Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Former PalArab legislator convicted of involvement in 2002 terror attack

A member of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction of the PLO, and a former legislator in the PA parliament, was found guilty Wednesday of sending a "suicide" bomber to Tel Aviv in 2002.
The attacker blew himself up in a coffee shop in the coastal city, killing Rachel Tcherkhi, an Israeli woman.

Jamal Tirawi was convicted of sending the bomber and thus of deliberately murdering Tcherki.

Remember - this guy is part of the group that the West supports as "moderate."

YNet adds:

According to the indictment, the suicide bomber that blew himself up in a coffee shop in the city in March 2002 made his way to Israel from the Nablus home of PLC member Jamal Tirawi.

The Fatah member is also accused of recruiting potential suicide bombers.

A little factoid about him from before the terror attack:

Like other leading activists, Mr Tirawi is mindful of the long arm of Israeli intelligence. Behind the lace curtains of his living room, he sat surrounded by 16 of his men. All were armed with M-16s or Kalashnikovs, and his six-year-old daughter played with a Belgian-made pistol.

But despite the assortment of weapons, Mr Tirawi said he was against vigilante justice for suspected Israeli agents.

While he might be against extrajudicial killing of "collaborators," it doesn't stop him from using the idea to do that recruiting he wants:

Wanted Tanzim terrorist Rabi'ah Abu Alil originally tried to employ the boy as a suicide bomber after he and his father quarreled over money. The boy refused, and was taken to an apartment by Abu Alil and another wanted Arab terrorist, Jamal Tirawi. Tirawi is also a high ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence officer, the IDF said.

"Despite the youth's pleas that he be released to his home and left alone, Tirawi and Abu Alil threatened him that if he did not cooperate, they would kill him and distribute a communique claiming he had been collaborating with the Israeli army," the IDF announcement stated. Terrorists photographed the boy wearing a vest and holding a rifle and a copy of the Koran.

Now, try to find a Palestinian Arab "moderate" who is willing to condemn this guy. Good luck with that.

Celebrity deathmatch: Tzipi Livni vs. Julia Roberts

Tzipi:

Ms Livni, a key figure in Israel's contacts with the new Abbas-established administration, said: "I know that it looks tempting and I know that the international community is eager to see a kind of understanding between Hamas and Fatah." But she warned at a news conference with her visiting Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso: "This is wrong. This is a mistake. Big mistake. Huge."

Julia: (as Vivian in Pretty Woman)

Vivian: You people work on commission, right?
Shop assistant: Yeah.
Vivian: Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now.

I think Julia has the edge. She comes off as more self-assured.

Hamas: Buses legit targets, no Jews in Palestine before 1917, goal to wipe Israel out

From MEMRI via Front Page:

The following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on August 6, 2007.

To view this clip visit: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1527.htm.

Interviewer: "Islamic law has forbidden aggression during jihad – by forbidding the killing of women, children, the elderly, clerics who devote themselves to the worship of God, and other noncombatant civilians who do not serve in the enemy's army. Do you consider all the Jews in Palestine to be combatants who have plundered the land? We've witnessed martyrdom operations that targeted buses and restaurants."

Osama Hamdan: "First of all, let me clarify something very important. What is the ruling regarding those who live in Palestine, in the so-called Israel, and who are aggressors and plunderers of the land? The way we see it, they all came to Palestine from abroad, whether before the declaration of the Zionist entity or after it. If you were to conduct statistics within the Zionist entity, you would find that all these people have their origins in other countries – they came from Europe, Eastern Europe, from America, South America, or other places."

Interviewer: "In other words, there were no Palestinian Jews?"

Osama Hamdan: "No, there were no Palestinian Jews. When the British Mandate began in 1917, there was only one settlement on Palestinian land, which included several dozen Jews, who were living there in violation of the law at the time. I would like to mention that under the Ottoman state – regardless of the many reservations we have about it – there was a law that prohibited the Jews from staying in Palestine for over a month.

"Their passports and personal documents were taken away from them, and they were given an Ottoman permit at the border, which allowed them to stay for a month on Palestinian land. The only group that can be called Jewish was the one in Nablus. They still live there to this day. The Palestinians regard them as part of the makeup of Palestinian society, and they number no more than several hundred. As for those who immigrated from various countries – they are not Jews.

"Anyone who comes to live in a war zone is a combatant, regardless of whether he wears a uniform. That's one thing. Secondly, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian resistance force intentionally killed civilians. You mentioned the buses. What's an easier target – a bus, which is protected by various security measures, or a school [or] a theater, or a stadium, for example? These civilian targets – in which the killing of women and children is intentional – were not targeted by
"Why were buses targeted? Because they are the means of transport used by the soldiers as well. The Zionist soldiers, who go from their homes to their bases and back, use public transportation, because it is free or almost free. In my opinion, the occupation soldiers also have a security motive in using public transport: They shield themselves behind the so-called 'civilians' within the Zionist entity.

"Therefore, the way I see it, they need to stop using public transportation, or else society should prevent them from using it, because it is the soldiers who are targeted. Just to prove it, in the dozens of operations that were carried out, the Zionists never announced, for example, that 20 children were killed, or that 50 women were killed. On the contrary, if you were to examine who was killed in martyrdom operations that targeted buses, you would find that 70% were occupation soldiers, and they may even have been in uniform at the time of the operation." [...]

"The Final Goal of the Resistance is to Wipe This Entity Off the Face of the Earth"

"We are making the preparations for a confrontation. This is not because we need to be prepared for an Israeli act of aggression – after all, aggression is intrinsic to this entity – but because the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the Earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out."

Interviewer: "Do you think that Mahmoud Abbas, who has found himself in the crisis of the confrontation with Hamas, plays the role of a policeman, who is thwarting the Intifada, the resistance, and the jihad against the Zionist occupation in the Palestinian lands?"

Osama Hamdan: "He plays a role that is even worse than that. Mahmoud Abbas is doing this out of ideological conviction. He has been calling for a settlement ever since 1973. It was Mahmoud Abbas who created the Oslo Accords, and who was brought in by the Americans to serve as prime minister in order to confront Arafat. In my opinion, he plays this role willingly and out of conviction, which is worse than if he were doing it out of commitment to the occupation."

The number of lies per sentence in this little interview is even higher than the usual number that comes out from Arab terrorists.

And if you are curious about the Jews in Nablus that he's talking about, he's referring to Samaritans. It is possible that by defining them as Jews he is also defining the Jews who have lived in Palestine continuously as infidels, not dhimmis, meaning that they are all legitimate targets for being killed.

Of course, we cannot expect too much consistency from people who rewrite history at will, and who conveniently forget terror attacks against schools, shopping malls, discos, bar mitzvahs, cafes, pizza shops, and hotels.

PalArabs celebrate their 11th honor killing this year

From PCHR:

at approximately 18:00 on Monday, 13 August 2007, the body of En’am Jaber Deifallah (37) arrived at Shifa Hospital. The victim is from El-T’wam area in northern Gaza City, and was a mother of one child. Medical sources indicated that she was killed by beating with a sharp object on the head. The victim’s family informed PCHR’s fieldworker that one of the victim’s brothers killed her inside her house in a murder motivated by “honor.”

It is noted that “honor killings” have increased over the past few years in the Gaza Strip. Deirallah is the 11th victim of such crimes this year.

See how much they honor their women?

Google News has nothing about this. The only news source I've seen mention this so far is Ma'an Arabic.

Our PalArab self-death count is now 507 for 2007.

Dr. Mamdooh Fahmy was a surgeon at the Albyaan Menfhoh Medical Center in Riyadh. His colleagues noticed that he didn't seem to practice Islam and they started trying to convince him to become Muslim and practice a religion that despises coercion.

