Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 12, 2010

ElderToons: Abbas threatens to resign

The second of what may become a series, if I find the time...

References:
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1526
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-abbas-poster.html
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=2531

50th anniversary of sacking of Algerian synagogue

From Jewish Refugees website:

It is exactly 50 years, on 11 December 1960, since Algerian Arabs attacked the Great Synagogue in Algiers. They had been incensed by the visit of General de Gaulle and violence by the 'pieds-noirs' (Algerians of French descent) and the OAS. The Algerian Jews had hitherto tried to remain studiedly neutral between the FLN fighters for independence and the pro-French paramilitary (OAS). Now they understood that their bread was buttered on the French side. Two years later, almost the entire Algierian Jewish community fled, nearly all to France.

"What better way of expressing weakness and cowardice than by attacking the greatest symbol of Algerian Judaism, hitherto always respected and untouched, in the heart of the Casbah," write Albert Bensoussan and Julien Zenouda.

They go on to describe the scene: " In the centre of the old city, Jews and Arabs had always lived in harmony. The Jews came and went among them without fear. We spoke the same language, they respected us and we had esteem and affection for them. They entered the holy place and went on the rampage, tore the memorial plaques off the walls, ripped up the symbols of our faith, sullied books and Torah scrolls, emptied the lockers where people stored tallit, tephilin and prayer books, and torched everything.

"The (French) Paras then came with their red berets, occupied the place, camped on the floor of our Temple, ate, drank and fornicated with the clear conscience of soldiers, and, adding insult to injury, set up a Christmas tree. "

Here is how AP reported it:

Muslims attacked Jews, whom they lived with in peace for years. The usual, tired excuse - Zionism - is entirely absent from this story. They were angry at the French - and took their anger out on Jews, the easy to find and weak neighbors.

(h/t Silke)

Marxists march in Gaza

From Ma'an:

Thousands of supporters celebrated the 43rd anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Gaza City on Saturday.

Politburo member of the leftist faction Jamil Majdalawi delivered a speech urging rival factions Hamas and Fatah to end "the unjustified disagreement which harms the Palestinian people, resistance fighters and negotiators."

Resistance, Majdalawi continued, was a legal right of the Palestinian people, and it would be wrong to look for alternatives.

The PFLP is a Marxist organization that has connections to socialist groups worldwide. (Here is its German site, for example, complete with links to a shop where you can buy their caps and T-shirts, which seems strangely capitalist. And here is the webpage of the New Zealand branch, complete with a video of "pro-peace" activist David Rovics, whom I lampooned here, performing at a terrorism fundraiser.)

The rally seems to have been fairly well-attended, and Hamas apparently did not interfere with this staunchly secular but terrorist organization's march:

The very existence of the PFLP in Gaza is proof that even if somehow an agreement would be reached with Fatah and (let's fantasize) Hamas, there are other terror groups like PFLP, DFLP, Islamic Jihad and some Salafist and al-Qaeda-leaning groups that would still happily attack Israelis by whatever means they could. Not only that, but groups like Fatah would encourage those groups to continue the "resistance" in the same way that Fatah has used the fiction of having a separate "political wing" as cover to shield it from criticism for terror attacks by organizations it actively supported behind the scenes.

When even Assad says Abbas is wrong.... (Zvi)

From Zvi:

Even Syria's Bashar al-Assad now says openly that making an Israeli construction freeze in the West Bank a precondition before Abbas will talk to Israel is pointless and stupid.

Even the most hard-line, anti-Semitic regime in the neighborhood agrees with most Israelis that insisting on a settlement freeze is a complete waste of time; if Mahmoud Abbas wants to stop the growth of settlements, then the only way to do it is to negotiate an agreement.

The column is dressed up in the usual flotilla of paranoid anti-Israel claims, of course, but the final conclusion is actually pretty reasonable:

"What matters are results, not the slogans that we have become addicted to."

It is time for Pres. Obama, Sec. of State Clinton and Sen. Mitchell, and also the useful EU idiots who wrote an anti-Israel letter to Catherine Ashton the other day, to come to the same conclusion. Blaming the settlers amounts to a mindlessly repeated, worn-out slogan. But the mindless repetition of slogans does nothing to improve the world.

Only an Israel-PA agreement that specifies borders will define the borders of Israeli towns in the West Bank. Without a peace agreement, US or PA attempts to micromanage what construction occurs in Israeli towns in the West Bank bring absolutely no benefit to anyone.

Of course, one cannot lay the blame *entirely* on Mr. Abbas.

The Obama administration, not Mahmoud Abbas, created this fiasco. The Obama administration took a situation that was gradually improving and, by introducing this mindless precondition, completely shut down negotiations. And they pursued this direction, in their arrogance and ineptitude, despite being warned of the consequences.

