Two completely different stories from Hebron - of the same event

Yesterday, a group of Jews in Hebron moved into a house that they say was paid for legally. An Arab man disputes that, saying he owns the house.

Reading these two accounts - from YNet and from Arutz 7 - show not just differing details, but completely different stories. First YNet's account of the Arab viewpoint:

The strife over the disputed house in Hebron continues to pick up steam and Fais Rajabi – who claims ownership of the structure – fails to understand how the situation deteriorated so far.

Rajabi claimed he purchased the house some 15 years ago and planned to begin inhabiting it next week with his three wives and 22 children. Rajabi said he bought the house from four brothers who inherited it and he has been renovating it since he made the purchase. It's his life's work, he says.

Rajabi estimates he has invested over $1 million in the project. "I bought this house with my hard-earned money, no one ever made any claims in the past, but apparently the settlers saw that all I had left to do was finish tiling and they decided that this is the right moment for them to steal the house," he said.

When asked how he felt about loosing his investment Rajabi said: "May Allah help me. Something that you nurture for years, invest enormous funds in, invest so much work and energy into, a dream that was the center of your life – that's robbed from you with empty claims and lies."

Rajabi vehemently rejects the settler's claim that they purchased the house and own the deed to it. There is no chance he was deceived by the original owner, he said, no chance it was also sold to the settlers.

"I cannot believe there is a man who can sell-out his faith like that, his conscious and his religion. The house is mine and mine alone. The documents I showed the police prove my ownership. The documents the settlers have, fake or not, purchased for money or not – that's not of interest to me. I am the sole owner of the house, and I sold nothing to anyone."

Rajabi claims that the settlers have recently begun observing the house. "I never imagined that it was towards stealing it. I will take this to the Israeli High Court – and if justice is not found there then I will go to the highest court in the world. This will not go on in silence. The house is mine, all of it is mine and only mine, and I will never give it up. This house is my entire life," he said.

The IDF, the Civil Administration and the police said they were looking into documents provided by Rajabi and the settlers, who both claim to be the rightful owners of the house.

And now Arutz-7:

Over 200 Jews, mostly yeshiva students from the Hevron area, entered a four-story building in the City of the Patriarchs Monday night, and have named it "Shalom House." MK Chaim Oron (Meretz) says the government must throw them out.

The house, which is only partially built and stood empty, was purchased by the Jews from its previous Arab owner two years ago. It is strategically located, in a spot overlooking "Worshippers Route" leading from Kiryat Arba to the Cave of Patriarchs. According to one report, the decision to enter the building now was reached after the Jews of Hevron received information that Arabs intended to enter the building in the near future.

"Shalom House" has a floor space of over 3,500 square meters (over 37,000 square feet - EoZ). It was reportedly purchased by a Jewish American businessman through a Jordanian real estate agency for about $700,000. Officials are looking at the documentation to ascertain its validity, and at present no evacuation of the Jews is foreseen.

The house's top floor had been used by the IDF for a lookout point. Twelve IDF troops and local Jewish residents were ambushed and killed by Arab terrorists on the Worshippers' Route in November 2002.

Upon entering the building in the evening hours, the new residents began singing and dancing. One of the youths told a reporter that he and others had reached the building by running through an Arab village. The Hevron Jewish Community's spokesperson, Noam Arnon, said the entry into the house was not meant for provocation but for peaceful residence by Jews. "We already have a long waiting list of potential residents," he added.

"This is a house that has been under construction for several years. No one lives in it yet, so no one was evacuated from it," said Arnon. "Right now there are young people living there, but in the future, after we renovate it, families will live there, like in other areas of Jewish settlement in Hevron."

Hevron has long had a lengthy waiting list for families who wish to move into the Jewish neighborhood, and well over 40 small families can easily fit into the building.

MKs Gideon Saar (Likud) and Otniel Shneller (Kadima) visited the youths and the new building this afternoon, and both expressed their support. Shneller said that forming a contiguous Jewish presence between Kiryat Arba and Hevron is in keeping with Kadima Party policy: "It is a very important contiguity; exceptional. The government should have done it itself... Kiryat Arba and Hevron are a Jewish bloc that will remain Jewish in any future settlement; this is how I understand Kadima's position."

The Yesha Council – the umbrella group for Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria – congratulated the house's new occupants. "The people of the Jewish Community are continuing in the path of the Patriarch Abraham, who paid full price for the Cave of Machpela," the council noted.

The Yesha Rabbis Council praised the new residents for "meriting to restore Hevron homes to Jewish hands and fulfilling in a practical manner the commandment of settling the Land."

MK Uri Ariel (NU/NRP) said, "Any act of strengthening the hold of Jewish roots in the City of Patriarchs is a blessing for the people and the land." He added that because the purchase was carried out legally, "this is a moment of trial for the government: shall it make the law subject to its political whims, or will it prove that the government too is subject to the law, and allow the Jews to remain in their house?"

MK Chaim Oron (Meretz) said today that the issue is not whether or not the property was legally bought, but the separation of populations. He called upon the government "to throw them out of there fast."

An Arab claiming to be the house's owner denies the house was ever sold to Jews. "The house is all mine," claimed Baez Rajabi, "and I have all of the documents proving it." However, another Arab man, Mohammed Al-Baradei, is also quoted in some media outlets as saying the house is his: "I handed all of the documents over to police after making copies," said Baradei.

So which is more reasonable?

The fact that two Arabs claim to own the house already makes their claims suspect, although it seems very possible to me that some Arab did sell the house multiple times. This is a huge structure and it strains credibility to think that an individual Arab there has a million dollars to sink into this project and to wait so many years to move in - even with 22 kids and three wives, the house is much larger than he needs.

It is also interesting that YNet didn't report the competing Arab claims, and so is Meretz' reason for wanting the Jews out of Hebron. Kadima's support of Hebron Jews was also a bit surprising. And YNet was remiss in not mentioning that for an Arab to admit thathe sold a house to a Jew is a literal death sentence.

A question to the Israel haters: should Jews be allowed to legally purchase land in Hebron? And do you support the PalArab death penalty for any Arabs that sell land to Jews?

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Guess what? There was a truce since November!

A number of newspapers are reporting some astonishing news this morning:

A Hamas sniper in the Gaza Strip shot and wounded an electric company worker on the Israeli side of the border Monday in the Islamic movement's first acknowledged breach of a 4-month-old truce with Israel.

And Reuters' version:

Gaza -- The armed wing of Hamas said it carried out its first attacks yesterday against Israel since a shaky November truce in the Gaza Strip, shooting a utility worker near the border and firing two mortar bombs at soldiers.

Wow, in the wake of the hundred of Kassams fired at Israel since November, as well as other attacks, was it really true that Hamas has not taken credit for any of these?

Well, according to the Al-Qassam Hamas website - not quite:

• January 11, 2007: Al-Qassam Brigades Bring down A Zionist drone
• December 29, 2006: Husam Al-Zumile &Muhammad Al-Masri were martyred during a resistance mission
• Novemebr 26, 2006 (the first day of the truce):Three Qassam rockets were fired at the Zionist " rocket launches" and " Ra'eem settlement"
  

Not to mention that the Hamas-led PA promised to stop Islamic Jihad rocket fire during the truce as well.

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EU Gaza border monitors threatened

Remember when Israel agreed, under US pressure, to let the EU monitor the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt?

From JPost:

Fearing for their lives, European Union monitors stationed at the Rafah Crossing that connects the Gaza Strip and Egypt have asked the defense establishment for help in drawing up escape routes from Gaza in the event of an attack on the border terminal, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The monitors, led by Italian Maj.-Gen. Pietro Pistolese, have raised concerns in recent weeks for their safety following a series of threats to their lives. An Israeli defense official told the Post that several weeks ago a large bomb was discovered on a route used by the monitors to drive through Gaza.

Later this week, the head of the Defense Ministry's Military-Diplomatic Bureau, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, is scheduled to sign an agreement that will extend the monitoring team's mandate by another year. It was initially signed following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

The increasing threats against the monitors have raised concerns in Israel that the EU would refuse to extend the monitors' mandate, leaving the Gaza-Egyptian border completely open. Diplomatic officials in Jerusalem rejected this possibility and said the agreement would be signed in the coming days as planned.

A military source close to Ashkenazi confirmed, however, that this scenario was raised during the meeting last week between the two chiefs of staff. The spokeswoman for the monitors, Maria Telleria, said Monday night that she had heard rumors of a plan to pull the team out of Rafah, but that there was nothing concrete.

There are a large number of analogies between computer security and physical security. And a couple of security rules here have been broken by Israel.