After some time of enduring their repeated invitations to become Muslim, Fahmy finally told them that he was a Coptic Christian, and he would not be changing his beliefs any time soon.

Soon thereafter, Dr. Fahmy received a friendly visit from our heroes, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They insulted him in front of patients and staff, confiscated his car keys, cell phone and wallet, handcuffed him and shackled his feet, and dragged him to a car where they nicely drove him to his house. They then raided his house and confiscated all his written materials, took him to the police station and placed him in solitary confinement.

After five days of this Muslim hospitality, they started interrogating him and referring to him as an 'infidel'.

His crime: Fahmy was accused of missionary activity. It seems that not allowing oneself to be pressured into becoming a Muslim is equivalent to asking people to become Christian, in Saudi Muslim thought.

When the Muttawa finally released him and he tried to get back to his home in Egypt, the Saudi government refused to give him a visa.

Finally, after months calls and letters, Saudi Arabia allowed him to go to Egypt this week.

Once again, the Commission has shown its hatred for vice and its promotion of virtue. Saudis can sleep soundly at night knowing that such zealous defenders of their lifestyle are on constant watch, ready to pounce at even the slightest whiff of infidelism.

Last episode here.

From left to right, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, react during a press conference in the West Bank town of Jericho, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007

Saeb Erekat is one of the most accomplished liars in history, who has said things like "Hamas' running in elections is tantamount to giving up weapons" and "You know, the Jenin refugee camp is no longer in existence…" and "people were massacred. And we say the number will not be less than 500."

In other words, he's a good representative for the Palestinian Arab people. How smart it is to negotiate with a known liar is a different question.

IAP skit: "I am Hamas and I'm going to kill Jews"

From a Fox News transcript for Hannity and Colmes last Friday, on a video shown in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation showing skits put on by the Islamic Association for Palestine:

LOWRY: Steve, as far as I can tell, these skits seem to be classic incitement, anti-Semitic propaganda, urging people on to kill Jews in the name of the intifada.

EMERSON: Well, they're pretty horrifying. They took place in the United States and they were skits put on by the Islamic Association for Palestine, which was a sister organization to the group that's on trial, the Holy Land Foundation.

And the person who makes the statement, "I am Hamas and I'm going to kill Jews" is Mufid Abdul Qatar. He's one of the defendants. And though it takes place in the late 1980s, the fact of matter it goes directly — it's directly relevant to the mindset of those that are on trial today.

It's like a pedophile who's on trial. If a pedophile says, in years before his trial that "I want to rape children," that's relevant to the mindset.

And in this case, the defendant, as well as the organization, clearly indicate their desire to carry out genocide against Jews.

LOWRY: So Steve, what does that do to the line of defense? In particular, the Holy Land Foundation says we were just supporting Palestinian charities and wow, it's really too bad that some of this money may have made it into the hands of bad actors?

EMERSON: Well, I think it puts a definite lie to that claim, because here you have one of the defendants, an official of the Holy Land Foundation, who actually blurts out and says, "I am Hamas."

And in the very end of this skit, which is pretty horrifying, the — Abdul Qatar actually kills the Jew. And you can actually hear children in the audience laughing and applauding.

By the way, the man in the skit who is pretending to kill a Jew, who is on trial as part of the Holy Land Foundation, is the half-brother of Khalid Mashaal, leader of Hamas in exile.

Happy blogoversary to me

3 years
over 3000 posts
well over a million words

Just for fun, I just pasted all my June and July postings into Microsoft Word as examples of typical months. Each one ended up over 140 pages long!

Thanks for reading!

Tunisia forbids access to Arafat's papers

From Ma'an:

The pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported on Wednesday that the Tunisian authorities have refused to open the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's office to the public.

The source added that there have been several attempts to obtain access to the personal archives of Arafat.

The archives include correspondence, documents and secret letters of Arafat, and are believed to reveal the personal life behind the public figure.

The main archives of Yasser Arafat in his Tunisia office are closed to the public.

One can understand how proof of his corruption and homosexuality might be a tad embarrassing.

Hezbollah wildly celebrates death

One of the themes of this blog is that it is a fatal mistake for Westerners to consider the Arab and Islamic mindset to be similar to ours. Both sides in this clash of civilizations will project their own attitudes onto the other, and as a result both sides will consistently overlook any attitudes that are utterly foreign to their mindsets as aberrations rather than mainstream.

This article describes how Hezbollah is celebrating the first anniversary of the war with Israel. Their museum contains items that would never appear in a Western museum, because while the West may have memorials to commemorate wars, it does not celebrate the deaths of enemies - and to Arabs, that is the entire point. This is not an aberration - this is mainstream Arab culture:

Nasrallah's speech last night was only the culminating moment in a summer marked by Hizbullah's celebration of its "divine victory" last year. The group even opened a museum last month in Dahia that commemorates its war efforts against the Israelis. Thousands of Lebanese have visited in recent weeks.

The museum's main exhibit - which is entitled "The Spider's Web" - is a macabre testament to Hizbullah's ongoing fascination with battling the Jewish state. At the entrance, children pose with badly-damaged Israeli armoured vehicles, adorned with placards giving the name of their model and the date of their destruction by the "resistance".

Moving past the tanks, one enters the main exhibit through an elaborately reconstructed Hizbullah bunker, where mannequins dressed in fatigues and holding Kalashnikovs stare ponderously at maps of the battlefield. In the "Living Post Model" inside the mock bunker, two would-be Hizbullah guerrillas recline on the floor watching television. An RPG leans against a bookshelf covered with Qurans, and Hizbullah flags and posters of Nasrallah dot the walls.

One emerges from the bunker into a large room filled with photographs from the war and weapons and ammunition captured from the Israeli military. Heart-wrenching pictures of Lebanese children wounded and killed in Israeli bombings are flanked by those of bloodied Israeli corpses. Airbrushed on one wall is a picture of an exploding Israeli warship that bears the caption, "Watch it burn, it will sink taking with it tens of Zionist [sic] Israeli soldiers"; adjacent to the warship, a wall-sized image of a contemplative, smug Nasrallah looks down upon droves of women and children lining up to snap pictures of Israeli rifles and rocket launchers with their camera phones. A replica of a dead Israeli soldier, outfitted in a captured IDF uniform and bearing an M16, lies in a shallow grave carved into the floor; ammunition, cans of Kosher food, and a smashed iPod lie to his sides.

The audio-visual presentations of the exhibit are its highlight. A television shows screen-shots of a Hizbullah computer game ("Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge"), whose object is to shoot IDF soldiers and blow up Israeli tanks. At the end of the main hall, visitors enter a darkened room where an enormous projection screen stands over the remains of a damaged Merkava tank. Images come across the screen of Hizbullah fighters firing RPGs and launching rockets at Haifa, as coloured lights illuminate the faux corpses lying by the tank. After an explosive climax, where sounds of screaming and crying fill the small room, the 10-minute movie ends with footage of Nasrallah proclaiming victory in front of thousands waving the yellow Hizbullah flag. The lights come up, and militiamen-cum-curators guide the onlookers back outside, where busloads of young children unload and line up to see the sights.

The last stop in the exhibit is the "Martyrs' Oasis", an abstract installation on the museum's lawn consisting of a few large blocks covered in white sheets and a stairway leading up to an open door, presumably signifying the entrance to heaven. And, as if the guarantee of paradise were not sufficient, the museum also boasts a gift shop, where those so-inclined can purchase Hizbullah DVD's, key-chains, car-fresheners, and perfume.

Even a whiff of such an attitude in the West would have liberals - rightly - screaming. If it is evil over here, why is it not evil elsewhere?

Gaza heats up again

A Hamas member was killed in a clash with a family in Gaza and six were injured. Palpress reports that it is the Daghmoush family which supposedly kidnapped Alan Johnston and that there were reports of two dead, but for now I'll only count Ma'an's one.

