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Friday, January 14, 2011

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Gaza,1961 (Martha Gellhorn)

I had forgotten much of the 1961 Martha Gellhorn article, where she visited Palestinian Arab refugees, that I had excerpted on a tiny portion of a couple of years back.

Look at her description of Gaza in 1961:

TO ENTER the Gaza Strip you require a military visa from the Egyptian government in Cairo. I had arrived in Cairo expecting to proceed like the wind directly from there to Gaza but was informed, by the local UNRWA press officer, that this permit took two or three weeks to get, and sometimes you never got it. Besides, there was only one UNEF army plane to Gaza each Saturday, and they didn't like carrying anyone except their own personnel; besides, it was now Thursday, and tomorrow was the Muslim Sunday, and indeed all looked hopeless. I foresaw bumming a jeep ride over the sand-storming desert and infiltrating into the Strip somehow; but meantime I called on the Egyptian authorities.

Because of the Muslim holy day, and the number of passport photos I needed and the number of offices I had to run between, it took about four days to get the visa, and every minute was enjoyable. ...

THE Gaza Strip, from all accounts, would be a real hell hole. It is a roughly rectangular slice of land, on the southernmost Mediterranean frontier of Israel, some forty kilometers long by five to ten kilometers wide, and 365,000 people, refugees and residents, live on it. I imagined it as a sand dune, packed solid with human flesh, blazing hot, hideous, and filthy. It is none of these. The weather was so idyllic—a china-blue sky and a constant cool breeze—that I assumed this was special luck and at once asked my charming landlady about it. No, the weather in Gaza was always delightful. She had lived here for thirty years; there were two "sticky" weeks in the summer, otherwise you could not find a more benign climate. Flying over the Strip, I had noted plenty of sand, but also plenty of green. There were always citrus groves in Gaza, my landlady reported, Gaza was famous for them, but since the refugees came these had greatly increased, as had the general cultivation. Anything grows here, she said, exhibiting her blossoming garden.

Then I remarked that Gaza town was a beehive of activity, with all the UNEF soldiers, Danes, Norwegians, Indians, Canadians, Yugoslavs, who patrol the Israeli-Gaza border and spend money in the town in their free time, and the Egyptian upper crust which oversees the Palestinian officials, and UNRWA and visitors and the local residents and, indeed, the refugees. The refugees seemed to bring prosperity with them; it was most mysterious.

Not at all, said my landlady, we do not know why we are not completely bankrupt; but she was adding a third floor to her already roomy house, so great is the demand for lodgings. Sizable villas are being built in what must be the fashionable section of Gaza. The main square boasts an array of parked Mercedes, finned pastel American cars, and humbler Volkswagens. The taxis in Gaza are new. There is an imposing movie theater, in the ugly world-wide chromium-and-junk style; there are abundant cafés and numerous ill-lit dingy shops, typical of the region. An economist could surely answer this riddle: if no one has any money, what are these eccentric merchants and purveyors of services doing?

The refugee camps are much larger than those in Lebanon, small towns by Middle Eastern standards. They are by no means luxury establishments, but many people live in a nastier state in American and European slums. The poor villagers of Gaza are not as well housed or cared for as the refugees. The Gaza Strip is not ,a hell hole, not a visible disaster. It is worse; it is a jail--with a magical long white sand beach, and a breeze, and devoted welfare workers (UNRWA) to look after the prisoners.

The Egyptian government is the jailer. For reasons of its own, it does not allow the refugees to move from this narrow strip of land. The refugees might not want to leave at all, or they, might not want to leave for good; but anyone would become claustrophobic if penned, for thirteen years, inside 248 square kilometers. A trickle of refugees, who can prove they have jobs elsewhere, are granted exit visas. The only official number of the departed is less than three hundred, out of 255,000 registered refugees. It seems incredible. Rumor says that more refugees do manage to go away illegally, by unknown methods.

These locked-in people--far too many in far too little space--cannot find adequate work. Naturally, there is less chance of employment than in the other "host countries." Meantime, they are exposed to the full and constant blast of Egyptian propaganda. No wonder that Gaza was the home base of the trained paramilitary bands called commandos by the Egyptians and Palestinians, and gangsters by the Israelis--the fedayin, whose job was to cross unnoticed into Israel and commit acts of patriotic sabotage and murder. And having been so devastatingly beaten by Israel again, in 1956, has not improved the trapped, bitter Gaza mentality; it only makes the orators more bloodthirsty.

ANOTHER Mad Hatter conversation, practically a public meeting, took place in the office of the leader of two adjacent camps, a man in charge of some 29,000 people. The camp leader, the self-appointed orator, sat behind his desk. The Secret Service youth, mentioned earlier, the quiet UNRWA Palestinian, my regular chaperone, and the three uniformed cops of highish rank completed the company.

