flaw in his argument. At one point he told that: "there are bits of these Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights all over the West Bank; the reason we bring you to Hebron is because here they're all concentrated in one spot".

To which a reasonable response would be: If this is the worst you can show, the Israeli occupation must be quite reasonable in its respect of Palestinian human rights. The one place in the entire West Bank which is worse than all others, according to you, can be walked from end to end in ten minutes. It's surrounded by a thriving Palestinian city, in which there are no Israeli human rights at all, because there are no Israelis. Your insistence on casting this as you do is pure politics."

(1) http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2009/12/stories-from-hebron.html

(2) http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgxshts6_76gpqgxjfb

Before finishing his diatribe (because that's what this is) Kristof documents the ongoing settler violence, which is surely reprehensible and should be condemned as terrorist, but these are generally not unprovoked events and they are isolated (not to detract from the severity of each of these condemnable attacks: the perpetrators should be punished swiftly and harshly if proven to be guilty). Hebron, Kristof's flawed case study, is historically the site of vicious and ongoing Arab-Jewish violence, ranging from the 1929 Hebron Massacre, which left 67-100 Jews killed and maimed, to Baruch Goldstein's terrorist shooting spree killing 29 Muslims praying at the Cave of Patriarchs. But Kristof downplays the violent back-and-forth: "For their part, settlers complain about violence by Palestinians, and it’s true that there were several incidents in this area between 1998 and 2002 in which settlers were killed." Violence need not be murderous to be criminal, and Kristof's use of the word 'several' bears testament to his myopia: settler violence need not be murderous to be criminal, whereas Palestinian violence needs to be (such is the implication).

Finally, Kristof makes this bald assertion: "Meanwhile, the settlements continue to grow, seemingly inexorably — and that may be the most odious aspect of the occupation." No statistics are offered for this statement, no citations, nothing. This is because it's patently false. Israel, by this I mean the government, has not authorized the building of new settlements since at least the Oslo Accords: "After the signing of the agreements, Israel refrained from building new settlements although the Oslo agreements stipulated no such ban" (http://www.fmep.org/settlement_info/settlement-info-and-tables/stats-data/housing-starts-in-israel-the-west-bank-and-gaza-strip-settlements-1990-2003).

Ignoring the incessant efforts of Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank since the concluding moments of the 1967 War in UN deliberations spanning to the most recent offer by Ehud Olmert (which Abbas has yet to respond to), the only thing that's 'wrong,' as Kristof concludes about Israel's ongoing occupation, are Kristof's facts.

To which I would add that for Kristof to condemn the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria based solely on an arranged tour with an anti-settlement organization is more than unfair.

Did he speak to a single Jew in Carmel? Did he ask what they thought of the barbed-wire fence, or how they lived their lives before it was built? For than matter, did he speak to any Jews in communities in the area who are forced to live within their own fenced-in areas because of Arab terror attacks? Did he speak to anyone who could recall how those awful "settlers "and Arabs lived together in neighboring communities, going to each others' weddings and shopping in each others' villages, before the first intifada? Did he speak to any Arabs who work in the settlements and manage to maintain an excellent standard of living as a result? Did he interview any Arabs who live in the many mansions easily visible from the highways and ask them how oppressed they are?

No, he spoke to an advocacy group and happily parroted what they told him to say. This is not even close to anything approaching journalism.

Israel doesn't exist according to PalArab quiz show

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog)

What is missing from the Palestinian Arab national movement?

PA prime minister Fayyad has been praised for his supposed groundwork in building a Palestinian Arab state, and it is clear that he is taking a page out of the Zionist playbook in saying that he will build state institutions independently so they will be ready if a state is ever declared - just like the Zionists did in the decades leading up to 1948.

However, there is a significant divergence between how the PA is acting and how Zionists acted before 1948, and these betray the difference between truly wanting to build a state and only pretending.

