Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Peaceful PalArab weekend

Three PalArabs were killed, including two brothers, in Gaza (Haitham and Mohammed Abu Amr and Hassan Abuscherkh, in autotransliteration.)

We've also recently seen gun attacks, drive-by shootings, accidental explosions and machine gun fire, bombings at an American university in Gaza, bomb threats, a PalArab journalist injured - the usual mayhem.

Israel is uncharacteristically aggressively attacking terrorists this weekend, with about 8 terrorists killed and 1 civilian (a sister of a wanted terrorist who stayed in the house after Israel asked everyone to leave.) So this week the PalArabs have to work hard to keep their streak going of killing each other faster than Israel is.

UPDATE: Paltoday.org (Arabic only) adds a fourth PalArab victim of PalArab violence Sunday, named Imad Abu Hussein. This brings the self-death count this year to 182.

UPDATE 2: Paltoday adds a 12-year old boy named Muhammad Al-Saadi was shot and killed Monday. 183. Ma'an adds a 5-year old girl was shot in the head by one of those "mysterious gunmen," critically injuring her.

UPDATE 3: A Hamas commander died of wounds he got two months ago in Hamas/Fatah fighting. 184.

UPDATE 4: From PCHR, another child who killed himself from finding a weapon at home:

At approximately 03:00 on Tuesday morning, 24 April 2007, medical sources at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City declared that Haitham Mohammed Bulbul, 12, from al-Sha’af neighborhood in the east of Gaza City, died from a wound he had sustained on Monday. The child was seriously wounded by a gunshot to the chest at approximately 22:00 on Monday, when he mishandled a gun at home.

185.

UPDATE 5: A woman died, and others were injured including a 70-year old man, in a clan clash in the Bureij camp in Gaza on Wednesday. 186.

Shame, responsibility and maturity

As a follow-up to my earlier posting on the differences between how South Koreans are acting to the AV Tech massacre versus Arab reaction to 9/11, there is still a nagging issue that needs to be addressed.

It has been long recognized that the West has a guilt culture and the Arab and Eastern worlds are a shame culture. He have discussed many times how Arab conceptions of "honor" (which is just a manifestation of shame) are so foreign to Western ears, and are critical in understanding the differences between us.

But here we have a stark contrast between two cultures that are both recognized as shame cultures: the Arab world and the Asian (in this case, South Korean) world. If they are nominally the same, why are their reaction so diametrically different?

I believe that the answer lies in another dimension of their respective psyches, namely, maturity. The Korean reaction to VA Tech represents a mature instantiation of a shame culture, while the Arab responses to the multitude of terror attacks is clearly immature.

I would argue that the single biggest difference between immature and mature people are their respective abilities to take responsibility.

A child will go through a number of steps instead of admitting guilt - he may lie, or try to put the blame on someone else, or claim extenuating circumstances - not only in an attempt to avoid punishment, but also often so as not to admit to himself that he is guilty.

Growth comes from learning to act responsibly and learning to take responsibility.

Compare the Arab world to Japan. Both suffered humiliating wartime losses in the 1940s. It can be argued that Japan lost much more, as it had a formidable war machine and it was not just defeated but forced to surrender unconditionally. And both of them have strong shame cultures.

Yet only decades later, with very few natural resources, Japan turned itself around into an economic and technological powerhouse that became the envy of the West. The Arab world, in contrast, had the misfortune of sitting on billions of barrels of oil.

Japan was forced to grow up in a hurry. The Arab world, with the cushion of petrodollars, had the luxury of becoming the spoiled brats of the planet, building playgrounds for the super-rich in the Gulf. Is there any real psychological difference between the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s and a boy who takes his football back when the game doesn't go the way he wants?

In short, the shame/honor dynamic may explain many of the Arab world's psychoses, but it doesn't explain them all. We need to add the dynamic of an infantile culture as well. And the VA Tech outrage shines a brilliant light on the contrast between a mature shame culture and a puerile one.

HH CXIII

The 113th edition of Haveil Havalim is out at Soccer Dad.

One of my posts made it in, always an honor since I rarely self-nominate.

Check it out!

South Korean vs. Arab reaction to terror

Many articles have been written about the Arab reactions to 9/11. Critics claim that Arabs refused to condemn the atrocity in an appropriate manner, and Arabs would point to articles and statements that did seem to condemn it.

Even so, there was still a nagging feeling in much of the West that the condemnations were not strong enough, that they weren't heartfelt, that something was missing.

In the wake of the VA Tech massacre, looking at the South Korean community's reaction, it is now clear what was missing: shame and responsibility.

For Korean Americans especially, the tragedy is hitting close to home. Though they don’t personally know Cho or his family, local Korean Americans share a cultural and ethnic background with them.

“I’m very ashamed,” admitted Buwon Brown, a community volunteer who is Korean American.

Dong Lee, an editor at the Korea Central Daily News’ office in Seattle, said the community was “very shocked, very saddened by the news.”

The state’s only Korean American legislator, Paull Shin, said he was watching the news early Tuesday morning as he was getting dressed. He “collapsed” when he heard the gunman was a fellow Korean American. “I could not face the reality. How could this have happened? I lost my control,” Shin recounted.

Later that day, the Edmonds legislator took the floor of the Senate chambers to apologize on behalf of the Korean American community. He told his fellow senators, “This (shooting) really affects me deeply. I’m sorry.” Afterwards, his colleagues came over to console him and to emphasize that the shootings were not his fault or the Korean community’s.

South Koreans expressed shock Wednesday, as new details revealed that the Virginia Tech shooter was Cho Seung-Hui, who was born -- and lived for eight years -- in Seoul.

President Roh Moo-Hyun held a special meeting with aides Wednesday to discuss the shooting and figure out further steps to ease the situation.

The president is expected to make a statement of apology at an event in Seoul Wednesday afternoon. His office has issued two statements of condolence about the mass killings.

"It's a tragic incident. But to find out that he is a Korean, I am ashamed and confused," a shipping-company employee said. "I keep asking myself what would have made him do such a thing. It's a very bad day."

A wave of shame washed over the Rev. Kun Sang Cho when he learned the Virginia Tech shooter was a native of South Korea.

He knew the murders occurred hundreds of miles away, possibly at the hands of a mentally ill young man. But what most pained Cho and many other Korean-Americans living in Colorado was that the shooter was Korean -- one of their own.

"They feel ashamed," said Cho, pastor at Asbury Korean United Methodist Church. "This is our culture. If one of my members got involved in a crime, all members feel the shame."

To honor the 32 victims of the shooting, Cho's church will host a community memorial Sunday at 4 p.m. at 7140 S. Colorado Blvd.

First-generation Koreans tend to have a cultural sense of shared responsibility, said Adrian Hong, a board member of the Mirae Foundation, a national organization of Korean-American college students. "If something good happens to one, it happens to all Koreans, and if something bad happens to one, it happens to all of them," he said.

Kyeyoung Park, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles and member at the university's Center for Korean Studies, said that because Korean culture tends to be homogeneous, new immigrants rely on one another emotionally.

"In Western culture there is an emphasis on guilt; in many Eastern cultures the emphasis is on shame," she said. "I think Korean-Americans want to do something because they feel ashamed. Some of them feel truly responsible, even though it is ridiculous to think they are responsible for the action of this person."

Park said some first-generation immigrants identified with the comments of South Korean Ambassador Lee Tae-sik, who said not only do Korean-Americans feel ashamed but called for them to "repent." He suggested a 32-day fast - one day for each victim of Monday's carnage.

Now we can understand more fully what was lacking after 9/11 and countless other Arab terror attacks.

A condemnation is not a heartfelt, spontaneous reaction. It is almost always a contrived, carefully written, political reaction more for damage control than for true remorse.

Koreans don't have madrassas with daily exhortations against infidels. Koreans don't have daily or weekly terror attacks against the West. Koreans don't have countless newspapers and websites demonizing Americans.

And yet, they spontaneously show true, heartfelt shame - and a sense of shared responsibility - for the actions of a lone crazed man who happens to be one of them. While they have a fear of a backlash, their shame is not a calculated reaction designed to blunt political reprisals - it is a true reflection of what they are feeling.

This is what was missing after 9/11 - the kneejerk reaction of guilt, shame and responsibility from the Arab community. Instead we saw attempts to deny, or redirect, or contextualize the despicable acts - never to take ownership.