Palpress also reports on an Islamic Jihad print shop that was closed by Hamas.

Interestingly, one of the commenters on that page announced another Fatah rally at the Tomb of the Unknown Terrorist in Gaza on Frfiday, where the Fatah rally on Monday resulted in Hamas beating the demonstrators and confiscating cameras.

Our PalArab self-death count is at 505.

UPDATE: Maan and YNet confirm Palpress' report of two killed. 506.

Interview with Saraa, Hamas' 11-year old terror apologist

From McClatchy Newspapers (h/t Jihad Watch):

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Saraa Barhoum picked at the buttons on her pink bellbottom jeans as she twisted on a chair inside the bustling new Hamas television headquarters. The afternoon light bounced off the sparkly outlines of butterflies on her frilly top, and a colorful hijab framed her 11-year-old face.

Saraa wants to be a doctor. If she can't, the young star of Hamas television's best-known children's show said, she'd be proud to become a martyr. Saraa says little Jewish girls should be forced from their homes in Israel so that Palestinians can return to their land.

With the show's producer helpfully offering written tips during an interview, Saraa didn't get into how she hopes to die for her cause, be it suicide bombing, fighting the Israeli military or some other way. She carefully sidestepped any suggestion that she's subtly calling for the destruction of Israel .

" Israel says that we are terrorists," Saraa said minutes before an interview with her was interrupted by an errant Israeli airstrike that slammed into an apartment building on the adjacent block. "But they are the ones that must stop their attacks against us and our kids."

Saraa is the sweet face of "Tomorrow's Pioneers," a weekly, hour-long Hamas television children's show best known for bringing the world a militant Mickey Mouse look-alike and then having him killed off by an Israeli interrogator.

With her jarring mix of innocent charm and militant rhetoric, Saraa is at the center of the militant Islamist group's increasingly sophisticated campaign to become the dominant force in Palestinian politics.

Since it went on the air last year in the Gaza Strip , the Hamas -funded al Aqsa television has gained momentum and expanded its audience to include the West Bank .

Taking a lead from Hezbollah's al Manar television station in Beirut , Hamas is using al Aqsa to promote its agenda and challenge its rivals, in this case Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his fractured Fatah allies.

During its decisive June military showdown with Fatah in Gaza , Hamas used its television station to broadcast footage of Fatah leaders joking with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials. The message was clear: Fatah is in bed with America. After Fatah lost Gaza to Hamas , Fatah forces laid siege to al Aqsa's offices in the West Bank and arrested several employees.

The station, which operates with a license from the Palestinian Authority, also features religious lessons, cartoons, advice shows and militant music videos. One video hailed a female suicide bomber whose young daughter vows to follow her mother's example.

"Tomorrow's Pioneers" sparked an international furor in April when it began featuring Farfour, the Mickey Mouse look-alike who sounded more like Iran's firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than a Disney character.

After two months, Farfour was beaten to death on the show by an Israeli interrogator. Nahoul, a larger-than-life bee, is now carrying his message.

"A lot of people in Palestine have died as martyrs, and lots of Palestinians hope to be martyrs," Saraa said of Farfour's demise. "This is one of the ends."

Asked if she hoped one day to be a martyr, Saraa instinctively nodded her head.

"Of course," Saraa said. "It's something to be proud of. Every Palestinian citizen hopes to be a martyr."

Saraa helps deliver similar messages to Palestinian children from a Hamas TV set filled with colorful numbers and pictures of kittens. During the show, Saraa fields calls from Palestinian children who warble songs about Islam, liberating Jerusalem and finding answers in the barrel of a machine gun.

On one show, she cut off a caller who was singing about surrendering herself, presumably to God's will.

"We don't want to surrender," Saraa told the caller. "We want to resist."

On the show, Saraa offers moral lessons to viewers and urges them to do what they can to fight Israeli occupation. After some prodding in an interview, Saraa offered a personal message for Israeli girls her age.

"They have to leave," she said. "This is our country. They kicked us out and stole our happiness. This is a natural result."

This is pure child abuse and brainwashing for the singular purpose of ridding the Middle East of Jews.Teaching children to aspire to death shows, better than anything I can write, the depravity of Islamism.

Israeli research helps keep breasts perky

Sure, Israeli research is helping fight terrorism, reduce our dependence on Arab oil and save people's lives. But they are also doing their part for women's breasts worldwide.

What's not to love?

The MIM technique (Minimally Invasive Mastopexy), developed by the startup of the same name, promises to reshape, support and lift breast soft tissue in a much more minimally invasive manner than today's cosmetic breast surgery. They're calling their breast support kit the 'Cup&Up'.

"Today in aesthetic surgery, plastic surgeons reshape many body parts - the nose, butt, hands, tummy - most of the procedures are very intensive, risky ones, with long recovery periods, problems with scars, inconvenience. We're trying to develop a method to replace those surgical procedures with minimally invasive kits," says the MIM CEO Adi Cohen.

..."What we've done is build a silicon bra, insert it into the body and attach it to the ribs and to the fascia. It's like a normal external bra," he continues, "where a strip lies on the shoulder and attaches around the body. We attach it to the ribs instead of to the shoulder, and to the fascia in the lower part of the body."

...The procedure is minimally invasive requiring two small openings through which the device is attached to the ribs.

"It may sound scary but take a look at cosmetic and plastic surgery - that's much more invasive," said Gur. "The most prevalent procedure in the world is breast implantation. Who is the crazy woman who agreed to be the first woman to put silicon into her body? Very strange things happen within the cosmetic world and the MIM is not as crazy as it sounds; that's the end point of what I'm saying."

Cohen founded MIM in 2004 as part of the Meytav technological incubator in Kiryat Shmona. Within three years they have produced a final prototype which has undergone rigorous testing.

According to Gur, tests applied included strength, fatigue and endurance "because the device in the body will have to endure running, spinning, bike riding."

In the holy city of Medina, a Bangladeshi man decided to wash his car.

Luckily, our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice noticed him and arrested him.

As you may have surmised by now, he was washing the car during prayer times.

Unfortunately, after his arrest there was a horrible accident, he "fainted" and died while in custody of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

The head of the Muttawa said that three Commission officers were questioned and found completely without guilt in the man's death.

Once again, our heroic Vice Squad has been proven to be an effective force in stopping immorality and vice, and promoting virtue, all throughout the Kingdom!

The last episode can be found here.

"Peace activists" with sledgehammers

Backspin links to a video of "peace activists" damaging Israel's security fence (somehow, it doesn't look like a wall in their video, even though the name of their organization is "Anarchists Against the Wall") :

The same "activists" evidently did the same thing recently in another section of the fence:

The only possible foreseeable result from these peaceful people poking holes in the fence is to allow Palestinian Arab terrorists to get through and blow up Jews. Makes you wonder what their definition of "peace" is.

Suha Arafat loses Tunisian citizenship

From IMEMC:

The London-based newspaper Al-quds Al-Arabi reported on Monday that Suha Arafat, the wife of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, lost Tunisian citizenship after it was granted to her in the fall of 2005.

According to the newspaper, the report was first made by a local Tunisian newspaper that claimed the Tunisian President had issued a decree cancelling Mrs. Arafat’s citizenship over the weekend.

The report did not reveal the reasons behind the decision, but commentators have suggested that Shua’s departure from Tunisia is related to a conflict between her and her Tunisian business partners.

Suha Arafat, along with her daughter Zawha, moved to Tunisia in 2004, shortly after Yasser Arafat died in a military hospital in France after suffering a rare disease.

Well, AIDS isn't that rare anymore.

Maybe the Tunisians are afraid they'll catch AIDS from Suha?

Freedom of the Press, PalArab-style (VIII) (UPDATED)

The series continues....

Hamas' Executive Force on Monday banned any form of demonstration in Gaza unless its organisers obtain permission.

