Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Peace souk

An excellent editorial from Moshe Sharon. He uses many of the themes I touch on often but puts them all together in a very interesting way. Which makes this article worth bookmarking.

On December 24, 1977, at the very beginning of the negotiations between Israel and Egypt in Ismailia, I had the opportunity of a short discussion with Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president.
"Tell your prime minister," he said to me, "that this is a bazaar; the merchandise is expensive."
I duly told my prime minister, but he failed to abide by the bazaar's rules. The failure was not unique to him. It has been the failure of all Israeli governments, and the media.
On March 4, 1994, The Jerusalem Post ran an article of mine called "Novices in negotiations." The occasion was the conclusion of the Cairo Agreement. A short time later, Yasser Arafat proved yet again that his signature wasn't worth the ink in his pen, let alone the paper to which it was attached.
In the Mideastern bazaar, diplomacy agreements are kept not because they are signed but because they are imposed. In addition, in the bazaar of the Arab-Israeli conflict the two sides are not talking about the same merchandise. The Israelis wish for peace based on Arab-Muslim acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. The Arabs' objective is to annihilate the Jewish state, replace it by an Arab one, and get rid of the Jews.
To achieve their goal, the Arabs have both taken to the battlefield and adopted bazaar diplomacy. In the bazaar, the most important rule is that if the vendor knows about your desire to purchase a certain merchandise, he will put its price up. The merchandise in question is "peace," and the Arabs give the impression that they possess this merchandise - and inflate its price - when the truth is they have never had it.
THIS IS THE wisdom of the bazaar: If you are clever enough you can sell nothing, at a price. The Arabs sell words, they sign agreements, they trade with vague promises and are sure to receive generous down payments from eager buyers. Yet in the bazaar only the stupid buyer pays for something he has yet to see.
The bazaar has another rule, which holds for the negotiating table too: The side that presents its terms first is bound to lose, since the other side builds its next move using the open cards of its opponent as a starting point.
In all its negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs Israel has always rushed to offer its plans - and was then surprised to discover that after an agreement had been "concluded" it became the basis for further demands.
Most amazing has been the reaction in such cases. Israeli politicians, "experts" and media eagerly provide "explanations" of the Arabs' behavior. A popular one is that these or other Arab announcements are "for internal consumption," as if that doesn't count. Others invoke "the Arab sensitivity to symbols," "honor," and "emotional issues.
Does Israel possess no "sensibilities" or honor? And what does all this have to do with political encounters?
If anybody in Israel is listening, here is what needs to be done:
Israel should stop talking about "peace." We have been using the word for 100 years, begging the Arabs to sell it to us and ready to pay any price. We have received nothing, because the Arabs have no peace to sell, but we have paid dearly.
FROM NOW ON, Israel should make a decision to create a new state of affairs, one that will compel the Arab side to ask for peace - and pay for it in real terms. For, unlike the Arabs, Israel has this merchandise for sale.
What will lead them to pay? If they conclude that Israel is so strong they cannot destroy it.
From now on, if anyone asks Israel for "plans," the answer should be: No plans, no suggestions, no "constructive ideas" - in fact no negotiations at all. If the Arab side wants to negotiate, let it present its plans and ideas. And if and when it does, the first Israeli reaction should always be: "Unacceptable - come up with better ones."
Here are the Ten Rules for Negotiations in the Middle Eastern bazaar:
Never suggest anything to the other side. Let the other side present its suggestions first.
Always reject; disagree. Use the phrase "doesn't meet our minimum demands," and walk away, even 100 times. The tough customers get the good prices.
Don't be hasty to come up with counter-offers. There will always be time for that. Let the other side make amendments under pressure of your total "disappointment." Patience is the name of the game: "Haste is from Satan!"
Have your own plan ready in full, as detailed as possible, with the "red lines" completely defined. Weigh the other side's suggestions against this plan.
Never change your detailed plan to meet the other side "half-way." Remember, there is no "half-way." The other side also has a master plan. Be ready to quit negotiations when you encounter stubbornness on the other side.
Never leave things unclear. Always avoid "creative phrasing" and "creative ideas" - which are exactly what your Arab opponent wants. Remember that the Arabs are masters of language, and playing with words is the Arab national sport. As in the bazaar, always talk dollars and cents.
Always bear in mind that the other side will try to outsmart you by portraying major issues as unimportant details. Treat every detail as vitally important.
Emotion belongs neither in the market nor at the negotiating table. Friendly words, outbursts of anger, holding hands, kissing, touching cheeks and embracing should not be taken to represent policy.
Beware of popular beliefs about the Arabs and the Middle East - e.g., "Arab honor." Never do or say anything because somebody told you it is "the custom." If the Arab side finds out you are playing the anthropologist, it will take advantage.
Always remember that the goal of all negotiations is to make a profit, and aim at making the biggest profit in real terms. Remember that every gain is an asset for the future, because there is always likely to be "another round."
The Arabs have been practicing negotiating tactics for more than 2,000 years. By contrast, the Israelis, and Westerners in general, want "quick results."
In this part of the world, there are no quick results. He who is hasty always loses.
The writer, professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was previously the prime minister's adviser on Arab affairs to Menachem Begin.

Implicit in his rules is that these are how the Arabs are playing the game already.

Jimmy Carter continues to support terrorists

I've been reading the Google auto-translated Palestinian Arab newspapers lately, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they have been dominated with stories on the PalArab strike, internal fighting and the Qatari-brokered negotiations between Hamas and Abbas. While most of the newspapers are heavily Fatah-leaning it is clear that there is intense pressure on the Hamas leadership to make concessions to help ease the economic sanctions on the Palestinian Arabs.

While I believe that any Hamas concessions are simply semantic in nature and worse than meaningless in reality, there is no doubt that even the vapor gestures are difficult for Hamas to do and that they are feeling the heat from their fellow Palestinian Arabs. A small example:

Hamas politburo leader Khaled Mashaal reiterated Wednesday that his group would not recognize Israel. In an interview published Thursday in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat and cited by Maariv, Mashaal said he was willing to accept a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, as well as a hudna [truce] with Israel but not to recognize the "occupation."

Mashaal addressed reports Wednesday that said he had agreed to wide-ranging concessions in order to pave the way for a unity government in the Palestinian Authority. Although he refused to recognize the "legitimacy of the occupation," Mashaal admitted the "Zionist entity" was an established fact. "There is an entity whose name is Israel, yes, but I am not interested in recognizing it," said Mashaal.

The Hamas political chief also hinted at the possibility that his organization and the Hamas-led Palestinian government would recognize agreements with Israel the PA and PLO previously signed. "We will deal with agreements that have been signed and are on the ground according to the interests of the Palestinian people," Mashaal said. "If the serve the interests of my people, I will implement them."

Again, this is nothing earthshaking and it fall so far short of any real concessions as to be laughable, but they do show that there is serious internal pressure that is even reaching Hamas' Damascus leadership.

In other words, it shows that the economic sanctions are working. While the results would be worthless, the fake progress that is happening is exactly what the EU and the US were hoping for when they decided to implement them.

Of course, that former President who wastes no opportunity to trash his own country's leadership refuses to see it this way.

Last week, Jimmy the Dhimmi made yet another of his absurd pro-terror statements, which have become so common and expected that the Western media pretty much ignored it:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Friday that a foreign policy aimed at punishing the Hamas-led Palestinian government through a seven-month aid freeze has failed, and called on the international community to seek other ways to resolve the conflict.

"The attempt to coerce Hamas leaders by starving the Palestinian people has failed, and it is time for the international community to alleviate their suffering and resort to diplomacy," Carter said in a statement.

The former president added that he is doubtful that Palestinian leaders will make any progress toward reconciliation with Israel "as long as the Palestinians are subjected to this kind of debasement and personal suffering."

So Carter has it exactly wrong, as usual, as he calls for dollars to flow yet again to pay for rockets and bombs aimed at Israeli civilians just as he places all his faith in words and none in actions.