For one, it is unclear what institutions Fayyad and the PA are really building. There has been a lot of talk about Salam Fayyad's revolutionary program of state-building, but there doesn't seem to be too many specific examples. As Barry Rubin writes,

.. I don't see any Palestinian state-building going on. Yes, there is some improvement in the West Bank security forces, including U.S. training, but the changes are not enormous. And at any moment, these forces could launch a war on Israel or start fighting each other. Yes, there is some economic improvement happening but it's based on foreign aid money and much of it is unproductive (i.e., real estate and housing speculation). And again, it could be blown up any moment in a new Palestinian-Israeli or Fatah-Hamas war or just major instability.

...The article [raving about state-building, in the Foreign Policy site] provides not a single example of any material action being done to create strong institutions or do anything else that a state requires. Indeed, the only actual action was the passing of a resolution saying that the Palestinian Authority is building a state.

The Zionists of the 1930s and 1940s didn't rely on the world's largesse to build their institutions, and by 1947 they already had a functioning state without the state.

Another difference is that the Palestinian Arabs do not seem to be trying at all to create economic independence - rather than creating a network of private Arab benefactors, they are instead completely dependent on Western money and support. They have floated the idea of their own currency, but that would quickly turn into a joke (imagine them trying to pay Hamas' electric bills in Gaza to Israeli fuel companies with Palestinian pounds!) They get some charity from places like the UAE but where is the massive investment in their future from the rest of the Arab world, or from the Palestinian Arab "diaspora"?

Thirdly, even though there is a large degree of autonomy within the PA, there is no desire to dismantle the "refugee camps" of the West Bank (or Gaza) and integrate those members into normal society. Zionists did everything they could to integrate their new citizens into the mainstream, even as they stumbled a bit with those from Arab countries. Yet the PA is more than happy to allow UNRWA to continue to administer camps within areas they control! A people who crave independence would consider these outsiders to be an unacceptable intrusion on their sovereignty, rather than a crutch to avoid the realities of tackling real problems with real governing.

Fourthly, there is no call for Palestinian Arabs in the "diaspora" to move to Palestine - today. If an Arab Palestine is going to be a safe haven for stateless Palestinian Arabs to come to live, shouldn't there be a push for them to immigrate? (I do not know if that is allowed under existing agreements, but that is not relevant to the desire to bring in as many of the suffering people as possible, as quickly as possible.)

Arabs have been trying to turn the PalArabs into the Jews, and have been consciously usurping Zionist motifs and themes (such as the term "diaspora".) However, the comparison falls apart very quickly as we see that the Palestinian Arab leadership is behaving in the exact opposite way than the ZIonist leadership did in the years before statehood.

They are talking a good game, but they are not even close to delivering anything but hot air.

Egyptian and Syrian "Islamophobia"

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1245845947279&pagename=Zone-English-Euro_Muslims%2FEMELayoutIf disagreeing with the supposed Islamic rule that women must wear veils covering their faces is Islamophobia, then both Egypt and Syria have more than their share of Islamophobes.

In Alexandria, Egypt, some restaurants, clubs and beaches have banned women from wearing the niqab, causing some controversy. About 17% of women in Egypt wear the veil.

Meanwhile, in Syria, nearly 1200 schoolteachers who wear the veil have been suspended from working in classrooms altogether:

[Syrian Minister of Education Ali] Saad justified his decision by arguing that the face veil is not in line with the secular policies followed by the state as far as education is concerned.

“Education in Syrian schools follows an objective, secular methodology and this is undermined by wearing the face veil.”

He also pointed out that the face veil disrupts the teaching process as it hinders eye contact, which is extremely important for the relationship between teacher and student. Therefore, information is not delivered properly to the students.

Is that also Islamophobia, or does that term exclusively apply to the West?

More on the British judge who hates Israel (Zvi)

Zvi does some research on Judge George Bathurst-Norman, who just essentially instructed a jury to acquit people from causing hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage - because the material might have gone to Israel:

It is impossible to run a society based on the rule of law if the courts refuse to enforce the law.