Spokesperson of the EF, Saber Khalifeh, issued a statement announcing that "for the sake of the general benefit and to secure the rule of law, it is totally forbidden to demonstrate without getting permission from the Executive Force."

The Palestinian factions called a rally on Monday in protest against EF actions in the Gaza Strip.

Eyewitnesses at the rally of Palestinian factions said the Executive Force banned journalists from covering the events.

A journalist who attempted to film the demonstration on his mobile phone was arrested.

Of course, Hamas' many repressive actions don't stop idiots in Britain from trying to increase ties with the terror group:

"The government should urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas," the all-party group of lawmakers said.

UPDATE: PCHR adds lots of details of this morning's moderate Hamas activities:

The Center’s preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 11:00 on Monday, 13 August 2007, tens of members of the Executive Force deployed around the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the Palestinian Legislative Council building. They prevented dozens of civilians from reaching the area to attend a rally organized by several PLO factions to protest the attacks of the Executive Force in the Gaza Strip. In addition, the Force prevented journalists from covering the rally, and confiscated the camera of Ahmad El-Ras, cameraman for Ramattan News Agency, and detained him in one of their vehicles. The Force members used sticks to disperse the demonstrators.

Ahmad El-Ras gave the following statement to PCHR’s fieldworker:

“At approximately 10:30, two colleagues and I went to cover the rally in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier area. When I disembarked from the agency vehicle carrying a camera, 2 members of the Executive Force raised their weapons at me; and one of them said to me, “If you take photage, we’ll put an end to you.” I answered them that I have not taken any photage; and I went back to the car to leave the area. Then, two Executive Force vehicles intercepted us. Force members took me and put me in one of their vehicles. They confiscated my camera. Several journalists gathered around the vehicle in which I was detained. They talked to the Force members. The latter stated that they would release me only if the camera tape is confiscated. And this happened.”

At approximately 11:35, two Executive Force gunmen raided the offices of Al-Arabiya and MBC satellite stations in the 12th floor of Al-Shoroq building in Gaza City. They confiscated the camera and rally photage belonging to Al-Arabiya. Reem Abd El-Karim, the director of the offices, informed PCHR’s fieldworker that the Executive Force gunmen raided the office and requested the rally photage. A verbal exchange took place when she refused to hand over the materials. However, the Executive Force took the camera and photage by force. The Executive Force returned the confiscated equipment to Al-Arabiya at approximately 15:30.

Exclusive: PRC brags of targeting Israeli reporters

From Palestine Today (English):

The An Nasser Salah Addin Brigades, The military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), have announced responsibility for setting a trap for an Israeli Press vehicle on a road, east of Gaza City, on Friday.

The brigades claimed that one of the Israelis in the vehicle was injured.

Many of these tyes of reports end up being fabricated or exaggerated, but the point is not whether the PRC actually succeeded in targeting Israeli journalists - it is the fact that they are bragging about targeting them, thus violating international law (the Geneva Conventions define journalists as civilians and therefore as protected.)

Reporters Without Borders has a number of articles about alleged Israeli targeting of Palestinian Arab journalists, and about reporters being caught in the crossfire between warring PalArab factions, but I could not find a single mention of Palestinian terrorists targeting Israeli reporters.

Exclusive: One third of PalArab youth want to get the hell out

Palestine Today (Arabic) reports that the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics announced this morning that one third of Palestinian Arab youth between the ages of 15-29 would consider emigrating. Fully 45% of young Palestinian males would leave, and the top reasons cited were the economy, security, and political reasons.

Now, who exactly is stopping them from leaving and making new lives in other countries? It appears that while the "right of return" is sacrosanct, the "right to emigrate" is not quite up there in the list of human rights that Palestinian Arabs like to talk about.

In addition, 59% of Palestinian Arab youth use the Internet. Evidently, the starvation we keep hearing about still allows the purchase of computers.

A Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs, part 12

The Palestinian Arab psyche underwent tremendous changes in the years after the 1948 war. In some ways, the Palestinian Arabs were more fragmented than ever before - certainly physically - but in some very important ways, for the first time in their history, they were turning into a people.

It is difficult to overemphasize the amount of shame that the 1948 war inflicted on both the Arab nations and the Palestinian Arabs themselves. This unprecedented disgrace informs most of the actions taken by the Arabs during the 1950s and 1960s, and nothing took priority over erasing this shame from their collective minds.

In the early years after 1948, the refugees tended to blame the Arab countries for their fate. For their part, the Arab nations looked at Palestinian Arabs as embarrassing reminders of their impotence in 1948, and this is one of the reasons that there was so little interest shown by the Arab nations in helping out Palestinian refugees at all, let alone allowing them to resettle in their countries (again, with the exception of Jordan, who used them to help expand their own boundaries.)

As has always been the case, there were extremists and pragmatists among the Palestinian Arab populations. The influence of Amin Husayni was still felt as it was a Palestinian Arab who assassinated King Abdullah of Jordan in the Dome of the Rock in 1951, and his co-conspirators had ties to the ex-Mufti. In the following years, communism made ideological inroads into the refugee camps as well. The philosophy that made the greatest and broadest inroads in the Palestinian Arab consciousness, however, was that of pure hatred towards Israel.

Hate is not too strong a word to describe the feelings that Arabs, both Palestinian and at-large, felt about the Zionists and, by extension, all Jews. Loathing towards the Jews poured out of the Arab media. The disgrace of 1948 could not have elicited any other reaction to a people who are as proud as Arabs are. They seethed, they detested, they were disgusted by Jews. In the aftermath of the 1948 war the Jews of Arab countries were accused of being spies, many were tortured and ultimately most were expelled and their possessions confiscated.

The Arab nations' propaganda against Jews and Israel, and their pretense of caring about the refugees, seeped into the Palestinian Arab viewpoint. Although the Arab nations as a whole were using the Palestinians as pawns, often in conflicting ways, the cognitive dissonance of believing that their brethren were not interested in their well-being was too much for Palestinian Arabs to handle. It was much easier to blame Israel and the West for all their troubles than to see how they were being used for selfish, political gain.

No matter what their disposition - Christian or Arab, religious or secular, in camps or in houses in Israel - Palestinian Arabs created their own fictional accounts of the war in 1948 to mitigate some of their feelings of shame at having been in the forefront of their ignominious defeat. They made up stories of massacres by Jews (although practically none of them knew anyone who had been killed,) they claimed that the US and/or Britain had conspired against them, they claimed that the Arab nations swooped into Palestine in 1948 to defend them from the Jews, they claimed that they all had palatial homes in Palestine and huge tracts of land they owned that were stolen by the Jews. They kept inflating their fantasies and they taught them to their children, the next generation to carry on their tradition of hate.

As the UNRWA tried to employ them and fix the refugee problem by building the economy of the Middle East itself, the Palestinian Arabs had no qualms about taking every advantage of the system. They never reported any deaths in order to get more ration cards, and a black market in food rationing cards flourished in the camps. They started businesses in the camps but didn't put up signs for fear of losing their benefits. They happily took in all the free perks of refugeehood - by the early 1960s they were better fed, better educated and better equipped to work than their non-refugee neighbors. While their situation in 1950 was desperate, by 1960 the Palestinian refugees under UNRWA were doing better than most Arabs.

But if the UNRWA expected to see appreciation and thanks from the Palestinian Arabs, they were sorely mistaken. The Palestinians attacked the agency both verbally and physically. To the Palestinian Arabs, all the free schooling and aid - more than most refugees worldwide have ever received - only symbolized their dependence on Western charity. Their pride wasn't strong enough to say no to the benefits, but it was quite strong enough to despise the people who were providing them.

This was one manifestation of the defining characteristic of Palestinian Arabs that started in the 1950s: that of selfishness.