While the Koreans are taking responsibility for the actions of a single nutcase, the Arab Muslims spent all their time trying to abdicate their responsibility for the culture that brought about Al Qaeda.

All the condemnations in the world is not worth a single heartfelt apology. And even though it is absurd for the Korean community to apologize for something that is clearly not their fault, the fact that they are doing it shows true remorse.

The world Arab community in general, and the Muslim Arab American community in particular, never felt truly sorry for 9/11, or else they would have acted beyond the way that Koreans are acting today for an event that is miniscule in comparison.

Invoking Elder's First Rule (part 2)

Another example of how Arab accusations about Jews are merely projections of Arab crimes can be seen here:

(IsraelNN.com) Residents of the Gush Etzion hilltop community of Sde Boaz had hundreds of grape vines and scores of fruit trees uprooted and destroyed Friday. The latest vandalism, though the most costly yet, is just the latest in a string of attacks on the community’s property.

Residents of the agricultural community said that in addition to the destruction of the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards and fruit trees Friday, expensive irrigation systems were damaged and stolen as well. The vandals used donkeys to plow under the hundreds of vines and uproot the fruit trees.

As Omedia notes, mainstream Israeli media refuses to even mention Arab destruction of Jewish agriculture, seemingly because it happens on the "wrong" side of the Green Line:

This accumulation of facts attests to a situation in which Israel is gradually conceding its sovereignty and its rule of law while abandoning Jewish agricultural property to the mercy of the Palestinians. The myth that the Palestinians are deeply attached to trees, perhaps as opposed to the Jews, plays into the hands of those who use trees for political purposes. When the trees belong to Jews, the tree is merely considered another tool in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It is well known that the Jewish-Arab conflict in Israel is tied to the struggle over land, such as the struggle between the Jewish National Fund’s pine and cypress forests (only in recent years have they begun planting olive trees), and olive groves, typically seen as a Palestinian symbol.
All of the above information was only made public on Arutz Sheva, a radio station identified with the settlers, and never managed to reach the general public. Why was such pertinent information never published in Ha’aretz or on central news sites such as NRG? Such information is obviously newsworthy. Perhaps these media outlets consider the uprooting of Jewish trees by Palestinians too commonplace – a “dog bites man” story – or see it as a mere curiosity. Whatever the reason, tree removal by Palestinians deserves media exposure as well.

As I have shown in the past, Palestinian Arab destruction of trees and other Jewish agriculture predates 1948 and PalArabs have been found to destroy their own trees when it can make the Jews look bad. The idea that trees are somehow sacred to Palestinian Arabs is a preposterous myth, one that is all too ready to be swallowed by even more preposterous supporters.

Invoking Elder's First Rule (part 1)

My First Rule of Arab Projection states that whenever Arabs accuse Israel of doing some crime, they are doing that exact crime, usually on a far grander scale than their accusations.

This weekend gives us the opportunity to invoke this rule more than once.

The first example can be seen in an article in Ma'an:

The Al-Aqsa association for protection of Islamic endowments and holy sites revealed on Saturday that some Jewish organisations are manufacturing forgeries of documents aimed to illegally purchase Arab properties in the old city area of Jerusalem.

The forgery and deception is being conducted through registering Jerusalemite lands to the names of Arab citizens who do not originally possess any lands in Jerusalem.

Extremist Israeli groups then come to those people and submit the forged documents, showing that there are lands registered in the lands' department under their names.

They offer those people huge amounts of money in return for selling properties which they never owned, nor did they know about it.

The conspiracy was unfolded when an elderly Palestinian man from the village of Qalansawa in ‘the triangle area’ inside Israel, told the Al-Aqsa association that “a Jewish extremist group had came to his home offering a large sum of money in return for 2600 square meters in Jerusalem registered under his name.” They then showed him the ownership document.

The old man added, "I kicked them out and told them that they are plotting a trick, since I never owned the span of a hand in Jerusalem."

The director of the media department of the Islamic movement and spokesperson of Al-Aqsa association, Sheikh Khalid Muhanna, warned of the dangers of this phenomenon, which, it has been noted has been rising in frequency recently.

He accused the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem in particular, and the Israeli government in general of taking a big share with these far right-wing groups. He based his accusations on the supposition that “such groups could not wander along the length of the country carrying bags loaded with money and forged documents without assistance of formal governmental institutions and departments”.

There are certainly Zionist groups that raise large sums of money to legally purchase Arab-owned land. While it is altogether possible that a member of this organization saw a common Arab name on a legal deed and made a mistake approaching the wrong man, this accusation shows no evidence of forgeries, Israeli government conspiracy or anything else.

But it is interesting that this accusation came on Saturday, because a much stronger accusation came just last Thursday - by the PA itself: (H/T: Backspin)

Dozens of Christian families from the Bethlehem area are about to discover that their homes and lands have been "sold" to Muslims without their knowledge, Palestinian Authority security officials said Thursday.

The officials told The Jerusalem Post that members of a local Muslim gang have been arrested on suspicion of stealing land and property registration documents from the Bethlehem Magistrate's Court.

Bethlehem Governor Salah Ta'mari confirmed that an investigation was under way to determine who was behind the theft. He said most of the stolen documents belonged to families living abroad.

A Christian businessman told the Post that most of the victims were Christian families living in the US and Latin America. "They are stealing our homes almost every day," he said. "We believe the suspects have been receiving help from some Palestinian security officers here."

The scam was uncovered when court officials complained that many files relating to cases involving ownership of property had disappeared, a security official said.

Initially, police thought thieves had broken into the court and stolen the files, he added. However, further investigation revealed that the theft was an inside job. Three court employees and five land dealers were later arrested in connection with the case.

The official refused to reveal the land brokers' identities, but sources in the city said some of them were not real land dealers.

"These are people with close ties to the Palestinian security forces," the sources said. "We have written to the Palestinian Authority demanding a full inquiry. This is one of the biggest scandals in Bethlehem and many families are very worried that they may lose their property."

Apparently, the "Al-Aqsa Association" decided that now would be a good time to divert attention from the real phenomenon of Muslims stealing Christian land in Bethlehem.

Ann Arbor synagogue gets picketed every week

A Jewish pro-Palestinian-Arab organization has been picketing an Ann Arbor, MI Conservative synagogue, Beth Israel, every Shabbat for over three years.

Even though the synagogue is pro-peace, and supports a two-state solution, this is not enough for the airheads who continue their protests. They demand that the synagogue disavow all support for Israel as a Jewish state, support all PalArabs to move to wherever they want in Israel, and some other absurdities. The protest group has been deplored and condemned by the Ann Arbor City Council and most major newspapers, and an anti-protest organization that just started in March already has 260 members.

Perhaps the most innovative response comes from a group named SPURN, for "Synagogue Protest UNACCEPTABLE! Respond Now," which raises money for Magen David Adom proportional to the size of the protest every week. So far, they have raised over $84,000.

Try to imagine the headlines that would result if people protested a mosque every week, no matter how peacefully.

Paging Dr. Melfi - Terrorists suffering from depression

An article in YNet that would be considered a spoof in any other area of the world: (Hat tip: EBoZ)

Palestinian security forces have been seeking emotional counseling, following "internal infighting in Gaza". Dr. Riad al-Aqra, the director for the Gaza hospital for mental health, said that "although the occupation is a major cause for emotional depression for Gaza residents…Palestinian infighting plays a striking role in the increase of shock, tension and depression, present in previously unseen amounts."

"One member of the Hamas security force came to me suffering from high tension, which was causing physical problems. He said he felt fear from the fact that he would burn in hell forever if he fired even one bullet at someone," the doctor said.

He told of another case, in which a member of the security forces arrived with similar symptoms. "He said he couldn't fire at another Muslim, and that he felt pain and bitterness," al-Aqra said.

"These are the feelings on both sides of the infighting, and emphasize that everyone, deep inside, rejects the civil war in his soul, rejects that which is unnatural," he explained.

As opposed to killing Jews, infidels and women who speak with unsuitable men, which is the most natural feeling in the world!

But Hamas angst ran even deeper this week:

Hamas members were troubled by an additional issue this week: an altercation with the Egyptian branch of the hitherto supportive Muslim Brotherhood.

The rift occurred after a senior leader in the organization, Abd al-Munam Abu al-Fatouh, announced that the Brotherhood supports the creation of a secular Palestinian state and a bi-national presence in Palestinian, as a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Hamas members were so incensed by al-Fatouh's announcement that the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Mahdi Akef, had to release a special statement refuting it.