The Implications
Let's remove Israel from the picture for a moment and examine the implications of the judge's instructions.

War is always hell, and true anti-war activists have a valid, if often naive, cause. Suppose that anti-war activists have exhausted all democratic means and have been unable to stop the UK from fighting wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Suppose that they have been unable to stop British arms manufacturers from selling weapons to third world countries. Apparently, anti-war activists are allowed to break into any munitions factory in the UK and do hundreds of thousands of Pounds worth of damage. Apparently, the rights of the factory owners are meaningless. The factories may be supplying the British armed forces and/or a variety of British partners and clients. None of that matters. War is always hell. British weapons are always designed to kill people.

There is, of course, another possible option. War might only be hell for Arabs who are fighting against Israel.

It is possible that war is not hell when Angola purchases 30 million Pounds worth of armored vehicles from the UK. It is possible that war is not hell when the UK sends 180 tons of arms to genocidal Sudan. It is possible that war is not hell when BAE alone sells 43 billion Pounds worth of arms contracts since 2005 to Saudi Arabia, which is currently fighting in Yemen and enforcing a strangling blockade through which no food or medicine is permitted to pass. It is possible that war is not hell when the UK sells weapons to Iraq, or when UK planes bomb Iraqi cities. It is possible that war is not hell when the UK sells weapons to Pakistan, and when Pakistan sought to acquire nuclear weapons (see below). It is possible that war is not hell when the UK sells weapons to Sri Lanka (thousands of Tamil civilians indiscriminately slaughtered by the Sri Lankan armed forces during the bombardment of the surrounded LTTE).

But to believe that war is only hell for those who are fighting against Israel, a person must not only ignore reality and objectivity; he must abandon all semblance of rational thought.

Proof, Assertion & Recusal
Next thought.

The judge made statements about the war in Gaza while instructing the jury. But I don't believe that any proof was offered up to demonstrate that these statements were factual. Is unsupported assertion the new standard of proof in the British courts? Or is this only true where Israel is concerned?
If a judge has political positions that lead to bias, then is he not required to recuse himself?

Who & Why?
Next thought. From the Elder's source:

We need not have worried! Perhaps the fact that His Honour was born in the Arab town of Jaffa opposite Tel Aviv might have something to do with it! Judge George Bathurst-Norman was brought out of retirement to hear the case.

I'm curious. Who "brought him out of retirement to try this case," and on what grounds?

Double Standard?
In 2003, Judge Bathurst-Norman jailed a man for 3 months for decapitating a statue of Margaret Thatcher. In that decision, the judge said that although many people sympathized with the man, smashing up property deserved a custodial sentence.

Nuclear Weapons are not a Big Deal, Apparently
In 2001, Judge George Bathurst-Norman handed down a "remarkably lenient" sentence to Abu Bakr Siddiqui, one of the procurement agents of the A.Q. Khan nuclear tech smuggling network(facilitating Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and the nuclear weapons programs of rogue states such as North Korea and Iran).

I guess "hell on earth" does not describe what would happen if Pakistani nuclear weapons were used against India, or Iranian nuclear weapons were used against Israel.

HRW and AI: Substituting Lex Ferenda for Lex Lata

In a brilliant monograph written by Asher Fredman for NGO Monitor and JCPA, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch's seemingly factual statements regarding the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) are examined - and found to be sorely lacking.

Fredman goes through the NGOs' writings concerning Operation Cast Lead and shows that their conclusions concerning the use of white phosphorus and UAVs do not reflect international law as it is (lex lata) , but rather how they would like international law to be (lex ferenda.)

Excerpts from the summary:

It is shown that the NGOs’ [1] descriptions of the means and methods of warfare contain numerous unwarranted assertions and unsubstantiated claims. In other cases, the NGOs present unrealistic depictions of the nature of modern combat, leading them to problematic evaluations of Israeli actions. It appears that these result at least in part from a lack of expertise in relevant areas.