But Mr. Abbas, of course, had every opportunity to reject such a pointless diversion. Mr. Abbas, being the do-nothing that he is, leaped at the chance to sit around doing nothing. And for that he MUST be blamed.

Since that time, the US insistence on beating up Israel for Abbas' rejectionism has given those who hate Israel a chance to sit back and smile. But the handful of people who would prefer to actually improve the lot of West Bank Arabs have grown increasingly frustrated.

Meanwhile, naive European and Israeli leftists, by continuing to flog the dead horse of the freeze, have simply prolonged the fiasco.

But there are some people in the Arab world who actually do think about the situation, and these people have increasingly criticized the whole pointless freeze idea. And now even Bashar al-Assad, die-hard enemy of Israel, looks at the freeze and comes to the same conclusion as Netanyahu or Lieberman.

Without a peace agreement, US and PA attempts to micromanage what construction occurs in Israeli towns in the West Bank bring absolutely no benefit to anyone. Only an Israel-PA agreement that specifies borders will define the borders of Israeli towns in the West Bank.

Comment issues

People have been complaining, a lot, about the new comment system.

Disqus already said they can't do anything about my linking the old Echo comments to Disqus because of something wrong with their format, but I can see that if I go to Blogger comments I would be receiving a lot of spam comments.

I just changed a setting that might help the comment situation; let me know if you are still having problems.

Arab leaders continue to support unrepentant anti-semite

The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee continues to honor Helen Thomas - not in spite of, but because of her anti-Jewish comments that she made in June as well as more recently when she spouted off anti-semitic stereotypes but tried to cover herself by using the word "Zionist."

According to Ray Hanania's Twitter feed, referring to Friday night,

Phenomenal turnout of 1,000 people at ADC Michigan banquet tonight with the great Clovis Maksoud and standing ovation salute to Helen Thomas

The Arab American News fully supports Thomas' statements, quoting lots of students and activists who support what she said. It also published a ludicrous article by the head of the ADC, claiming that Helen Thomas cannot be anti-semitic because she is a Semite:

Underlying the political struggle between proponents and opponents of Zionism in America is a definitional context. Thomas, a Semite in her own right, delivered politically charged remarks against a political entity, Zionism. Thus, one must ask, is a Semite who makes non-ethnic or non-racial remarks against a political entity anti-Semitic? The answer is clearly no. However, the denotation of "Semitic" advanced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) not only extracts Arabs, such as Thomas, from their unilateral definition, but also narrows it to only include Jews. This may be politically expedient for organizations in America, such as the Anti-Defamation League, but is ultimately an incorrect usage of the term.

I guess that Dictionary.com is part of the ADL/Jooish conspiracy.

What makes all this defense of Thomas really funny is that, deep down, Arab Americans know very well what she meant. Amer Zahr, who appears to be an Arab comedian, says it outright in the Arab Detroit paper:

Helen, don’t you know that you can’t say the Jews should get the hell out of Palestine? Don’t you know it’s not even called Palestine? Don’t you know that there never was a Palestine?

C’mon, Helen…

People got upset and Wayne State, your alma mater, discontinued an award in your name. They said you were anti-Semitic. For saying Jews own all the important stuff? As Arabs, we don’t get the anger. If someone said we owned those things, we’d take the credit. Or at least we’d say, “Well we don’t own it yet, but we’re working on it.”

There's yet another irony at play here, as these Arab Americans are fighting for the right of Helen Thomas to spout Jew-hatred in the name of free speech. Beyond the obvious irony that they didn't feel the same way about the Mohammed cartoons, of course.

The fundraiser last night by the Michigan ADC chapter was announced this way on their website:

Join the ADCMichigan Annual Benefit Gala this Friday, December 10, 2010 at 6:00PM at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Dearborn as it recalls the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, 1948.

The irony is that the Organization of the Islamic Conference - meaning, most Arab states - does not accept the UDHR, instead supporting the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which does not guarantee freedom of religion nor gender equality, and ultimately says that Islamic law defines human rights, not humans.

Has the ADC, so concerned with Helen Thomas' rights to freedom of expression, ever publicly called for Arab nations to adopt the UDHR that they dedicated their fundraiser to?

The hypocrisy shown by this organization is staggering, and the Helen Thomas episode just proves that they care far more about defending bigotry than with standing up for the truth.

Hamas parades fake "Shalit" in celebration

Hamas is celebrating the 23rd anniversary of its fonding. In one rally, they took someone to represent Gilad Shalit, in handcuffs, and paraded him around Gaza:

This is probably a violation of Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention.

Newspaper poll: Majority of PalArab view saving Jews as "disgraceful"

From Ma'an:

A slim majority of the respondents to a reader poll on Ma'an's Arabic-language news site said sending Palestinian firefighters to help battle Israel's fire was "disgraceful."