First the camp leader told me how rich they had all been in Palestine and how miserable they were now and how much land they had all owned. I do not doubt for one minute how much land some of them owned, nor how rich some of them were, and I did not point out this subtle distinction: if everyone owned the land claimed, Palestine would be the size of Texas; if everyone had been so rich, it would have been largely populated by millionaires. To gild the past is only human, we all do it; and to gild it with solid gold is even more human if you are a refugee.

This part of his address was already so familiar that I could have recited it for him.

Then he spoke of Jaffa, his native town. The Jews surrounded the city, firing on all sides; they left one little way out, by the sea, so the Arabs would go away. Only the very old and the very poor stayed, and they were killed. Arab refugees tell many dissimilar versions of the Jaffa story, but the puzzler is: where are the relatives of those who must have perished in the fury of high explosive the infallible witnesses? No one says he was loaded on a truck (or a boat) at gun point; no one describes being forced from his home by armed Jews; no one recalls the extra menace of enemy attacks, while in flight. The sight of the dead, the horrors of escape are exact, detailed memories never forgotten by those who had them. Surely Arabs would not forget or suppress such memories, if they, too, had them.

As for those Arabs who remained behind, they are still in Jaffa--3000 of them--living in peace, prosperity, and discontent, with their heirs and descendants.

"The Jews are criminals," the camp leader continued in a rising voice. "Murderers! They are the worst criminals in the whole world."

Had he ever heard of Hitler?

He banged his table and said, "Hitler was far better than the Jews!"

"Far better murderer? He killed six million Jews as a start," I observed.

"Oh, that is all exaggerated. He did not. Besides, the Jews bluffed Hitler. They arranged in secret that he should kill a few of them--old ones, weak ones--to make the others emigrate to Palestine."

"Thirty-six thousand of them," said the Secret Service man, proving the point, "came here, before the war, from Central Europe."

"It's amazing," I said. "I have never before heard anywhere that the Jews arranged with Hitler for him to kill them."

"It was a secret!" the camp leader shouted. "The documents have been found. Everyone knows. It was published. The Jews arranged it all with Hitler."

There is a limit to the amount of Mad Hattery one can endure, so I suggested that we visit the camp. I knocked on a door at random, before the camp leader had a chance to steer me anywhere. Two young married couples lived here. In a corner by the courtyard wall stood a group of visitors, silent Arab women, in their graceful long blue dresses, slightly hiding their faces behind their white head veils. The older women wore silver coins on chains across their foreheads; this is very pretty and is also guaranteed to prevent sickness of the eyes. It was useless to try to lure the women into talk, but one of the husbands talked freely. The Secret Service youth translated.

"It is the blame of America that this happened, because they help the Jews. We only want America to help us to get back to our land."

"How?" I asked. "By war?"

"When the Arabs are united, we will make the war."

"What do you want from us then? Arms to make this war with?"

"No, we want you to stop giving arms and money to Israel. Just now Kennedy has given Israel $25 million for arms"

"I do not believe that the U.S. government has ever given or sold arms to Israel. What about the arms Nasser gets from Russia and Czechoslovakia?"

"That is all right. That is different. They are peace-loving nations. They only want to help the undeveloped countries."

The Secret Service man put in: "America offered us arms, but with conditions. We will not accept conditions. So we take from the Eastern countries, who give without conditions."

"What do you do?" I asked the fat young husband.

"Nothing."

"What would you like to do?"

"Be a soldier and fight Jews."

This oratory pleased the public very much.

"Do you all like Nasser?" I asked, politely.

Wide smiles. General joy.

"We do. Certainly. Oh, of course. He will unite us and make us strong. He is our leader."

Latest Latma (1/14/11)

A lot of political jokes that only Israelis would get, but a very good short commercial for a new horror-film sequel.

Sky News bias and Amnesty hypocrisy

From Sky News:

Britain is buying 30 Watchtower WK450 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which are based on the Israeli Elbit Hermes 450 system, in a deal worth close to a £1bn.

But some accuse the Government of purchasing technology that was "field-tested on Palestinians" during the three-week Gaza conflict in 2008-9.

And the revelation that Royal Artillery soldiers undertake drone training in Israel has reignited the debate over Watchkeeper's purchase - particularly given that their Israeli trainers may have been involved in the Gaza conflict.

Note the implication by Sky News that the Gaza operation was inherently immoral. Not that some bad things may have happened, or that Israel could have somehow done a more effective job at targeting only militants in civilian clothing with weapons caches in civilian neighborhoods hiding among civilians, but that the war itself was illegitimate and Israel had no business defending itself against thousands of rockets aimed at its citizens. This is a sickening implication, one that is aimed only at Israel and no other nation who has ever had a war.

Amnesty International UK Campaigns Director Tim Hancock said: "Amnesty International has documented the role of drones in serious human rights violations by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza."