Akef said, in his statement, that the Muslim Brotherhood believes that "Palestine is Islamic and therefore, holy to Muslims and, thus, belongs only to Palestinians."

"No Palestinian has the right to refute this…The Zionists have no choice but to live under the rule of a Palestinian nation in which they will be free to worship their God and enjoy full rights of citizenship," Akef added.

"If the Zionists do not agree, our Palestinian brothers will have no choice but to resist and undertake all actions that are consistent with holy principles that were given to the Palestinians and that are in accordance with their national interests," he said.

Nonetheless, a source from the Muslim Brotherhood told the London-Based a-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper that Akef's statement was made primarily to reduce tension between the two groups.

No one even mentions the horror that accompanied reports that King Abdullah of Jordan said that he favors monetary compensation to PalArab "refugees" rather than their physical moving to Palestine.

Too much news, too little time - Dhimmi Carter edition

Jimmy Carter has decided that Palestinian Arab rights are the most important issue in the coming presidential election, a litmus test that Iowa caucus voters should use when choosing a candidate. It seems that the Saudi money that pays for The Carter Center is being spent very wisely.

A Palestinian Arab whose rights Carter is so concerned about got very close to blowing up a bus in Israel two months ago, but he put the batteries for the bomb in incorrectly. He made it into Israel through parts of that apartheid fence that Jimmy wants to see destroyed. As Barak at IRIS points out, he would be a candidate for prisoner release the next time Islamic Jihad kidnaps a Jew, because he doesn't have "blood on his hands."

While Dhimmi Carter is obsessing over the Israel Lobby, Harper's Magazine is more concerned with the Saudi Lobby.

Carter's favorite moderate PalArab group, Fatah, announced that it want to kidnap more Israelis.

Birthright Israel is bringing a record 23,500 students to Israel this summer. Carter would want them to go to Gaza.

I've been skeptical about the possibility of strengthening moderate Islam. Daniel Pipes disagrees. I'm not sure what Jimmah would think.

Canadian reporter attacked over Islam article

From the Toronto Star:

Journalist Jawaad Faizi says he can still feel broken glass showering over him in his car as he fended off blows from a cricket bat in a surprise attack he blames on "religious fanatics."
A writer for the Pakistan Post, Faizi said he was beaten by three men because he mocked a Pakistani cleric in a column.
Faizi said the men smashed the windshield and driver's window of his car as he arrived at his editor's home about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday. He said he was struck by the cricket bat and was cut on his forearm.
"They were smashing and smashing, hitting and hitting," Faizi said. "I could not stop them."
Faizi said both he and his editor, Amir Arain, recently received phone calls warning them to stop writing defamatory articles about the religious group Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran and its leader, Allama Tahir-Ul-Qadri.
Faizi said he wrote a column two weeks ago mocking the cleric, who he said told a gathering in Pakistan "that he could write the name of Mohammed on the moon with his finger."
"He is always trying to fool the people," Faizi said.
The columnist said his three attackers screamed at him in Punjabi and Urdu to stop writing about Minhaj-ul-Quran.
He said they fled when he dialed 911 on his cellphone. He was treated at Mississauga's Trillium Health Centre and released the same night.
Constable Jodi Dawson said Peel Region police have assigned the case to detectives in 12 Division.
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, a Toronto-based association of more than 300 journalists, editors, publishers, producers and students, condemned the attack.

Hat tip Zionist Spy.

Hamas: We don't give no respect

Remember when the EUdiots and others were falling over themselves to explain that the Mecca agreement between Hamas and Fatah meant that Hamas was moderating? It was based on language that Hamas promised to "respect" previous agreements of the PA.

An interview with "Dr." Mahmoud Al-Zahar, co-counder of Hamas and current deputy in the Palestinian Legislative Council (as well as former foreign minister for the PA), explains the Mecca agreement a bit further from Hamas' perspective:

Dr, Zahhar said that "what happened in Mecca agreement were four issues; firstly , the agreements and laws that are related with the Palestinian issue which was signed by Arab countries and the PLO, but we didn’t mean (Oslo agreements), because it is known here that we did not recognize the Oslo Agreement and we will not recognize it at all. Also, the international agreements is the Geneva agreement which related to the international law. The humanitarian law which are war, prisoners of war and others. In addition, there are Arab cooperation agreements in security, economic and others.

"Regarding the word " respect" or " accept" .. if I respect your views , it doesn't mean that I accept your views. So , the saying that we are accepting the Oslo agreement is not true"

Q: You mention the word " respect" which evoked the debate recently that it is an introduction to recognize " Israel" ?

A: What does commitment mean in Law ?? does respect mean commitment ?? If respect means commitment , then why the two words are different in Language ..they are surely different". If Hamas wanted to recognize "Israel" , we will say it frankly. Hamas does not have the intention to recognize "Israel" at all because we will contradict the Quran with that in the Israa' verse "7" and will contradict ourselves that the occupation should be eliminated.

Q: Some said that "Accepting Hamas of Palestinian State on 67 borders is considered a retreat of the Hamas project " Palestine From Sea to River" ?

Zahar : If you read Hamas Charter , we were ready to establish a state on any "Span". That mean : we are ready to establish that state on less than 67 borders or more than that but that doesn't mean that we will leave the whole land… this is a clear point. The interpretations are Zionist interpretations and some other Palestinian factions , who leave the Palestinian issue at all , took these interpretations.

Q: What is the distinction between the political program of Hamas and the political program to the unity government, Which led by one of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniya?

A: The unity government duration of time is three years but Hamas program is not linked to time. Hamas even after the liberation of Palestine, is looking to the Arab and Islamic world as an Islamic state, forming the Arab-Islamic forces unity.

A couple of observations:

Islam is a legal-based religion, and therefore since the word "respect" is meaningless in a legal context, Hamas could claim to "respect" agreements knowing full well that they were not agreeing to anything. Zahar is explicit about that.
When he claims that accepting Israel's existence is against the Koran, he is tying Hamas' terror with religion. This means that the Saudi "peace" proposal where the "entire Arab world" would recognize Israel is known initially to be a sham - obviously, the large percentage of the Arab world that accepts Hamas' interpretation of the Koran can never recognize Israel - theologically.
The ultimate goal (which is clear in the Hamas charter) is not getting rid of Israel but establishing a global Islamic 'ummah, similar to Iran's goal.

Happiness is.... shooting a machine gun

In an Arab wedding in Hebron yesterday, the brother of the groom celebrated in the usual PalArab fashion: by shooting a machine gun in the air.

He was lucky - he only injured 7 guests, one seriously.

The PalArab leaders are struggling with the difficulty of wanting to limit weapons while at the same time making sure that there are plenty of weapons around to kill Israelis easily available.

The cult of death is so ingrained that it literally doesn't even occur to them that Israeli actions against them are proportional to their own violence against Israel, not inversely proportional as they seem to think. They honestly think that all they need are more weapons and things will then be hunky dory.

A different reaction to mass murder

I didn't really want to comment on the VA Tech massacre because it really has nothing to do with the normal themes of the blog. But Dry Bones makes an acute observation:

Indeed. Islam has been used as inoculation against outrage. When Muslims do something crazy in the name of Mohammed, it is not regarded as a mental illness, rather as freedom of religion.

That extra sympathy doled out by terror sympathizers, that "but..." that always accompanies every Muslim "denouncing" terror acts, not to mention the sheer quantity of Islamist mass murders (in Iraq, a day when 32 civilians are killed would be considered a pretty good day) all combine to give Muslims, if not quite a free pass, at least a much less critical eye for their terror.

7000 concentration camp prisoners killed in one day in 1945 - by England

Holy crap:

On May 3, 1945 - in the worst friendly-fire incident in history - Britain's Royal Air Force killed more than 7,000 survivors of Nazi concentration camps who were crowded onto ships in L beck harbor, Germany. The ragged masses that had survived the Holocaust stood no chance against the guns of their liberators.

This tragic mistake occurred one day before the British accepted the surrender of all German forces in the region. Reports of the incident were quickly hushed up - as a jubilant world prepared to celebrate the Allied victory in Europe.