Spam and Islam

As I wait in line at the Times Square TKTS booth to hopefully get discounted tickets to Spamalot tonight (I wisely indoctrinated the kids in Monty Python when they were younger), I urge you to read Omri's post on the Robert Spencer's blogger conference call,. Those of us who struggle with the hope of moderate Islam can always use a little cold water splash of reality.

Mixed blessing

It is wonderful to see the amount of support that Christian Zionists give to Israel.

It is even more wonderful when thousands of them make the decision to actually visit Israel and publicly show their support, by the thousands:

Israelis and foreigners take part in the annual Jerusalem parade October 10, 2006. More than 5,000 evangelical Christians, including believers from as far afield as Congo and New Zealand, marched through Jerusalem on Tuesday to voice their support for Zionism and the state of Israel. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

G-d knows that Israel needs all the support she can get, and from what I can see nowadays, the support from evangelical Christians seems heartfelt and sincere, without strings attached.

And yet....

In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a proto-Zionist movement among Christians as well. Some Christian denominations openly called for the "Restoration of the Jews" to Palestine, and the wisdom of that support was debated among various prominent Christian preachers, both in the US and in England.

It would be hard to deny that the success of the early Zionist movement up through the Balfour Declaration was in some part due to this subconscious desire on the part of the Christian leaders in England to see Biblical prophecy fulfilled. Newspapers at the time showed intense interest in any story relating to Jews in Palestine, especially Jews immigrating to Palestine, and Jews being successful in agriculture in the Holy Land.

Sometimes the interest would appear to be more of an political or humanitarian nature than overtly religious. But even then, the religious and historical dimension was clear, as in this petition to President Harrison in 1891:

But there is another part of the Christian biblical prophecy regarding the "Restoration of the Jews" that is a bit more troubling. In the early part of the 19th century, just as the words "Restoration of the Jews" were understood to mean the return of the Jews to Palestine, they were just as often used and implied with two more words: "The Restoration and Conversion of the Jews."

This is an entire book on the topic (which you can download), and not the only one. Other books debated the wisdom of the Restoration and whether it fit into Christian Biblical prophecy (this one from 1828) - but the subtext was that the Jews would have to be converted to Christianity, either before such restoration or afterwards.

In fact, there were entire societies in England (and Scotland) dedicated to the conversion of Jews to Christianity, that seemed to reach their greatest influence in the early to middle 19th century.

The conversion aspect of Christian proto-Zionists seemed to die out as the actual reclamation of Jews to biblical Israel accelerated mid-19th century, and it was hardly mentioned publicly by 1900. Nevertheless, this history is enough to make one pause as to the true intent of today's friendly Christian Zionists. The idea of mass conversions of Jews may no longer make sense but the thought of an ulterior motive that lines Israel's fate up more with perceived prophecies than with what is actually good for Israel is not something that is so easy to overlook, despite the many sincere friends that Israel does indeed have today among the Christian Zionists.

Very funny ad, but let's get serious

David Zucker, the same man who co-directed and produced many very funny movies, created an ad for the GOP that is really quite funny:

My only problem is that for the past five years the Bush Administration had done close to nothing about North Korea either. Since naming North Korea as one of the members of the "Axis of Evil" in January 2002, has anything concrete been done to stop their actions? North Korea continues to arm terrorist states, it continues to develop and test long-range missiles, and it continues to develop nuclear weapons. GWB has talked tough but it is apparent that nothing concrete was done.

And Iran is watching very, very closely.

It may be fun to try to score political points and point fingers. But in the face of Iranian and Korean nukes, isn't it time to stop the stupid partisan games between Democrats who think that Bush is evil incarnate and Republicans who refuse to think that perhaps the Iraq war was not thought through correctly?

So many people spend uncounted hours hung up on Valerie Plame or Swiftboating or whatever today's perceived smoking gun is to prove once and for all that the Other Side is shallow and dishonest. Meanwhile, all that is being proven is that both sides are shallow and dishonest. Both sides are so disconnected from reality that they can both watch the same video and come to radically different conclusions. (I didn't watch it myself, so I cannot comment either way.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we are facing some real threats. Let's concentrate on them for a change.

Death toll update: 108 PalArabs (UPDATED - 110)

One really has to scour the Palestinian Arab press to find stories of people who are killed in internal clashes. Most of their newspapers ignore the stories altogether, even the Arabic ones.

Dr. Moawiya Hassanen, head of the Emergency Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reported that one Palestinian security officer, member of the Presidential Guard Force, died of wounds suffered during internal clashes last Sunday.
The officer, Rafeeq Siyam, was seriously injured last Sunday and was moved to an Israeli hospital for further treatment; he died of his wounds at the Israeli hospital.

Yes, you read right: the horrible, bloodthirsty Israelis routinely try to save the lives of Palestinian Arabs being shot by other Palestinian Arabs.

Slightly more press is given toPalArabs who die in more noble and glorious ways:

Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip reported that rescue teams extracted a body of a Palestinian fighter who was killed in a tunnel explosion west of Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

Mohammad Naji, 25, member of the Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad was killed on Monday evening when an explosive charge went off while he was training other members of the brigades.
The traning camp is located in place of the evacuated settlement of Atzmona, west of Rafah.

The body of the fighter was severely mutilated and burnt as a result of the blast.

It is worthwhile to compare this story, translated by IMEMC to English, with its Arabic original (autotranslated):

One of the members of the martyrdom of Al-Quds Brigades in the internal explosion in Rafah
Khan Younis-together - medical sources in Abu Yousef Al Najjar Hospital in the town of Rafah in the martyrdom of the young Muhammad Naji (25 years) and of Deir el-Balah and the Al-Quds Brigades activists one by an explosive charge he was training a group of members of Al-Quds Brigades in a training sites in what is known as the settlement> Atassimona> west of Rafah. The sources added that the body of the martyr was taken to hospital and the charred body was found riddled result of the bomb attack in which a large volume directly.

It appears that the PalArabs know that all that talk about how people who blow themselves up are "martyrs" doesn't play well in the Western world, so they purposefully mistranslate the news story for English-language readers.

So our count of confirmed PalArabs killed by PalArabs since late June is now at 108.

And our count of official Palestinian Arab or international sources who bother to keep their own count of violent Palestinian Arab deaths that have nothing to do with Israel remains at zero.

UPDATE: 109, when Rafik Siam died of injuries from Hamas earlier this month. Interestingly, the article refers to him as a "martyr" and only alludes to his cause of death.

UPDATE 2: 110, when a Fatah member died as a result of injuries from Hamas last May.

McGreevey's former aide denies everything

This isn't really the sort of story I generally follow, but in the wake of the publicity tsunami that the former New Jersey governor has embarked on to push his autobiography, no one seems to mention a very basic fact:

His Israeli "gay lover" denies everything in McGreevey's book, including being gay. He claims he was sexually assaulted by the governor and that he is looking for a nice Jewish girl to marry.

I don't know the truth, but shouldn't the other party have at least as much of a chance to say his side of the story? And shouldn't those people who are sweetly interviewing McGreevey know that it is possible that they are joking around with a sexual predator?

"Call them ZioNazis because it pisses them off"

A remarkable piece of truth, telling the Arabs how exactly to use propaganda and lies:

Ayoon Wa Azan (Enraging the Zionists)
Jihad el-Khazen Al-Hayat - 09/10/06//

About a month has passed since I made my suggestion to popularize the term 'Nazi Zionist' and the derivative 'ZioNazi', and readers are still discussing the matter....
What I say about myself is what I said when I put the term forward on September 5, 2006. I said at the time that the objective of the term was to exasperate the Zionists, because nothing vexes them as much as associating them with the Nazis. I do see the term as an exaggeration, since the crimes of the Nazis against the Jews are greater that the crimes of the Israeli government against the Palestinians and the rest of the Arabs. There is nothing between the Arabs and the Jews that is the equivalent of using gas chambers.