Firefighters from more than 16 countries helped to extinguish the blaze, the worst in Israel's history, which broke out on Dec. 2 and spread through the Carmel forest for four days.

Of 48,870 readers who responded to the 7-day poll, 50.3 percent (24,524) described Palestinians' participation as a disgrace, but 48.7 percent (23,761) said sending Palestinian firefighters to help was civilized and a humanitarian duty.

Newspaper polls are far from scientific, but Ma'an is certainly one of the more moderate Palestinian Arabic news websites out there. My guess is that a real poll would show that far fewer PalArabs support saving Jewish lives in Israel.

Something you won't read in AP

From AP last week:

In recent years, Hamas has tried to reach out to the West, and its supreme leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, has expressed support for a Palestinian state in 1967 borders.

At the same time, Hamas has not revoked its founding charter which calls for Israel's destruction, and Hamas officials won't say whether they see a two-state deal as a final arrangement or a step toward eliminating Israel.

Actually, they do say it, pretty much daily. Just AP won't listen when they speak in Arabic.

From Firas Press:

[Hamas leader Mahmoud al-] Zahar stressed in a speech in the beginning of celebrations of the 23rd anniversary of Hamas' inception "that the [Hamas] movement was launched to continue the jihad until the liberation of all Palestine."

Zahar burned an Israeli flag on the occasion of the 23rd anniversary of its launch in southern Gaza City.

He said "The journey of jihad and martyrdom began 23 years ago and will continue until the liquidation of the masses of aggression, treachery and even high banners of faith and bring us day after day, year after year from Palestine .. all of Palestine."

"The Jihad will continue until the liberation of the Palestinian city of Jerusalem to pray a prayer of thanks after the liberation of all Palestine..."

Any questions, AP?

Fisking a single Juan Cole paragraph

A reader emailed me to fisk a new Juan Cole posting on his blog. While I would normally not waste my time on something that does not get wide circulation, in the light of my now thinking more in terms of training people how to do hasbara, I thought this would be an opportunity not only to fisk, but to give pointers on how to fisk.

I do not have the time to show the lies in the entire piece, but the first paragraph will do quite well (and take up enough time, thank you.)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his far rightwing government have slapped President Obama in the face with mail gloves by refusing to extend the freeze on new colonies in the Palestinian West Bank. Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed his refusal to go forward with direct negotiations if Israelis were going to be seizing land that was being negotiated for while the talks were ongoing!

1. "Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his far rightwing government." As Cole well knows, left-wing Labor is part of this government. Likud itself is not "far rightwing" by any measure, as it is the government that made peace with Egypt and withdrew from Gaza. The PA, on the other hand, has every attribute of a far right-wing government, as it refuses to negotiate without preconditions and it refuses to compromise on even the most basic demands that Israel could not possibly countenance, like the illusory "right to return." It also refuses to allow any Jews in its nascent state and it imposes a death penalty on anyone who sells his land to Jews, making it an apartheid government as well.

2. "slapped President Obama in the face with mail gloves" is ridiculous imagery - mail gloves are metal gloves used by armored knights. The implication is that Netanyahu is actively injuring Obama, both in terms of honor and physically, which is absurd. (And isn't it interesting that Cole now cares so much about the honor of the President of the United States when he would have applauded any foreign leader treating Obama's predecessor with contempt.)

3. "by refusing to extend the freeze" - There was a ten month freeze,and for nine and a half of those months the Palestinian Authority refused to negotiate with Israel. As Cole will presently mention, he accepts Abbas' refusal to negotiate while the freeze is not in effect, but did he ever say a word about Abbas' intransigence while the freeze was in effect? Of course not!

4. "on new colonies" - Israel has not sanctioned the building of new Jewish towns for years. They have, in fact, dismantled numerous structures built by Jews outside existing boundaries of towns and villages in Judea and Samaria. This is simply a lie. Note also that he chooses the word "colonies" and not the more popular "settlements" because he wants the reader to think of Israel as a "colonialist" state.

5. "in the Palestinian West Bank." Which parts of the West Bank will end up as "Palestinian" and which will end up in Israel is up for negotiation. UN resolution 242 makes clear that Israel must have secure borders and that the 1949 armistice lines were not the recognized borders of Israel. There has never been a Palestinian Arab state so calling the West Bank "Palestinian" is presumptuous. You can call it "formerly occupied by Jordan," you can call it "disputed," but if you want to be accurate you cannot call it "Palestinian" unless you are referring to Mandate-era Palestine, in which case all of Israel is "Palestinian" as well.

6. "Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas" - who is now the illegal president of the PA because he went past his term in office and did not call new elections.

7. "reaffirmed his refusal to go forward with direct negotiations" - which proves that he is the intransigent party here, not the "obstreperous Likud government" as Cole goes on to say later.