First of all, you never outsource your security to a third party that cares less about your security, or does a poorer job enforcing security, than you do yourself. Everyone knew from the outset that the EU monitors were not going to really do anything effective, that they would remain as passive monitors rather than security enforcers. In fact, they do not have a mandate to even detain people with suspicious packages (they can just request that a PA officer checks the packages.)

And secondly, security enforcement points must "fail closed." In computer terms, if a firewall should fail for any reason it should not allow traffic through. Otherwise, people will attack the firewall itself.

So far, Rafah has held to this model - in the numerous times that the EU monitors needed to flee for their safety (the first time was only a month after they started), the crossing was closed, much to the consternation of "human rights" organizations who have no problem with smuggling weapons into Gaza. But now it looks like it is possible that the EU will abandon Rafah and leave it open.

Now that this is a possibility, all the terrorists in Gaza have a great incentive to directly attack the EU monitors - a much easier and cheaper alternative than digging more tunnels or opening their own holes in the border. The monitors have now become the weakest link in Israel's security.

And this was entirely predictable.

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Latest insane Temple Mount excavation conspiracy theories

From PNN:

The popular resistance against the ongoing Israeli aggressions at Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem's Old City have slowed down for the time being, while Israeli forces have accelerated the excavations. A new tunnel beneath the walls of the Muslim holy site is near completion, threatening the mosque with collapse.

Director of Al Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Farid Yahya, says that Israeli forces worked day and night at an unprecedented pace to dig a tunnel concealed from view. They managed to do so, the Sheikh said Saturday, by going in through a small shop that they bought on Al Wad Street near Ras Al Amud for 60,000 dollars.

Yahya said they began digging a tunnel from the inside, working clandestinely and quickly, after closing the shop doors. The work is ongoing in several directions around Al Wad Street leading to the gates of Al Aqsa Mosque.

The Israeli administration had been able to appease the international community by installing a camera in one area of the excavations and showing other investigative groups particular spots of work, with the only claim in one area to be that they were building a Jewish synagogue, said Yahya. “This is going on in broad daylight, but they were able to portray what is happening in the media as fairly innocuous. This is not an individual incident. Follow-up shows that many excavations that lead to full takeovers have been carried out in this way.”

And from Al-Hayat al-Jadeedah (autotranslated):

The director of charts at the Orient House, Khalil Tufakji said that the Israeli authorities continue excavation work and confidential under the walls of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and facilities, the aim being to weaken the foundations of the mosque in order to create the conditions leading to the fall of the mosque in a shorter period.

Tufakji and confirmed in a statement to the press yesterday, that there were tunnels under the Israeli walls of the al-Aqsa Mosque to speed up installations in the collapse of the mosque, which is a serious attack on the inviolability and sanctity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The same source also says that the crazy Sheikh Raed Salah met with UNESCO where he rejected their claims that Israel was not harming anything - and then he added that Israel is using acid to dissolve the foundations of the mosque.

Personally, I want to know how I can buy a shop right next to the Temple Mount for only $60,000, and where I can get a hold of this acid that can destroy huge stones that weigh hundreds of tons. It would sure save a lot in expensive excavation equipment.

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Islamic Jihad "work accident" in Gaza City

Another work accident:

Gaza - Ma'an - One Palestinian activist from the Al-Quds brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, was killed and five others wounded in an explosion in a house in Ash-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip on Monday.

The explosion took place at noon on Monday and destroyed the house of the Hessi family.

Palestinian medical sources said that Ala'a Hessi, 26, was killed in the explosion and five others were injured. The Islamic Jihad movement is in mourning for Hessi and confirmed that he was one of its members.

Oops!

Remember last summer when the entire world castigated Israel for "targeting" populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon? Western nations who are no stranger to creating far worse collateral damage during wartime didn't hesitate to condemn Israeli actions as Hezbollah hid among Lebanese civilians.

Now, who exactly is condemning Islamic Jihad for building weapons and explosive factories in people's houses?

(And who knew that Islamic Jihad had anything other than a military wing?)

The late Mr. Hessi hated Jews so much that he didn't hesitate to build a bomb in his own family's house. As a known member of PIJ, one can assume that his family approved of his sacred work - because the intended victims of his explosives are Jewish families, not his own. And he ended up not only destroying his own life and house, but he also damaged neighboring houses as well.

Obviously this is a "dog bites man" story and there is nothing spectacular about it in the context of general PalArab depravity. I've reported dozens of similar "work accidents." But the reason it is worth emphasizing is precisely because it is not a noteworthy news story - the very frequency that these things happen ensure that Palestinian Arabs get a free pass from the world when they support and allow actions that would be considered grave war crimes by any real nation on the planet. Since it doesn't get reported, and since Israeli actions that are far less severe get reported constantly, the world gets a heavily skewed idea of what is going on in the Middle East.

Because of this skewed coverage, the average person would have no idea that Palestinian Arabs have killed roughly four times of their own people this year than Israels has. One would think that this is an important statistic for a true understanding of the situation, but the news is not trying to give the big picture - and this is a large reason why Israel ends up getting the lion's share of bad press.

The number of Palestinian Arabs violently killed this year by their own actions is now 142 by our count.

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March 18, 1948: Arabs threaten Hadassah Hospital

59 years ago, in an astonishing feat of Arab projection, the Arab commander in Jerusalem threatened Hadassah Hospital, claiming that Jews there were attacking Arabs. This claim would have been dismissed as absurd if it wasn't for the fact that Hadassah itself was truly already under attack, and the British were not interested in defending her so close to their withdrawal from Palestine.

Husseini's threats proved to be true, for in April, a convoy of doctors, patients and nurses trying to reach the hospital came under attack and suffered a seven-hour massacre, ultimately killing 77 Jews including the hospital's director.

An eyewitness account of the massacre fills in some details (from the April 21, 1948 Palestine Post; in this case I OCR'd the article):

About 9.45 a.m. the ambulance In which I was travelling hit a mine, fell into a road trap, and the engine was damaged. The ambulance was a few metres behind the escort car and a few metres in front of two buses which were also damaged. The vehicles were peppered with bullets arid at 10.15 am. the first bullets penetrated the ambulance. Dr. Yassky was the first person to be wounded, some pieces of shrapnel hitting his leg. Many hundreds of shots were fired at the vehicles, some from heavy weapons, and explosions occurred nearby.

Those in the ambulance were the drivers, Dr. arid Mrs. Yassky, one wounded patient on a stretcher, the assistant matron of the hospital, and six other physicians.

Dr. Yassky sat next to the driver throughout, and opened the peephole of the ambulance from time to time to see what was going on and to report on events. His movements were quickly observed by the Arabs and it became clear that he had become a special target, because the largest concentration of bullets was directed at his part of the vehicle. He wis to move further back Into the ambulance, but refused, wishing to stay at his observation post and to encourage the driver.

At 11.15 am. the second casualty occurred In the ambulance, when Dr. Matoth, children’s physician, was also hit by shrapnel. At 12 noon Dr. Yassky reported that Arabs were approaching much nearer, and that large numbers were massing for what appeared to he the kill. At 1 p.m. Dr. Yassky said. “This looks like the end. We must say goodbye.”

A little later, a convoy of British Army cars was seen by Dr. Yassky to turn into the Ramallah Road. He shouted to them for help and waved a white handkerchief which he reported must have been clearly seen by the soldiers.

At 2 p.m. a second army convoy took the same road and again they were signalled. There was no help forthcoming.

At 2.45 p.m. more bullets penetrated the car near Dr. Yassky. and he was slightly wounded in the face. A little later he reported that one ol the buses was burning, and that Its occupants must be dead. Soon afterwards he had to report that the second bus was burning. He then said farewell to the occupants ol the ambulance and to his wife and the other passengers also began to say farewell.
Just after 3 pm., a bullet penetrated the lower part of the ambulance, apparently passing through the engine, and hit Dr. Yassky In the region of the liver. He began to bleed profusely. He asked for an Injection of morphium, which he was given. He said a final word to his wife and his staff, and to the patient on the stretcher.

The passage of time In the ambulance became blurred. One or two people actually dozed of at Intervals, and all were resigned to their death. Many made neat packages of their watches and personal belongings, which they stowed away in the ambulance, and sat awaiting their bullet. Indeed, several were impatient for this bullet to come, because on several occasions waves of Arabs had approached to within a few metres of the car. out to slaughter.

Around noon the driver of the vehicle, Zecharia. thought It was better to run for It than to sit and await butchery In the ambulance. He was killed a few moments later. Rather later, one of the physicians also thought that the slim chance of a run for safety was better than the certainty of being killed In a trap. Though wounded he got out of the car, and his run for safety was a crawl on all fours to Antonius House, which he reached to be saved by the small British unit in occupation of the building, about 20 yards from the ambulance.