So even though the author knows that the term is ridiculous and has no relationship to truth, the important thing is that it makes Jews angry - and that is a worthwhile goal, in and of itself!

I wonder if he would agree that it would be fair for the West to do the same with Islamists - perhaps we should always refer to Mohammed as "Pedophile Prophet Mohammed" because we know that would upset Islamists, and in some strange universe that is considered a Good Thing to do. (Not to mention that it is probably a whole lot more accurate than "ZioNazi.")

Or is he proposing rules to the game that only one side has to adhere to?

Nah, that couldn't be the case.

(Why am I not surprised that one of the major advertisers in this website is NPR International?)

Righteous Arab Gentiles

In January, I highlighted an article about Muslims in Albania, Turkey and elsewhere who saved Jews from the Holocaust.

Today's Washington Post has an similar important article about the heroic Arabs who saved Jews from being murdered in the 1940s, as well as those who collaborated with the Nazis:

The Holocaust's Arab Heroes

By Robert Satloff
Sunday, October 8, 2006; B01

Virtually alone among peoples of the world, Arabs appear to have won a free pass when it comes to denying or minimizing the Holocaust. Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has declared to his supporters that "Jews invented the legend of the Holocaust." Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently told an interviewer that he doesn't have "any clue how [Jews] were killed or how many were killed." And Hamas's official Web site labels the Nazi effort to exterminate Jews "an alleged and invented story with no basis."

Such Arab viewpoints are not exceptional. A respected Holocaust research institution recently reported that Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all promote Holocaust denial and protect Holocaust deniers. The records of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum show that only one Arab leader at or near the highest level of government -- a young prince from a Persian Gulf state -- has ever made an official visit to the museum in its 13-year history. Not a single official textbook or educational program on the Holocaust exists in an Arab country. In Arab media, literature and popular culture, Holocaust denial is pervasive and legitimized.

Yet when Arab leaders and their people deny the Holocaust, they deny their own history as well -- the lost history of the Holocaust in Arab lands. It took me four years of research -- scouring dozens of archives and conducting scores of interviews in 11 countries -- to unearth this history, one that reveals complicity and indifference on the part of some Arabs during the Holocaust, but also heroism on the part of others who took great risks to save Jewish lives.

Neither Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to Holocaust victims, nor any other Holocaust memorial has ever recognized an Arab rescuer. It is time for that to change. It is also time for Arabs to recall and embrace these episodes in their history. That may not change the minds of the most radical Arab leaders or populations, but for some it could make the Holocaust a source of pride, worthy of remembrance -- rather than avoidance or denial.

The Holocaust was an Arab story, too. From the beginning of World War II, Nazi plans to persecute and eventually exterminate Jews extended throughout the area that Germany and its allies hoped to conquer. That included a great Arab expanse, from Casablanca to Tripoli and on to Cairo, home to more than half a million Jews.

Though Germany and its allies controlled this region only briefly, they made substantial headway toward their goal. From June 1940 to May 1943, the Nazis, their Vichy French collaborators and their Italian fascist allies applied in Arab lands many of the precursors to the Final Solution. These included not only laws depriving Jews of property, education, livelihood, residence and free movement, but also torture, slave labor, deportation and execution.

There were no death camps, but many thousands of Jews were consigned to more than 100 brutal labor camps, many solely for Jews. Recall Maj. Strasser's warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film "Casablanca": "It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here." Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.

About 1 percent of Jews in North Africa (4,000 to 5,000) perished under Axis control in Arab lands, compared with more than half of European Jews. These Jews were lucky to be on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, where the fighting ended relatively early and where boats -- not just cattle cars -- would have been needed to take them to the ovens in Europe. But if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.

The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews; and a brave few even helped save Jews.

Arab collaborators were everywhere. These included Arab officials conniving against Jews at royal courts, Arab overseers of Jewish work gangs, sadistic Arab guards at Jewish labor camps and Arab interpreters who went house to house with SS officers pointing out where Jews lived. Without the help of local Arabs, the persecution of Jews would have been virtually impossible.

Were Arabs, then under the domination of European colonialists, merely following orders? An interviewer once posed that question to Harry Alexander, a Jew from Leipzig, Germany, who survived a notoriously harsh French labor camp at Djelfa, in the Algerian desert. "No, no, no!" he exploded in reply. "Nobody told them to beat us all the time. Nobody told them to chain us together. Nobody told them to tie us naked to a post and beat us and to hang us by our arms and hose us down, to bury us in the sand so our heads should look up and bash our brains in and urinate on our heads. . . . No, they took this into their own hands and they enjoyed what they did."

But not all Arabs joined with the European-spawned campaign against the Jews. The few who risked their lives to save Jews provide inspiration beyond their numbers.

Arabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews' valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. In the words of Yaacov Zrivy, from a small town near Sfax, Tunisia, "The Arabs watched over the Jews."

I found remarkable stories of rescue, too. In the rolling hills west of Tunis, 60 Jewish internees escaped from an Axis labor camp and banged on the farm door of a man named Si Ali Sakkat, who courageously hid them until liberation by the Allies. In the Tunisian coastal town of Mahdia, a dashing local notable named Khaled Abdelwahhab scooped up several families in the middle of the night and whisked them to his countryside estate to protect one of the women from the predations of a German officer bent on rape.

And there is strong evidence that the most influential Arab in Europe -- Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris -- saved as many as 100 Jews by having the mosque's administrative personnel give them certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could evade arrest and deportation. These men, and others, were true heroes.

According to the Koran: "Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world." This passage echoes the Talmud's injunction, "If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world."

Arabs need to hear these stories -- both of heroes and of villains. They especially need to hear them from their own teachers, preachers and leaders. If they do, they may respond as did that one Arab prince who visited the Holocaust museum. "What we saw today," he commented after his tour, "must help us change evil into good and hate into love and war into peace."

rsatloff@washingtoninstitute.org

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is author of "Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands" (PublicAffairs).

As with the Europeans, there were evil Arabs, indifferent Arabs and a small amount of heroic Arabs. We must not forget the good ones just as we must not forget the evil ones.

You need a scorecard

At least one Fatah terrorist was killed when a bomb prematurely exploded in an arms smuggling tunnel.

Another Fatah terrorist was shot and killed (and two Hamas terrorists critically injured) in PalArab infighting.

A young man shot and killed near Al-Masri (from a PalArab Arabic newspaper.)

Our PalArab self-death count is now at 103.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that I will know if the Hamas terrorists die, so as always I am erring on the side of confirmed dead PalArabs.
Chol HaMoed update:

On Friday, 6 October 2006, 3 masked gunmen opened fire at Mohammed ‘Adnan ‘Atiya, 26, near his house in al-Tannour neighborhood in the east of Rafah. ‘Atiya was wounded by several live bullets to the abdomen and the legs. He was evacuated to the hospital, but he died soon. No more information has been available concerning the reasons of this crime.

At approximately 11:45 on Thursday, 5 October 2006, a number of gunmen traveling in a civilian car (a white Peugeot 504) opened fire into the air for no apparent reason in al-Hawaja Streets in the center of Jabalya refugee camp, and then escaped. As a result, two children were wounded:

1. ‘Essam Musleh al-Maqadma, 6, wounded by a live bullet to the buttock; and

2. Ahmed Nabeel ‘Ali, 12, wounded by a live bullet to the right foot.

And here's a case where the PalArabs will undoubtedly consider the victim to be a martyr - but he fits our definition of a PalArab self-death:

A Palestinian man was shot and killed near the West Bank city of Nablus Sunday afternoon on his way to break the Ramadan fast with family, relatives said.

Relatives said Ahmed Yousef Tirawi, 25, was walking with his wife on a path off limits to Palestinians when soldiers fired a single bullet to his head, killing him.