From the legal perspective, it will be argued that the NGOs’ presentation of several key LOAC principles is inaccurate or incomplete. In other instances, AI and HRW present controversial interpretations of LOAC treaties as widely accepted customary law. This suggests that the NGOs may be engaged in “standard setting” [2] rather than in objective evaluations.

On white phosphorus (WP):

Among the findings are that:

LOAC, as reflected in state declarations and practice, recognizes the right of a commander to consider military needs, particularly force protection, when evaluating what actions and precautions are feasible in a given situation.

HRW’s claim that Israel could feasibly have used a different type of smoke obscurant to the same effect as WP is contradicted on several counts by military sources and weapons experts.

AI and HRW's arguments regarding the feasibility of using other means and methods to deliver WP are unsubstantiated and based upon information unavailable to the NGOs. Suggested alternatives may, in fact, have posed a greater danger to civilians.

Contrary to the claim that Israel’s use of WP was indiscriminate and hence unlawful per se, its use was “directed at a specific military objective” and therefore lawful under LOAC.

On the use of UAVs:

Among the findings are that:

The evidence AI and HRW present to establish their claims regarding the weapons platforms and munitions allegedly used is rendered questionable by military and defense industry sources. In a number of instances, the witness testimony relied upon heavily by the NGOs is contradicted by widely published media reports or the NGOs themselves.

AI and HRW present an unrealistic depiction of the factors influencing targeting decisions on the modern battlefield. They fall prey to the “allure of precision” that leads “those beyond the battlefield [to] impose unreasonable demands on the military or postulate norms that go beyond treaty or custom” (Schmitt, 2004, p. 466).

Israeli actions are judged based on hindsight, in contrast to LOAC standards as affirmed by the declarations of 13 countries when ratifying Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions.
The NGOs misrepresent LOAC definitions of legitimate military objectives. On the basis of this misrepresentation, they presume the absence of legitimate military objectives in the vicinity of a strike.

Once presuming the absence of legitimate military objectives, the NGOs assume that civilians injured in a strike were deliberately targeted. This allows them to ignore LOAC’s recognition of the possibility and lawfulness of proportional collateral damage in attacks on military objectives.

Conclusion:

The findings of this study indicate that at least in their reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, AI and HRW’s reports contain many factual inaccuracies and problematic presentations of international law. It is therefore suggested that AI and HRW, as well as other NGOs dealing with similar issues, carefully evaluate their areas of competency, and ensure that factual and legal assertions are made with the proper degree of expertise. It is further suggested that the NGOs take steps to maintain standards of objectivity and ensure that ideological predilections do not color their analyses. When claiming to evaluate the lawfulness of a party’s actions, the NGOs must not conflate lex lata (the law as it exists) with their preferred lex ferenda (what the law should be).

As I showed in AI's contradictory and HRW's bogus definitions of "occupation."

Policy-makers, diplomats, and journalists should more carefully scrutinize NGO-generated information. Subjecting NGO reports and statements to careful analysis will help ensure that these documents are produced at the highest standards. This would enable NGOs such as AI and HRW to most effectively fulfill their mission of promoting and protecting human rights.

Don't expect HRW or AI to respond in any substantial way. As we have seen, NGOs tend to get very shrill and defensive when light is shined on them.

If Iran wants to boycott Israeli products... (Zvi)

As I mentioned yesterday, Iran has officially announced a boycott of either Israeli or Zionist or Jewish-owned companies, depending on the report.

Assuming that Iran's boycott is only for companies that have a significant presence in Israel, things might get a little hairy. From Zvi:

Among the top 20 non-oil companies in the S&P Global 100 list (not yet updated to reflect Apple's rise), the only companies that DON'T have research labs, joint ventures, strategic investments, subsidiaries, etc. in Israel are:

* lung cancer purveyor Philip Morris
* WalMart
* BHP Billiton (diamond miner that does significant business with Israel and uses Israeli technology)
* Banco Santander

Every other company on the list has a direct presence in Israel. So the IRI would have to boycott the rest of the world's largest companies, including companies that they probably don't want to boycott (such as Samsung, Siemens and Toyota) as well as frequently companies such as Intel and Microsoft. They would also have to boycott most of the world's leading pharmaceutical and medical-device companies - but then, health care has never been the IRI's top priority, has it?