Even though they had supported a war that they lost, even though they had for the most part chosen to flee their homes in the expectation of a quick victory, even though they were to a large extent responsible for their own troubles, the Palestinian Arabs of the era had little capacity for self-examination nor for self-criticism. All the bad things that happened were the fault of others, and anything that could compensate for these bad things were their inherent right.

Another example of this selfishness was their utter inability to empathize with anyone besides themselves. Had the tables been turned, they would have happily cheered their Arab brethren dumping all the Jews into the sea, and the very idea of compromise with Jews when they were in the superior position was unthinkable. Now, in defeat, they clung to the 1947 UN Partition plan as their right - they wanted the victors to share the spoils with them, even though they would have laughed had someone asked them to do the same.

This selfishness stems from a number of factors: Arab supremacism, the desire to reinstate the Arab empire of the early part of the millennium, and Arab pride -where it is easier to deny history than to submit to the shame that accompanies defeat, especially defeat at the hands of a seemingly weak foe. Mostly, though, the selfishness comes from the "us vs. them" mentality that Arabs have had for their entire history, pre-dating Islam. The Arab nation is the only important fact; any other nation can be used if they are needed but the are effectively irrelevant. The fact that Arabs routinely accuse Jews of this very behavior, despite the thousands of counterexamples where Jews over-empathize with their oppressors to the point of self-annihilation, is but one outstanding example of Arab projection of their own attitudes on their enemies.

This selfishness is all the more notable since the 1950s was the lowest point in Palestinian Arab history. One would expect a people who are hated by those who profess to love them, and who hate those who were doing the most for them, to have some ability to step back and see where their problems may have started so as not to repeat them. But in fact the 1950s Palestinians were buffeted by competing Arab leaders trying to use them against each other. In the few cases where Arab leaders tried to help resettle the Palestinians, the criticism was so withering that the plans were abandoned. In 1952, Syrian "strongman" Colonel Adib Shishekly worked with UNRWA to create a plan where the agency would provide $30 million to irrigate undeveloped northern Syria with the intent of resettling 80,000 refugees there; he became president in 1953 but was overthrown in 1954. A 1953 plan of resettlement and job creation, close to being agreed by Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel, was shot down in 1955 by the Arab League. Even plans to plant trees or build permanent housing in refugee camps were criticized as diluting the desire for Palestinian Arabs to want to return to their homes.

There is of course an irony here - just as the Arab leaders in the 1940s claimed to be doing things for the good of the Palestinian Arabs that ended up hurting them the most, so were the 1950s leaders prepared to do the same. In reality, it was pride that forced them to act this way, because if the Palestinian refugee problem would be solved by the Arabs, it would be an indirect belated admission of defeat in 1948. As long as the refugee issue could be kept alive, the Arabs could pretend that they still had a chance to destroy Israel without firing a shot.

The Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser, said this explicitly in 1961: "If the refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist." Year after year the Arabs would lobby the UN for Palestinian Arab return, and their goals were hardly altruistic for their suffering brethren.

The only people who were truly working to solve the problem of Palestinian Arab misery were Westerners. Saudi Arabia contributed no money to UNRWA, but Israel did.

For their part, the refugees would say themselves that they would never return to any part of Palestine that is controlled by Jews. Even Israeli Arabs, enjoying benefits undreamed of before the war, still claimed that they were in worse shape and would prefer Arab rule, at least when talking to Westerners. Privately, some admitted that it may be possible to compromise. It is difficult to discern how many Palestinian Arabs were pragmatic and how many were truly hardline in their beliefs, but in an atmosphere where moderation could be construed as weakness and collaboration with the hated West, it makes little difference.

For a while, Gamal Abdel Nasser used radio broadcasts effectively to incite Palestinian Arabs against Jordan. To the refugees, Nasser was a true Arab leader that they thirsted for. Nasser, along with his rhetoric supporting the refugees, became a hero. In 1956, Egyptian incitement caused Palestinian Arabs in Jordan to riot and, in one case, the young King Hussein's troops had to quell a riot in a refugee camp, killing 100.

Nasser's fortunes with Jordanian Palestinians dipped, however, after the 1956 Sinai campaign where he very quickly lost the Sinai militarily (although he gained it back diplomatically.) Even so, his major incentive remained to right the perceived wrongs of 1948 and to become a pan-Arab leader, and even his survival after the 1956 war was considered a victory by many other Arabs. Hussein's rule over Palestinian Arabs in his country was far from absolute; terror attacks against Jordan included the bombing of an Amman office buildingin 1958.

The Palestinian terrorism of the 1950s, whether the fedayeen attacks against Israel or the attacks on Western interests of Jordan, were still planned and funded by the Arab states. Only in the end of the decade were the first stirrings of a new independent Palestinian Arab initiative starting - but rather than trying to unify Palestinian Arabs for peaceful purposes, this initiative was also centered on terror and violence.

The Fatah movement was started by a few Palestinian Arabs who had managed to move out of the refugee camps, into college in Cairo and then to jobs in the Persian Gulf. Even though they would have been considered the success stories of the West - people who managed to get off the UNRWA dole and find jobs - they would be the vanguard of the most destructive period of Palestinian Arab history, a period that is synonymous with terror and yet which made them heroes to the entire Arab world.
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Terrorist prisoners still get their PA salaries

Isn't it wonderful to see how well the PA is spending the millions of dollars they have gotten from Israel and the West? This "peace dividend" has so far paid for Hamas terrorist salaries (they now claim a PA member was bribed to transfer that money over - I guess that the Palestinian Arab audit department is not too skilled) and now, they are paying salaries to another group of people who haven't gotten much productive work accomplished over recent years:

Ajrami: 2-month's salary to be paid to prisoners

Bethlehem – Ma'an – The minister of prisoners' affairs, Ashraf Ajrami, said on Sunday that two-month's allowance for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will be paid on Monday.

The terrorists are really loving the PA for how well it takes care of them.

As far as building libraries, schools and hospitals, well, let's just say that the PA has its priorities exactly where they want them.

HH CXXIX (I think)

Haveil Havalim is the weekly round-up of the best of the JBlogosphere, and this week I am honored to have been mentioned three times:

Hamas blaming internal fighting deaths on Israel?
A Grim Milestone - 500 PalArabs killed by each other this year
Bat Mitzvah girl donates $100K for playground in Israel.

The last couple of Haveil Havalim were not numbered, but I think that the current HH at Jack's Shack is number 129. Check it out!

Another Ma'an headline that lies

We noted last week that the Palestinian Arab Ma'an news agency wrote a headline accusing Israel of crimes that even its own article contradicted. Well, they've done it again:

Palestinian women in Israeli jails risk rape, says director of research institute

Gaza – Ma'an – Director of the Prisoners Center for Studies and Research, Rifat Hamdona, said on Saturday that female Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are at risk of rape.

Hamdona said that the Israeli prisons' officers are threatening to rape women during interrogation in order to force them to confess to crimes.

However, Hamdona said that there have been no documented cases of rape in the prisons and expressed doubt that such cases exist. He said that the threat of rape is only used in order to exert pressure on female detainees to obtain a confession.

"Many Palestinians in Israeli jails have died to preserve their dignity and are regularly on hunger strikes, but I have not heard of any case of rape," said Hamdona.

So he is saying that there's a "risk for rape" but admits that it is highly doubtful that any rape would ever occur. The one accusation he has, that Israelis threaten to rape Palestinian Arab women prisoners, is stated with no corroboration whatsoever.

Yet another example of the quality of the best of PalArab journalism.

The utter lack of Arab empathy for others

As I research the next chapter of my series on the history of Palestinian Arabs, I have been having some troubles finding sources on how ordinary PalArabs were living or thinking in the 1950s and 1960s. But tonight I found a single article that is a goldmine - a long article in The Atlantic from Martha Gellhorn, who visited many Palestinian Arabs in a number of countries in 1961.