The Israel Defense Forces said it was unaware of any shooting incident in the area and its forces had not opened fire.
So we are at 105.

UPDATE 2: 106.

Also on Thursday, medical sources at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City declared that Ussama Ahmed al-Shiekh ‘Eid, 24, a member of the Executive Force, died from an injury he had sustained on Monday, 2 October 2006. Al-Sheikh ‘Eid was injured by a live bullet to the abdomen during clashes between the Executive Force and members of Fatah movement, which left dead two civilians and injured 25 others.

"Queer Rite of Jews"

One of the fascinating parts of looking through old newspapers is seeing how Jews were described in the American press in the 1800s and early 1900s. Invariably, they are looked upon as being quaint "others" but not as a part of real America.

The descriptions of Sukkot are a good case in point:

Other articles are somewhat more accurate:

And sometimes you see something a little more interesting:

חג שמח

Muslims riot! A brief survey.

I once came up with a short list of bizarre things that Muslims have rioted over in the past.

Here are a few more:

Source: Associated Press
Moslems angered by a short story they consider insulting to the Prophet Mohammed rioted for a third day today in Karnataka state, and police said they shot and killed one rioter. Police gunfire has killed at least 16 people since Sunday during protests over a fictional story in the largest English- language newspaper in the southern state.

Published on December 9, 1986, Page 6C, San Jose Mercury News (CA)

The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973) - Washington, D.C.
Date: May 19, 1962

The American Consulate at Peshawar, Pakistan, was damaged yesterday by a mob demonstrating against reported plans of a U.S.-Italian movie firm to make a film of the life of Mohammed, the State Department reported.

Reuters
Jerusalem Post
04-06-1997
KUALA LUMPUR - Police detained about 250 anti-Israeli protesters on Friday after demonstrating against the presence of an Israeli cricket team in predominantly Moslem Malaysia.

Riot police used tear gas, water cannon and batons against 500 demonstrators when they refused to disperse after shouting anti-Israeli slogans for an hour at Malaya University, where a match between Israel and Argentina was to take place.

The demonstrators from the opposition Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) hurled stones and wood when police fired tear gas canisters and sprayed the crowd ...

The Washington Post
Date: Nov 17, 1936
Beirut, Syria, Nov. 16 (AP). -- At least three persons were killed and more than a score reported injured today in a series of clashes between Moslems and Christians over the new treaty between France and Lebanon.

Moslems Riot On Bombay's First Dry Day
55 Persons Injured
Hindus Stoned
10 P.M. Curfew Ordered
The Washington Post
Date: Aug 2, 1939

Bombay, India, Aug. 1. -- The Bombay government tonight imposed a 10 p.m. curfew for 14 days in an effort to prevent further violence following today's riots in which 55 persons were injured in fighting over the new prohibition law.

Syrians in Israeli prisons sending telegrams to Syria?

In an incoherent article from Syria's "news" agency, celebrating their "victory" in the Yom Kippur War (you know, the victory where Israel went past the purple line and took Syrian territory, shelling Damascus), we are told:

DAMASCUS, (SANA) - Captives of the occupied Arab Syrian Golan sent on Thursday a cable of congratulation to President Bashar al-Assad on October war for liberation in which they depicted it as "the greatest world war."

Life must be rough in those Zionist gulags where prisoners can write and publish any propaganda they feel like.

Ronnie Kasrils makes an idiot out of himself again

We revisit the case of the South African Minister of Intelligence [sic] , Ronnie Kasrils:

RONNIE KASRILS says young Jewish people should not just listen to their parents’ stories about Israel.

The Minister of Intelligence, who said he was proud of his Jewish origin but considers himself an atheist, said young Jews should learn the history and facts about what really happened in the Jewish state.

He said the wall built recently by Israel to cut off the Gaza strip was worse than the Berlin Wall because it was three times as high and it was longer (160km).

I agree wholeheartedly that young Jewish people should learn the facts about Israel. For example, the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip is only 51 km long.

Another "grim milestone"

As I've mentioned before, I have always suspected that my English sources at PCHR and other places were not telling us about all the deaths in the PalArab territories due to infighting and plain stupidity.

Thanks to Google Arabic translation now in beta, I can start to glean a little more about the many Palestinian Arabs who are killed by their own. Most Palestinian Arab newspapers in Arabic seem to ignore the self-deaths as well, but I found one that seems to report on them, Fasl Al-Maqal.

So far today I saw a story about a Christian woman who entered a car which then exploded last Sunday.

Widow of large crowds of Almgar and nearby villages on Sunday, the body of the murdered women, Ms. Aida Abu Shakarh (44 years old). , which killed as a result of an explosion of an explosive device placed under the car driven by her brother Milad Abu Shakarh.

And a man stabbed to death:

Young has reached the age of twenty-eight years, from the village of Allekaya in the Negev, was killed on the night of the day before yesterday, after it was attacked and stabbed with a knife.

The young man, the victim arrived at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba by his family but the crew medical examination could not save his life, and announced his death.
This, police sources did not disclose the name of the deceased young man, as it did not point out what believes the cause of this crime, note that the young man had no criminal record holders.

Combine this with the story of a Hamas man killed by four masked "militants" and we now have documented 100 Palestinian Arabs killed by their own people since Operation Summer Rains began in late June.

Human rights organizations of course ignore these cases because they do not consider Palestinian Arabs to be human - unless they are killed by Israelis. (The only exception is PCHR, and as we've seen they miss quite a few cases themselves.)

Israel's newest attempt to save the planet

I've talked about this before - how alternative energy sources are not only an ecological issue but a national defense issue. This article from Arutz-7/Israel21c mentions this explicitly, which is a good thing.

Personally, I think that similar research should be funded in the US by the massive defense budget, where a billion dollars can easily be found.

Israel is taking the lead in the effort to attain energy alternatives to oil. A new research initiative was launched at Israel’s Weizmann Institute and new cooperation with the US is in the works.

At Rehovot’s Weizmann Institute of Science, a new multidisciplinary research initiative into alternative, sustainable energy resources was recently launched. The goal is to significantly advance the search for solutions to the world's most pressing energy problems.

"Developing alternative means of producing energy is a necessary step for dealing with the continuing energy crisis," Institute President Prof. Ilan Chet told Israel21c. "Creating fresh, sustainable methods of producing energy in the required amounts will only be possible if we can gain the knowledge to invent completely new technologies.”

Finding true sustainable and affordable alternatives to oil would strip powerful Arab oil states of their ability to use oil as a tool of diplomatic pressure. “We believe we can help shape the planet's future," Chen said.

Institute scientists have already come up with several original approaches to producing alternative energy, such as the production of methanol, which is now extracted from fossil fuels, from the sun’s energy instead. If that method proves successful, it could provide a relatively clean, renewable, and environmentally friendly fuel, researchers say.

Physics and chemistry research groups are focusing on energy conversion, storage, and conservation. One research team, in the Institute’s life sciences department, plans to investigate ways of utilizing plants and biomass as energy sources.

A new bill, called the United States-Israel Energy Cooperation Act, was submitted to the U.S. Congress in July. The bill was sponsored by 100 congressmen, both Democrats and Republicans.

The bill passed in the House of Representatives and has moved to the Senate for ratification.

"There is nothing we can do that is more important than weaning the United States and the world off its dependence of petroleum,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) told Israel21c. “And the first step is research, and an important part of that research is cooperative research with other countries similarly dedicated to finding alternative energy. There is perhaps no better partner than Israel."

Ramadan chatter?

An AWACS plane has been circling over New York City today.

A perfect day to play hooky

About 15 years ago, one day at work I had a lot of frustrations with my work and my boss, and an idea hit me - just get into my car and drive east until I hit the ocean.

On the way I stopped off to buy a beach chair, sunglasses, a trashy novel and some shorts, and within two hours I was situated in a pretty empty beach with nothing but sun and sand. I still treasure that day - a true mental health day.