Amnesty's Gaza report talks often about the advanced optics that the drones have that should allow the IDF to distinguish between civilians and terrorists. For example, it says "Surveillance drones have exceptionally good optics, allowing those watching to see details such as the type and colour of the items of clothing worn by those being observed, and what kind of objects they are carrying." Yet most of the specific instances they discuss are where the people are in the building that was bombed - where the optics are useless. Not only that, but we have seen the video from the drones. it is not nearly as easy to distinguish the targets from civilians in real time, especially when the targets hide among the civilians.

Amnesty's report assumes a superhuman, omniscient infrastructure where the IDF knows what every Gaza citizen is doing every minute of the day and can instantly distinguish between legitimate targets and civilian targets. And once it creates this huge straw man of the all-knowing, all powerful, highly accurate IDF, it then compares the actions of the real army against its ideal. Then when the IDF inevitably falls short - it is ready to accuse them of severe human rights violations.

And, of course, Amnesty never acknowledges Israel's explanations and justifications for its actions. The report was written in 2009 but a lot of information has come out since then from the IDF - information that Amnesty has shown little interest in using to modify its initial conclusions. Has Amnesty ever retracted a specific allegation after an Israeli explanation or proof otherwise?

"There is already growing international concern over the use of drones in remote unlawful killings, sometimes amounting to extrajudicial executions," Mr Hancock said.

Don't you love the passive voice here? He is referring only to his own organization, of course, but he wants to make it sound much more like a consensus.

Note also that he is implying that no one is a legitimate target of drones, since every death in war is an "extrajudicial execution."

"It would seem wholly inappropriate for UK forces to be trained in the use of drones by a country with a track record of applying this technology in grave abuses of people's human rights."

Here we see Amnesty's hypocrisy in full bloom.

Amnesty admits that drones help nations be more effective in fighting their enemies. They allow more precise targeting, and less collateral damage. In fact, if you believe Amnesty, Israel's drones - seemingly the best in the world - should result in zero collateral damage, because their optics are so fantastic.

Amnesty should love drones as the single most effective method of distinguishing between military and civilian objects - to do exactly what the Geneva Conventions require.

Yet when Great Britain shows a desire to purchase the weapons that would allow them to minimize human rights violations, Amnesty is suddenly concerned and calls such a move "inappropriate." Why? Because they believe that the people selling these weapons that can save lives are immoral people, therefore the purchase of these effective tools are tainted by Israel's inherent immorality.

This is an astonishing example of Amnesty's hatred of Israel. Would they say the same thing about Great Britain buying American drones, even though by any objective measure the US is guilty of exactly the same alleged crimes Israel is, on a much larger scale, in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Alternatively, would Amnesty rather have Great Britain target terrorists in Afghanistan with blunter and less accurate weapons?

During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli offensive on Gaza following Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel in 2008, UAVs were used for targeting - leading to Israel being accused of breaking international law.

Amnesty International estimated that hundreds of civilians were killed, including up to three hundred children - the targets often identified by UAVs.

Sky News here (and Amnesty in its report) is broadly implying that Israel specifically targeted children. This is simply slander, and it can be disproven by the simple fact that Amnesty admits that Israel used phone calls, "roof-knocking", flyers and other methods to avoid civilian casualties. Why on earth would Israel go through so much effort to avoid civilian casualties if they then turn around and target them?

But consistency is not what Amnesty, and Sky News, are after. They want blood - and in this case, Israeli blood.

(h/t T34)

PA health ministry denies Hamas claims of medicine shortage

Hamas has been claiming a severe medicine shortage in Gaza, blaming the PA for not providing enough for the area.

Today, the PA health ministry released specific figures of the value of the drugs sent to Gaza in 2010, saying it took up 45% of its budget for medicines. (Gaza's population is about half that of the West Bank.)

The ministry slammed Hamas' claims, saying it was a cover for Hamas crimes against doctors and medical institutions in Gaza.

The Palestine Press Agency notes an earlier story where the medicines that are meant to be freely available to patients have been diverted to pharmacies where patients are forced to buy them - even though they are labeled as gifts for Gazans.

Whether Hamas is involved in this black market is not explicitly stated but it is assumed to be.

New prayer area adjacent to HaKotel HaKatan?

From Ha'aretz, an article by Akiva Eldar where I try to remove all vestiges of bias. Read the original to see how bad it really is.

The Jerusalem Development Authority recently removed scaffolding in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. The authority, controlled by the Jerusalem municipality and by several ministries, removed scaffolding from under an arch supporting Palestinian homes in the Little Western Wall plaza (also known as the Little Kotel plaza ).

The move was carried out to make more room in the plaza for Jewish prayer and other events.

The courtyard faces a small of section of the western support wall of the Temple Mount. The largest open section of that same wall is known as the Western Wall.

The Little Kotel plaza is considered the second closest spot (after the Western Wall Tunnel) to the "Holy of Holies," which was the most sacred place for Jews in the temple.

Ateret Cohanim, headed by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, has been demanding for years that the scaffolding be removed to make room for prayer and other events. The Waqf (the Muslim religious trust ) has specifically warned against the removal of the scaffolds and opening the site to prayer gatherings, threatening a strong response.