8. "if Israelis were going to be seizing land that was being negotiated for" - All the building happening right now is within existing towns, no more land is being "seized" by Israel. In fact, Palestinian Arabs have been seizing land by planting trees and crops in disputed areas that would and should be up for negotiations.

9. "while the talks were ongoing!" - The Pa negotiated in the past without this condition, which means that it is the PA that has changed the rules and added preconditions, not Israel.

When reading a piece by someone like Cole, one must not only look at the main points but at the side-statements and adjectives, which are in some ways even worse. His entire framework is twisted, so one cannot take literally anything he says to be the truth unless it is verified from another source.

And one must also realize that Cole knows every fact I bring up above is true - and he chooses to ignore the truth anyway. This is enough to prove that his words have no value, and his entire intent is demonization and propaganda, not truth.

The truth is that there is one intransigent party here, and that is the PLO led by Mahmoud Abbas. (The PLO does the negotiations, not the PA.) If Obama is to be counseled to lean on anyone, it is the PLO. The negotiating position of the PLO has not changed since 1988 - no compromises, no flexibility, no concessions since then. Not one. Their demands are identical, and they add up to the same result - the ultimate destruction of Israel. (See this 2009 video just sent to me for yet more proof of that.) This is the reality, the reality that people like Cole know very well but spend countless hours trying to distract the world away from with their mantras of lies like "seizing land" and "far rightwing government."

Latest Latma (12/10/10)

"We Didn't Start the Fire" and more:

PA to cancel all security agreements?

From JPost:

The Palestinian Authority will stop coordinating its security with Israel, in response to the US's official announcement that peace talks have failed, Al Quds al-Arabi reported on Friday.

Khana Amira, a PLO official, told the UK newspaper that the PA is also considering canceling its other commitments to Israel, including the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, which demand that terror organizations will stop.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official and an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly plans to convene a meeting with the PLO and Fatah central committees on Friday afternoon, in order to make a new plan for the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are also considering seeking the UN Security Council's recognition of a Palestinian state on all the Palestinian territories that were captured by Israel in 1967.

In October, Abed Rabbo warned that the PA would unilaterally abrogate the Oslo Accords if the peace process broke down.

“We can’t remain committed to the agreements that were signed with Israel forever,” he said. “One party can’t remain committed while the other party has violated the agreements and even canceled them.”

I cannot find the original Al Quds article.

Abed Rabbo's statement is strange considering that Salam Fayyad has already said that he is no longer abiding by the Oslo Accords. True, Fayyad represents the PA and Abed Rabbo the PLO, but it is a distinction without a difference - officially the PA reports to the PLO.

The security arrangements that the PA has admittedly been doing a reasonable job on for the past couple of years in the West Bank has resulted in their citizens doing quite well - their economy is booming and their standard of living is relatively high, especially compared to Gaza where no such agreements exist. The economic prosperity is directly proportional to the security situation and cooperation with Israel. If the PLO wants to destroy the arrangements, they will destroy the livelihoods and well-being of their citizens.

Which will not be the first time that the Palestinian Arab leaders sacrifice their citizens' lives and happiness for their own petty politics.

(h/t Zach)

Iran's Other War (Totten)

Another great and illuminating article by Michael J. Totten:

Iran’s most repressed religious minority is also its largest. Members of the community are routinely imprisoned, frequently executed, banned from universities, and ruthlessly repressed economically. Tens of thousands have been murdered by one regime after another. The current government—the Khomeinist “Islamic Republic”—goes farther than any other by vowing to crush these people wherever they live and erase them from the face of the earth.

There are only six or seven million in the entire world, and their spiritual home is in Israel.

I am not, however, referring here to the Jews - but to the Bahais.

Their world headquarters is in Israel, and they came during Ottoman times from Persian lands. The nation-state of one of the world’s oldest religions now hosts the holiest site of one of the newest, and the nation where the Bahai Faith was born vows to destroy the nation where the Bahai Faith had to migrate.

The strikingly different treatments of these people by Iran and by Israel infuses the looming showdown between the Middle East’s two most powerful countries with even more moral clarity than it already had.

Totten, as usual, gives as much space to his article as it needs - and it remains interesting throughout. Read the whole thing.

(h/t Silke)

Wikileaks: State Dept. profile of Mubarak

Here is part of the profile of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak written before his visit to the US in 2009. It looks like a very good analysis of how Mubarak tries to balance a moderate stance against the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood:

He is a tried and true realist, innately cautious and conservative, and has little time for idealistic goals. Mubarak viewed President Bush (43) as naive, controlled by subordinates, and totally unprepared for dealing with post-Saddam Iraq, especially the rise of Iran's regional influence.