At 3 p.m. two army ambulances passed by the stranded cars, help was asked for, and again was not given.

Some time during the afternoon, a number of Molotov bottles hit the ambulance, but failed to set it on fire. One of the wounded bus drivers crawled to our ambulance and was able to get into the driver’s seat. He became impatient, decided the occupants at the ambulance had no chance, crawled out again, and was killed.

All these macabre happenings took place against background of bullets, bombs. mortars, Molotov bottles and hordes of Arabs crazed with an orgy of shooting.

The ordeal lasted seven hours and then — at 4.30 p.m.. British help arrived. Once this help was extended, all occupants of the ambulance have been unanimous in declaring how helpful and considerate its manner was.

This sickening attack came about a week after the Deir Yassin incident. By almost any measure this was far, far worse - a deliberate attack on medical personnel and patients, deliberately done with no possible excuse, no warning and no provocation. Yet how many people are familiar with this massacre?

This was not the end for Hadassah Hospital in East Jerusalem yet. Arabs continued to attack the hospital itself, shelling its wards in constant bombardments. Finally, it made no more sense to keep it open.

This article is interesting in how it is an early example of how international law cannot protect people when one side disregards it. The hospital could have chosen to be protected by the Red Cross but the Geneva Conventions say that hospitals cannot be protected by armed personnel and still be protected by Geneva. Hadassah knew that Arabs would ignore the Red Cross protection and attack anyway. This resulted in armed guards who never entered the hospital itself and who did not answer Arab fire so as not to escalate the danger to the hospital.

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HH CX

Soccer Dad hosts the 110th edition of Haveil Havalim.

Read it, and let this be a lesson to you.

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Another peaceful PalArab weekend - 8-year old girl shot in chest

From Ma'an:

On the first day after the formation of the Palestinian unity government, Palestinians witnessed a wave of disorder in the Gaza Strip in which a young Palestinian girl was killed and many others injured.

Palestinian medical sources said that 8 year old Shaza Abu Muhsin was killed and three others were injured in family clashes in the Rafah area in the southern Gaza Strip.

The sources confirmed that the girl arrived at An Najjar hospital dead, after being shot in the chest. Three others were wounded, two of them were women and the third was a young man from the same family.

Medical sources said that two Palestinians were injured in crossfire between the Abu Aha and Almasri families in Khan Younis, both men were transported to hospital.

Security sources said that several armed men kidnapped Mohammad Abu Shamala aged 40, from Rafah. Abu Shamala is an officer with Force 17, the Palestinian presidential security guards; it is believed that the kidnapping was based on a family feud.

On Friday, two Palarabs were injured in a "work accident."

The number of Palestinian Arabs violently killed this year by each other now stands at 140 by our count.

UPDATE: A PalArab security officer died of wounds sustained Saturday night when he was shot while chasing some robbers (as far as I can tell from the autotranslation.) 141.

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Palestinian Arabs sure hated by other Arabs

Libya's leader has threatened to expel thousands of PalArabs - and this wouldn't be the first time:

Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi has decided to boycott the Arab League's summit, set to be held in Riyadh at the end of March, in response to what he considers as the Arab leaders' plan to "sacrifice" the refugee issue in order to please Israel.

Gaddafi is worried that in the framework of the Saudi peace initiative, Arab leaders would concede the refugees' right of return, and agree to have them naturalized in their countries of residence, in a bid to encourage Israel's cooperation with the peace plan.

Libyan newspaper al-Jamahiriya reported this week that Libya may begin deporting Palestinian refugees soon, in protest of the Arab plan.

In September, 1995, Libya deported thousands of Palestinians in protest of the signing of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians, and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.

Hundreds of those refugees remained stranded in a refugee camp on the Libyan-Egyptian border, while hundreds others spent weeks aboard ships in the Mediterranean Sea, after both Syria and Lebanon refused to give them shelter.

Meanwhile, PalArabs continue to be killed - in Iraq:

Geneva, 16 March (AKI) - The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday that it found deeply disturbing a raid conducted by Iraqi security forces in a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood in Baghdad on Wednesday that left at least one Palestinian dead and nine others reportedly still in detention. The agency says it has repeatedly expressed concern over the fate of Palestinian refugees in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's demise.

"The violence reportedly broke out when the Palestinians tried to resist the raid," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva. "They said they were frightened following months of being targeted by various groups. Several have been kidnapped, arrested and killed. They have often expressed concern about the lack of protection by the Iraqi security forces."

Over the past year UNHCR said it has repeatedly called on the Iraqi authorities and the United States-led multinational forces to protect the Palestinians, who fled to Iraq after the creation of Israel in 1948. Some received preferential treatment under Saddam Hussein and have become targets for attack since his overthrow in 2003. Nearly 20,000 of them have already fled but an estimated 15,000 still remain in the country, mostly in Baghdad, according to UNHCR.

Redmond urgently appealed to countries in the region and outside to offer temporary shelter for Palestinians from Iraq, noting that at least 186 of them had been confirmed murdered in Baghdad between April 2004 and January 2007.

“UNHCR believes the number may be significantly higher. Their enclaves in Baghdad have been the target of many militia attacks. Hundreds of Palestinian families have been evicted from their homes with nowhere to go, prevented from seeking refuge in neighbouring countries,” he said.

“Recently, UNHCR has received reports that the families of several detained Palestinians have been forced to pay thousands of US dollars to some members of the Iraqi security forces, allegedly for protection from torture and mutilation of their family members while in detention. Higher sums have reportedly been demanded to ensure their release.”

In fact, the numbers of Palestinian Arabs killed or missing in Iraq (not just Baghdad) is over 500, and in the thousands over the past three years according to PalArab sources. And those who are fleeing cannot find refuge in Arab countries either.

Yet for some reason, you will find very few human rights organizations or Muslims publicizing these crimes by Arabs against Palestinian Arabs. No human shields, no protests, no calls for boycotts, no calling this "ethnic cleansing" nor "genocide." Very few people even know about Kuwait's expulsion of 400,000 PalArabs in only one week in 1991.

The hypocrisy of those who pretend to care about PalArabs is overwhelming.

The only use that the world has for Palestinian Arabs is to be used as pawns to help destroy Israel.

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Peaceful PalArabs attack UNRWA chief. Reuters downplays it.

From AP:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Three masked Palestinian gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying the chief of the U.N. refugee mission in Gaza and tried to kidnap him, the U.N. official said.

No one was hurt in the kidnap attempt in northern Gaza, said John Ging, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza.

Earlier in the week, unidentified gunmen kidnapped a BBC reporter in Gaza City, Alan Johnston, who remains in captivity, his whereabouts unknown.

Ging said he, a driver and a security official were traveling in an armored vehicle when the gunmen jumped out of a white Subaru and opened fire. "They tried to force open the car, but our driver extracted himself from that situation," and sped away as the gunmen continued firing, he said. "This is a shocking development. We are still considering how to deal with this," Ging said.

The vehicle was clearly marked with the U.N. insignia and a U.N. flag, he said. Eleven bullets pierced the car, Ging added.

Reuters' coverage so far is only mentioned in passing in a different story, but includes this interesting blurb:

Palestinian attacks on UNRWA -- which supplies vital aid and employment for refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and neighbouring Arab countries -- have been very rare.

Now, that's in interesting statement. In a few minutes of searching I found (from a 2002 UN report):

Many of the instances of threats against United Nations personnel occurred in the West Bank and Gaza. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) indicates that during the reporting period there was an increase in the number of violent incidents directed against United Nations and humanitarian personnel. In a number of instances UNRWA personnel were verbally abused, threatened, physically assaulted and shot at. What is of particular concern is that ambulances and medical personnel have not been exempt from attack. On a number of occasions, UNRWA ambulances were attacked, resulting in death and injury to personnel.

And, from 2006:

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) condemns the attack on a United Nations facility in Gaza on the morning of 1 January 2006 which included the beating of a UN guard by unknown assailants before they bombed the premises.

Now, why would Reuters characterize these as being "very rare"?

Because, of course, it goes against the Reuters template to characterize Palestinian Arabs as anything but victims or resistance fighters. To even imagine PalArabs attacking the very agency that pretends to help them the most goes against Reuters' editorial grain. So it is compelled to point out that specific attacks against UNRWA are "very rare" and completely ignore not only the numerous attacks that have occurred, but also the many attacks against other humanitarian organizations and NGOs that have made it enormously difficult for aid workers to do their jobs in Gaza and forced most of them to leave.