According to the Ateret Cohanim website, students of the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva pray in the courtyard every Friday, and no disturbances at the site have been recorded in recent years. The website also states that the Little Kotel is visited by Jews throughout the year, including both private individuals and tours organized by various groups.

The scaffolds do not actually support the arch.

I found a photo of the scaffolding in a picture of a women's prayer gathering at the Kotel ha-Katan in 2005 taken by Batya Medad::

Her husband, Yisrael, took this photo only yesterday - there was no sign previously:

Notice that when Jews want to use a space that is not being used at all, by Muslims of anyone else, this is considered highly provocative. No one is being kicked out of their homes, no change to the status quo (despite what Ha'aretz is claiming in the original article,) - just when Jews who are already praying at the site want to be shielded from the elements, they'll have a place to go.

This is fantastic news. There is no downside except for Muslim threats - and Muslims will threaten Jewish rights in Jerusalem regardless of what Jews actually do. Far better for Jews to assert these rights than to ceded them in fear of a "strong response."

Here is a post about my visit to the Kotel ha-Katan four years ago, and here's some background about efforts to give the site the prominence it deserves.

Guyana's recognition of "Palestine" - the definition of nonsense

Here is the statement by the government of Guyana, joining the list of South American countries that recognize "Palestine":

The Government of Guyana has today decided to formally recognize the State of Palestine as a free, independent, and sovereign state, based on its 1967 borders.

"Based on its 1967 borders"? In early 1967 there was no entity called "Palestine," period. There were no borders. There was no government, not even a puppet government.

So what does it mean to recognize a state based on pure fantasy?

By the way, there were plenty of countries that already recognized "Palestine" since 1988 - by my count, 70 of them where "Palestine" maintains embassies. That doesn't make it a state.

But, as I asked previously (and I don't know the answer,) does this mean that - from the perspective of these 70 states - that "Palestine" must adhere to states' obligations under international law? Much of the Geneva Conventions are concerned with how states must act, and, to put it charitably, "Palestine" has not been exactly doing that.

It is easy to assume the benefits of statehood - but is "Palestine" ready to assume the responsibilities? So far, that answer has been a very clear "no."

The only bone marrow registry for Arabs is in...Israel

From JPost last October:

There are 325 million Arabs in 22 Middle Eastern countries and other lands, but the first and so far only registry for potential unrelated Arab donors of bone marrow or stem cells – which have the ability to cure certain cancers and other serious disorders – is at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem.

In 1987, Prof. Chaim Brautbar established Israel’s first general unrelated bone marrow donor registry at Hadassah; upon his retirement, he was succeeded by Dr. Shoshanna Israel. Today, the general registry has over 80,000 people listed. Two years ago, he set up the Arab registry with veteran immunologist Dr. Amal Bishara. Since then, data from over 9,000 Israeli Arabs (initially obtained only from peripheral blood and more recently also from buccal cells taken from the inside of the cheek) have been stored in its computers and fed into the international database in Leiden, Holland so that compatible Arab HLAs for would-be recipients can be more easily found. Yet many more samples are needed to find potential donors for those who are ill.

Today, there is an option for Arabs in other countries – even those officially at war with Israel – to find a compatible Israeli donor and come to Hadassah for a transplant, or send the bone marrow or stem cells abroad to the transplant center.

(h/t Jawa Report)

Espouser of "Jewish racism" defends her master's thesis

Remember Jenny Peto, the University of Toronto student who wrote her master's thesis on how Jews justify their inherent racism by invoking the Holocaust?

She was just interviewed by The Varsity, and in the interview she - and her thesis adviser - justify the paper on the grounds that the only critics are Jewish racists who never read the paper to begin with!

I think that this is about who I am as a pro-Palestinian activist and what I have to say which is very critical of Israel, very critical of mainstream pro-Israel institutions in Canada, and critical of what I see as an abuse of Holocaust memory to justify Israeli apartheid.

I really don't think that it's a case where it's just such a convoluted academic paper that people don't understand. People who have read it understand what I'm saying. And some may agree, some may disagree, but for the most part all the [criticism] hasn't actually been about the content of the paper itself.

This is almost like a warning shot to Jewish Canadians saying, "you watch yourself, if you're going to criticize Israel, we'll come down on you, and we'll come down on you in a huge way."...But it's what I expect of the Canadian media, it has a terrible, terrible pro-Israeli bias.

Yes, the person who is claiming that Jews are using "victimhood" is whinng about being a victim herself of a vast pro-Israel conspiracy that includes the Canadian media.

That media, unsurprisingly, is unimpressed with Peto's arguments - not because of her anti-Israel stance but because of her shoddy research and pitiful justifications. See here and here.