3. (S/NF) On several occasions Mubarak has lamented the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the downfall of Saddam. He routinely notes that Egypt did not like Saddam and does not mourn him, but at least he held the country together and countered Iran. Mubarak continues to state that in his view Iraq needs a “tough, strong military officer who is fair” as leader. This telling observation, we believe, describes Mubarak’s own view of himself as someone who is tough but fair, who ensures the basic needs of his people.

¶4. (S/NF) No issue demonstrates Mubarak,s worldview more than his reaction to demands that he open Egypt to genuine political competition and loosen the pervasive control of the security services. Certainly the public “name and shame” approach in recent years strengthened his determination not to accommodate our views. However, even though he will be more willing to consider ideas and steps he might take pursuant to a less public dialogue, his basic understanding of his country and the region predisposes him toward extreme caution. We have heard him lament the results of earlier U.S. efforts to encourage reform in the Islamic world. He can harken back to the Shah of Iran: the U.S. encouraged him to accept reforms, only to watch the country fall into the hands of revolutionary religious extremists. Wherever he has seen these U.S. efforts, he can point to the chaos and loss of stability that ensued. In addition to Iraq, he also reminds us that he warned against Palestinian elections in 2006 that brought Hamas (Iran) to his doorstep. Now, we understand he fears that Pakistan is on the brink of falling into the hands of the Taliban, and he puts some of the blame on U.S. insistence on steps that ultimately weakened Musharraf. While he knows that Bashir in Sudan has made multiple major mistakes, he cannot work to support his removal from power.

¶5. (S/NF) Mubarak has no single confidante or advisor who can truly speak for him, and he has prevented any of his main advisors from operating outside their strictly circumscribed spheres of power. Defense Minister Tantawi keeps the Armed Forces appearing reasonably sharp and the officers satisfied with their perks and privileges, and Mubarak does not appear concerned that these forces are not well prepared to face 21st century external threats. EGIS Chief Omar Soliman and Interior Minister al-Adly keep the domestic beasts at bay, and Mubarak is not one to lose sleep over their tactics. ...

¶6. (S/NF) Mubarak is a classic Egyptian secularist who hates religious extremism and interference in politics. The Muslim Brothers represent the worst, as they challenge not only Mubarak,s power, but his view of Egyptian interests. As with regional issues, Mubarak, seeks to avoid conflict and spare his people from the violence he predicts would emerge from unleashed personal and civil liberties. In Mubarak,s mind, it is far better to let a few individuals suffer than risk chaos for society as a whole. He has been supportive of improvements in human rights in areas that do not affect public security or stability. Mrs. Mubarak has been given a great deal of room to maneuver to advance women’s and children’s rights and to confront some traditional practices that have been championed by the Islamists, such as FGM, child labor, and restrictive personal status laws.

...11. Israeli-Arab conflict: Mubarak has successfully shepherded Sadat's peace with Israel into the 21st century, and benefitted greatly from the stability Camp David has given the Levant: there has not been a major land war in more than 35 years. Peace with Israel has cemented Egypt,s moderate role in Middle East peace efforts and provided a political basis for continued U.S. military and economic assistance ($1.3 billion and $250 million, respectively). However, broader elements of peace with Israel, e.g. economic and cultural exchange, remain essentially undeveloped.

I actually feel sympathy for Mubarak, and his points about the Shah, Musharraf and the Palestinian Arab elections are cogent - as is his fear that the ultimate winner of the invasion of Iraq is Iran.

There is a bitter irony that the most moderate Arab states) Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) also are the ones whose citizens are the most anti-semitic, according to polls. [I have not seen a Saudi poll on this matter, chances are the government would not allow the question to even be asked.] Real peace with Israel - full diplomatic relations and normalization - seems as distant as it did in the 1970s. The way that these governments think is not in terms of peace and democracy but in terms of managing conflict, which may be the only realistic way to stop regional situations from devolving into anarchy.

Sometimes, the alternative to the Cold War-era thought process of "He may be a bastard but he's our bastard" is much worse - for the entire world.

UPDATE: The New Republic looks at this exact issue today.

Chanukah in Tehran

From the Christian Science Monitor:

As Jews around the world celebrate Hanukkah this week, menorahs are burning in a surprising corner of the world: Iran.

Home to Jews – including the biblical Esther – for 3,000 years, the land today is sprinkled with synagogues that serve the Middle East’s largest community of Jews after Israel.

At recent services in the Joybar synagogue in Tehran, one of 20 in the capital city, Iranian Jews streamed in until the hall, decorated with gold, wooden, and velvet relics. More than 200 attendees read from prayer books printed in both Hebrew and Farsi.