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Notable postings

The value of perspective at Treppenwitz
Analyzing the Mecca agreement at Yourish
Cappuccinos for Peace at Soccer Dad
Followup on Post-Academic Freedom at My Right Word

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An oldie but a goodie: The Gaza Arab "state" of 1948

Looking through the logs, I see that someone from France found my blog by Googling "gaza arab government 1948." They found this post from December 2005 which unfortunately had lost all its graphics. I just restored them, and the article shows yet again that there is nothing new under the sun.

In brief: in 1948, the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem set up his own government in Gaza, complete with a flag. It was recognized by Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen.

When Israel counterattacked Egypt in late 1948, half the cabinet resigned and all of them bravely fled to Cairo.

It was such a spectacular failure that no Palestinian Arab mentions this original and only "Palestinian state" today out of embarrassment.

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14 weeks in a row

For the fourteenth consecutive week, more Palestinian Arabs were killed by their own people than by Israel. This week's score is about 5-2 (following PCHR's Friday-to-Thursday counting, and reflecting an uncertainty of exactly when two women murdered their own infants over the past weekend.)

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Answering Joseph Massad

Joseph Massad, an associate professor at Columbia University, wrote an article for Al-Ahram Weekly and reprinted at Electronic Intifada about Israel's "racism." Since he is far brighter than the typical Neanderthal that writes for EI it is worthwhile to review his argument and show that not only is Israel not racist, but his claims amount to a form of anti-Semitism.

His thesis is laid out in the first two paragraphs:

Israel's struggle for peace is a sincere one. In fact, Israel desires to live at peace not only with its neighbours, but also and especially with its own Palestinian population, and with Palestinians whose lands its military occupies by force. Israel's desire for peace is not only rhetorical but also substantive and deeply psychological. With few exceptions, prominent Zionist leaders since the inception of colonial Zionism have desired to establish peace with the Palestinians and other Arabs whose lands they slated for colonisation and settlement. The only thing Israel has asked for, and continues to ask for in order to end the state of war with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours, is that all recognise its right to be a racist state that discriminates by law against Palestinians and other Arabs and grants differential legal rights and privileges to its own Jewish citizens and to all other Jews anywhere. The resistance that the Palestinian people and other Arabs have launched against Israel's right to be a racist state is what continues to stand between Israel and the peace for which it has struggled and to which it has been committed for decades. Indeed, this resistance is nothing less than the "New anti- Semitism".

Israel is willing to do anything to convince Palestinians and other Arabs of why it needs and deserves to have the right to be racist. Even at the level of theory, and before it began to realise itself on the ground, the Zionist colonial project sought different means by which it could convince the people whose lands it wanted to steal and against whom it wanted to discriminate to accept as understandable its need to be racist. All it required was that the Palestinians "recognise its right to exist" as a racist state. Military methods were by no means the only persuasive tools available; there were others, including economic and cultural incentives. Zionism from the start offered some Palestinians financial benefits if they would accede to its demand that it should have the right to be racist. Indeed, the State of Israel still does. Many Palestinian officials in the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation have been offered and have accepted numerous financial incentives to recognise this crucial Israeli need. Those among the Palestinians who regrettably continue to resist are being penalised for their intransigence by economic choking and starvation, supplemented by regular bombardment and raids, as well as international isolation. These persuasive methods, Israel hopes, will finally convince a recalcitrant population to recognise the dire need of Israel to be a racist state. After all, Israeli racism only manifests in its flag, its national anthem, and a bunch of laws that are necessary to safeguard Jewish privilege, including the Law of Return (1950), the Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of the State's Property (1951), the Law of Citizenship (1952), the Status Law (1952), the Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), the Construction and Building Law (1965), and the 2002 temporary law banning marriage between Israelis and Palestinians of the occupied territories.

Notice how Massad states Israel's racism as a fact, and only later does he make his argument. The argument is fundamentally that since Israel is meant to be a Jewish state it is by definition racist against non-Jews, and he brings as proof various laws and national symbols that mean to maintain Israel as a Jewish state.

The rest of his long and articulate article boils down to some strawman arguments as to why Israelis believe that they have the right to be racist.

Nevertheless, he does make his argument, and the crux of the issue is that it is impossible to have a Jewish state that is not racist, by definition.

First of all, the professor's use of the word "racist" is faulty and he knows this quite well. Racism is discrimination based on race, and of course neither Jews nor Arabs form a race. A good portion of Jews in Israel are descended from Arab Jews. The word is nothing but an inflammatory rhetorical device and his use of it is as absurd as those who redefine anti-Semitism as "hating Semites."

His argument would be much stronger, more accurate and not nearly as inflammatory if he used the word "discriminatory." But since that word can apply to pretty much every nation and clearly defined ethnic, racial, religious or gender group on the planet, he purposefully chooses to use a word that forces a more visceral reaction from the reader. Notice how his entire argument loses its punch if you substitute "discriminatory" for "racist" - he is not arguing based on facts, he is inciting. This is more than dishonest.

Back to his argument, framed correctly: is there discrimination in Israel against Arabs? Well, yes, there is. It is not news that there is a tension between the desire for a Jewish state and a desire for a state where all citizens are treated absolutely equally.

What Massad dismisses is the need for a Jewish state:

It is important to stress that this Zionist rationale is correct on all counts if one accepts the proposition of Jewish exceptionalism. Remember that Zionism and Israel are very careful not to generalise the principles that justify Israel's need to be racist but are rather vehement in upholding it as an exceptional principle. It is not that no other people has been oppressed historically, it is that Jews have been oppressed more. It is not that no other people's cultural and physical existence has been threatened; it is that the Jews' cultural and physical existence is threatened more. This quantitative equation is key to why the world, and especially Palestinians, should recognise that Israel needs and deserves to have the right to be a racist state. If the Palestinians, or anyone else, reject this, then they must be committed to the annihilation of the Jewish people physically and culturally, not to mention that they would be standing against the Judeo-Christian God.

Here is one of his straw man arguments. Do Jews deny the right for, say, Kurds or Armenians or any historically oppressed people to have their own state? His thesis of Jewish "exceptionalism" would imply that Jews want only an exclusive Jewish state and that no other people deserve one - a claim that is manifestly absurd.

To deny the right for Jews to have a state of their own, while (in this case, implicitly) allowing other peoples to have their own states, is simply a form of anti-semitism. One can argue that a Jewish state should not have been established in Palestine because of other issues - but this is not Massad's argument. He is the one who is suffering from exceptionalism, by denying only a single group of people the right to have a state where they suffer no discrimination.

If he argues just as strenuously against Saudi Arabia's discriminatory laws, or the fact that the Queen of England is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England or against the fact that many European flags have crosses - then he might not be guilty of the "racism" that he accuses Israel of. But as far as I can tell, his writings on the topic exclusively speak about the Jewish state, not any other group of people.

His answer to this is not an answer - it is simply the use of the word "racism" as a club in the way that he accuses Jews of using the term "anti-semitism:"

As for those among us who insist that no resolution will ever be possible before Israel revokes all its racist laws and does away with all its racist symbols, thus opening the way for a non-racist future for Palestinians and Jews in a decolonised bi-national state, Israel and its apologists have a ready-made response that has redefined the meaning of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is no longer the hatred of and discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group; in the age of Zionism, we are told, anti-Semitism has metamorphosed into something that is more insidious. Today, Israel and its Western defenders insist, genocidal anti-Semitism consists mainly of any attempt to take away and to refuse to uphold the absolute right of Israel to be a racist Jewish state.

His sleight of hand is in never defining "racism" in any meaningful way, and then affixing the reprehensible label exclusively on Jewish Zionists repeatedly. It is a classic example of Arab projection. Forgetting the fact that non-Jews in Israel have more rights than minorities in most nations do (and certainly in Israel's neighbors), ignoring the fact that Israeli Arabs have risen to unimaginable political heights - even without those arguments which he would probably dismiss as apologetics, the fundamental issue remains that Massad denies Jews the rights that he seems to allow all others.

And his repeated misuse of the word "racist" shows clearly that his argument is fundamentally an emotional one clothed in pseudo-rationalism, rather than based on any facts.

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Hamas: "Gov't Will Support Resistance"

From the webpage of the Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas "military wing"):

The Palestinian new government will continue to support "resistance," according to excerpts from the new government's platform.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh agreed Wednesday on the make-up of the new government, ending weeks of arguments over the candidate for the powerful interior ministry post.

Our Sources reported that the new platform states that, "The government confirms that the resistance is a legitimate right for the Palestinian people."

It goes onto say that, "halting resistance depends on ending the occupation and achieving freedom and the right of return and independence."

The new government also recognizes that "the key to security and stability in the region is in the ending of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, recognition of the right to Palestinian self-determination."