When a photo caption lies

From Daylife:

A Star of David and the name of the Israeli settlement of Shilo written in Hebrew are seen on a Palestinian farmer field vandalized by Israel settlers on January 12, 2011in the northern West Bank village of Qariot, near Nablus. (Getty Images)

Horrible Jewish settlers defacing a Palestinian Arab field - and rubbing the owner's nose with it, by placing a Star of David there. How heartless! (The words say "Shiloh Land.")

However, Yisroel Medad - who lives in Shiloh - fills in the details:

Well, I happen to know something of this incident. In fact, I blogged about the background which was a legal dispute with illegal intervention, leading to Arab violence against Jews perceived to be desirable due to the presence of Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights. And read his comments at a later post on another but similar issue: land disputes.

They lost the court case but Ascherman never reported that.

The judge decided that the land was legally the property of Moshe Moskowitz of Shiloh and he could plough it and farm it at will. You can see Shiloh marked in the lower right-hand corner. Qaryut is in the top right-hand corner. The pink-colored land is below Qaryut and Shiloh and lies much lower than either village. The road that can be discerned as the left-hand boundary of the property is Highway 60, from Jerusalem north. Our main road.

It was done at night as a celebration of their legal victory.

Read the whole thing.

So don't be so quick to believe captions!

East Coast readers - sign up for NORPAC Mission to Washington

From NORPAC:

Come join us in our largest event of the year, NORPAC’s
Mission to Washington

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Our 2011 Mission is set to be our most successful to date! In 2010 over 1000 NORPAC members met with 450 members of the House and Senate. Together, we can make a difference for Israel.

We look forward to seeing you at the Mission this year!

I have mentioned the two times I've gone on the NORPAC Mission to Washington and how gratifying it is. I don't know if I can make it this year but I highly recommend it for anyone who lives in the New York metropolitan area.

You won't regret it.

Martha Gellhorn on her June, 1967 visit to WB camps

I had once excerpted the Martha Gellhorn article in The Nation, October 23, 1967, about her visit to a Palestinian Arab refugee camps immediately after the Six Day War in 1967. In the wake of the article I posted yesterday from German magazine Cicero on a similar theme, I decided to post the entire article, since it is not available online.

We were drinking Nescafe in the cool, over-furnished parlor of an elderly refugee schoolteacher. A horde of charming, bouncing small children had been pushed out to make room for serious grown-up talk. The children all seemed to be the same age and were, oddly, the teacher's own sons and daughters and his grandchildren. His wife vanished, as is correct. His bright 22-year-old daughter, already the mother of four, crouched outside the door like a beggar, holding a bit of white cloth over her face, and listened.

In 1961, I had made a long tour of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) Palestinian refugee camps m Lebanon, West Jordan and the Gaza Strip, and I had been at this camp near Jericho before. It is disheartening. The world believes, because it is constantly told, that the Palestinian refugees have lived in physical misery for nineteen years. Middle-class refugees will confide, in private, that their poorer compatriots, those who remain in the camps. owned nothing at home and are no worse off now than before. The majority of refugees, educated, skilled, semi-skilled, live outside the camps and manage like any other Arabs.

The refugees' misery is in the head. They are sick in their minds from a diet of propaganda, official Arab dogma and homemade fantasy, which they have gobbled for nineteen years. Schooled in self-pity, encouraged to believe they are the worlds unique victims of injustice, they have never been allowed to forget the daydream past or to settle for the real future. Since the third Arab-Israel war hardly touched them, they learned nothing from it.

The schoolteacher was tired of fire eating and disabused with Nasser. But the rest of the company, three husky chicken farmers, men In their late 20s, a tall, pale, elegantly put together student from Amman University, and a cocky grammar schoolboy, were as devoted to Nasser as ever. Though all except the schoolboy (we took a vote) thought a peace treaty between Jordan and Israel would be a good thing, the young men felt that Nasser must decide.

They had personal problems from the war. The chicken farmers lacked transport. The schoolteacher said his wife was running out of kerosene for cooking, The grammar schoolboy's matriculation exams at Ramallah had been Interrupted; when would the Israelis arrange for him to finish? The university student was worried that the Israelis would compel him to repeat his second year instead of continuing straight Into his third year, as was fair, at Hebrew University In Jerusalem. He was stunned to hear , that Hebrew University teaches In Hebrew. I kept pointing out, in the face of these complaints, that the shooting had ended only ten days earlier .

Then, as on remembered cue, we went into the fantasy phase of conversation It consists of recounting how many acres of fine fields and orchards, what splendid houses, were left behind in Palestine and stolen by the Jews. There is competition In fantasy ownership: if you add up the lost acreage claimed by the inhabitants of any camp you usually arrive at a total larger than the whole recovered arable land of Israel. One very nice man in another camp told me that he had owned 11,000 acres of citrus groves: legend has it that once the Sultan of Turkey owned that much land in Palestine and sold it to the Rothschilds. But I think this ownership fantasy is the real human core of the Palestinian refugee problem, as opposed to the unreal Arab propaganda problem.