As I came to work today, I realized that today was a perfect day to do the same thing. But I can't - between all the yomim tovim and covering for someone at work who is on maternity leave, I cannot take advantage of the last 80-degree day this year.

So I am asking my loyal readership:

Please take today off , especially if you are in the Northeastern US. Go to the beach, spend the entire day doing nothing, and let me know about it.

Have a great day.

Fatah official: Abbas wants Israel destroyed

Yesterday, Dry Bones blog linked to an older article of mine where I reminded everyone that Mahmoud Abbas is hardly the moderate, peace-seeking person that the world makes him out to be.

Today, we have more proof, thanks to the incomparable Aaron Klein of WND, who seems to be the only reporter on the planet to actually interview terrorist leaders and print what they say in English:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' stated recognition of Israel's right to exist is part of a "political calculation" aimed at ultimately destroying the Jewish state, a terror group leader and member of Abbas' Fatah party told WND in an interview.

The leader said the Fatah party does not recognize Israel and that any final accord that doesn't include flooding the Jewish state with millions of Palestinians will not be supported by the Fatah party and will lead to Palestinian civil war.

"The base of our Fatah movement keeps dreaming of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa and Acco," said Abu Ahmed, Fatah member and leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip. "There is no change in our position. Abbas recognizes Israel because of pressure that the Zionists and the Americans are exercising on him. We understand this is part of his obligations and political calculations."

The Brigades is the declared "military wing" of Abbas' Fatah party. Together with the Islamic Jihad terror group, the Brigades has taken responsibility for every suicide bombing inside Israel the past two years, including an attack in Tel Aviv this past April that killed an American teenager and nine Israelis. The Brigades also has carried out scores of deadly shooting and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians in recent months.

Brigades leaders are members of Fatah. The terror group's founder, Marwan Barghouti, is an elected Fatah official and is largely considered one of the most popular Fatah figures. Several top Brigades members serve in Abbas' Force 17 personal security detail.

The U.S. and Europe label Hamas a terror group, while Fatah largely is considered "moderate," in part for its purported willingness to accept Israel. The U.S. has given large sums of financial aid and weapons to Fatah since late Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Peace Accords with the Jewish state in 1993.

Abu Ahmed explained Fatah itself has never officially recognized Israel.

"It is the PLO, which is a separate entity, that recognized Israel,and this was a step, a tactical step that had as its goal to bring the resistance and the revolution closer to the lands of Palestine," Abu Ahmed said.

The PLO was the official governing body of the Palestinians until the PA was formed following the Oslo Accords. Subsequent Israeli-Palestinian agreements were signed officially by the Fatah-led PA but not by Fatah as a party.

Still, Fatah leaders, including Abbas, have made scores of statements recognizing the Jewish state.

But Abu Ahmed commented, "There is an opportunistic class at the head of the Fatah leadership that for personal and political interests says it accepts the existence of Israel. There is no change in our official position. Fatah as a movement never recognized Israel. It is the PLO who did so for the reasons I mentioned."

The U.S. State Department considers the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades a terror organization.

A State Department spokesman yesterday told WND the Brigades is "separate" from Abbas' Fatah party. But Abu Ahmed explained his Brigades group is "one and the same" with the Fatah party.

"We are members of Fatah, and there are normal organic relations between us and the Fatah. We are in the Al Aqsa Brigades because we are Fatah members. We participate in all political decisions making of the Fatah movement."

Abu Ahmed said Brigades members consider Abbas their legitimate leader and answer ultimately to the PA president.

"Of course we are loyal to Abbas. He is our elected leader. We would of course prefer if his policy toward Israel was different, but we understand his obligations and calculations, and we do not consider ourselves limited by these calculations," the terror leader said.

Abu Ahmed explained the difference between Hamas and Fatah is that the Fatah party "is ready to discuss a political arrangement for the Jews."

But he said any arrangement must include the "right of return" of millions of Palestinians to Israel.

"We demand [any agreement with Israel] be based upon the principles that the great majority of our people support and first of all the right of return to the refugees, which mean that there cannot be any recognition of the Zionist entity.

"If any Palestinian government will dare sign a deal without this it means that this government has decided to throw away the fate and destiny of more than four million Palestinian refugees, and we cannot accept this."

The "right of return" is widely seen by Israelis as a ploy to flood Israel with millions of Palestinians, thus threatening the country's Jewish character.

As we have seen before, the Fatah "constitution" indeed never recognized Israel. It's major goal, still on its website today, is "Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence."

So what Abu Ahmed is saying is entirely consistent with known facts about Abbas, Fatah, the PLO and the Al Aqsa Brigades. The evidence that Abbas does not truly seek a lasting peace with Israel is overwhelming. But as the State Department quote above proves, the Western world would rather keep the fiction of a peaceful Abbas alive than abandon the failed, destructive "peace process."

Haveil Havalim #88 has arrived

The new, improved AbbaGav site is where you will find HH88, the finest of the JBlogosphere. Lots of thoughts about the yomim tovim but even a couple of links to my own strange postings.

Check it out! And update your blogroll with his new, easy to remember URL!

(I actually do own elderofziyon.com, but I don't publicize it because I can't see good statistics on people who link to there when I obsessively watch my Statcounter. So please don't use it, even though it is easier to remember. Just forget I ever mentioned it, OK?)

Pakistani charities for jihad

Two very interesting articles in The Times (Pakistan). The English isn't very good but the ideas (and tilt of the writers) soon becomes clear. ("Welfare Trusts" are simply charities):

With the advent of Ramazan, the mobile welfare trusts started their business in different Mohallahs, streets and by lanes on loudspeakers, asking donations for what they announced, that Almighty Allah is always happy with those, who give charity to the destitute, poor and needy people.

People usually used to contribute according to their means without ever getting to know whether or not this money was distributed among the deserved person. These religiously emotional announcements also shook the belief of the common man, a person with least education, and with the fear of God used to give money to these people who were walking around or riding a Suzuki pick-up unhindered.

The govt, reportedly issued an order that announcement of loudspeakers in the mosques is banned to avoid any hate material, but is unable to make accountable these roadside fundraiser for the so-called Madressahs or in the name of construction of mosques, more often than not, cheating people.

This business swells up in the month of Ramazan as being a Muslim, everyone believes that giving charity in the month of Ramazan is worth more and elicits the blessings of Allah Almighty. With this concept in mind, people without any hesitation give away money to these people.

The authorities concerned, especially town Nazims and councillors have the responsibility of keeping a check on these people and certain laws should be framed for their accountability. The govt must have a system of checks and balances in place on these street fund raiser and an account book should also be maintained.

This trend is usually witnessed in low-lying areas, where Suzuki pick-ups also sell the Holy Qura’an on the streets, whereas in somewhat posh areas, these people have somewhat improvised their mode of business by organising Dars (sermons) at home and asking donation for the people which ultimately responded by the upper middle class, as in our society, sham display of wealth has become a fashion.

It is the duty of the administration to compile a list of these roadside donation collecting welfare trusts and double-check their activities and make sure as to for what purpose they were collecting money and other gift items. Besides restricting Madressahs to show their annual accounts, government must also adopt code of conduct on these mobile welfare trusts and monitor their activities as to where they are getting their directions from and on whose directions, they are working in the city right under the nose of administration.

OK, this is not too strange. There are people who use charity to rip off other people all the time and in all organized religions. Calling for the government to oversee these charities makes sense.

A little later comes this other article about these "charities," which is a bit more ominous:

KARACHI: In order to maintain the record of Welfare Trusts, the government has decided to register all of them running in the province and any trust functioning prior to obtaining the license from their respective government would be disbanded, sources confirmed to this reporter.

According to details available, the government has received complaints from the various quarters that these Welfare Trusts were collecting donations to train manpower for Jihad in the war-torn areas of the Muslim world to fight evil forces. The sources said that in the garb of charity collection these trusts fully employed resources for procuring weapons of war and imparting training to the youth for Jihad....