Thus, the statement confirmed, "the government will work with the international community to end the occupation, and to return the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people."

The government "holds fast to the rights of Palestinian refugees, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their land and belongings."

So not only did Hamas completely win in its vision of how the PA should be run, they are bragging about how they can continue terror attacks according to this document.

Stupidly, the Deutche Press Agency backgrounder on this agreement says:

- Section I, clause 4, says the government 'holds on to the right of refugees to return to their land and property.'

The phrase leaves out whether that should be to all of British mandatory Palestine, including what is now Israel, or to a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza only.

As if that is even in doubt.

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Arafat's webpage

The first link in the "Palestinian National Information Center" webpage points to the President Arafat Homepage.

Here you can find a biography without any mention of his death, an account of his daily chores, and a disturbing photo gallery where we can see the President among his possible lovers:

I especially like his Honors and Awards page, which states in its entirety:

Main Orders & Awards

• Nobel Prize with Isaac Rabin and Shimon Peres
• Various honorary awards
• Honorary Ph.D. degree / the University of Jamaat Islamiya in Haidar Abad, India
• Honorary awards by Arab intimates and foreign friends

I may put on my resume, "Various honorary awards from friends."

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Arabs for book burning

We mentioned last week about a Palestinian Arab folktale book that was being banned and destroyed by the PalArab Education Ministry, because of some fairly subtle sexual imagery (it also had scatological references, but those were not controversial from what I can tell.)

After this hit the international press, the ministry reversed its decision.

Ma'an News Agency has a poll on its English website asking:

Was the decision to destroy the folk story collection 'Speak Bird, Speak Again'

...sensible to avoid corrupting the youth?	5.56% (5)
...indicative of a necessity for censorship?	1.11% (1)
...a "bad omen" for free speech?	93.33% (84)

Not a huge number of replies, but their English speaking readers are solidly against censorship.

But the question they ask on their Arabic website, and their answers, are a bit different:

Do you support the destruction of the book 'Speak Bird, Speak Again'؟

Yesه	48.52% (7093)
Noافه	43.89% (6416)
Don't knowف	7.59% (1110)

Total votes : 14619

Now, this is obviously not a scientific poll, but on the other hand the only people who can participate are those who have access to the Internet and read the most "moderate" Palestinian Arabic news source. And still a plurality of these more modern Arabic speakers support not only the censorship but the actual destruction of the book!

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PalArab unity news

Fatah and Hamas are stumbling slowly towards approving a "unity government." Of course, they are still killing each other.

Yesterday's unity news:

Gaza - Ma'an - As Palestinians edged a step closer to having a national unity government, clashes between the rival factions of Hamas and Fatah erupted again on Wednesday evening in the Gaza Strip, leaving one Fatah militant dead, and nine other Palestinians injured, and 12 abducted.

Medical sources in Gaza have confirmed the death of Muhammad T'emeh, 25, an activist in the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah movement. T'emeh died from wounds he sustained late on Wednesday night in confrontations between members of Fatah and Hamas in Beit Lahiya in the north of the Gaza Strip.

T'emeh was shot in his feet which led to the severing of his arteries. He arrived at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in a serious condition.

Also on Wednesday evening, a series of tit-for-tat abductions took place between the two sides, Fatah and Hamas. 12 people were abducted in total, of whom four were released and eight remain in custody of their rivals. Of the remaining eight abductees, four are from Fatah and four from Hamas.

At the same time, armed clashes raged between the two sides, which led to the injury of nine Palestinians.

Our count of PalArabs violently killed this year by each other now stands at 137.

UPDATE: A 30-year old PalArab was killed in a weapons smuggling tunnel between Egypt and Gaza. 138.

UPDATE 2: Two members of "Palestinian military intelligence" were taken out of their car in Gaza and shot in their heads. One died so far. 139.

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French and German universities host Terror U.

In the wake of yesterday's announcement of University of Manchester "twinning" with An-Najah University (a source of terror and "art exhibits" that celebrate blowing up Jews,) today the Arabic Ma'an News says that the University of Frankfurt and a French university are also adding cultural ties with Terror U. Autotranslated:

As part of a cultural exchange Palestinian French-German delegation participated Najah National University in cultural exchange forum, which was organized in each of the universities of Frankfurt in Germany, Berbinieh in France during the period from February 17-March 5, 2007.

Regarding the goal of this partnership Professor Samer Aqrouk it aims to provide information on all the issues of civil society and democratic life, and the issue of citizenship in the Palestinian society and Palestinian immigrants, their whereabouts, their living conditions, as well as the occupation practices and violations against the rights of the Palestinian people exercised, and the separation wall and its impact on the lives of Palestinian rights, as working papers were submitted by the students participants on topics of religion and state (citizenship), and Islam's position on the State-old and new citizens, between religion and international law, and religious freedom in the Arab and Palestinian artists and Palestinian identity, and good governance (good), women in Islam.

He added that during this participation screening of a series of documentary films namely : immigrants in the country, which exposes the suffering of the students at the checkpoints and in particular the students of the An-Najah University, and a Palestinian film reviews occupation practices, and the olive tree, which addresses the issue of how to falsify Palestinian history, as presented to the lives of immigrants living in the Palestinian territories and abroad journey in the search for identity, in addition to the documentaries the university, and the film title (story), which reviews developments of the Palestinian cause since the year 1917 until the year 2005,

Professor Samer it was during the visit to meet with Vice President of the University of Frankfurt, director of cultural relations and external been put forward a set of ideas for future cooperation.

I'm sure that the "how to falsify Palestinian history" was a mistranslation but it is more truthful than was intended, especially as they feed their European hosts propaganda about Israeli atrocities.

I always find it interesting that for a people with such a long an illustrious history, the Palestinian Arabs always seem to start their history lessons in the 20th century.

And somehow I doubt that An-Najah mentioned how many of its famed alumni died as "martyrs" while murdering Jews.

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More unease over fundamentalist Christian support for Israel

I've mentioned before that I have always been a bit uneasy about the support that fundamentalist Christians give to Israel. As I wrote then:

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.

Today's Huffington Post has an article about a featured speaker at the AIPAC conference, Pastor John Hagee, leader of "Christians United for Israel." It describes him as an "anti-semitic Holocaust revisionist," and while this appears to me to be a gross exaggeration, there is enough about Pastor Hagee that is troubling enough.

This article seems to lay out most of the arguments against Hagee. Reading it critically, one can seen that many of the complaints are a little contrived - it tends to draw lines between what he has said and what the author assumes believes, in terms of the "rapture" and other Christian end-times theology, where presumably most Jews will be killed in a final apocalyptic battle. The problem that liberals have with Hagee are probably far more against his evangelical and conservative beliefs than against his purported anti-semitism.

For the other side of the story, this article shows the face he puts on for Jewish audiences. He explicitly rejects "replacement theology" and claims to be 100% supportive of Jews as well as Israel.

Nevertheless, enough of what he has said and done - including the fact that he set up a Christian broadcasting station in Israel to preach to Jews - makes it worthwhile to ask the question of whether Israel needs supporters like Hagee, not to mention whether he should be greeted as a hero by AIPAC. Politics may make strange bedfellows but that doesn't mean that one will not regret it in the morning.

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University of Manchester twinning with Nablus terror college

From Ma'an News:

Nablus - Ma'an - An-Najah National University in the northern West Bank city of Nablus is preparing to twin with the universities of Manchester and London through cooperation between the student unions in these universities.

The University of Manchester Student Union passed a motion in its entirety on 7 March to go ahead with a twinning agreement with their counterparts at An-Najah University.

An-Najah University is where the infamous exhibit reconstructing the Sbarro's terror attack in Jerusalem was held. Here's a video of that exhibit.

In addition, An-Najah has itself produced a few suicide terrorists and is itself a hotbed of Hamas terror. Besides the disgusting Sbarro's exhibit complete with dismembered limbs and the "kosher" sign, Hamas there re-enacted a suicide bombing in an Afula mall and an attack on a bus that killed 10 - all done by terrorists who attended An-Najah.

Not that these facts would matter much to Manchester.

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Today's apartheid news

From the European Jewish Press. Notice the people being quoted:

LONDON (EJP)--- At a landmark conference in London this week leading figures within the British Jewish community explored how to increase charitable donations to Israeli Arabs.

Speaking at the day-long event on Thursday, senior community leaders said boosting the status and prosperity of the Arabs, who make up 20 percent of Israeli society, is vital to the country’s democracy.

Significantly, the event was backed by the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Organisation, and the Ministry of Education in Israel.