Half the refugees are under 18 years of age; Palestine is a myth taught in school and at home. I do not think that any of these people truly want to return to Israel - not unless the Israelis would give them the country, improved by decades of labor, and obligingly jump in the sea. What the refugees really want is money for their imagined lost possessions. They don't seem to know that, repeatedly since 1949, the Israeli Government has offered compensation, sometimes with conditions, such as a peace treaty, sometimes for nothing. Nor, apparently, do they know that these offers have always been angrily rejected on their behalf by the Arab governments. To accept compensation would be to end the Palestine Refugee Problem. The compensation is there and waiting, but it will never satisfy these people because it is based on fact, not fantasy. If your father owned a recorded 5 acres of land, and you believe he owned 500 acres, you are bound to feel bitter and cheated by an exact repayment.

"Why can't we go on a bus to see Israel?" the schoolboy asked. He was the best linguist. "What is it like?" How to put it quickly, m our limited mutual supply of words? "Everyone works very hard," I said. That is the basic description of Israel.

"Works very hard?" he repeated with horror, and was annoyed when I laughed.

"What do you think about the English and American planes for Israel?" he asked, black eyes gleaming.

"A lie. There were none."

"Every Arab believes it. There were. The planes helped the Israelis. What about the oil blockade?"

Translations into Arabic for the chicken farmers and the teacher, who understood no English.

"I think it will hurt the Arabs most. How will they live if they don't sell oil?"

"Russians will buy the oil," the boy said proudly, "and India and Vietnam. Arabs will not suffer."

"What would have happened to the Jews if the Arabs had won?" I was taking a little Gallup poll on that one. The university student translated and the six men muttered together for some time.

"Very terrible," the boy summed up. "All dead."

Out of the blue, remarks of the schoolteacher were translated. "Eshkol and Dayan are very good."

"Why does he say that?"

"Because all is peaceful," the university student said. "We must live in peace with the Jews."

"King Hussein is very good," the boy interrupted. "We like him very much now he went to Cairo to see Nasser " Repeated In Arabic; general nodding agreement. The schoolteacher looked weary and offered more coffee and cigarettes.

"Educated refugees make money and have a good life," the university student observed suddenly. "In Amman we go to our classes with girls. That is very good. Can I go back to Amman University because I cannot speak Hebrew?"

The visiting males filed out, thus freeing the bright 22- year-old daughter from veiled exile by the door. She spoke passionately; I feared that I had offended some mysterious female code. "What does she say?" I asked the boy, a friend of the family and too young to require a woman's hidden face and silence. He grinned, embarrassed by her outburst.

"She says: Finish Nasser. Finish Shukairy. Finish Hussein. Enough. Enough. Peace. Peace."

It is a great pity that Arab women have no voice in Arab politics.

Spain denies any involvement in "Israel boycott" ad (updated - But...)

From JPost:

A “public service” advertisement on Palestinian television calling for the boycott of Israeli goods is not being paid for by Spanish tax payers’ euros, Spanish Ambassador Alvar Iranzo told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.

Iranzo was responding to a video posted Tuesday by the Palestinian Media Watch organization showing the ad, which has been running for the last week on PA TV. The advertisement announces at the end that it was sponsored by the Spanish government, the Spanish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, AECID (Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development), ACSUR (a Spanish nonprofit organization), and the Canaan Joint Development Project for Jerusalem.

Iranzo said the Spanish Foreign Ministry and its aid arm, AECID, both denied financing the advertisement, and that the NGO listed as a sponsor had sent a letter to the ministry saying it bore no direct responsibility for the video.

“We are the victims of this fraud,” the ambassador said.

He added that he had not yet contacted PA TV to determine how this had happened, but that the Spanish consulgeneral in Jerusalem would follow up on the matter. Iranzo said his first priority was to check with Madrid and find out if there was any Spanish involvement.

The Spanish envoy said the government was intent on seeing who was responsible for the advertisement and misuse of his government’s logo.

“The substance of the advertisement is in frontal opposition to the government’s opposition to any boycott of Israeli goods, much less a blanket boycott like the one insinuated in the video,” he said.

UPDATE: An email correspondent notes that the "Travel Palestine" website, which defines Palestine as covering the area from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, is also funded by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation.

On Holbrooke's honesty in diplomacy (Judea Pearl)

From JPost, by Judea Pearl:

THERE ARE people whom you meet once and know you will never forget. I met Richard Holbrooke once, in Doha, Qatar, in April 2005 – a meeting I will never forget.

It took place at a high-profile gettogether called the US-Islamic World Forum. Organized by the Qatar government and the Brookings Institution, the conference was packed with more than 150 scholars and leaders from all sides who, for two full days, diligently discussed the needs and means for achieving democracy, reforms and renaissance in the Muslim world. Oddly enough, there was hardly a Muslim speaker who did not tie the implementation of such reforms to “progress toward settling the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.”