Despite the bitter irony of dying in hellish fires on sinking ships just hours before liberation, the tragedy was quickly forgotten or resolutely ignored. The anniversary of this dark day will soon pass by again - largely unnoticed or unmentioned.
By early May 1945, the rumors of Hitler's suicide had rekindled hope for beleaguered prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. The Red Army had just conquered Berlin, the British held Hamburg and Americans were in Munich and Vienna. After surviving unspeakable horrors and deprivations for years, the battered prisoners could finally dare to hope that their day of deliverance was at hand.

In the closing weeks of World War II, thousands of prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, the Mittelbau-Dora camp at Nordhausen and the Stutthof camp near Danzig were marched to the German Baltic coast. Most of the inmates were Jews and Russian POWs, but they also included communist sympathizers, pacifists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, prostitutes, Gypsies and other perceived enemies of the Third Reich.

At the port of L beck almost 10,000 camp survivors were crowded onto three ships: Cap Arcona, Thielbeck and Athen. No one knew what the Nazis were planning to do, or what plans the Allies had already set into motion.

Although the final surrender was imminent, British Operational Order No. 73 for May 3 was to "destroy the concentration of enemy shipping in L beck Bay." While thousands of camp prisoners were being ferried out to the once-elegant Hamburg-Sud Amerika liner Cap Arcona, the RAF's 263rd, 197th, 198th and 184th squadrons were arming their Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers with ammunition, bombs and rockets.

At 2:30 p.m. on May 3, at least 4,500 prisoners were aboard the Cap Arcona as the first attack began. Sixty-four rockets and 15 bombs hit the liner in two separate attacks. As the British strafed the stricken ship from the air, Nazi guards on shore fired on those who made it into the water. Only 350 prisoners survived.

The Thielbeck - which had been flying a white flag - and the poorly marked hospital ship Deutschland were attacked next. Although Thielbeck was just a freighter in need of repairs, it was packed with 2,800 prisoners. The overcrowded freighter sank in just 20 minutes, killing all but 50 of the prisoners.

In less than two hours, more than 7,000 concentration camp refugees were dead from the friendly fire. Two thousand more would have died if the captain of the Athen had not refused to take on additional prisoners in the morning before the attack.

MOST WHO were familiar with the Cap Arcona disaster believed that the Nazis intended to sink the ships at sea to kill everyone on board. Hundreds of prisoners had already been killed on the forced marches from the camps. In this case, however, RAF Fighter Command did their killing for them.

In the Cap Arcona/Thielbeck/Athen disaster, the tragic deaths of so many who had suffered so much for so long were quickly forgotten. After years of unprecedented bloodletting and destruction, the nations involved were in shambles, their populations numbed by suffering and death. The unfortunate victims who perished at the close of history's worst conflagration were quickly lost in the fleeting euphoria of peace.

...Britain has never officially apologized for its tragic mistake at L beck Bay, nor has it honored the innocent victims with a proper memorial.

The RAF records of the disaster are sealed until 2045, one century after the attack. No British government document has referred to the estimated 7,500 victims of its mistake.

In an age when the words "coverup" and "massacre" are thrown around like so much confetti, it helps to put things into perspective.

Even in the context of the war, it is unconscionable that Britain does not even acknowledge what it did, let alone investigate this unimaginable tragedy.

UPDATE: Wikipedia adds some detail:

The ships were carrying from 7,000 to 8,000 prisoners from the German concentration camps in Neuengamme, Stutthof and Mittelbau-Dora, half of whom were Russian and Polish POWs, others from 24 nationalities, including French, Danish, and Dutch. Those reaching the shore after the sinkings were shot by SS troops, but about 350 managed to escape from the massacre; others were cannoned by the British pilots while trying to get ashore.

For weeks after the sinking, bodies of the victims were being washed ashore, to be collected and buried in a single mass grave at Neustadt in Holstein. For nearly three decades, parts of skeletons were being washed ashore, the last find, by a twelve years old boy, was in 1971.

This is one game the PalArabs win every week

For the 19th consecutive week, more Palestinian Arabs were killed by their own actions than by Israeli actions.

Those aggressive, genocidal Israelis with their sophisticated war machines managed to only kill a single Palestinian Arab during the week from April 12-18, according to the "Palestinian Center of Human Rights."

In that same time period 5 PalArabs were murdered by each other, including a woman in an "honor killing." In addition, two bodies were found of people murdered in previous weeks, including another woman, which makes last week's revised score 8-5, not the 6-5 squeaker we reported.

Of course, the PalArabs have a perfect record against the Israelis this year in how many PalArabs can be killed in any particular week.

As a people who are always so jealous of Israeli accomplishments while their own society literally wallows in its own sewage, this record should cause some much-needed pride for the oppressed Palestinian Arabs.

Did US lose Saddam's WMD?

Melanie Phillips speaks to a man who claims that he found Saddam's WMD bunkers back in 2003, but the army ignored him and the materials ended up getting smuggled out to Syria.

His story has made it into various right-wing websites and newspapers and his credentials seem stellar (although his web design skills are pretty bad.) He certainly deserves to be taken more seriously, no matter how circumstantial the evidence.

Mahmoud Abbas lies again

A couple of hours ago, Reuters reported:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has reached an agreement with militant groups that they will stop rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel, an aide said on Wednesday.

"President Abbas is doing everything he can to stop the attacks," said Nabil Amr, accompanying Abbas on a visit to Poland as part of a diplomatic offensive to convince the EU to lift a freeze on financial aid to the Palestinian government.

"He has reached a real agreement with all forces that occasionally fire rockets," Amr told Reuters in an interview.

It took only a few minutes for even Reuters to show that Abbas was lying:

In Gaza, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, which advocates the Jewish state's destruction, said his group's [sic] had no plan to stop firing rockets and was bound only by tactical considerations.

"There is no decision to stop firing," the spokesman, Abu Ahmed, said. "It increases and decreases according to security conditions on ground."

But what about Hamas? Surely the newly-moderate coalition partner will agree to stop rocket attacks?

Not according to Hamas' "military wing":

Al-Quds Brigades Denied what the Zionist media claimed about reaching an agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas to stop firing rockets, Abu Ahmed, the spokesmen said in a statement "the Zionist media claims are untrue".

For Hamas to call Reuters the epithet "Zionist" must mean they are really ticked off.

UPDATE: YitzchokGoodman of Judeopundit correctly points out that Al-Quds is Islamic Jihad, not Hamas. I mixed them up because I read it on a Hamas website. Sorry!

Novak's great white hope, redux

I wrote yesterday about the phenomenal self-delusion of Robert Novak as he seemingly found a single sort-of moderate Hamas voice and he played it to the hilt, implying that Hamas was ready to make peace with Israel and that not speaking to Hamas was foolhardy and wrong.

Today, his Hamas hero has backtracked on his moderate words:

Jenin - Ma'an exclusive - Palestinian Education Minister Nasser Addin Ash-Sha'er has denied the declarations which the US daily newspaper Washington Post ascribed to him.

In an interview with Washington Post columnist Robert Novak published on Monday, Ash-Sha'er was quoted as saying that bombing attacks by Palestinians on Israeli targets had ruined past peace attempts.

Ash-Sha'er reportedly said that "previous attempts at peace were ruined by suicide bombers. Now, we look forward to a sustained peace."

On Wednesday, in conversation with Ma'an, he depicted the newspaper's allegations as imprecise.

The minister highlighted, "electronic websites took portions of a long interview, and what they took was absolutely out of the real context." It was misinterpreted, he explained.

Ash-Sha'er explained, "Every people in the world has the right of self defence, and nobody can incriminate his own history or his own right to self defence."

So it seems that he really doesn't think that suicide bombings had a negative effect on peace efforts. And that terror attacks against civilians is every Palestinian Arab's right.

Poor Robert Novak. He wasted an entire year searching for the legendary Moderate Hamas leader. Perhaps he'll have better luck looking for the Easter Bunny in Bethlehem.

PalArabs 133, Israelis 34

According to the UN's OCHA statistics, from January through the end of March, 34 Palestinian Arabs were killed by Israel.

And 133 were killed in PalArab violence.

(I had counted 159 PalArab self-deaths at that time, but I am not sure if they include things like honor killings, deaths during tunnel cave-ins and murders during robberies, for example.)

Although there are no good statistics, it appears that more Palestinian Arabs were killed by Arabs in Iraq than by Israelis during that time period.

Still waiting for any NGOs that claim to care so much about the Palestinian Arab people to start mentioning the Arab-caused deaths as prominently as they mention Israeli activities.