One part of this article is very illuminating (although the entire article is very worthwhile). Gellhorn spent a large part of her time trying to understand the PalArab mindset and how they can be understood by Westerners,and then she came across an Israeli Arab man who also clung to fantasies about 1948:

At this point, I decided to make one long, determined stand to see whether there was any meeting ground of minds on a basis of mutually accepted facts and reasoning.
"Please bear with me and help me," said I. "I am a simple American, and I am trying to understand how the Arab mind works, and I am finding it very difficult. I want to put some things in order; if I have everything wrong, you will correct me. In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it and lived under an Economic Union. And, of course, the Arab countries around the borders would have to be peaceful and cooperative or else nothing would work at all. The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with five regular armies and forty million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?"

"It is right."

"The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this. The statements of the Arab representatives, in the UN are on record. The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel. But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this, you wanted it. And you thought, it seems to me very reasonably, that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don't happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost."

"Yes." It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words.

"Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this, which is what I must, know. If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine -who had fled from the war--to come back?"

"Certainly not," he said, without an instant's hesitation. "But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea."

He had given me the missing clue. The fancy word we use nowadays is "empathy"--entering into the emotions of others. I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why--owing to this nice, gray-haired schoolteacher. It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless. Some of them may be unfortunate human beings, and civilization would collapse (as it notoriously did in Nazi Germany) if most people did not naturally move to help their hurt fellow men. But a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune (there, but for the grace of God, go I) and victims of injustice. My empathy knew where it stood, thanks to the schoolteacher.

"Do you follow the Eichmann trial?" I asked. An Arabic daily paper, weeklies, and radio station thrive in Israel.

"Yes. Every day." He wrinkled his nose with disgust.

"Do you not imagine that all the Jews in Israel believe this massacre of their people could have been prevented if the Jews had had a homeland to escape to? Don't you think that they knew,, also, what you just said: there would have been no Jewish refugees from here--they would be dead or in the sea? Doesn't that perhaps explain them to you a little?"

He shrugged, he smiled; with these gestures he tacitly admitted the point, but it was of minor importance.

This is a brilliant observation. The Palestinian Arabs (who, for the most part in 1961 were living better lives than other Arabs due to the UNRWA and US aid) didn't want justice - they wanted to see all the Jews dead. When they whine about "justice" what they really mean is "give us everything we demand and ask nothing in return." In their mindset, they have no blame, no guilt, no shame - everything is always the Other's fault.

This is not only a Palestinian Arab trait - it is universal among Arabs. The Arabs, by their nature, seem to feel that they deserve everything and no one else deserves anything. You will not see Arab charities giving aid to non-Arabs or non-Muslims. You will not see them say that the Jews (or Kurds...) have a right to live in peace in their own country. What few concessions some of them may have made towards the West have been out of political necessity, never out of a true belief that these concessions were the right thing.

The absolute lack of Arab empathy is the key reason why true peace is illusory. Without empathy you cannot even begin to see how the other side thinks; you cannot even begin to come up with an equitable solution. The entire Arab point of view is not one based on a win/win or an accommodation, it is based on the pure selfishness that is a component of the inability to empathize.

How can two sides come to an agreement when one side has no ability to think past his own self?

Another section later in the article, starting with a conversation with her Israeli Jewish driver:

"What's the matter, Nissim?"
"Nothing. What the children say."

"You mean just now, shouting?"

"Yes. They say: 'Where you going, bastard? I spit on you.'"

What for, I thought, what for, and will it never stop?
"Do you hate the Arabs, Nissim?"

"No. Of course no."

"Why not?"

"What is the good of hate?"

What indeed? Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and, en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them?

This week's episode of Saudi Vice

In this week's episode of Saudi Vice...

Muslims like to point out that in Mecca, it doesn't matter what race you belong to or what country you are from; there is a beautiful feeling of unity with all other Muslims worldwide for the pilgrims who travel there from near and far. As Ummah.net describes it:

Although Makkah is always filled with visitors, pilgrims wear special clothes: simple garments which strip away distinctions of class and culture, so that all stand equal before God.
Peace is the dominant theme. Peace with Allah, with one's soul, with one another, with all living creatures. To disturb the peace of anyone or any creature in any shape or form is strictly prohibited.
Muslims from all walks of life, from every corner of the globe assemble in in response to the call of Allah. There is no royalty, but there is loyalty of all to Allah, the Creator....It is also to remember the great assembly of the Day of Judgement when people will stand equal before Allah.

A group of eight pilgrims from the US and Britain of Iraqi descent visited Mecca last week with the intention of participating in this holy rite where all are equal before Allah.

But they were Shi'ite.

When they tried to perform a Shi'a - flavored version of the holy ritual while circling the holy Kaaba stone, they were arrested by our heroes, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

As was described by an infidel newspaper:

“While in police custody we were handcuffed and savagely beaten with chairs, bats, sticks, shoes and police radio communication devices,” 24-year-old pilgrim Amir Taki said.

He said they were refused food, water, medicine and access to toilets. One was told they would be “killed and thrown to the dogs”.

The group, aged between 16 and 26, said they were not allowed to contact their embassies or relatives.

However, using a cell phone hidden by one of the pilgrims, they were able to contact family members and were released after intervention from the embassies.

The Shi'ite infidels may have won this round, but the Commission (known as the Muttawa) will be ever vigilant to make sure that the sanctity and holiness of Mecca is unsullied by the infidels again.

Last week's episode is here.

Watching the Watchers

For the past two weeks, posts of mine have been nominated to the weekly Watcher of Weasels list of the best posts of the week (for non-Council members.) While I didn't win. I didn't expect to - when up against serious heavyweights from serious on-line sources and authors like Newsweek or Michael Totten.

Thanks to Soccer Dad who nominated me and to those who voted for me or just read the nominated articles: the article I wrote on the "Grim Milestone" (which has to date received roughly 5000 hits) and "The Extremism and Bigotry of PA 'Moderates' " from last week.

Mustafa Barghouti condemns Jews daring to stay alive

From Arutz-7:

Shortly after 11 AM not far from the Old City of Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate, an Arab terrorist grabbed the gun of a guard in a building belonging to Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim. The Arab managed to shoot at the legs of the guard, while another guard opened fire and killed the Arab. Nine other passersby were hurt in the incident as well, some by bullet grazings and others as they fell while running away. The guard and two passersby sustained moderate wounds.

So of course, we need to hear from "Dr." Mustafa Barghouti, one of the more moderate members of the PA government (autotranslated from Palpress:)

MP Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Secretary General of the National Initiative, denounced the Israeli crime perpetrated by a Jewish extremist (this) afternoon, and led to the martyrdom of the Palestinian people and injuring eleven others wounded in the old town of Jerusalem.

Al-Barghouthi feet to guard Jewish extremist killed in a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem Christians and wounded 11 others suffered light to moderate volume and the viciousness of the Israeli crimes and shed Palestinian blood on the hands of the occupation.

You see, according to our allies in the PA that we are giving millions of dollars to, the Jewish guard should have just let himself be killed. This is considered the natural order in the Arab world - Jews cower in fear for their Arab superiors and they are forbidden to do anything to defend themselves. If, Allah forbid, they actually try to stop themselves from being murdered in cold blood, then they are clearly violating the rules that have been passed down in Arab tradition from time immemorial.

Thus we have the conflict in a nutshell. Even the most moderate, anti-corruption, educated, suit-clad Palestinian Arab will never allow any Jews to live in a position of power in the Middle East if he can help it. They claim that every Jewish activity is offensive - building a wall, immigrating, building a synagogue - every single activity that is not done from a position of dhimmitude is automatically deserving of condemnation. The very existence of guards to protect Jews in Jerusalem is thoroughly offensive to these bigots.