Inside, the men wear the kippa, a Jewish religious head covering. The women cover their hair with their hijab, adhering to the Orthodox Jewish custom of covering their hair while also abiding by the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“It is safe for us in Iran, for Jews. But we always have to be careful. We know that we should stay with our community. We should not become close to Muslims. If we do, it will only be trouble,” says Rachel, a young woman who attended services recently with her toddler son.

...Early in the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that Jews would be distinguished from Zionists. But in 1979, the head of Tehran’s Jewish community, millionaire businessman Habibollah Elghanian, was executed after being convicted by a revolutionary court for spying for Israel – a sign to many that Jews could be targeted no matter how wealthy or prominent they might be.

In a closed trial in 2000, an appeals court upheld the imprisonment of 10 of 13 Iranian Jews, including a minor, arrested the year before on charges of spying for Israel and the US. They were released before finishing their prison terms, due to international pressure.

...But Jews, whose population in Iran has dropped to 25,000 from 100,000 in the 1950s, aren’t the only struggling minority in Iran.

The US State Department estimates that 300,000 Christians live in Iran, with more than 70 registered churches and countless informal groups run from individuals’ homes. As many as 100,000 Christians in Iran are converts, according to local estimates.

“Theoretically in Islamic jurisprudence, death is the punishment for any Muslim who dares to convert,” says a Muslim journalist jailed during former President Mohammed Khatami’s 1997-2005 tenure for writing about the conversion of Muslims. “In practice in Iran, converts are arrested for a few months and then released, which helps their case in seeking asylum abroad.”

But state-run businesses refuse to hire Christian and Jewish converts, and those who practice minority religions are arrested if they proselytize, he says.

“The secret police come every week to the Jewish Association and ask if any Muslims have tried to convert to Judaism,” whispers Rachel, who asked to go by a pseudonym. “They will kill us if that happens. But more people are trying to convert to Judaism, a few come every week ... and ask. We always tell them to go away.”

...But Rachel is more bold. Back in the Tehran synagogue, she leans in and whispers, “You know, I wish I could go to Israel. It is my dream to go there one day and see it.”

Apparently, Roger Cohen couldn't find a single "Rachel" when he visited Iran.

How do you treat a lying, biased reporter?

How do you treat a reporter who reports on things he couldn't possibly have seen, ignores video evidence that disproves what he is reporting even though it is available before his article is published, writes a laughably biased article that is easily proven wrong, lies about easily verifiable facts and then brags about how he is, in fact, biased and writes with an agenda?

When his lies and bias are against Israel, you give him an award, of course!

JOURNALISTS from the Herald won six categories at this year's Walkley Awards, which recognise Australia's best journalism.

In the event's 55th year the chief correspondent, Paul McGeough, won the award for the best print news report for his story ''Prayers, tear gas and terror'', which covered an attack by Israeli commandos on a flotilla of aid ships heading for Gaza. The judges praised McGeough for his courageous journalism and writing excellence and commended the story for its newsworthiness and degree of difficulty.

McKeough wrote in his prize-winning piece of fiction -oh, sorry, "journalism" - the IDF "hunted like hyenas" and that the attack was "timed for dawn prayers" and that "a lot of people moved in to shelter" the first Israeli commando on deck "with their bodies." McKeough, who was not on the Mavi Marmara, must have interviewed Ken O'Keefe for his "facts."

UPDATE: The Cook's Cogitations blog illustrated this story:

Amnesty UK's duplicity, bias and false accusations against Israel

The director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, wrote a piece in Foreign Policy calling Israel's easing of the Gaza closure a sham:

As a recent report from 26 humanitarian and human rights organizations shows, six months of a less-oppressive blockade regime has made only a minimal difference to the lives of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants.

Isn't it interesting that the major player behind that report was Amnesty International UK? The wording here implies that she is merely quoting a study to support her thesis - but she is the main force behind the study to begin with, hosted on Amnesty's UK site!

We've already looked at that study and exposed how one-sided it was. It plays with numbers, minimizes Israel's almost superhuman and certainly unprecedented allowance of aid to a hostile territory - even in the midst of a war! - and it does everything possible to pretend that Gaza's residents' lives have not improved at all since the summer, when in fact many correspondents have reported the opposite. Far worse is the fact that if Amnesty's recommendations would be implemented, it would give Hamas unlimited access to weapons. Placing hundreds of thousands of Israelis in danger is a consequence of Amnesty's demands that Amnesty considers inconsequential.

So right up front, we see that Kate Allen is being somewhat deceptive in her characterization of the study to support her thesis. There's more, however.

For example, she refers to the flotilla incident - and links it to a FP article about it, written as it was happening, by anti-Israel writer Marc Lynch. Of the avalanche of articles about the flotilla and the IHH attack on IDF soldiers as they legally attempted to board it, it is telling that this is the one she chooses - one that refers to the incident as an "outrageously disproportionate military response."