All you need to know about Hezbollah/Syria can be seen at Shebaa Farms

A clueless EUdiot visits Lebanon:

Hezbollah would be ready to transform its armed resistance into a political movement, if all occupied Lebanese territories are freed, a Spanish representative to the European parliament said Sunday.

"One of the positive elements of our meetings with Hezbollah was that they declare that they would like to become a political movement ... when the occupation of Lebanese land end," David Hammertzein told reporters at the end of a three-day visit by an EU delegation to Lebanon.

"When asked when the occupation ends, they said clearly the 'Shebaa Farms'," Hammertzein added. "We all clearly support such an idea of placing Shebaa under the temporary jurisdiction of the UN and urge Syria and Israel to cooperate with this idea which will end the tension at the borders between Lebanon and Israel," he added.

A little more context on Hezbollah's peaceful intentions can be found in this article from today:

Lebanon's Hezbollah group on Tuesday accused the Lebanese March 14 majority coalition of seeking to "normalize" relations with Israel and backing an alleged scheme to create a U.S.-controlled Middle East.

Mohammed Raad, leader of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc, said that the Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc of Saad Hariri, leader of the parliament majority, "went too far with a scheme to reconcile with the Zionists and the Americans who want to create a new Middle East by describing the resistance weapons as illegitimate."

Such a new Middle East, according to Raad, "is based on recognizing the Zionist entity's (right to exist), normalizing relations with it and abolishing any opposition to or resistance of Israeli aggressions."

The first thing to understand is that the Lebanese claim to the Shebaa Farms is completely and utterly worthless. There is no "dispute" - the border was as clearly drawn as is possible, by the UN based on overwhelming map evidence. See Wikipedia for a fair and exhaustive discussion of all claims and their worth.

The second thing to understand is that the crux of the entire problem Arabs have with Israel has nothing to do with refugees, or "apartheid," or "occupation" - it is all about eliminating the shame of inferior, dhimmi Jews controlling land that the Arabs consider their own (namely, all of Israel.)

When Sadat was negotiating for the Sinai, he insisted on every grain of sand - or he would start another war. Every negotiation with Israel is based on the idea that the Arabs want the amount of land that Jews own and control to get smaller and smaller. The entire existence of the "Palestinians" as a separate Arab people was a fiction by the Arab powers as a means to force Israel to give up land. (Today, there are indeed a Palestinian Arab people, and the only thing they have in common is the fact that they were thoroughly screwed by their brethren.)

Land is the key.

So there is no contradiction between Hezbollah telling the EU that their only desire is the Shebaa Farms, and them accusing the Lebanese government of the hideous crime of wanting to actually have peace with Israel and not another war. In both cases, their goal is to get some land away from Jewish control - politically, by getting naive EUdiots to consider their demand for Shebaa Farms to be a reasonable and tiny request, and militarily by insisting that they will keep attacking Israel indefinitely.

The cynicism exhibited by Hezbollah, and especially the Syrian government supporters vis a vis Shebaa Farms is breathtaking. Syria is trying to say both that the Shebaa Farms should be returned as part of UN resolutions 242 and 338 (which would imply that they are Syrian land) and also that they are Lebanese lands. Again, the intended result is not to gain land, but to ensure that Jews lose land. Hezbollah and Syria don't want the land - chances are pretty good that they would agree to giving it to the UN.

They just cannot accept the idea of Israel controlling it.

The stupidity of the "who stands to gain" argument

A certain Alan Hart, former BBC and ITN reporter and rabid anti-Zionist, says in his blog that it is entirely possible that Israel kidnapped (and already killed) Alan Johnston. His reason for believing that?

...what can be said for certain is that the Palestinians were the party with absolutely nothing to gain and much to lose from Alan's permanent removal from the scene. And they had much to lose on two counts.

On Count One, Alan was not only the BBC's man, he was the only permanent foreign correspondent in Gaza. He was, in short, the best and most informed provider of news about the Palestinian side of the story; a story which, in many of its details, is an embarrassment to Israel and those governments, most notably the Bush and Blair regimes, which support Israel's efforts to break the will of the Palestinians to continue their struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice.

On Count Two, and if he has been murdered, Alan's death, if it could be blamed on a Palestinian or a pro-Palestinian Arab and/or other Islamist group, would be a huge political setback for the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle and the present leadership of it. (The Al Qaeda franchise would not give a damn about harming the Palestinian cause).

There is a case for saying (repeat a case) that the party with most to gain from Alan Johnston's permanent disappearance was Israel. It would not be the first time that Israeli agents had dressed as Arabs to make a hit.

Media Backspin put together a funny list of equally plausible kidnappers, explaining what they have to gain, like Rachel Corrie's parents and the royal family.

The argument of "who stands to gain the most" is very popular among conspiracy theorists, and their explanations always leave Occam's Razor in the dust. Once a person comes from an anti-Israeli viewpoint to begin with, along with fantasies of an all-powerful Mossad and impermeable cabal of Elders who never reveal their secret plans to the goyim, it is ridiculously easy to come up with ways to blame Israel for everything on the planet. In fact, this is exactly what Arabs do routinely:

Every single disaster from WTC to earthquakes are attempts by Israel to divert attentiojn from its daily crimes against humanity.
Suicide bombs in Israel are attempts by Israel to gain world sympathy and allow Israel to go on with its business of daily crimes against humanity.
"Accidentally" killing Palestinian Arab children allows Israel to practice genocide against PalArabs while pretending that it is an accident.

Every person ever killed worldwide can be blamed on Israel using one of the arguments above. It means that Jews, the most talkative people on the planet, manage to hide their nefarious plans from scary-intelligent all-knowing blowhards like Alan Hart, until he gets a hold of an Ilan Pappe and finds out the ugly truth.

UPDATE: Asharq Alawsat reports that Johnston's kidnappers are demanding $5 million for his release. I can't wait for Hart's next blog entry about those greedy Zionists.

Freedom of the press, PalArab style

From Ma'an:

Five Palestinian journalists were injured after being attacked by police guarding the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) building in Gaza.

The journalists were demonstrating against the abduction of BBC reporter Alan Johnston.

The police attacked the journalists with rifles and many sustained bruises. The journalists were forced to return to the strike tent in the centre of the city.

Ma'an's reporter said that he and dozens others of his colleagues "were protesting and then were attacked by the police and obliged to return to the tent".

Some other reporters confirmed the attack and said that the guards threatened to shoot the journalists if they continue their protest in the area.

No word on any reaction from the British National Union of Journalists.

Another day, another PalArab death you won't hear about

For the third time since the PA announced their new internal security plan over the weekend, a man was murdered (‘Abed Mohammed al-Wahesh.) This one was in Bethlehem, not Gaza, and it appears to be another "family dispute."

This brings the number of PalArabs violently killed by PalArabs this year, by my count, to 176.

UPDATE: A 55-year old man, Izzat Rashid Hassan, was found dead from gunshots near Jenin. I think he is the father of the the con man who scammed millions from gullible PalArabs a couple of weeks ago.

UPDATE 2: A 25-year old man killed in another clan clash near Gaza City.

Robert Novak's self-delusions

Robert Novak's latest column is another prime example of what can happen when one's personal opinions and wishes interfere with the truth.

I don't think that Novak is stupid, but the self-delusion in this column is emblematic of all that is wrong with well-meaning people who are starving for "peace" - no matter how illusory. (I would tend to believe that it is related to egomania as well - to my mind, the credibility of a commentator is inversely proportional to how much he injects himself in the story. Much like Thomas Friedman and Bill O'Reilly.)

In this column, Novak tells of his difficulties in finding someone from Hamas to interview. Then he somewhat dishonestly mentions:

I arrived in Jerusalem again April 3, two weeks after Hamas brought the more moderate opposition Fatah party into a new National Unity government. The Los Angeles Times had just run a remarkable op-ed column by political independent Salam Fayyad, finance minister in the new government who lived in Washington for 20 years, served as a World Bank official and is well respected in the West. He wrote that the Palestine Liberation Organization's 1993 acceptance of Israel and disavowal of violence is "a crystal-clear and binding agreement" that "no Palestinian government has the authority to revoke." He added that the unity government's platform "explicitly" pledges to honor all PLO commitments.

Over dinner in a Ramallah restaurant April 4, Fayyad told me he offered his column simultaneously to several major American newspapers to get this story out quickly. But do his Hamas colleagues accept his reasoning? Fayyad made clear he was not flying solo.