Apple

The iPad and iPhone 4 include components from Samsung and Micron, which have Israeli R&D centers. Apple's computers use Intel chips.

So sorry! Mahmoud, if you were hoping to buy an iPad on your next trip to Europe, you will need to reconsider.

AMD and Linux

Iran is on the US list of Embargoed Countries. AMD can't legally sell to Iran. Nevertheless, the IRI regime obtains AMD chips on the black market and has used them to build a 216-processor supercomputer and to conduct aerospace research (i.e. missiles), which Iran then bragged about. An AMD statement says that the company is investigating how the IRI could have obtained these CPUs and that it has alerted the US State Dept. to these reports.

The IRI is using the SUSE distribution of Linux in its aerospace programs. This is the free distribution from Novell. Novell has a local office in Israel. Want to try again, Mahmoud?

I'm not going to guess how many contributions to the Linux source come from "Zionists" (Israelis, Jews, Christians who support Israel, Muslims who support Israel, anyone whose country Iran has ever accused of being Zionists, e.g. all Americans, etc.) or from companies on the banned list. However, I definitely encourage IRI bureaucrats to immediately go through the source code and delete every line contributed by these pernicious Zionists, as well as by all companies on the "banned" list, e.g. IBM. The IRI can't possibly want to have evil Zionist code running Iran's computers. Furthermore, I encourage all Iranians who love the Islamic Republic to immediately content their leaders and tell them that it is unacceptable to be running the country using a crypto-Zionist operating system that might be secretly mocking Islam and which might deviously cause Iran's missiles to turn around and blow up Tehran. I do think this is a very reasonable fear for delusional paranoid conspiracy theorists to hold, and I am happy to warn them about this secret plot.

Coke & Pepsi: failed again

The IRI is boycotting Coke but not Pepsi; however, in 2008, Pepsi and Strauss formed a joint venture that acquired an Israeli company. Better luck next time, Mahmoud.

Conclusion

The whole boycott-Israel is an example of the IRI regime's badly skewed priorities. Instead of working pragmatically to create the greatest value for its people, the IRI regime continues to focus on attacking a country 1000km away and attempting to slaughter a people that has never, in thousands of years of recorded history, initiated military action against Iran/Persia. The Iranian regime will continue to operate in this obsessively destructive fashion until it collapses, because this psychotic obsession is quite literally the backbone of the regime.

Britain decriminalizes vigilantism against Israel

In a mind-blowing verdict, a British jury acquitted people who admitted that they purposefully caused damage to an arms factory - because, they said, the arms were being used by Israel:

Five activists who caused £180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes.

The five were jubilant after a jury found them not guilty of conspiring to cause criminal damage to the factory on the outskirts of Brighton.

The five admitted they had broken in and sabotaged the factory, but argued they were legally justified in doing so.

They believed that EDO MBM, the firm that owns the factory, was breaking export regulations by manufacturing and selling to the Israelis military equipment which would be used in the occupied territories. They wanted to slow down the manufacture of these components, and impede what they believed were war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

They are the latest group of peace and climate-change activists to successfully use the "lawful excuse" defence – committing an offence to prevent a more serious crime – as a tactic in their campaigns.

They had decided to act last January after three weeks of Israeli military manoeuvres against Gaza in which many Palestinians were killed.

In his summing up, Judge George Bathurst-Norman suggested to the jury that "you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time".

The judge highlighted the testimony by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, that "all democratic paths had been exhausted" before the activists embarked on their action.

Meaning that the judge pretty much told the jury to acquit them. Unbelievable.

Hove crown court heard the activists had broken into the factory in the night. They had video-taped interviews beforehand outlining their intention to cause damage and, in the words of prosecutor Stephen Shay, "smash-up" the factory.