Worst of all, however, is Allen's repetition of one of the biggest lies around about the closure of Gaza - one that Goldstone, HRW, Amnesty and the UN repeat ad nauseum yet one that has no basis in fact:

The blockade is a violation of international humanitarian law (Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) in its collective punishment of an entire civilian population under military occupation and control.

First of all, as we have shown many times, Gaza is not under "occupation" by any definition of the term. Military occupation means the physical presence of an army on the territory, and the only definition is the one given in the Hague Conventions. Not only that, but Amnesty's own definition of "occupation" proves that Israel is not occupying Gaza.

Beyond that, the idea that a blockade is "collective punishment" is also a lie. The framers of Geneva, when they wrote Article 33, specifically were thinking about purely punitive measures against an innocent population - wanton punishment for no possible military purpose. Wikipedia accurately gives the background:

By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and World War II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there. Additional concern also addressed the United States' atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, in turn, caused death and disease to millions of Japanese civilians as well as their decedents. The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility.

These are active acts of punishment aimed directly at an innocent population.

Yet no one has starved in Gaza from this horrible "siege." Thousands of trucks of aid are sent in weekly; the Rafah crossing is open for people with legal passports to leave Gaza, thousands more have gone to Israel and elsewhere for medical treatment.

As law professor Michael Krauss has written:

The bar on collective punishment forbids the imposition of criminal or military penalties (imprisonment, death, etc) on some people for crimes committed by other individuals. But ceasing trade with a country is not inflicting a criminal or military penalty against that country's citizens, not least because those citizens have no entitlement to objects of trade that they have not yet purchased. If Canada tolerated and celebrated car-bombings of Buffalo from Fort Erie, Ontario, the United States could cease exporting cars to Canada - such cessation of trade was never contemplated as collective punishment, because it is not a military or a criminal sanction. The United States quite legally froze trade with Iran after that country committed an act of War against the USA following the 1979 Revolution.

Even prevention of access of goods coming from third parties is not collective punishment: the U.S. blockade of Cuba after they installed nuclear missiles directed at the United States was not a collective punishment of the Cuban people, it was a non-violent act of war in self-defense. In any case, Israel has made no effort to prevent Gaza from receiving electricity from Egypt; it has merely declined to furnish this assistance itself. Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions clearly does not outlaw such acts.

An article in the San Diego Law Journal from 2009 sheds more light on the distinction between collective punishment and what Israel does to Gaza:

Israel's imposition of economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip, such as partially withholding fuel supplies and electricity, does not involve the use of military force and is therefore a perfectly legal means of responding to Palestinian attacks, despite the effects on innocent Palestinian civilians. The use of economic and other non-military sanctions as a means of disciplining other international actors for their misbehavior is a practice known as "retorsion.” [FN82] It is generally acknowledged that any country may engage in retorsion. [FN83] Indeed, it is acknowledged that states may even go beyond retorsion to carry out non-belligerent reprisals--non-military acts that would otherwise be illegal (such as suspending flight agreements) as counter-measures. [FN84] Since Israel is under no legal obligation to engage in trade of fuel (or anything else with the Gaza Strip) or to maintain open borders with the Gaza Strip, it may withhold commercial items and seal its borders at its discretion, even if intended as “punishment” for Palestinian terrorism.

While international law bars “collective punishment,” [FN85] none of Israel's combat actions and retorsions may be considered collective punishment. The bar on collective punishment forbids the imposition of criminal-type penalties on individuals or groups on the basis of another's guilt, or the commission of acts that would otherwise violate the rules of distinction and proportionality, or both. [FN86] None of Israel's actions involve the imposition of criminal type penalties or the violation of the rules of distinction and proportionality. It is striking that there has never been a prosecution for the war crime of collective punishment on the basis of economic sanctions. Indeed, many of the critics calling Israel's withdrawal of economic aid “ collective punishment” call, or have called, for the imposition of economic sanctions or the withdrawal of economic aid against Israel and other countries [FN87] or, at least, claim to have “no position on [the legality of] punitive economic sanctions and boycotts.” [FN88]

Examples of retorsions are legion in international affairs. The U.S., for example, froze trade with Iran after the 1979 Revolution [FN89] and with Uganda in 1978 following accusations of genocide. [FN90] In 2000, fourteen European states suspended various diplomatic relations with Austria in protest of the participation of Jorg Haider--believed to be a racist--in the government. [FN91] Numerous states suspended trade and diplomatic relations with South Africa as punishment for apartheid practices. [FN92] In none of these cases was the charge of “ collective punishment ” raised. “Punishing” a country with restrictions on international trade is not identical to carrying out “collective punishment” in the legal sense.