Note that Fayyad is not a Hamas member. He doesn't mention any specifics about who in Hamas might agree to a peaceful solution. Novak does mention that he is an "independent" but a cursory reading of this episode, right next to his description of how hard it was to find someone from Hamas, implies that Fayyad is representing Hamas in some way.

Just before my trip ended, the Palestinian Authority at long last put me in touch with an official who was no low-level bureaucrat. Nasser al-Shaer was deputy prime minister in the all-Hamas regime last Aug. 19 when he was seized in an Israeli raid on his home in Ramallah and held for a month without charges or evidence.

In his ministry office April 7, he looked nothing like the shirt-sleeved, tie-less Shaer photographed when he was released last Sept. 27. Holder of a doctorate from England's University of Manchester, he was dressed in a stylish suit. More telling than his appearance was what he said.

When I asked whether Hamas agreed with Fayyad's formulation, Shaer said it did not matter: "We are talking about the government, not groups." He said Hamas was no more relevant to Palestinian policy than the views of extremist anti-Palestinian Israeli Cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman are to Israeli policy. Unexpectedly, Shaer expressed dismay that "previous attempts at peace were ruined by suicide bombers. Now, we look forward to a sustained peace."

While avoiding Israel-bashing, Shaer conjectured: "I don't think the Israeli government wants a two-state solution. Without pressure from the president of the United States, nothing is going to happen."

Novak exhibits a complete and utter lack of cynicism for Shaer's semi-peaceful words. He finally found his Hamas spokesman and any facts that disagree with this man's assertions do not even rate a mention.

Comparing Hamas, the ruling partner in the coalition, with Lieberman is intellectually dishonest.
Not mentioning Hamas' charter, its repeated description of its purpose as the destruction of Israel, it clear support for terror attacks is equally dishonest.

It is especially ironic that he approvingly quotes Shaer's "I don't think the Israeli government wants a two-state solution" and doesn't deign to mention that Hamas explicitlydoesnt' want a two-state solution. One would expect a reporter to ask at least a couple of basic questions: how can Shaer be a Hamas member and then disavow himself from Hamas' very raison d'etre? Is this not similar to the PLO's historic two-faced positions where they say one thing to gullible Western journalists and diplomats and the complete opposite to their own people? Is Shaer not afraid to saythese things publicly when Hamas has a habit of making dissenter's lives a bit uncomfortable?

Novak does none of this. His personal agenda and narrative has been confirmed by a single member of Hamas in English and that's all the evidence he needs to push it as fact, and blame the Bush administration for not talking to these reasonable sounding people.

Israeli professor, Holocaust survivor, a victim and a hero at Virginia Tech

From YNet:

WASHINGTON – Prof Liviu Librescu, a senior researcher and lecturer at Virginia Tech, is among the 32 people who were killed during a shooting rampage at the university Monday.

One of Prof Librescu's students, Alec Calhoun, who was with him at the classroom when the shooting started, told AP that at about 9:05 am, he and classmates heard "a thunderous sound from the classroom next door, what sounded like an enormous hammer."

When students realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, they started flipping over desks for hiding places. Others dashed to the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens and jumping from the ledge of the room.

Calhoun said that just before he climbed out the window, he turned to look at the professor (Librescu), who had stayed behind to block the door.
Prof Librescu and his wife are both Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Israel from Romania in 1978.

Librescu was an accomplished scientist in Romania, and the Communist regime had tried to prevent him from making aliyah to Israel. He was allowed to leave the country only after the Israeli prime minister at the time Menachem Begin appealed the matter to President Nicolae Ceausescu.

Several years later, Librescu left for a sabbatical in the United States and has remained there since. His first son, Arieh, lives in Israel, while his other son, Joe, resides in the US.

Librescu's colleagues described his as a "true gentleman."

Many more humiliating checkpoints coming to territories

Over the weekend, the PA Interior Minister presented his plan to reduce the chaos and murders in the Palestinian Arab territories.

Yesterday, the first details of the plan emerged:

In a press conference held in Gaza City on Sunday evening, Al-Qawasmi explained that the plan would be gradually implemented through the massive deployment of domestic security forces in the central and northern Gaza Strip. Pedestrian and vehicular patrols would be deployed in addition to checkpoints in order to impose law and order and minimize the spread of arms in the streets.

This will be accompanied by a campaign to impose law in general through organizing the traffic and the marketplaces. That will be the duty of the Palestinian internal security forces in cooperation with the national security forces and the municipalities, explained the Palestinian interior minister.

Oppressive checkpoints? I wonder if the UN and NGOs will be obsessively tracking them - the UN counted 237 Israeli checkpoints last week.

Finally updated to new Blogger template

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my template to the new Blogger. Please let me know if anything is not working. I am seeing some glitches but hopefully the problems that some people were having viewing the blog in IE will go away.

I tried to reproduce the old format as much as possible, although there are some font and color changes.

For some reason, Feedburner (which should add a Digg and Reddit and email link at the end of each post) is still not working, and I seem to have lost my nifty tab icon graphic that looked like this:

If anyone knows how to make these work in the new Blogger, please let me know.

UPDATE: Got the icon working. The Feedburner stuff is driving me nuts.

1.6 million Palestinian Arabs alive because of Israel

In 1967, after the Six Day War, Israel introduced modern health care to the territories, as well as an electrical grid and sources for safe drinking water. As a result, the Palestinian Arab mortality rate plummeted and their life expectancy soared.

I am no demographer, but I thought it would be interesting to see roughly how many fewer Palestinian Arabs would be alive today if they had remained under Egyptian/Jordanian rule after 1967.

I based my numbers on the West Bank and Gaza populations as of 1970 (Palestine Remembered) and 2004 (CIA Factbook) to calculate growth rates, and the natural growth rates of Jordan and Egypt today (2.5% and 1.75%, respectively.) The CIA Factbook growth rates for Palestinian Arabs today (3.06% in West Bank, 3.71% in Gaza) are much smaller than what the real population growth during these dates were, so I used the Factbook current population numbers, ignoring the problems that some Israeli demographers have found with these numbers.

I did not account for emigration or immigration into the territories, making the oversimplistic assumption that the population growth is mostly the same as the natural growth. I also did not have accurate historical growth rate data for Egypt and Jordan so I assumed today's rates as being constant over the decades, another gross oversimplification.

Given this back-of-the-envelope calculation, and based again on current population numbers that Palestinian Arabs accept as accurate, I estimate that 1.6 million Palestinian Arabs exist today in Gaza and the West Bank that would not be alive had Israel not occupied the territories after 1967.

In other words, "occupation" was the best thing to ever happen to Palestinian Arabs in their short history.

(If you accept the criticisms about PalArab demographics, these numbers go down to only about 200,000 PalArabs alive because of Israel.)

For what it's worth....

Bargaining with semantics

Syria says that they want to revive the "peace process" with Israel....

"Syria wishes to revive the peace process with Israel with the help of US and Russian mediators," the Syrian Information Minister was quoted as saying by Israel Radio, Monday.

The minister immediately added a threat that "If Israel rejects the Arab peace initiatives, the only way to get the Golan Heights back would be the way of resistance."

In a crystal clear manner, Syria has defined for us its definition of "peace," and it has nothing to do with ending hostilities.

The "peace process" is just one way to get the Golan, and Syria otherwise exhibits not the slightest interest in what the word "peace" normally means. Peace is not a goal or even desirable to Syria - it is just a way to get what they really want, which is the high ground from which they can resume shooting at Israel and access Israel's main water source.

How peaceful was the Israeli/Syrian border before 1967, and how peaceful was it afterwards? If "peace" is the goal, then all should agree that Israel should hold onto the Golan.

Arabs are highly adept at the art of bargaining, as anyone who ever enters a souk can tell you. They know that Israel desperately wants a real peace so they use the word with impunity as a dangling carrot in order to get what they want - any land they can that Jews control in the area. Since most Westerners think of the word "peace" the way Israel does, no one thinks that when the Arabs say the word that they could possibly mean anything else.

But here we see here explicitly that "peace" is not a goal for the Arabs - it is a bargaining chip, that is infinitely valuable because it is worthless to the seller and highly prized by the buyer.

Another type of bargaining is evident from this story, showing an unusual unity among terror groups:

A number of Palestinian factions, including Hamas, have called for more Israeli soldiers to be captured in order to ensure Palestinian prisoners are released in exchange. They say that this action is necessary following the failure of the diplomatic efforts to release the Palestinian prisoners.