From the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to Rami Khouri, former editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon, almost every speaker ended his or her speech with a reminder that the Muslim world is not ready to accept reform for its own sake; reform is, in fact, a concession to America, and will be granted if, and only if, it “resolves the Palestinian problem.”

None of the speakers spelled out what “solution” meant to him or her; it was probably part of an unspoken agreement to avoid controversial issues for fear of spoiling the friendly atmosphere of renaissance and collaboration. It was only in private conversations that I discovered that, to most of them, the “solution” was unquestionably the same one proposed by Helen Thomas.

Richard Holbrooke spoke at the last session of the conference, addressing a large audience of Arab dignitaries, scholars and pundits. After repeating the great things that America can do for the Muslim world – in science, education, freedom, entrepreneurship and more – and after saying all the things that a seasoned diplomat would say on occasions like this one, he added one innocent remark that fell like a bombshell: “By now,” he said, “two and a half generations of Arabs have been brought up on textbooks that do not show Israel.”

The audience was stunned. I can still hear the pin-dropping silence as he calmly went on: “Such continued denial of reality, at the grassroots level, is a major hindrance to any peaceful settlement of the conflict.” (I am quoting from memory.)

I watched Holbrooke’s colleagues from the Brookings Institution to see how they reacted. Their faces were blank.

There were a couple of Palestinian women sitting next to me, and their faces looked like they had been caught cheating on an exam. One of them raised her hand and started to say something about checkpoints and occupation (“settlements” were not in fashion then), but in Holbrooke’s presence, she sounded more like someone complaining about the video cameras that caught her stealing.

Holbrooke answered her politely and comfortably: “Your textbooks do not show Israel on the map, and that does not help the peace process.”

There was no need for further elaboration. The elephant that everyone was pretending did not exist suddenly appeared in the room. Two days of hard deliberations, with Arabs pretending that “progress in the peace process” doesn’t really mean the elimination of Israel, and Americans pretending they have no reason to doubt it, had ended with a refreshing spark of honesty.

AT THE end of the Q&A session, I walked up to Holbrooke and told him how much I admired his presentation and the way he handled the question. He looked at me with some astonishment and said: “This is obviously one of the main obstacles to peace.”

He said it as if stating in public what everyone knows to be true – even in a place like Doha – is as natural as breathing.

This was the meeting I will never forget.

(h/t Herb)

Palestinian men ride horses during sunset on the beach of Gaza City January 12, 2011.

Wikileaks: Iceland's joke about Hamas

A number of new Wikileaks memos talk about Iceland. From February 2006:

Post discussed reftel points with Icelandic MFA Head of International Institutions Division Nikulas Hannigan February 10. Hannigan took note of U.S concerns about a new Palestinian Authority government that has not committed to non-violence, and he affirmed that Iceland generally supports the Quartet statements regarding Hamas. He stated that while Iceland contributes to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (note: to the tune of U.S. $45,000 in 2004, according to latest available UNRWA figures), it provides no bilateral aid to the Palestinians and has none planned. He added that, as far as he knew, the Government of Iceland had no bilateral contacts with Palestinian representatives or
delegations.

Referring to Middle Eastern protests in response to the Danish Mohammed cartoons, Hannigan remarked that, given the current "Nordic profile" in that region, he did not anticipate that Reykjavik would soon initiate aid to the Palestinian Authority. (Note: An Icelandic newspaper reported last week that the honorary Icelandic consul in Amman had taken down the Icelandic flag outside her office for fear it could be mistaken for its Danish or Norwegian cousins. Another newspaper carried a column from an Icelandic journalist in Iran who reported that anti-cartoon demonstrators had told her that, had she been Danish, they would have killed her.) Icelanders have reacted with bemusement and distaste to radical Islam's violent hijacking of what they believe should have been a debate about good taste and freedom of expression.

From the following month:

Post discussed ref A points with Icelandic MFA Head of International Institutions Division Nikulas Hannigan March ¶16. Hannigan took note of U.S concerns about a Hamas government. He assured us that Iceland has no plans to receive any member of Hamas. Referring again to Arab revulsion at the Mohammed cartoons (ref B), Hannigan quipped that he did not believe Hamas planned any near-term visits to countries with crosses on their flags.

And in October 2006:

Hannigan, who also covers Middle East issues for the MFA, noted that the Government of Iceland agrees with the need for balance on UN resolutions concerning the region. As such, Iceland would continue to withhold its support for anti-Israel initiatives such as those described in ref A.

Saudi Arabia forces "news blogs" to promote Islam

From Fast Company (h/t Jihad Watch):

Saudi Arabia has enacted stringent new regulations forcing some bloggers to obtain government licenses and to strongarm others into registering. In addition, all Saudi news blogs and electronic news sites will now be strictly licensed, required to “include the call to the religion of Islam” and to strictly abide by Islamic sharia law. The registration and religion requirements are also being coupled with strict restrictions on what topics Saudi bloggers can write on--a development which will essentially give Saudi authorities the right to shut down blogs at their discretion.