It was however, also learnt through reliable sources, that these trained youth were also sent to Lebanon and Palestine and other Muslim countries to wage Jihad against Zionist forces. These young people, who were briefed on, and made aware of the wily machinations of the imperialist forces, belonged to highly educated families who had become highly motivated and were ready to sacrifice their lives as they said, for the sake of Islam.

As Jihad is the basic and the most important element of Islam to fight against those spreading hate, dividing people along ethnic and religious grounds the parents send their children knowingly or unknowingly to such Dars (sermons) for spiritual refreshment.

However, one could not overlook the fact that many of these so-called trusts were working on the agenda of West and receiving handsome amounts from the foreign donors/agencies for preparing children for confrontation, the source confided. Islam is being used by certain elements for their vested interests who have become tools in the hands of West, whose only aim to eliminate Muslims and defame Islam all over the world as the most facists religion on earth and US President George Bush Jr., has already issued an “edict” in this regard referring to Islam as Fascist Islam.

It is a little unclear whether this author is saying that the Jihadist charities are really fronts for an imperialist Zionist plot to make Muslims look bad, or if there are other charities that the West is supporting that are worse than the Jihadist front charities.

Either way, we can glean a few interesting points:

This article defines Jihad as quite warlike, unlike every Muslim apologist that the West ever sees.
Pakistani Islamic newspapers do not have a clue on the Western attitudes towards Islam.
From this article it appears that the idea of charities brainwashing Muslim youth to fight against the Zionist/imperialist forces is really no big deal, and that the Pakistani government is doing the bidding of the US by trying to crack down on this rather than anything being inherently bad.
It is far preferable to send kids to kill Jews than to think that your charity money might be going to thieving Muslims.

In short, Pakistan is one thoroughly screwed-up place. To think that they are our allies in the war against Islamic terrorism seems to be more a product of wishful thinking and arm-twisting that the reality.

Another "human rights" organization that lies

I just discovered another "human rights" organization that has no real interest in human rights but every interest in making Israel look evil.

Defence for Children International, Palestine Section is a self-styled defender of children that admits it is an :

independent, Palestinian non-governmental organization, which develops its programs and acts according to Palestinian children's needs and Palestinian priorities.

Might there just be a wee bit of a conflict of interest between pretending to care about Palestinian Arab children's needs and saying that they promote "Palestinian" interests - which include exploiting those same children for political gain?

Well, in case you thought not, think again. Their website spares no effort to count every possible Palestinian Arab minor who is injured or killed that they can blame on Israel, and does not mention a single negative word about Palestinian Arab children who are killed by their own people, or who are routinely used as human shields by their "militant" friends, or even who are encouraged to blow themselves up as martyrs , both directly and through the PA-funded media.

No, none of that seems to count to these supposed defenders of the innocent.

But beyond that, their count of Palestinian Arab children supposedly killed by Israel include some outright lies.

For example, I mentioned the PCHR report of two brothers who found a homemade Palestinian rocket , took it home and blow it up, killing one of them. Guess how DCI reports the same event?

On the 28 August 2006, 16 year old Mohamad Khaled Al Za anen found an unexploded shell on his family's land. He picked it up and carried it to his home with the help of his younger brother. Suddenly the shell exploded, kiling Mohamad instantly and severely injuring his brother.

Same dead kid, but this "human rights" organization blames Israel while the PCHR says that it was a locally made rocket.

They also go on to describe many instances where Israeli forces are battling Gaza terrorists, where any stray bullet that kills a PalArab kid is invariably blamed on the Israeli side, often with such objective descriptors as "an Israeli sniper put a bullet in his head."

They count events that are ambiguous at best:

Raja' was playing on a swing. At the same time the Israeli army attacked the neighbouring land, used for training Al Nasser Salah Al Deen militias. As Raja' tried to run, one of the poles from the swing fell on her head, killing her instantly.

Did a shell hit the swing? Or was this one of the swings built on the many Palestinian Arab "metal workshops"? No matter - it is easy to add this to the list of murdered kids, to make Israel look bad.

Or look at this incident:

On 10th July 2006, at around 19:50, a group of children were playing football on a piece of land near the agricultural school in Beit Hanoun. At that time, Palestinian resistance groups launched a missile towards Israeli towns, before quickly leaving the area. Immediately afterwards Israeli airplanes launched a missile towards the children immediately killing three of them and injuring another.

Assuming this is true, do you think that these mighty Defenders of Children will ever say a word about why their heroic resistance fighters are shooting missiles from the immediate area where children are playing soccer?

Also, notice that neither DCI nor PCHR will ever mention anyone killed by Palestinian Arabs shooting towards Israelis. Without exception, it is always asserted that any bullet that kills a child belongs to Israeli soldiers. So my running count of 97 Palestinian Arabs killed by their own people since Operation Summer Rains began is probably way, way undercounted.

But since there are no true human rights organizations interested in such things, no one will ever know.

The PalArab reverence for funerals

Looking at Palestinian Arab news reports I came across this little nugget:

Meanwhile a group of unknown gunmen open fired at residents while taking part in a funeral in Gaza city, Monday morning, inuring several residents.

Remember, it is only bad when non-Muslims do something like that.

Meanwhile, over at the offical Palestinian Arab "News" agency Wafa, not a single word about Arab on Arab violence in the territories. The entire site is dedicated to demonizing Israel - because, after all, that's the only "news" they are interested in telling the world about.

Civil war - complete with civilian deaths

Since my last PalArab self-death count post, four more dead have been added to the list, making the grand total 96 since I started trying to keep track.

Some details on these mature people who the world believes deserve a state of their very own:

In scenes reminiscent of the Lebanese civil war in the 70's and 80's, the confrontation quickly turned into street gun battles, with both sides using automatic rifles, pistols and hand-propelled grenades. At least three of the casualties were identified as innocent passersby, including 15-year-old Hassan Abu al-Hatel.

This is shaping up to be another week where more PalArabs are violently killed by their fellow moderate countrymen than by the "genocidal Zionist occupiers." But don't forget - they are a democracy, and their infighting is the same as in any other democratic country.

Just with RPGs.

UPDATE: 97, 12 dead in the past two days.

G'mar chatima tovah - 5767 edition

My most popular posting today is one I wrote two years ago, saying simply "G'mar chatima tovah." Many people are Googling the phrase today and ending up at this blog.

Someone should tell Answers.com that their translation is not quite accurate; this one is. (Hat tip: Balashon)

It is also very worthwhile to check out the poignant post by Ocean Guy.

So I will take this opportunity to wish everyone a g'mar chatima tovah (and a g'mar chasima tovah as well :) ) . I hope that anyone who I may have wronged during the year forgives me, and I forgive everyone for anything they may have done to me.

May we all be sealed for a great year, and may we all have an easy fast!

The great PalArab self-death whitewash - now at 92

As my readers know, I have been trying to keep a count of how many Palestinian Arabs have been killed by other PalArabs since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit in late June. At the moment, I have identified 85 (one I missed from August who was executed by the "Executive Force" and an infant girl killed by her brother who found his father's assault rifle, in addition to my running count.)

As far as I can tell, there is no Palestinian Arab source who keeps an official count of dead Palestinian Arabs from infighting, "work accidents" and executions. I know that I am undercounting, because the closest thing to an authoritative source I have has missed some from other sources. For example, today's five injured by a hand grenade thrown by a Hamas member into a Fatah rally is not being reported by any PalArab English source I can find. Also, PCHR never reports on people who have died days after their injuries.

I just spent some time at the Palestinian Red Crescent site, thinking that an ambulance service would surely report on any injuries and deaths that they were aware of, no matter what the source.

But of course this "humanitarian" organization only cares about Palestinian Arabs killed and injured by Israel. For example, their detailed statistics from September show no one killed on September 8, when I know that one was that I reported on. Also September 13 - the PRCS mentions no deaths or injuries, I reported on one death from someone who blew himself up building a bomb and four lawyers injured from some clan clash.