The Pears Foundation, a Jewish organisation which says it "seeks to promote human and civil rights for all citizens of Israel" organised the event, and said it was designed to bring community leaders together to discuss how best to increase funding to the Arab sector.

...
In a letter to the Pears Foundation ahead of the meeting at London’s Lincoln Centre, Yuli Tamir, the Israeli Education Minister, welcomed the initiative as "enlightened and progressive".

"Israeli leaders have long understood the importance of creating an equal and inclusive society," she wrote.

"Enlightened and progressive initiatives such as this demonstrate the commitment and concern that many Jewish people around the world share with the inhabitants of the State of Israel to create a just, stable and democratic country."

Ze’ev Bielski, executive chairman of the World Zionist Organisation and Jewish Agency, wrote to say: "It is my honour and pleasure to offer my blessings on the occasion of the London symposium on Israeli Arabs.”

Yes - Israeli Jews are raising money from Jews abroad to help out Israeli Arabs.

Isn't that exactly what one would expect from an apartheid state and representatives of a racist religion?

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Israel gives Hamas money as a "good will gesture"

From Arutz-7:

(IsraelNN.com) A source in the Hamas terrorist organization said Tuesday that its operatives were paid with part of the funds transferred by Israel to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

“The [Hamas] Executive Force was a part of the security services which received part of their salaries, just like the other forces,” said the Hamas source. An international boycott of the Hamas-led PA government is still in force inasmuch as the terror group continues to refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist, renounce terrorism and honor past PA agreements.

Israel released $100 million to Abbas as part of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s “good-will gesture” to the PA in the wake of his first meeting with the PA Chairman last December. Abbas aides had no comment on the report.

Remember, the $100,000,000 that Israel gave to Abbas was supposed to be earmarked exclusively towards humanitarian causes. Here's how it was reported back in January:

Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said the money would be earmarked for humanitarian needs and a U.S.-backed programme to strengthen Abbas's presidential guard.

It will not be used to make long-overdue salary payments to Palestinian public sector workers, hard hit by a Western and Israeli embargo of the Hamas-led government, they said.

Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said the funds would be channelled to humanitarian projects and the private sector, but declined to say if any would go towards boosting Abbas's security.

The decision not to allocate funds for salaries angered Hamas, which said the money should be distributed by the Palestinian finance ministry.

"We reject any Israeli conditions on regaining this money. This money belongs to the Palestinian people," Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas told reporters after Friday prayers.

Not to mention that every dollar that goes towards "salaries" frees up more suitcase dollars that go towards weapons.

It has been clear for some time that Hamas completely controls the PA and that Abbas is at best a figurehead president. Every dime that comes to the PA in the form of "aid" is effectively boosting Hamas, directly or indirectly.

And yet it still keeps coming.

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Marvin Kalb paper on asymmetrical conflict

Marvin Kalb wrote a scholarly article on "The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media As A Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict."

This is a topic I mentioned a number of times last summer during the war, and he does a very nice job surveying exactly what happened during the war and how the media portrayed it. Here is a sample:

For any journalist worth his or her salt, this should spark a respectful moment of reflection. Not only did this new and awesome technology enable journalists to bring the ugly reality of war to both belligerents (and others around the world), serving as a powerful influence on public opinion and governmental attitudes and actions; it also became an extremely valuable intelligence asset for both Israel and Hezbollah, and Hezbollah especially exploited it.

If we are to collect lessons from this war, one of them would have to be that a closed society can control the image and the message that it wishes to convey to the rest of the world far more effectively than can an open society, especially one engaged in an existential struggle for survival. An open society becomes the victim of its own openness. During the war, no Hezbollah secrets were disclosed, but in Israel secrets were leaked, rumors spread like wildfire, leaders felt obliged to issue hortatory appeals often based on incomplete knowledge, and journalists were driven by the fire of competition to publish and broadcast unsubstantiated information. A closed society conveys the impression of order and discipline; an open society, buffeted by the crosswinds of reality and rumor, criticism and revelation, conveys the impression of disorder, chaos and uncertainty, but this impression can be misleading.

It was hardly an accident that Hezbollah, in this circumstance, projected a very special narrative for the world beyond its ken—a narrative that depicted a selfless movement touched by God and blessed by a religious fervor and determination to resist the enemy, the infidel, and ultimately achieve a “divine victory,” no matter the cost in life and treasure. The narrative contained no mention of Hezbollah’s dependence upon Iran and Syria for a steady flow of arms and financial resources.

For Hezbollah, the 2006 summertime war was more than a battle against a mortal enemy; it was a crucial battle in a broader, ongoing war, linking religious fundamentalism to Arab nationalism. Will victory be defined as an open door to modernity or to a new caliphate? That is a key question. The whole Arab world is often framed as a “politically traumatized region,” wrote Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland, caught in the “morbid interim between the dying of an exhausted political and social order and the birth of a still-unknown way of life.”2 Hezbollah saw itself as a resolute leader in shaping the Arab future.

Like Hamas and al-Qaeda, it appreciated the central importance of the communications revolution sweeping through the region. These three radical groups believe, according to Steve Fondacaro, an American military expert, that it is on the “information battlefield” that the historic struggle between Western modernity and Islamic fundamentalism will ultimately be resolved. “The new element of power that has emerged in the last thirty to forty years and has subsumed the rest is information,” he said. “A revolution happened without us knowing or paying attention. Perception truly now is reality, and our enemies know it.”3

It is worth reading. A summary can be seen in the Jerusalem Post article about this paper.

Some of my postings on similar themes at the time:
Bill Maher: The world IS Mel Gibson
The perfect weapon
Three more asymmetries and its companion piece, The elephant in the room of international law.

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On money and responsibility

Although we've seen this before, this article in the Telegraph does a good job in describing exactly how screwed up the Palestinian Arab finances are and how it is nearly impossible to fix the problem:

A former World Bank official who is about to become the Palestinian finance minister has warned foreign donors that he has no idea where much of their money has been spent.

In the 14 months since Hamas won elections, Palestinian finances have descended into such chaos that there is now no way to confirm whether aid is going to its stated purpose, according to Salam Fayyad, 54, who is poised to start his second stint as treasury chief once the rival Hamas and Fatah factions finalise a "unity" government.

An estimated £362.5 million has flowed into Palestinian government coffers from abroad since the election that brought Hamas to power and ushered in a period of internal conflict that came close to all-out civil war.

The European Union alone provided £59.5 million last year and sent a far greater sum directly to hospitals, power generation projects and to families in need.

Now, Palestinian Authority spending is out of control, salaries are being paid to workers who never turn up, and nobody can track where the money is going, according to Mr Fayyad.

There was no way to be certain that aid was being used as intended, he admitted. "Please write this: no one can give donors that assurance. Why? Because the system is in a state of total disrepair."

...Ironically foreign aid to Palestinians increased (in 2006), either carried across the border into Gaza in cash-stuffed briefcases by Hamas officials, or through a special financial channel to the office of President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the rival Fatah faction with whom the West is prepared to work.

As a result, Mr Fayyad said, incoming funds have been widely dispersed with no central authority to monitor them. Some have gone to people who do not appear on the Palestinian budget ledger. "Where is the control?" asked Mr Fayyad. "It's gone. Where is all the transparency? It's gone."

He said his first objective would be to make the finance ministry the sole conduit for incoming aid, and to reinstate proper audits. That meant no more financial back channels or border smuggling, he said. "It's not my intention to manage the Palestinian budget system through the brown bag." The Palestinian Authority's unchecked proliferation of government jobs - growing by 11 per cent a year - is another threat to its existence, the World Bank said. Mr Fayyad acknowledged that the problem of thousands of absentee employees was "serious", but said it would take up to five years to bring wages into line with income.

He was reluctant to say how he would do that, perhaps understandably, given that unpaid security forces have a habit of barging into government offices with guns blazing, and that gunmen recently shot up the outside of his office.

Now some of Mr Abbas's presidential guard is assigned to his premises - a stark reminder of the connection between restoring security and bringing finances under control. "This will be extremely difficult," he said. "It's virtually impossible."

No doubt the EU will find a solution - give them more money to fix the problems they have of not acting responsibly with their money.

The world community has limited resources to take care of problems. For some unfathomable reason, the corrupt and terror-infested Palestinian Authority and its supporters is a major beneficiary of the world's largesse, and the PalArabs are the highest per-capita recipients of aid - more than Darfur, more than sub-Saharan Africa, more than any place there are truly starving families with no resources at all. What makes the PalArabs so special?