They would much prefer to see all the Jews slaughtered, because that would herald a return to the good old days of Muslim rule.

These are the people we are showering with millions of dollars because of their moderation, pragmatism and pro-Western thinking.

Moderate PA tortures Hamas member to death in prison

You will no doubt have noticed the screaming headlines worldwide condemning Mahmoud Abbas for allowing torture in his prisons. But in the tiny chance you missed them, here are the details:

Hamas have said that Palestinian security sources in the West Bank have confirmed the death of a Hamas member they claim was tortured in a Palestinian security prison.

Twenty-two-year-old Mou'aiad Bani Odeh in an Israeli hospital, from Tamon in the north of the West Bank Tobas, died in an Israeli hospital after he was transferred from Al Junied Jail in Nablus.

The Palestinian media centre said that according to Palestinian sources, "Bani Odeh died after he was severely tortured in Al Junied Jail, which is run by the Palestinian Authority.

Bani Odeh's family are blaming the Palestinian security services for their son's death.

In a news conference Hamas said that this is an example of the torture their members are facing in Palestinian Authority jails.

The PalArab self-death count rises to 505 for the year.

UPDATE: It was apparently a fake-out; Fatah put the man on TV and he claimed he was a Hamas member and a collaborator with the Shin Bet. Back down to 504.

Hollywood takes honor killing out of movie; leaves in anti-semitism

An amazing article from Debbie Schlussel.

As Robert Avrech points out, Hollywood producers don't have to worry about being killed when they bash Jews or Christians. The crude Muslim version of censorship - claim "Islamophobia" while subtly hinting that violence may happen to break out and threaten the set or the producer - works quite well, even in America.

The 6000 stranded PalArabs are down to 30 Hamas members

Remember the 6000 Arabs stranded in Rafah because the EU no longer monitored that crossing from Egypt to Israel? The PalArabs, especially Hamas, whined incessantly about the humanitarian crisis, about how they were sick and dying, and how Israel must open that crossing point.

Israel, meanwhile, made a deal with Egypt for them to cross through Israel into Gaza, and over the past week, that's what has been happening.

Now there are only 30 left - all of them refusing to go to Gaza because they know Israel will arrest them as being terrorists:

ARISH, Egypt -- The last batch of 6,000 Palestinians stranded in Egypt since Hamas took control of Gaza in June returned home Thursday, leaving behind 30 Hamas supporters who cannot travel via Israel.

The final group of 400 Palestinians crossed the Oja (Nizana) checkpoint, near the divided town of Rafah on the Egypt-Gaza border, before continuing to Gaza via the Jewish state, a Palestinian source at the border said.

Rafah, the usual crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, has been closed since Hamas militants violently took over the territory June 15, stranding thousands in dire conditions in the Egyptian desert.

"These 30 Palestinians would rather stay in Egypt until the Rafah terminal is opened, and they refuse to cross via Oja," an Egyptian border source said. "They know they're down as belonging to or sympathizing with Hamas and fear being arrested by the Israeli authorities," he said.

"They don't have any choice but to wait for the Rafah crossing point to open, because either they're wanted by Israel or because the Zionist enemy won't allow them in," Hamas MP Moushir Masri said Tuesday.

"We demand that the Rafah crossing point be opened and reject any Israeli involvement" in controlling who crosses, said Masri, himself stranded in Egypt.

When open, Rafah is operated in close cooperation by Egypt, European Union monitors, Israel, and the Palestinians, and can be closed if any one party refuses to participate.

Here we have a classic case of erstwhile "leaders" of Palestinian Arabs who are willing to allow thousands of their people to suffer for their cause. Hamas did everything they could to not allow the stranded people to come to Gaza - and they continue to blame Israel, when the hated Zionist entity worked so hard to help out the Palestinian Arabs stuck in the desert.

Once again, Israel shows more concern for the welfare and well-being of Palestinian Arabs than their own leaders do.

Once again, Israel was vindicated in its reasoning of why the Rafah crossing needed to be monitored to begin with - because known, wanted terrorists were freely crossing between Gaza and the rest of the world via Egypt.

And once again, a few weeks ago the world media had a field day with suffering PalArabs that could (erroneously) be blamed on Israel, but now when Israel helps those people despite their own leaders' objections and Hamas is still fuming that their human pawns have disappeared, the story is almost impossible to find.

UPDATE: Look how the Palestinian Arab English propaganda press is spinning this story to make Israel look as bad as possible. Orwell is alive and well at IMEMC.org.

Hamas blaming internal fighting deaths on Israel?

The Palestine Press Agency, which is rabidly pro-Fatah, anti-Hamas but also rabidly anti-Israel, is reporting that Hamas is hiding deaths from internal clashes and then, if any Israeli activities happen anywhere in Gaza, they claim the deaths came from Israel.

I'm still on the fence about how accurate Palpress.com is, but on the other hand it is clear from many examples that there is no independent press in the PA that is willing to report objectively about Hamas because of death threats against reporters and a general atmosphere of intimidation (the public relations director of Shifa Hospital, who said that medical supplies in Gaza were running low, was arrested overnight by Hamas.)

My working policy on counting PalArabs being killed by PalArabs is that if the news source mentions names, I regard it as legitimate. And this story names the victims. Also, one of the commenters corroborates that Hamas indeed does things like this. On the other hand, the IDF does confirm that they killed two armed men in Gaza yesterday and then Hamas announced that they were Hamas members, and named them.

The auto-translation is a little difficult but this is interesting:

Sources close to Hamas martyrs of the Qassam Hamas claimed today cites the impact of a military confrontation with the Zionist occupation forces were only two dead fell following internal clashes occurred yesterday between leaders of the executive power lawless and banned street Palestinian Qassam around Disagreement over the loot that had been looted from the headquarters of the Palestinian National Authority in the wake of the bloody coup carried out by Hamas against the organs and the PA offices and the two deceased were killed in the west of Gaza City supporters.

The same sources "that the two deceased were Fadi Fawaz Arkic 22 general, Mohamed Subhi Batunaiji 24, both from the Shajaiyeh neighborhood east of Gaza, Hamas has had to transfer their bodies to a nearby site of the Al-Mintar and conceal the fate of deaths for fear of detection daily crimes occurring between gangs and Qassam militia force operational sharing the Palestinian people and the property sold and divert funds to personal accounts.

The source continued that the Qassam Brigades took Bomb occupation soldiers mortar, which is the first time the bombing by Hamas rallies after the coup on the Israeli Palestinian legitimacy and to work to lure the occupation forces to respond to the bombing scene to show picture engineered by Hamas that targeted or killed in military operation against the Israeli occupation forces.

The source confirmed that the explosion which occurred near the towers of Sheikh Zayed northern Gaza days ago, which claimed the lives of the family Zulkiparneh Tefilin is the result of leaving the Hamas elements of explosive devices and ready-Bina children, which exploded after tampering (packaging belonging to Hamas)

This is known that Hamas had lied to the methods and falsifying many to justify its crimes against our people growing in the Gaza Strip, and the sons of the Fatah movement in particular.

And the commenter adds:

God give wrong evil-doers ... that the statement in the news is true ..

And I live very close to the compound supporters and the Office brother President Abu Mazen and heard heavy firing light and medium weapons and was clear that the clash lasted about a quarter of an hour and saw many ambulances and heard many screams in the place .. and assured me that there were dead and wounded the day before yesterday I met one of the businesses in the ER section of Shifa Hospital, told me that he had seen the dead and wounded .. When asked by a member of the so-called operational reason, I keep silent answer is not to do with you .. and this happened last Sunday evening, and God on what to say a martyr ... and that the firm also of those killed yesterday allegedly at the al-Mantar crossing is not right, did not kill them

There were killed because of missing two days before the announcement of the killing, and this Aydhahussb many of the witnesses and relatives Alkateliokadd heard this from some of their relatives ... have revealed all their papers and found enclosed in their misrepresentations and deceit everyone I, Banat Hamas for what God .. unmasking them violin and violin .