The site is filled with pictures of death and injury from the early days of the intifada, lots of statistics and highlighting of Israeli actions, and not a single word that I could find about Palestinian Arab terrorists blowing themselves up, or children handling bomb belts, or people shot and killed by gunfire during wedding celebrations, or even the three "honor killings" I have mentioned.

It is almost as if even the Palestinian Red Crescent Society doesn't give a damn about Palestinian Arabs killed, unless they can use the deaths to score political points against Israel.

Also, since the PCHR started keeping track, at least 90 more PalArabs were killed between February and late June. One would think that some 180 deaths woudl rate a mention.

Here are links to my articles on Palestinian Arabs killing each other. You won't find these stories anywhere else.

Two Gaza girls on their way to school hit by rocket
Diary of the week's violence
Count keeps rising
Hot time in Palestine
Extrajudicial killing
Don't foozle
Another "honor killing"
Killing each other and blaming Israel
2 honor killings for the price of 1
Grim milestone
Oops!
They keep killing each other
Wedding, funeral, and a couple of clan clashes
Woman and child in a clan clash
A few more
No one cares

UPDATE: 7 more killed since last night, bringing the total now to at least 92.

At least 75 Palestinians – including security officers, passersby, and members of Hamas’ special security force – were hurt in violent confrontations and gun battles that erupted in Khan Younis Sunday morning.
A Palestinian was killed near the parliament building in Gaza, and another four were wounded. Shortly afterwards it was reported that a teenagers who was injured in the clashes died of his wounded. A member of the Palestinian presidential guard was also killed in exchanges of fire in Gaza City. Another four people were killed in other incidents, two of them Palestinian security personnel.

Ball in Siniora's court - if the game was fair

A whopping three days ago:

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora on Wednesday called the ongoing Israeli military presence in Lebanese territory the "mother of all ills" and said it must be brought to an end.

"There won't be any valid argument then for the continuation of weapons in the hands of Hezbollah," he told a news briefing when asked about Hezbollah's claim last week to have more than 20,000 rockets after a month of war with Israel.

This of course begs the question of what the valid argument was for Hezbollah to amass such an arsenal to begin with over the past six years.

Luckily, we have the Syrian puppet Lebanese president ready to give an answer:

Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud said on Saturday that if Hezbollah didn't resist aginst the Zionist regime's aggression, a Zionist-affiliated President would now be in office in Lebanon.

In an exclusive interview with channel 3 of Italian state television, Lahoud asserted that Hezbollah was the only force which defended the country against Zionists' aggression and Lebanon can't demand them to be disarmed, adding that Lebanese army only can grant domestic securing and lacks the power to encounter Zionist army which is backed by America.

Makes perfect sense! The Zionist infidel dogs have always been wanting to sink their fangs into juicy Lebanese territory, and only the heroism of the Hezbollah heroes have stopped them.

The President, a Syrian crony, further announced that Lebanese army too ruled out Hezbollah's disarmment and so the UN peacekeeping forces have not the right to do so as there is no reference to this matter in UN's resolution.

Uh-oh, we have a slight contradiction here. Siniora is implying that the Lebanese government will not allow Hezbollah to hold arms as long as Israel withdraws from Lebanon, and Lahoud is saying that it is not an option.

Nasrallah, for his part, has added a new condition before he disarms. Besides Israel leaving the Sheba Farms and some northern Israeli villages, he also wants to make sure that Lebanon has an army that can repel Israel. He also threw in a threat that if Lebanon doesn't turn itself into a more pro-Syrian government, Hezbollah might just have to take over.

Meanwhile, Israel removed its last troops from Lebanon this morning, so Siniora's "mother of all ills" has made his words from last Wednesday become suddenly relevant.

Not that we are expecting him to actually follow through.

Ahmadinejad acknowledges the Elders

Ina fascinating New York Observer article written by Ahmadinejad's interpreter while he was in New York comes this tidbit, during a speech by the Iranian president to an enthusiastic room of Iranian-Americans - who gave him a standing ovation:

“Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world. You can do it elsewhere,” he said, as if speaking directly to the mysterious 2,000, “but not in Iran. It’s impossible—it’s not doable.”

I am privileged to be one of the infamous, mythical Two Thousand.

And, Mr. Ahmadinejad will be frightened to know, our power does not stop at the borders of Iran.

How to get a guaranteed job in the PA

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs prints its reservations on the EU resuming funding the PA. Most of the things they bring up are familiar but some details were new to me. In the aggregate, it is hard to conclude anything other than the fact that the "moderate" Fatah party actively supports fighting and terrorizing Israel. (Translation by Daily Alert:)

Is Financial Aid from the West Supporting Palestinian Terrorists? - Jonathan D. Halevi

EU members have been expressing great interest in renewing financial support to the Palestinian Authority. On September 21, 2006, the office of the Palestinian president signed an agreement with the World Bank for the transfer of $46.6 million to maintain basic services in the Palestinian Authority. In order to encourage donating countries to transfer as much money as possible to finance its budget, the PA is striving to magnify the image of a "humanitarian crisis" in the territories. However, without proper supervision, the West's financial aid might directly or indirectly find its way to funding Palestinian terror.

The PA allocates $48 million a year to security prisoners in Israeli jails and to released prisoners. Every Palestinian prisoner or Israeli-Arab in an Israeli prison is entitled to receive financial aid from the PA if he was imprisoned for the struggle against "the Israeli occupation." In addition, a released prisoner is entitled to a government position if he spent more than 5 years in prison. A prisoner who spent over 25 years in prison is entitled to the position of deputy minister and the rank of a brigadier-general in the security forces. The PA also transfers millions of dollars per month to organizations, run mostly by Hamas, that support the families of prisoners, dead terrorists, and the wounded.

This system of support, which aids murderous terrorists, suicide bombers who were caught, and those who launched them, conveys the message that the Palestinian Authority supports the armed struggle against Israel. The West's financial aid to the PA, if renewed without the proper precautions and supervision, might end up supporting thousands of former and current Palestinian terrorists. (JCPA-Hebrew, 27Sep06)

So the longer you are in prison for terror activities, the higher your rank in the peaceful PA.

In other words, the EU wants to give money to a people who explicitly and consistently idolize and support terrorists.

Yeshiva boys rejoice

And yeshiva parents, beware:

Tosfos.com is here.

Hat tip to Junior Elder.

Notable articles about Arabs

Enlightening articles on similar themes:

Observations on Arabs
Tribalism
which is itself a long commentary on this: Why We Will Never See Democracy in the Middle East

I do agree that the Arab psyche seems to predate Islam by quite a long period of time. I would venture to guess that Islam was heavily influenced by this Arab tribalist mindset overlaid with a religious motif.

As a trivial example, I once noted thatArab women covered their faces centuries before Mohammed. Islamic law apparently took the Jewish concepts of female modesty, applied it to justify the existing custom, and then used it to strengthen the laws of Islamic modesty beyond the original legal requirements. The Koranic laws may have been codifying and organizing existing Arab customs and mores.

A PalArab leader who really is a leader - and one who isn't

Palestinian Arabs themselves have historically always been far more pragmatic than their "leaders," who almost invariably are more interested in destroying the Zionist state than in building their own.

But once in a great while, you can find an exception:

LIKE every Palestinian town, Beita, a dusty home for 10,000 people spread across a hillside in the middle of the northern West Bank, has seen its fortunes dive since the start of the second intifada in 2000. Never prosperous, reliant on the wages of labourers who worked in Israel, it now has around 65% unemployment.

Yet since coming to office in December 2004, Arab Asharafa, the town's engaging and energetic mayor, has achieved something of a turnaround. He has widened the main road running through the town, is landscaping a new public park and opened a fruit and vegetable market that brings the council $100,000 a year in revenues (the market has gained at the expense of tightly-restricted Nablus, which used to be the main trading hub for the region). He has even started a project to bottle water from the town's spring and sell it, perhaps for export to Jordan.