These statements were posted on the Indymedia website shortly after they were arrested.

Apparently, according to British law, Israel has no right to defend itself from Qassam rockets. Period.

I guess that synagogue bombings can be defended next, because Jews provide material and emotional support for Israel which does all of these war crimes. Then they can go after Melanie Philips.

It turns out that the judge was born in Arab Jaffa, and was brought out of retirement to hear this case, as a jubilant anti-Zionist notes. Which would explain his directing the jury as to what their verdict should be.

(h/t My Right Word)

Abbas once called for Arab nations to naturalize Palestinians!

I was astonished to find this quote from Mahmoud Abbas in 2005:

In an unexpected move, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called upon Arab countries hosting Palestinian refugees to give them citizenship, asserting that such action would not compromise the Right of Return. "I call upon every Arab government wishing to give citizenship [to Palestinian refugees] to do so.

The Palestinian Authority president insisted that obtaining citizenship in a host country would not compromise the refugees' right to return to their homeland. Palestinians have sought to assert this right since being forced from their homeland 50 years ago.

Abbas explained: "This does not mean resettlement [of refugees]. A Palestinian would return to his homeland whenever he is allowed, whether he carried an Arab or non-Arab citizenship."

In the interview, Abbas criticized claims that the Arab League had banned naturalization of refugees, calling these claims "mere excuses."

"There is no decision, as the Arab League only recommended [not to grant citizenship], but this was not a decision," he said, referring to the recommendation made in the early 1950s when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became refugees following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

While Abbas boldly stated during his visit to Lebanon that he "speaks for all Palestinians," a number of Palestinian officials and refugees in Lebanon disagree with his push for citizenship. Some expressed great surprise over his statement.

Suhail Natour, a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said: "It comes as a great surprise, as this move is very dangerous."

Natour explained: "Once a Palestinian becomes a citizen of another country, he can't claim his right of return to Israel, as Israel can easily turn around and say, 'you now have a country and can't claim refugee status.'"

"Slowly, as more Palestinian refugees get naturalized, the Right of Return will turn from a national case to a mere personal case against Israel," he said.

According to Natour, naturalizing Palestinian refugees would add to what are "already" serious legal, political and social problems involved with the Right of Return.

Notice that they interview a leader of a terrorist organization as a representative of Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon to say they oppose the right to be naturalized citizens - but they didn't interview any real citizens. As usual, self-appointed "leaders" do everything they can to quash their people they are supposedly leading.

On the cached Lebanese forum page from which I found the rest of the Daily Star article, one of the members posted in reaction to this:

Do you think the 350,000 Palestinians in the refugee camps want to be here? Me and my buddies are a group of five guys. One of them is Palestinian who lives in Kfarchima. Four of us are not in Lebanon, scattered between the US, Canada and Australia. The only one left behind is the Palestinian guy, who is stuck in Lebanon with no future to look forward to, and not being able to leave Lebanon because he's not able to get either a travel document from the Lebanese authorities, or a visa to get out...

Abbas must have been pilloried for making his pro-naturalization statement, because he changed his tune pretty quickly after this rare show of true leadership. In 2008, he completely contradicted his 2005 statement:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted Wednesday as rejecting the naturalization of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. "We would never accept any settlement that leads to naturalizing Palestinians in Lebanon," Abbas told pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.

And in 2009, he went even beyond that:

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will not be offered Palestinian Authority passports, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday following his meeting with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman at the Republican Palace.

Abbas’ remark quashed recent rumors concerning the issuing of PA passports to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon...

Abbas could have acted as the conscience of the Arab world and pushed for his people to have the right to live in dignity - and he instead (apparently) caved to pressure and now advocates keeping his people in misery, as permanent second-class citizens in their host countries, without even the basic ability to leave their hellholes of "refugee" camps.

What a great leader the Palestinian Arabs have!