In a statement, Hamas said that their movement urges the armed brigades of Al-Qassam (Hamas), Al-Aqsa (Fatah), An-Nasser (Popular Resistance Committees), Al-Quds (Islamic Jihad), Abu Ali Mustafa (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and others, to work together to capture more Israeli soldiers in order to exchange them with Palestinian prisoners .

The statement confirmed that Hamas "intends to release all the prisoners, regardless of their faction or affiliation, by all means available and at any cost, especially after the failure of the diplomatic efforts, the weak agreements and the false promises."

Hamas also called on the Israeli leaders to "comply with the factions' demands, accelerate the exchange deal and avoid deception."

In this case as well, it all comes down to bargaining and peace is the furthest thing from the Arab minds.

Israel would be wise to take a chapter from the Arab playbook and start grabbing things that they value - land, specifically - so that Israel's bargaining position can be enhanced. Imagine how much more leverage Israel would have if it, for example, took a few square miles of Gaza, name it Kfar Gilad, and announce plans to build settlements there in two weeks unless Shalit is released.

Real peace is not in the playbook, so it is time Israel started playing the game the way that the Arabs want to play it themselves.

UPDATE: Joe Settler agrees.

Thomas Friedman's "Petropolitics"

The NYT's Thomas Friedman, who is a bit too egocentric for my tastes, mentions something interesting in the middle of a much longer article about the necessity of the US to be a leader in energy conservation and alternate energy (something I've been talking about for years):

No, I don’t want to bankrupt Saudi Arabia or trigger an Islamist revolt there. Its leadership is more moderate and pro-Western than its people. But the way the Saudi ruling family has bought off its religious establishment, in order to stay in power, is not healthy. Cutting the price of oil in half would help change that. In the 1990s, dwindling oil income sparked a Saudi debate about less Koran and more science in Saudi schools, even experimentation with local elections. But the recent oil windfall has stilled all talk of reform.

That is because of what I call the First Law of Petropolitics: The price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions in states that are highly dependent on oil exports for their income and have weak institutions or outright authoritarian governments. And this is another reason that green has become geostrategic. Soaring oil prices are poisoning the international system by strengthening antidemocratic regimes around the globe.

Look what’s happened: We thought the fall of the Berlin Wall was going to unleash an unstoppable tide of free markets and free people, and for about a decade it did just that. But those years coincided with oil in the $10-to-$30-a-barrel range. As the price of oil surged into the $30-to-$70 range in the early 2000s, it triggered a countertide — a tide of petroauthoritarianism — manifested in Russia, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Egypt, Chad, Angola, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The elected or self-appointed elites running these states have used their oil windfalls to ensconce themselves in power, buy off opponents and counter the fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall tide. If we continue to finance them with our oil purchases, they will reshape the world in their image, around Putin-like values.

You can illustrate the First Law of Petropolitics with a simple graph. On one line chart the price of oil from 1979 to the present; on another line chart the Freedom House or Fraser Institute freedom indexes for Russia, Nigeria, Iran and Venezuela for the same years. When you put these two lines on the same graph you see something striking: the price of oil and the pace of freedom are inversely correlated. As oil prices went down in the early 1990s, competition, transparency, political participation and accountability of those in office all tended to go up in these countries — as measured by free elections held, newspapers opened, reformers elected, economic reform projects started and companies privatized. That’s because their petroauthoritarian regimes had to open themselves to foreign investment and educate and empower their people more in order to earn income. But as oil prices went up around 2000, free speech, free press, fair elections and freedom to form political parties and NGOs all eroded in these countries.

The motto of the American Revolution was “no taxation without representation.” The motto of the petroauthoritarians is “no representation without taxation”: If I don’t have to tax you, because I can get all the money I need from oil wells, I don’t have to listen to you.

It is no accident that when oil prices were low in the 1990s, Iran elected a reformist Parliament and a president who called for a “dialogue of civilizations.” And when oil prices soared to $70 a barrel, Iran’s conservatives pushed out the reformers and ensconced a president who says the Holocaust is a myth. (I promise you, if oil prices drop to $25 a barrel, the Holocaust won’t be a myth anymore.) And it is no accident that the first Arab Gulf state to start running out of oil, Bahrain, is also the first Arab Gulf state to have held a free and fair election in which women could run and vote, the first Arab Gulf state to overhaul its labor laws to make more of its own people employable and the first Arab Gulf state to sign a free-trade agreement with America.

People change when they have to — not when we tell them to — and falling oil prices make them have to. That is why if we are looking for a Plan B for Iraq — a way of pressing for political reform in the Middle East without going to war again — there is no better tool than bringing down the price of oil. When it comes to fostering democracy among petroauthoritarians, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a neocon or a radical lib. If you’re not also a Geo-Green, you won’t succeed.

There is some truth here, but Friedman pointedly tries to avoid making this an Arab issue and tries to generalize it to any authoritarian regime heavily dependent on oil.

Obviously if dictatorships have the ability to act without worrying about the consequences, they will be emboldened to act in ways that will keep them in power.

But there is a flip-side to his observation that he doesn't want to mention: when enlightened societies become richer, their citizens and other nations benefit. The US is not only the richest nation but also the most generous, and this is a direct result of being built with ingrained ideals of freedom and democracy. Israel's economic might pays dividends to not only her citizens but also to the entire world in the areas of scientific research, help during disasters and anti-terror training.

Friedman is specifically applying this "rule" to oil-rich nations but it would apply to any nation with a fundamentally immoral outlook and access to any valuable resource.

Oil isn't the problem; it is the underlying mindset of the entire nation that encourages corruption.

Egypt and Jordan may indeed have been more amenable to signing a peace agreement with Israel because they do not have huge oil reserves, but the point is that acting in peaceful ways goes against their very nature and only economic incentives could push them into reluctantly abandoning their pan-Arab, anti-Israel "principles." While this is probably better than no peace at all, one must remember that it was not based on a natural longing for peaceful co-existence with their neighbor, but rather on external economic factors. This is starkly apparent in that Egypt is literally being paid off by the US to the tune of billions of dollars a year just to maintain the paper peace treaty with Israel.

So while I agree that economics, and specifically energy economics, is a hugely important vector in minimizing tyranny, it is fundamentally cosmetic and coerced. These societies, and specifically those that are based on Arab/Muslim honor/pride ideas, are inherently against transparency in leadership, freedom, equal rights and democratic principles and

Economic coercion is a tool but it will not fix the real problems they have.

Background information: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

There was a brief kerfuffle over the weekend when the Vatican threatened to boycott a Holocaust ceremony in Israel because they were upset that Yad Vashem captioned a picture of Pope Pius XII with the words "even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest." Yad Vashem stands by its research, and invited the Vatican to open its archives if it had evidence to the contrary.

A very good and fair article about Pius' role during the Holocaust can be seen at the Jewish Virtual Library. While there are some of accounts showing that the Pope did save a number of Jews and that the Vatican itself sheltered 477 Jews, the overwhelming evidence is that he refused to do anything to save the Jews that he clearly knew were being systematically murdered until it was obvious that the Allies were going to win the war. Even then his actions were half-hearted and seemed to be more motivated by politics than by any true concern over human beings being butchered. Read the whole thing.

Interestingly, a joint Catholic/Jewish commission appointed by the Vatican itself issued its own preliminary report on Pius' actions in 2000 showed clearly that the Pope was aware of Nazi atrocities as early as 1941. The report poses a series of questions that the Vatican apparently failed to answer and the Commission itself disbanded shortly thereafter. Two of the unanswered questions were:

14. On several occasions Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, had vainly appealed to the Pope to protest specific Nazi actions, including those directed at the Jews. On 17 January 1941 he wrote to Pius XII, noting that "Your Holiness is certainly informed about the situation of the Jews in Germany and the neighboring countries. I wish to mention that I have been asked both from the Catholic and Protestant side if the Holy See could not do something on this subject, issue an appeal in favor of these unfortunates.²⁷" This was a direct appeal to the Pope, which bypassed the nuncio. What impression did von Preysing's words make on Pius XII; what discussions if any, took place about making such a public appeal as the German bishop requested, and was any further information about Nazi anti-Jewish policy sought?