What makes this remarkable is that the Beita council is dominated by Hamas, which ousted Fatah from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in elections this year. Well before the world's economic boycott of the PA began in March, foreign funding to local councils had begun drying up as Hamas took them over. Beita used to get 30-40% of its revenues from abroad, says Mr Asharafa; now it gets none.

Instead, Beita, under its Hamas mayor, provides an example of how Palestinians might start to wean themselves off donor-dependence. Its success comes partly because, while at the national level Fatah and Hamas are at loggerheads (talks on a national unity government, which seemed a done deal two weeks ago, are now stalled again), in Beita, as in many other mixed local councils, they co-operate.

It is also due to Mr Asharafa's mixture of charisma and creative thinking. He cracked down on electricity theft and non-payment of utilities bills while giving amnesties to students and the unemployed. He saves money by buying bulldozers and reselling them at the end of a project, instead of hiring. He talks businessmen into investing in public projects and taking a cut of the proceeds; at one point, he offered to put his own house up as collateral.

Politically, too, Mr Asharafa can permit himself statements that Hamas's senior leaders cannot. “Hamas must make peace with Israel,” he says, claiming that 90% of Palestinians want a two-state solution, and that the main obstacle—and reason why Hamas will not take the step of recognising Israel outright first—is a lack of trust.

While I, and every poll I've seen, disagree about the 90% number, this mayor symbolizes what Gaza could have been after Israel's withdrawal. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and blame, he actually acts to make life for his people better. He thinks creatively and he solves problems.

He sounds Jewish!

Too bad, Mr. Asharafa is the exception that proves the rule. He is more likely to be murdered for his views of a two-state solution than to be promoted to a ministerial position in the PA.
On the other hand, we have "leaders" like the current chairman of Fatah, Faruq Qaddumi. He advocates overthrowing the PA government because he doesn't like the infighting between Hamas and Fatah. But one of his quotes is very telling:

Fatah secretary general and head of the PLO politburo, Faruq Qaddumi, sharply criticized the Hamas and Fatah movements, warning that "their stubbornness will lead to fighting between Palestinian factions," and accusing those of taking in part in negotiations of "not wanting to reach an agreement."
In an interview to the London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper, Qaddumi claimed that the lead negotiators between the movements "are not interested in reaching an agreement." He called on the Palestinians to overthrow their government "so that Israel will bear the responsibility for the lives of the Palestinians who still are under the fire of occupation."

In other words, this "leader" who still operates out of Tunis wants the Palestinian Arabs to remain in refugee camps forever. He realizes that if PalArabs take responsibility for their own nation, and try to improve it - try to make the lives of their people better, try to build an economy, try to fight the clan wars and infighting, try to bring real peace and security to the region - then the pressure will be off of Israel!

This has been the face of the PalArab "leadership" - ignore the people except for their usefulness as pawns to pressure Israel. Happy Palestinian Arabs are very counterproductive to people like Qaddumi (as well as Haniyeh), because they don't turn into terrorists. Happy citizens actually go to work, provide for their families, and build an economy. Unhappy citizens attend protest after protest and blame others for their problems. As long as their "leaders" can channel their hate towards Israel and not towards the leaders themselves, they remain secure in their destructive policies.

It is a bit ironic that in this case, the real leader is the member of the recognized terror group and the destructive "leader" is a member of the "moderate" Fatah. But it is not surprising: Fatah is no more enlightened than Hamas is; it just has better PR.

What "dialogue" means to Muslims

I've mentioned before how, whenever Muslims call for "dialogue" with Christians or the West, they really mean that they want the opportunity to recruit more Muslims and that they have no interest in actually, you know, listen.

In other words, when they say "dialogue" they mean "Muslim monologue."

And this has been as consistent across all streams of Islam that I've seen. The terrorist front group CAIR has always called for "dialogue" as the answer for every problem, but look how they define it (in the recent example of the Pope kerfuffle):

"The proper response to the Pope's inaccurate and divisive remarks is for Muslims and Catholics worldwide to increase dialogue and outreach efforts aimed at building better relations between Christianity and Islam. This unfortunate episode also offers an opportunity for Christians to learn more about Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Islamic concept of jihad.

The rest of the press release is, of course, a lesson in whitewashed Islam, cherry-picking Koranic statements to make it sound moderate.

Further proof about what "dialogue" means to Muslims comes from a favorite Palestinian Arab sheikh, who explicitly rejects the idea of dialogue - when the person initiating the dialogue is a Christian. (The amount of projection in his description of Catholic "dialogue" is classic.):

Pope Benedict XVI's meeting this week with a delegation of Muslim leaders and his calls for interfaith dialogue following earlier remarks about Islam are really "Crusader conspiracies" to subjugate the Islamic faith and force "Christian-Zionist" worldviews upon Muslims, a prominent Gaza Strip preacher told WorldNetDaily in an interview.

Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called the pope a "puppet" for "that Crusader George Bush."

The Gaza imam said the only Christian-Muslim dialogue that is acceptable is one in which "all religions agree to convert to Islam."

"The call for so-called dialogue by this little racist pope is a Trojan horse with the main goal of reaching a new system in which the ideals (of Christianity) are a new ideology that will rule relations between nations and people. The dialogue he wants is dangerous," said Abu Saqer, speaking to WND from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

"The pope is the spiritual and religious wing of the Crusader ideology," Abu Saqer said. "He is totally coordinated with Bush. Through this dialogue he hopes to break the lines of unity between Muslims and polarize the Muslim world, which has some partisans who will accept this new dialogue. But true believers know Islam must rule all relations. The only dialogue we will accept is when all other religions agree to convert to Islam."

Will we be seeing the "moderate" CAIR, or any Muslim leader for that matter, disagree with these statements?

A suggestion for the Z-Blogosphere

I spend a fair amount of time browsing Google News for articles of interest that may have escaped the notice of the mainstream media. In many cases, the most virulently anti-semitic and absurdly pro-terrorist articles are concentrated in a relatively few set of "news" sources.

Some of them are predictable - loony left sites such as Indymedia, and English-language Arab or Iranian sites.

But the Internet has spawned a number of other Web "news sources" which claim to not have an ideological bias, and are in fact just collections of articles that can be written by pretty much anyone. Examples include:

Scoop
OpEdNews
The People's Voice
Axis of Logic

There is no shortage of borderline psychos who tirelessly submit articles to these sites to push their agenda to make the Middle East, and the world, Jew-free. The sites themselves seem more interested in providing content to attach advertising to rather than in pushing a real agenda.

My suggestion, which I haven't yet had time to do myself, is for the Zionist Blogosphere (Z-Blogosphere?) to submit articles to these outlets. We can even rework old blog posts of which we are particularly proud. For most of us, it would increase our readership and allow us to counter the vile filth that passes for journalism or reasoned opinion on these sites.

Any articles that get rejected would, if nothing else, show the bias that the "unbiased" editors really have.

Any interest?

Latest peaceful PalArab poll

Unfortunately, the raw data for this poll is not available online (as was the case in past polls,) and the Palestinian Arab press release for the poll completely ignores the inconvenient support for terror that was uncovered, so I am relying on this Jerusalem Post report about the poll:

63% of PalArabs support shooting rockets into Israeli cities.
57% support terror attacks against Israeli civilians inside the Green Line.
75% support kidnapping Israeli soldiers to trade them for PalArab prisoners.

Yet "77% of Palestinians support a cease-fire with Israel and 74% believe that Palestinians cannot rely solely on armed struggle and must reach a political settlement with Israel."

The only way to interpret these contradictory results is to realize that to the Palestinian Arabs, peace is not the goal - the eradication of Israel is the goal, and they believe that this can be accomplished by diplomatic as well as terroristic means.