The answer is depressing. The decades of terror plus anti-Israel propaganda has kept the issue of the "poor Palestinians" on the front pages and on the front burner. Infiltrating academia and journalism, aided with a healthy dose of genteel anti-semitism, the idea that the PalArabs are terribly oppressed even as they spend all of their money building bombs and rockets has taken such a hold on the world that it is simply accepted fact.

What is missing from the world's telling of the Palestinian Arab narrative is the idea of responsibility. The PalArabs have a free pass - they can hijack airplanes, they can cheer thousands of American deaths, they can dance as Scud rockets fly towards Tel Aviv, they can praise people who blow up pizza shops and birthday parties - and they get rewarded by the world.

And here's a classic example. They get more money after they elect a terrorist government. They have a long history of squirreling away billions of dollars, of diverting money towards terror, of hiring phantom "policemen" by the tens of thousands, of destroying their own economy.

And yet the world keeps giving them more. The trite phrase "throwing good money after bad" never had more relevance.

No one would treat even family members with such deference.

Is it even possible that the PalArabs would do something so irresponsible that the world community would say "enough!"? Apparently not, because it is hard to imagine them acting more irresponsibly than they already are.

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Al-Qaeda and Hamas argue who hates Jews more

One of the surest ways to get someone's attention in terror circles is to call him "Zionist."

Being a murderer is fine; blowing up children is praiseworthy and raping Jewish women is a great way to fight. Even killing your own wife or sister under the correct circumstances has its advocates.

But no crime is so heinous as to imply that you might possibly not be 100% supportive of the genocide of millions of Jews who live in the Middle East.

In the latest episode, Al Qaeda weighed in on the still-fictional "unity government" between Hamas and Fatah. Ayman Al Zawahri accused Hamas of serving US and Israeli interests by saying that they might agree to a cease fire with Israel under ridiculous and absurd conditions.

Evidently, in many parts of the world, them's fightin' words.

Hamas today fell all over itself to reassure Al Qaeda that its terrorist bona-fides are unimpeachable.

‘We will not betray promises we made to God to continue the path of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine,’ Hamas said in a statement, in a clear reference to Israel as well as to the occupied West Bank.

In its statement Hamas said it continued to be a ‘movement of resistance, seekers of martyrdom’ and that its ‘principles will never be changed’.

‘Zawahri’s recent statements were wrong ... Resistance is our strategy. How and when? This depends on the reality at the time and our corresponding view of things,’ Hamas said.

‘So be assured doctor Ayman, and all those who love Palestine like yourself, that Hamas is still the group you knew when it was founded and it will never abandon its path.’

Glad they cleared that up.

Although no matter how clearly Hamas says its goal, the EU and Russia still want so very hard to believe otherwise.

The Hamas statement above was a bit too apologetic, and not in the hallowed Arab tradition. Usually one expects something a bit more combative. And sure enough, the Hamas website attacks Al-Zawahri in the time-honored manner, accusing him of not caring about Palestinian Arabs and of helping the Jews:

The director general of palestinedialogue.net, one of the most famous electronic websites of the Hamas movement, who introduced himself as Dr. Othman, has accused Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, of being behind the elimination of the first Palestinian group of Al-Qaeda members and the dismissal of all Palestinians who used to work for Bin Laden's institutions everywhere.

Othman said that whoever knows Zawahiri will know that this man was behind the planned dismissal of all Palestinians and the employment of Egyptians instead. Dr. Othman added that some of these newly-recruited Egyptians were from the Egyptian intelligence.

Othman added that Zawahiri used to deceive Bin Laden by telling him that he has some Al-Qaeda groups working in Palestine; then, when Palestinians contacted Bin Laden, he refused to hire them as Al-Qaeda members because he believed what Zawahiri told him about members of Al-Qaeda already working in Palestine, while this was never true. Zawahiri even had dealings with the Egyptian intelligence, such as handing some of the Palestinians in Egypt over to them to exchange for Zawahiri's friends, Othman added.

Othman also confirmed that Zawahiri has detested Palestinians, and Hamas, for over ten years, when he became the second man in Al-Qaeda. He even used to talk about his hatred to Hamas amongst his followers, Dr. Othman said. "He never tried to understand that the Hamas movement is a huge movement, and it intends to make changes, and it inspires its believers from the great Islam," he said.

Dr. Othman added: "If Zawahiri understands politics, he should play the game from all sides, not only the weapons game; we learned that from the great prophet Mohammad." He also urged Zawahiri to respect others when he speaks about them. Othman said to Zawahri, "We will respect you when you stop attacking Hamas, who are running a revolution in Palestine." He added that he will respect Zawahiri, "When he stops supporting the Jews and stops the incitement against Hamas; it would have been better for him to keep silent instead of throwing out these words about Hamas".

Othman ended by saying: "The people used to like Al-Qaeda because it launched a war on the US, who is supporting the occupation in Palestine, Afghanistan, and now Iraq, but this has gone after Al-Qaeda struck the innocent people in the hotels of Amman. These people, whom we still meet their family members and still pay condolences to them. What happens in Amman is a witness to the blindness of Zawahiri and his group's weapons, which don’t differentiate between people."

You see, Zawahiri? Hamas is trying to destroy Israel not only through terror but also through politics - just like Mohammed!

You've really got to brush up on your Koran!

UPDATE: I found the actual text of the original Zawahiri note about Hamas. He certainly can dish it out!

I am sorry to face the Muslim nation with the truth, and to tell it please accept our condolences for (the loss) of the HAMAS leadership. It has fallen in the swamp of capitulation. In the past, at the time of Al-Nakbah , Hasan al-Banna, whom we pray God would regard as a martyr, and Shaykh Amin al-Husayni, may God have mercy on their souls, gathered the fedayeen groups and marched toward Palestine. Now, at the time of the deal, the HAMAS leadership is handing over to the Jews most of Palestine.
..
The HAMAS leadership has finally joined the train of Al Sadat for humiliation and capitulation. The HAMAS leadership has sold out Palestine, and earlier it had sold out referring to Shari'ah as the source of jurisdiction. It has sold all that to be allowed to maintain one-third of the government.

And what kind of government is this that does not have control over entry or exit, and movement between its two parts without a permit from Israel? It is a government whose prime minister is not allowed to enter his homeland and is not allowed to do so unless the Egyptians mediate between him and the Israeli defense minister. He would stay outside in the cold in front of the Rafah crossing until the Israeli minister gives approval.

For the sake of retaining one third of the seats in this ridiculous government, HAMAS leadership has abandoned the rule of Shar'iah. It has also ceded most of the Palestinian territories. For one-third of the seats of this ridiculous government, they abandoned the resistance movement and accepted the government of bargaining; they abandoned the movement of martyrdom operations and accepted the government of respect for international resolutions; they abandoned the heroic struggler movement and accepted the domesticated beggar government; they abandoned the movement of penetrating the enemy throngs with explosives and accepted the government of playing with words in the halls of palaces. For a third of the seats in t he government, they abandoned the rule of Shari'ah and bowed to the international legitimacy....

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Washington Post lionizes far-left Israeli historian

Here is a classic example of a "news story" that serves no purpose but to promote the ideological agenda of the reporter.

In todays' Washington Post there is an article about Ilan Pappé, the revisionist Israeli historian and lecturer at the University of Haifa, by Scott Wilson. While the article starts off as if it is going to contrast the differing ideological journeys of Pappe and Benny Morris, it ends up being nothing but an adoring profile of Pappé - even as the article admits that he has no following in Israel itself:

Ilan Pappé, one of the revisionist scholars known in Israel as the "new historians," began his career in some of the same wartime archives as Benny Morris. But his own ideological journey has taken him to the far shore of Israel's political gulf and nearly complete isolation.

The two disagree not on the facts about Israel's founding that they helped uncover but on what lessons they hold nearly six decades later. Morris maintains the rise of radical Islam is largely responsible for the region's strife; Pappe is virtually alone among Jewish Israelis in blaming the Zionist project to create a Jewish state in the Arab Middle East for the lack of peace.

"Zionism is far more dangerous to the safety of the Middle East than Islam," Pappe says.

The 52-year-old historian is a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, which overlooks the thriving port where Pappe's parents arrived from Germany seven decades ago. Many of the relatives who stayed behind perished in the Holocaust. Pappe's family was apolitical. He served in the Golan Heights during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

What Pappe calls his "journey to the margins and beyond" began at Oxford University, where under the guidance of the renowned Arab historian Albert Hourani he wrote a doctoral thesis that became his first book, "Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict." He mixed with Palestinian intellectuals when the Palestine Liberation Organization was outlawed in Israel.

"My research debunked all of the lessons about Israel's creation that I had been raised on," Pappe says.

In his view, Israeli professors were not criticizing Israel's occupation of Palestinian land with the same stridency in academic conferences abroad as they did in the op-ed pages back home. He increasingly believed that land included all of Israel, not just the territories Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East War.