10. At the end of August 1942, the Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Lviv (Lwow), Andrzeyj Szeptyckyj, wrote to the Pope and described with stark clarity the atrocities and mass murder being carried out against the Jews and the local population.²⁴ No other high-ranking Catholic Churchman, to the best of our knowledge, provided such direct eye-witness testimony and expressed concern for Jews qua Jews (and as primary targets of German bestiality) in the same way. Moreover, he indicated to the Pope that he had protested to Himmler himself. Finally, he publicly denounced the massacres of Jews in circumstances in which some Ukrainian Catholics themselves were collaborating with the Germans in these murders. Is there evidence of a discussion or a reply to Szeptyckyj's plea? (In a separate citation: "The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to 'bear adversity with serene patience.'⁽⁸⁾)

A separate chapter of Pius' attitude towards Jews opened after the war, as thousands of Jewish children who had hidden in convents throughout Europe had to be dealt with.

In 2005, the New York Times published a letter that originated in the Vatican instructing Catholic institutions on how to handle requests from Jewish families and institutions to take Jewish children back. A critique of that letter's translation and veracity was printed in Beliefnet.

Even if the critical article cited is 100% accurate, it still shows that there was a concerted effort on the part of Pius' church to stop orphaned children from being taken care of by Jews, and almost certainly from even letting them know that they were Jewish to begin with. Not to take away from the bravery of those who hid these Jewish children, but in the end these children were not to ever know their true heritage.

The Vatican is now going through the process of promoting Pius to sainthood. It is even possible that the Vatican wants to mollify Yad Vashem to help make its case for sainthood.

But by any yardstick, he had the ability to actively appeal for the lives of Jews before millions of them were murdered - and he refused.

This is not how a saint would act.

British reporters condemn Israel as BBC reporter reported executed

Ya gotta hand it to British leftist journalists - they have a great sense of timing.

The day after the National Union of Journalists called for a far from even-handed boycott of Israeli goods, and in another vote called Israeli actions "savage," a previously unknown terror group in Gaza claimed that they executed BBC reporter Alan Johnston and said a video will be released soon.

The NUJ had nothing to say about their fellow British journalist in their orgy of condemnations. After all, why pretend to be fair when your pre-defined agenda is so much more important? After all, isn't that the underlying premise of British journalism to begin with?

Christian bookstore bombed in Gaza

From YNet:

Three explosions rocked Gaza City early Sunday, damaging two Internet cafes and a Christian bookstore.

No one was hurt and no group claimed responsibility for the blasts, which took place around 3 a.m. local time, Palestinian security officials said.

Heavy external damage was visible at the three stores. At the bookstore, which is funded by American Protestants and known as the Bible Society, a number of books were also burned in the explosion.

This is not the first time that the Bible Society has been threatened or bombed. It is a proselytizing group.

The irony is, as documented by Michael Oren in his book about America's history in the Middle East, that the pro-Arab tilt of the State Department is a result of the early American Protestant missionary involvement there as their children gravitated towards jobs at State. Now the spiritual descendants of the original missionaries are reaping the results of the influence of their forefathers.

A somewhat more direct irony is that one of the activities of the Society has been:

Visiting Palestinian injured during the Intifada uprising, and helping them with moral and financial support.

One wonders if this organization distinguishes between innocent victims and terrorists themselves when supporting them financially. Could some of the "victims" paid by the PBS have been behind this bombing?

On another note, I wonder how long it will take for thousands of enraged Christians worldwide to violently protest the purposeful desecration of many Christian Bibles.

Iranian nuclear accident watch

Here's the earthquake activity in Iran for just the past few days:

Quake jolts southern Iran Thursday April 12, 2007
Shiraz, Fars prov, April 12, IRNA
Iran-Quakes-South
There are no reports of any casualty or damage to property caused by the quake.

Quake hits southeastern Iranian city Thursday April 12, 2007
Iran-Quake
The seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 16:29 hours local time (12:59 GMT).
The quake was epicentered in an area measuring 56.09 degrees in longitude and 32.17 degrees in latitude, the report added.

Quake jolts southeastern Iranian city Saturday, April 14, 2007
Iran-Quake
The seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 16:36 hours local time (1306 GMT).
The quake was epicentered in an area measuring 57.35 degrees in longitude and 30.73 degrees in latitude, the report added.

Quake hits southwestern city Sunday April 15, 2007
Iran-Qal'e Khajeh-Quake
The seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 07:26 hours local time (0356 GMT).
The quake was epicentered in an area measuring 49.44 degrees in longitude and 32.16 degrees in latitude, the report added.

More proof of UN worthlessness

On Saturday, Mahmoud Abbas met with the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy.

According to Wafa (Arabic only):

Ms. Coomaraswamy was pleased to hear about a deal to exchange prisoners, and that the deal would include the release of prisoners of children.

She added, "I am also happy to hear from Mr. President and his commitment to promoting the culture of peace among children and the development of sports activities."

She said : "Peace is the most important thing at this moment, we in the United Nations support the Palestinian president in his efforts to bring peace to this region."

A small reminder of the great efforts that Mahmoud Abbas has undertaken to promoting a culture of peace among Palestinian Arab children: (all examples from Palestinian Media Watch):

Mohammed Al-Dura music video includes

Narrator: "How sweet is the fragrance of the shahids [people who have died for Allah]. How sweet is the fragrance of the earth. Tts thirst quenched by the gush of blood flowing from the youthful body. How sweet is the fragrance of the earth."

Vocalist: "The boy cried, 'O father, 'til we meet, O father, 'til we meet, 'til we meet, father, 'til we meet. I will go with no fear and without crying. How sweet is the fragrance of the shahids. I will go, father, to my place in heaven. How sweet is the fragrance of the shahids. O father, 'til we meet, O father, 'til we meet."
[PATV 2000-2003, and PATV June 28-29, 2006]
Interview with an 11-year old girl on PATV:
Interviewer: You described Shahada as something beautiful. Do you think it is beautiful?

Walla: Shahada is a very beautiful thing. Everyone yearns for Shahada. What could be better than going to paradise?

Interviewer: What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people or Shahada?

Walla: Shahada. I will achieve my rights after becoming a shahid. We won't stay children forever.
PATV February 2006:
"Daddy brought me a present
A machine gun and a rifle
When I am big I will join the liberation army
The liberation army has taught us
How to liberate our homeland"
[PA TV, February 26, 2006]
Tarashibo, a talking chicken:

Girl: If a boy comes in front of your house, where a tree is planted, and cuts it down, what would you do?

Tarabisho: I have two trees in front of my house.

Girl: If a little boy cuts them down, what will you do to him?

Tarabisho: What will I do to him? I'll fight him and make a big riot! I'll call the whole world and make a riot! I'll bring AK-47s and the whole world. I'll commit a massacre in front of the house.
[PA TV, October 22, 2004]

This is all PA TV, made mostly under Fatah leadership (even after Hamas was voted into power, the PA TV remained pro-Fatah.)

The UN representative had a golden opportunity to pressure Abbas to do something about inciting children to war, and instead she praises him as teaching them about peace.

Once again, the UN is shown to be a worthless organization on every level.

Who are those masked men? Terror webpage banner gallery

See if you can see all the things these have in common.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Fatah) website:

Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas):

Al-Quds Brigades (Islamic Jihad):

Yup - they all feature those scary ski masks!

Just like these members of the "special forces" that were training today in Gaza:

Notice the liberal use of jungle camouflage - on a beach. You can hardly see them.

But nothing beats these Fatah terrorists, who are so intent on covering their faces while they wear their faek suicide bomb belts that they don't even bother with holes for their eyes:

Nothing says "I'm proud of who I am and what I do" like covering your face in public.

Want some refreshing Zionist MelonAIDS?

Not dyslexic lemonade, but only the latest insane rumor going around Saudi Arabia:

"Beware of Israeli melons infected with AIDS arriving in Saudi Arabia!" is the latest rumor being spread throughout Saudi Arabia like a wildfire.

An SMS message being sent around the country this week said, "The Saudi Interior Ministry warns its citizens of a truck loaded with AIDS infected melons that Israel brought into the country via a 'ground corridor.'"

The Interior Minister's spokesman General Mansour al Turki responded to news of the message and made it clear to a-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper that the Ministry "did not issue any such announcement. This is just a rumor."

The rumor, despite being denied several times, has gained so much steam in the Arab world that it made it to the front page of one of the most important Arabic language newspapers.

But is it so unreasonable when Jews are "known" to gouge out Arab kids' eyes for transplants, fly poison balloons over Lebanon, and create a virus that only attacks Arabs?