Another Lebanese politician against Palestinian Arab rights

Lebanese politicians continue to speak out against giving Palestinian Arabs equal rights - and some want them to have fewer rights than others.

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel criticized the way the issue of granting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon their rights was presented in parliament, saying that it was aimed at dividing people between those who are for and others who are against this issue.

He made his statements after holding talks with the head of UNRWA in Lebanon Salvatore Lombardo on improving the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon.

Furthermore, Gemayel stated: "Granting the Palestinians the right of ownership in Lebanon is a step closer towards naturalization."

"A number of legal matters need to be studied calmly in order to improve the Palestinians' humanitarian situation and maintain the Lebanese state's higher interests in a way that would prevent their permanent residence in Lebanon," he stressed.

He added that Lebanon does not have the funds to support presenting the Palestinians with their rights, saying that this is the international community's duty.

Arabs are all behind their Palestinian brethren - as long as all they have to do is talk. Once they are asked to actually do something, then the excuses start to fly.

Golda Meir, the UN, and "Palestinians"

One of the most quoted, supposedly racist sayings by an Israeli leader is Golda Meir's supposed 1969 statement that "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." You can find it cited over 18,000 times in Google.

The quote is false.

Here is what Meir said, referring to when the bulk of Zionists returned to their land in the first half of the 20th century, quoted in the June 15, 1969 Sunday Times:

There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.

Notice that she stated it in past tense, and given the timeframe that she was referring to, her statement is indisputable. (The correct statement is quoted much less frequently on the Internet.)

There is another interesting thing about the timing of her statement.

The first time that Palestinian Arabs were recognized as a "people" by the UN was not in the 1940s or 50s. It was in December, 1969, six months after Meir spoke on the topic. In GA Resolution 2628, it refers to the "people of Palestine" - the first time that this term was used by the UN to refer exclusively to Palestinian Arabs.

And the first time that the term "Palestinians" was used by the UN in reference to Palestinian Arabs was a year later, in A/RES/2628 in November, 1970.

Isn't it interesting that for over twenty years after the Palestinian Arab exodus, the UN never referred to them as a people? Only after the Six Day War, when the Arab world changed its tactics from bragging about "throwing the Jews into the sea" and into "Jews as tyrants, Arabs as victims" did the UN pick up on this new construct of recognizing a people and a state whose existence were denied even by Arabs only a few years beforehand.

Not to mention afterwards, as this (Hebrew) video shows, as Palestinian Christian politician Azmi Bishara says explicitly:

Or the famous quote from the PLO's Zuheir Mohsen denying the existence of a Palestinian people in 1977.

(I did not research the UN resolutions exhaustively; I came upon this in a footnote in this paper. H/t to Biodegradable and Jed for post-1970 quotes.)

Iran boycotting Jewish companies?

From YNet:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed Wednesday a new amendment to a law in the Islamic Republic that forbids the airing of advertisements for "Zionist companies." The blacklist of prohibited companies is comprised mainly of international companies, mainly American, owned by Jews or that operate branches in Israel.

Among those on the list are Coca Cola, Nestle, Intel, and IBM.

The amendment obligates a number of government ministries to establish a committee to identify and locate products from "Zionist" companies being sold in Iran. In addition, this committee will be charged with finding the names of leading figures in the blacklisted companies so that they may be boycotted as well.

I cannot find any verification of the "Jewish-owned" part of this; Iran's PressTV merely says that the boycott was of Israeli companies:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the implementation of a bill demanding major efforts to enforce a total boycott on goods with Israeli origin.

According to the website of the Iranian government, President Ahmadinejad ordered the implementation of the pro-Palestinian bill, which was ratified by the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) earlier in June.

Iranian lawmakers agreed to task a committee with identifying Israeli companies and institutions to step up efforts for imposing a ban on Israeli products.

The bill also demands the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting not to air television and radio advertisement for Israeli products.

Ahmadinejad's website does not have any such story, nor does the official Iranian government website.

It will be interesting to see the list of boycotted "Zionist" companies.