In 1996, Pappe joined Hadash, the mostly Arab anti-Zionist communist party and ran unsuccessfully for parliament. His work two years later organizing campus events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of "the catastrophe," as Palestinians call the 1948-49 war, placed him at odds with the university's politically powerful Land of Israel Studies department.

The university president began calling for his resignation.

"The debate that year prepared the way for the big battle -- the second intifada," Pappe says. "I looked around and I was alone."

Relatives stopped speaking to him over his rejection of the Jewish state in the dedication of his 2003 book, "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples." He dedicated it to his sons: "may they live not only in a modern Palestine but in a peaceful one."

"When I was struggling against public denial of what occurred in 1948, I was still hopeful," Pappe says. "But the fact that denial has disappeared is even more worrying. It means that my outlook and theirs is unbridgeable. This is a basic problem of morality and ethics now."

Israel's war with the radical Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah last summer convinced Pappe of something he suspected for years: His views are irrelevant inside Israel.

...

He has accepted a post at the University of Exeter in England and will move there later this year.

"It will be an attempt to see if one can live outside this place," Pappe says.

Now, why is it newsworthy to profile a lone Israeli historian, who unsuccessfully ran for Knesset in an Arab Communist list and who calls for Israel to be dismantled? The only possible reason is that the author of the story agrees with him and tries to make him look like a romantic "lone wolf" telling the truth against his hundreds of colleagues who disagree.

Pappé himself hardly has impeccable credentials. As CAMERA shows, he freely admits that he lets his ideology cloud his historical judgment.

There is no historian in the world who is objective. I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what's happened. ("An Interview of Ilan Pappé," Baudouin Loos, Le Soir [Bruxelles],Nov. 29, 1999)

I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings...(Ibid)

Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers. (Ibid)

The debate between us is on one level between historians who believe they are purely objective reconstructers of the past, like [Benny] Morris, and those who claim that they are subjective human beings striving to tell their own version of the past, like myself. (“Benny Morris’s Lies About My Book,” Ilan Pappé, Response to Morris’ critique of Pappé’s book, “A History of Palestine” published in the New Republic, March 22, 2004, History News Network, April 5, 2004)

[Historical] Narratives... when written by historians involved deeply in the subject matter they write about, such as in the case of Israeli historians who write about the Palestine conflict, is motivated also... by a deep involvement and a wish to make a point. This point is called ideology or politics. (Ibid)

Yes, I use Palestinian sources for the Intifada: they seem to me to be more reliable, I admit. (Ibid)

Beyond that, while the WaPo brings up Morris, they fail to even contextualize their disagreements to allow the reader some information on the matters. Morris has said about Pappé:

..Unfortunately, much of what Pappé tries to sell his readers is complete fabrication...

...In Pappé's account, there is no faulting the Palestinians for regularly assaulting the Zionist enterprise...The Palestinians are forever victims, the Zionists are forever "brutal colonizers"...

...The multiplicity of mistakes on each page is a product of both Pappé's historical methodology and his political proclivities...

...For those enamored with subjectivity and in thrall to historical relativism, a fact is not a fact and accuracy is unattainable. Why grope for the truth? Narrativity is all.

Shouldn't an article about Pappé mention some of the real, objective problems people have with him rather than frame it solely as being against his ideology (as reprehensible as it may be)? Especially egregious are Wilson's quoting of Pappe, "My research debunked all of the lessons about Israel's creation that I had been raised on," without a single indication that his research and conclusions are deeply flawed.

Even more unbelievably, the caption under his picture quotes him as saying "Zionism is far more dangerous . . . than Islam," going even beyond his own sickening quote about the safety of the Middle East as if to support the view that Zionism is a threat to the entire world.

This article is incredibly irresponsible journalism - not just shoddy, but ultimately deceptive. It hides more facts than it reveals, and as such it is the exact opposite of what journalism should be.

UPDATE: I didn't realize from my Internet search that this article was a companion piece on a larger article about Benny Morris. Even so, the point remains - the article about Morris is not shy with quoting people who disagree with him and why; it plays up his questioning of the standard Israeli historical narrative and it subtly demeans his more recent skepticism about the prospects of peace with Arabs. In other words, it pooh-poohs Morris' hawkish views while it embraces his findings that make Israel look bad, just as in the Pappe article it embraces his anti-Israel views and doesn't bother to find another viewpoint.

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PA draft constitution

I just saw this, even though it is from 2003.

Under pressure from the US, the PA created a draft constitution. It is a very strange collection of lies to placate the West and interesting truths about their goals buried in Western-style rhetoric.

Article (1)

The State of Palestine is a sovereign, independent republic. Its territory is an indivisible unit based upon its borders on the eve of June 4, 1967, without prejudice to the rights guaranteed by the international resolutions relative to Palestine. All residents of this territory shall be subject to Palestinian law exclusively.

How exactly are Gaza and the West Bank indivisible? Or is this a backhanded way of saying that it includes all of Israel?

Article (3)

Palestine is a peace loving state that condemns terror, occupation and aggression. It calls for the resolution of international and regional problems by peaceful means. It abides by the Charter of the United Nations.

This is a prime example of that famous PalArab sense of humor.

Article (4)

Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine and seat of its public authorities.

Notice it doesn't say "East Jerusalem" or "The Old City." Hmmmm.

Article (5)

Arabic and Islam are the official Palestinian language and religion. Christianity and all other monotheistic religions shall be equally revered and respected. The Constitution guarantees equality in rights and duties to all citizens irrespective of their religious belief.

All three of these sentences contradict each other. If Islam is the official religion, it is impossible for other religions to be equally respected. If only monotheistic religions are respected, then there are no equal rights for Hindus or Buddhists. So, which is it? Just read on:

Article (7)

The principles of Islamic Shari’a are a major source for legislation. Civil and religious matters of the followers of monotheistic religions shall be organized in accordance with their religious teachings and denominations within the framework of law, while preserving the unity and independence of the Palestinian people.

Meaning that Islamic law is the basis for all law, and as long as other religious laws do not contradict Shari'a they will be permitted to practice. Sounds very equal to me!

Article (12)

Palestinian nationality shall be regulated by law, without prejudice to the rights of those who legally acquired it prior to May 10, 1948 or the rights of the Palestinians residing in Palestine prior to this date, and who were forced into exile or departed there from and denied return thereto. This right passes on from fathers or mothers to their progenitor. It neither disappears nor elapses unless voluntarily relinquished. A Palestinian cannot be deprived of his nationality. The acquisition and relinquishment of Palestinian nationality shall be regulated by law. The rights and duties of citizens with multiple nationalities shall be governed by law.

The three sentences I highlighted also contradict each other. Can a Palestinian relinquish his nationality or not?

And according to this, there are plenty of Jews who are Palestinians - probably well over a million who descended from the Jews in Israel in 1948, and by the definition here of either parent my guess is that possibly half of Israeli Jews might have a bloodline to a pre-1948 Jew. If they cannot be deprived of their Palestinian nationality, what does PA law say about them? Can they vote? If not, what about the pledge not to discriminate against monotheistic religions?

Article (13)

Palestinians who left Palestine as a result of the 1948 war, and who were denied return thereto shall have the right to return to the Palestinian state and bear its nationality. It is a permanent, inalienable, and irrevocable right.

The state of Palestine shall strive to apply the legitimate right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes, and to obtain compensation, through negotiations, political, and legal channels in accordance with the 1948 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 and the principles of international law.

Every Arab nation voted against Resolution 194 in 1948.

Not only that, the wording of 194 concerning the refugees says: "...the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date". It is clear that in the nearly sixty years since then, they have never fulfilled that provision.

Also, 194 says that Jerusalem will be under international control. This contradicts the idea of Jerusalem being the capital of "Palestine."

Ah, but look at the words more closely. They are not accepting 194; they are just pretending that a single paragraph written for this non-binding resolution in 1948 supports their right of return and they are explicitly ignoring/rejecting the rest of it.

Article (14)

Natural resources in Palestine are the property of the Palestinian people who will exercise sovereignty over them. The state shall be obligated to preserve natural resources and legally regulate their optimal exploitation while safeguarding Palestinian religious and cultural heritage and environmental needs. The protection and maintenance of antiquities and historical sites is an official and social responsibility. It is prohibited to tamper with or destroy them, and whoever violates, destroys, or illegally sells them shall be punishable by law.

Unless, of course, they are Jewish antiquities.

The entire second section of the draft constitution talks in lofty terms about equal rights and Western-style freedoms that simply do not exist anywhere in the Arab world.

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