I found this description of retorsion in International Law in Theory and Practice by Oscar Shachter:

It might be worthwhile to go through Amnesty's archives to see if it is consistent in its definition of closures and blockades as "collective punishment," but NGO Monitor once did the same for Human Rights Watch and found that they were remarkably inconsistent - and only a single nation that deprives a territory of certain supplies was considered in violation of Geneva's Article 33.

Using a Google search on HRW's site as a heuristic, 55 percent of HRW’s content referring to blockades and collective punishment is related to Israel.¹⁵ (Note that this is 55% of all HRW material and not limited to the Middle East and North Africa section). However, Israel is the only case where HRW uses "collective punishment" to refer to a blockade and the potential impact on civilian life. In other cases, this term is used to describe beatings, murder and destruction of property as indiscriminant retaliation against a group of people for the acts of members of that group.

Other cases of blockades that are not termed "collective punishment," include Azerbaijan's blockade of Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia described in Human Rights Watch 1994 World Report:

“Electricity, gas, oil and grain-necessary for the basic human needs of civilians in Armenia-were in extremely short supply… … The lack of gas and electricity deprived Armenians of heat in the freezing winter… a rise in deaths among the newborn and the elderly was accompanied by a higher suicide rate and growing incidence of mental illness. The blockade had ruined Armenia's industry…”

The report does not refer to this “blockade” as “collective punishment,”, and indeed recommends that “all but humanitarian aid should be withheld from Armenia because of Armenia's financing of the war”. It is not clear why HRW promotes a policy of economic isolation for Armenia, but when Israel must respond to daily rocket attacks on civilian population centers, HRW condemns a similar policy as "collective punishment."

Similarly, in a 1999 press release on Chechnya, “Russian Ultimatum to Grozny Condemned” (8 Dec, 1999) HRW described the humanitarian situation as

“rapidly deteriorating, with no functioning hospitals, electricity, running water, gas, or heating since the beginning of November, and dwindling food supplies”.

This is clearly a more urgt humanitarian situation than Gaza in 2007 (where humanitarian aid enters daily¹⁶), but HRW did not classify it as “collective punishment.” en

In 2007, the term “collective punishment” was used by HRW in 13 items not referring to Israel (see Table 1). These cases generally provide evidence of punitive intent against third parties either at the family or community level.

Table 1 Collective punishment in 2007 HRW publications

The items in Table 1 show HRW’s use of “collective punishment” in highlighting reprisal actions against third parties. For example, in 2007, testimony to a US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, Sam Zarifi (HRW's "Washington Advocate")¹⁷ stated,

“in the Ogaden, we have documented massive crimes by the Ethiopian army, including… villages burned to the ground as part of a campaign of collective punishment”.

Another example is found in an August 2007 Guardian article, “Ethiopia's dirty war” authored by HRW's London Director, Tom Porteous¹⁸. He asserts that

“dozens of civilians have been killed in what appears to be a deliberate effort to mete out collective punishment against a civilian population suspected of sympathising with the rebels.”

These results show that HRW’s application of "collective punishment" is inconsistent and arbitrary. No other "blockade" is described in these terms, and other cases of "collective punishment" involve beatings, murder and destruction of property as indiscriminate retaliation against a group of people for the acts of members of that group.

Almost certainly, Amnesty is equally guilty of applying this standard to Israel, and Israel alone. (The quick search I did of their site indicates this, but I did not do an exhaustive search.)

Certainly Amnesty UK is less than objective when it comes to Israel.

(h/t Zach for original article and San Diego Law Journal text.)

UPDATE: Zvi mentions that Allen was formerly the long-time lover of former mayor of London and anti-Israel extremist Ken Livingstone, and that she fired a member of Amnesty for questioning Amnesty's political backing for a Taliban supporter.

Saudi media silent on Wikileaks revelations

In the wake of the Wikileaks revelations about Saudi princes partying, Saudi desire to destroy Hezbollah and how much the Saudi monarchy hates Iran, I was wondering how the Saudi media are reporting these news items.

The answer? They aren't.

The English-language Saudi Gazette and Arab News have both limited their Wikileaks stories to very general issues and have not delved into any of the revelations, especially none that mention the kingdom. (Al-Arabiya, partly owned by the Saudi MBC network but based in Dubai, did a minimal report on one of the cables.)

It is easy to forget, when reading English-language Arab media, that there is a wide gulf (pun partially intended) between Western ideas of freedom of expression and those practiced in most of the Arab world. Even though one can find articles in Arab and Arabic media that would not be out of place in any Western publication, it takes a little more effort to realize what is not being covered.

There is a glimmer of good news here, though. Since we can see that the Saudi monarchy does not allow any articles to be published that they disapprove of, that means that they specifically allow many recent articles about increasing women's rights in the Kingdom as well as articles that implicitly denigrate the Muttawa, Saudi Arabia's religious police.