I knew the violins were important!

In the light of the IDF statement, I will not count these - I can't see how Hamas could fake the deaths of two already-dead people. In all likelihood, Palpress.com is not adhering to any journalistic standards in its anti-Hamas zeal and is willing to believe anything.

Even so, it is interesting that there are a couple of photos of the dead PalArabs - in Hamas colors - but no omnipresent wire service photos of grieving relatives at those two funerals.

Now, Olmert is alienating American Jewish donors

I've heard of tone-deafness, but this is ridiculous:

By Brad A. Greenberg, Staff Writer

[JERUSALEM, Aug. 8] "You are not to directly quote the prime minister," Ehud Olmert's press handler told a group of American Jewish journalists I've been traveling with this week.

This directive came as we sat in a conference room in the leader of Israel's Jerusalem offices. It seemed a ridiculous request, but the prime minister's fears made more sense once the meeting was over.

When Olmert walked confidently into the conference room, he shook some hands, said 'Shalom' and posed for a photo with a few journalists. Dressed in a navy suit and red tie, he sat tall, speaking in fluent English as he cracked jokes and invited our questions -- and that's when the meeting went south.

Asked about the hundreds of millions of dollars sent by American Jews to help Israel during and after last summer's war with Hezbollah, Olmert responded that the donations were very important -- but not necessary.

If a giver wants to give and the receiver wants to get, Olmert said, God bless that situation.

And as we've seen this week, God -- or human resourcefulness -- has blessed a quick reconstruction of northern Israel. But Olmert's comments seemed particularly ungrateful because he spoke not only to the American journalists, but also to some top officials of the United Jewish Communities (UJC).

Through the UJC's Israel Emergency Campaign last summer, North American federations sent $360 million to Israel. UJC is also the sponsor of this media trip, which was designed to show reporters and editors how American donations have been used. UJC officials have shuttled our group, including editors and writers from major Jewish publications in Washington, New York, Philadelphia and L.A., to show us the pain inflicted by war.

They arranged this forum with the prime minister to allow him to speak to the most philanthropic Diaspora community -- and this is what he says?

...Olmert has been heavily criticized for myriad mistakes in last summer's war, and even now, 12 months after the ceasefire, he appears oblivious to the situation on the ground.

I've spent the past three days in Northern Israel, near Haifa, Nahariya, the Galilee - and most everyone I've met has talked at some length about the lingering and traumatic affects of having been bombarded by Katyusha rockets for 34 days last summer.

Take, for instance, Shiri Havkin, who lives in the town of Rosh Pina. Havkin runs a small business, Drora's Herb Farm, out of her home; it was started by her mother, the Israeli singer Drora Havkin, and the younger Havkin took over when her mother died in 1995. She nearly lost it all last summer when tourism stopped -- her savings shriveled and she bounced so many checks the bank froze her activity.

She only stayed afloat thanks to a low-interest loan from a small-business development center that was supported by UJC. Another war, though, might be enough for Havkin to give up on the Galilee.

"If there will be another war, I will have to sell my house," she said. "I'm sorry to say but I cannot stand another war."

Olmert dismissed such sentiments as isolated and insignificant.

There is no trauma, he said: Nothing is collapsing; the north is booming; income is higher than ever; employment is higher than ever.

And, in fact, his claims are partially true. Israel's economy is once again going gangbusters. People have returned to the north, and the most visible remnants of war are a few blackened trees on the hillsides close to the border. Nahariya's streets and boardwalk are filled day and night with young revelers.

But that doesn't account for the emotional wreckage inside many Israelis.

Numerous psychologists and social workers told our group that post-traumatic stress disorder is a public-health crisis in northern Israel. Rami Benbenishty of Hebrew University said he'd found that 10 percent to 11 percent of children in Nahariya are in "critical, immediate need" of psychological treatment. They suffer not from war fatigue, but concussion paranoia. Debilitating fear is literally a sneeze away for some.

But what did the leader of Israel say when told many psychologists would not agree with his analysis of how war has affected his citizens?

He said it was time to change the psychologist.

We've seen leaders in history who didn't care about what their people thought. We've seen leaders who felt that they knew what was best for the nation in the face of facts and reason. We've seen leaders who spat in the face of their citizens when they pointed out the problems.

But I am not aware of any democracy that has ever had a leader who acted with such smugness, such dismissiveness, when his approval rating was in the single digits. The disconnect between what is in Olmert's head and reality is a gaping canyon. And yet, because of the peculiarities of Israel's parliamentary system, he has no reason to fear being voted out any time soon - by which time the amount of damage he can do to Israel is unimaginable.

Olmert is now acting as a king, not a servant of the people. And his reign is not just a mistake - it is a catastrophe.

UPDATE: See this article at Human Events.

Ahmadinejad: Newscasters' "holy war" - plus why censorship is important to Iran

See how objective Iranian news is?

IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Wednesday during his visit to the country's official news agency, IRNA, "Today our duty is proper informing to enable the people to adopt proper decisions."

Addressing IRNA staff, the president added, "Your mission for proper and in time news dissemination is a sacred one, and you should with your strong will push aside the oppressors' news networks." He reiterated, "The oppressors' front takes advantage of news and information dissemination at the service of inducting their policies and their programs in the hearts and minds of the world nations." According to IRNA Political Desk, Ahmadinejad who was visiting IRNA on the occasion of Iran's Reporters Day, added, "Today, proper information dissemination equals presence at the frontline of a holy war to liberate the mankind, and a liberating confrontation." He added, "The reporters are precious assets of our nation and revolution, and the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) has qualified personnel at its disposal that are valuable assents for our nation and our revolution."

He added, "We need to take advantage of the idealist, brave, and pious reporters, analysts, and professional news people, and the country's information dissemination networks as a huge capital, in order to enter the international scenes."

Ahmadinejad referring to the psychological war launched by the world oppressors media through news making, said, "Today the entire media, news agencies, news production and newspapers of the country must leave their defensive status and let the world nations hear the message of divine messengers of God, and the message of mankind's grandeur."
He added, "Today the oppressors' front tries to keep the people under the influence of inappropriate news dissemination, but when some of these people travel to Iran they experience a great mental evolution."

The President of the Islamic Republic of Iran emphasized, "One of the reasons why US is opposed to the visits of American nationals to Iran is that they have been bombarding our nation with their news weapons, and when they visit Iran and witness the cheerful people, or the advancement and positive developments in Iran, their viewpoints on Iran are altered."
Ahmadinejad referred to the point that the oppressors news agencies, resorting to words, report the news on criminal acts of the Zionist regime in a way that the oppressors are introduced as the oppressed, and vice versa. He reiterated, "The majority of the public that are not opposed to hearing the truth, when they are exposed to proper news dissemination find their proper way, and today our duty in the world is proper news dissemination."

Elsewhere in his remarks the president stressed the need to broadcast "useful news" in the country, arguing, "There might be lots of news that are authentic, but they should not be broadcasted, because they would disturb the peace of mind of the society." Stressing that we are not pro-censorship, Ahmadinejad said, "Censorship was invented by those who also devise standards for news dissemination, defining the news and the reporters in a way to match their standards and propagate their policies in the world." Addressing the IRNA reporters, he said, "My dear fellows, you shoulder a heavy responsibility today, because news work and news dissemination is a divine occupation, and the job of holy prophets." The president emphasized, "If we are to be witness to the occurrence of a positive event, we need to remember that one of the main pillars for it is proper news dissemination."

Ahmadinejad added, "You should know that your message is the message of divine prophets, the message of real liberation, justice, brotherhood, love, and kindness."