The new regulations went into effect on January 1, 2011.

What the new regulations center around is a legal redefinition of almost all online content created in Saudi Arabia. Blogs are now legally classified as “electronic publishing” and news blogs (the term is not explicitly defined in the Saudi law) are now subject to the same legal regulations as newspapers. All Saudi Arabia-based news blogs, internet news sites, “internet sites containing video and audio materials” and Saudi Area-created mobile phone/smartphone content will fall under the newspaper rubric as well.

Under the regulations, any operators of news blogs, mobile phone content creators or operators of news sites in Saudi Arabia have to be Saudi citizens, at least 20 years old and possess a high school degree.

At least 31% of Saudi Arabia residents do not possess citizenship; these range from South Asian migrants living in poor conditions to well-off Western oil workers. All of them will find their internet rights sharply curtailed as a result of the new regulations.

The most telling--and dangerous-- detail in the new Saudi regulations is a provision requiring all news bloggers to provide the Saudi Arabian government with detailed information on their hosting company. This could easily allow the Saudi Arabian government to block access to a particular website across domains or to even force hosting companies to take dissidents' websites offline.

Non-citizens will still be allowed to blog on non-news topics. However, all Saudi Arabian bloggers--both citizens and non-citizens--are “recommended” to register with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture and Information. In addition, blogs are now defined as falling under the Saudi Press and Publications Law.

This requires all publications created in Saudi Arabia to “include the call to the religion of Islam,” not to “violate the Islamic Shari'a rulings,” or to compromise national security or “public order.”

Posters on online forums, internet users who communicate on listservs and guests in online chat rooms are also “recommended” to register with the government under the law.

While the registration process is optional, it will serve as a likely coercion tool in the case of websites or blogs targeted by Saudi authorities. The regulations strictly classify and offer a bureaucratic taxonomy for all online media in a country with one of the most extensive censorship regimes in the world.

Arabic speakers can find a copy of the new laws as a Word document provided by the Saudi Arabian government.

The Saudi Arabian government has a long history of jailing bloggers who write about politics, corruption or religion. Now the situation may even get worse.

The story itself is evidence of the difference between a closed society and an open one.

It took twelve full days for the existence of these laws to make it to the Western media!

Any new law that is even contemplated in Western nations must go through at least somewhat of a transparent process. But this Saudi law was already on the books for nearly two weeks!

This is exactly why major human rights organizations need to be concentrating on closed societies rather than open ones. The open ones have checks and balances built in to limit the possibility of abuse. They have robust media, reasonably fair judicial systems and entire arms of the government meant to audit and check the powers of other government agencies.

But places like Saudi Arabia can crack down on basic personal freedoms without any worries. Here is a case where they did exactly that.

Human Rights Watch did mention it, to its credit, but it still took a week after the law was introduced.

(Correction: I hadn't seen the HRW article in my search; commenter Gabriel found it so I corrected the post that had said they didn't.)

Erdogan comes out in support of Hamas

From the Al Qassam website:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country stands by Hamas, calling the resistance movement an election-taking political party, and ruling out achieving peace in the region without them.

"We stand by Hamas when they are right, because the Hamas movement is a resistance movement. I do not see Hamas as 'terrorist'. They are people who defend the land, and it is a political group that entered the elections and won the elections," Erdogan told Al-Jazeera Wednesday night.

The Turkish premier accused those who call Hamas "enemies of democracy" of not giving the party a political opportunity. "They have been able to place all obstacles in front of them (Hamas) so they do not succeed in any way."

Erdogan urged Quartet head Tony Blair to include Hamas in the peace process, saying: "Peace will not come out of a Hamas-excluded table."

PA official accuses Hamas of being too peaceful

From Ma'an:

Spokesperson for the Palestinian security services in the Major General Adnan Dmeiri criticized Hamas on Wednesday, saying its leaders were adopting a two-faced and inconsistent policy, by calling for calm in Gaza and "escalating conditions" in the West Bank.

"Israel gets a free-of-charge calm," Dmeiri said, referring to a series of urgent talks the party held with militant groups on Wednesday to pass on a warning from Arab leaders about firing rockets at Israel.

The meeting at a Gaza City hotel came just days after Hamas said it would ensure militant factions obeyed a national consensus truce on rocket fire, following weeks of rising tensions along the border with Israel.

"Hamas considers calm an accomplishment in Gaza, but a crime in the West Bank," the official said in a statement, accusing the party of stepping up work against the Palestinian Authority with one hand, just as it deescalates in Gaza.

He said the move was one trying to evade national conciliation.

The "moderate" PA is criticizing Hamas' decision to avoid conflict with Israel. And not for the first time, either.

Just more proof that the PA doesn't regard peace as a goal, but rather as a tactic. Within that strategy, they welcome Hamas' unofficial role as "bad cop" and slam Hamas when they go off-script.

And the ultimate goal is anything but peaceful, at least if you are a Jew who happens to live in Israel.