Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 05, 2007

Put not your trust in princes

YNet has a provocative editorial by Sever Plocker, arguing for territorial compromise from a purely economic perspective:

Oil-exporting Mideastern countries earned roughly $600 billion from oil and gas exports. In the years 2003-2006, the export revenues of these countries totaled about $2,100 billion.

This year, export revenues of Middle Eastern oil-rich nations will reach another $700 billion; should the price of oil reach $100 dollars a barrel, the revenues will leap forth to $850 billion. Next year, in 2008, the Arab-Muslim Mideast’s oil revenues will cross the $1,000 billion mark. We should remember this number: One thousand billion dollar revenues from oil and gas exports in one year.

Israel’s GDP, that is, the total value of all the products and services produced in Israel, will total roughly $170 billion this year. Or in other words, the Muslim-Arab world’s oil export revenues are at least six times higher than all of Israel’s domestic production….

It’s hard to exaggerate the implication of such figures. They shape a new Middle East, but not the kind of Mideast President Shimon Peres dreamed of. Arab and Muslim oil exporters no longer need Israel’s assistance in order to integrate into the global world. The world is knocking at their doors. The approved investment plans of the Emirates alone are estimated at $800 billion for the next five years.

And we are not there.

A two-hour flight away from Tel Aviv, on the sands of the desert, we are seeing the emergence of an oil- and gas-based Arab-Muslim economic empire never before seen in this region. Its power will grow from one year to the next. It will be a major player in deciding the fate of the global economy.

Yet all of this is happening without us. The Arab economic prosperity, which is so close to our borders, is completely skipping us. It is still not being directed at us. The Arabs have not yet internalized their power and wealth. It came too quickly and too easily. Yet they will internalize it, grasp it, and start conducting themselves accordingly.

For Israel, this is the last chance to “get on the bandwagon” and join this new reality. We must change our national perception: Israel’s economy, with all its technological achievements, will continue to dwarf in the face of the accumulated wealth of the Arab-Muslim Mideast. Our economy will decline to a much greater extent if we do not have any access to this wealth.

Such access can only be facilitated by signing an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to end the conflict. The most blatant Israeli existential interest is to advance the signing of such agreement, and through it normalize our ties with wealthy oil exporters – we can then start trading with them, selling to them, and taking part in their development plans.

The opening of Mideastern markets to Israel could double the annual growth rate of our economy from 5 to 10 percent. The Arab wealth would also enable an economic-financial resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem, once such agreement is reached by all parties. This will require no more than a donation of 5% of the foreign currency reserves of oil-exporting countries or of their annual export revenues. There would still be money left, via wise business investment, to turn the future Palestinian state into a growing region.

Those who prefer to keep dozens of West Bank settlements over the opening of Israeli embassies in Riyadh and Qatar and over opening the Saudi and Libyan market to Israeli exports are anti-Zionist in my view. They understand nothing when it comes to the new Mideastern balance of power. They will leave Israel deep in the shadow, and in practice jeopardizes the foundations of our existence.

This is a seductive argument, one that many Israelis subscribe to.

It is also wrong, shortsighted and dangerous.

While he spends most of the article discussing the undeniable growth of the oil economy, Plocker papers over exactly how Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank would turn the implacably hostile Arab world into a friendly trading partner. More importantly, he completely ignores the character of the resultant Palestinian Arab state that would be his neighbor.

The Arab economic boycott of Israel has been in place, officially or unofficially, since before 1948. Israel’s trade with Egypt and Jordan has not skyrocketed in the time since their respective peace agreements; in fact some Egyptian firms have been penalized by the WTO for still complying with the boycott. Conversely, clandestine trade with Arab countries still nominally at war with Israel continues to grow. Israel would probablybenefit economically by an agreement but the trade would remain clandestine and hidden to the Arab public and would be hampered by the anti-semitism that has not abated at all in the Arab world. There would be no bonanza for Israel.

Plocker somewhat deceptively implies that Israel’s economy is shrinking in the face of this tsunami of Arab growth: “Our economy will decline to a much greater extent if we do not have any access to this wealth.” Of course, Israel’s economy is not declining at all; as even Plocker observes in other columns. He probably means “relative to the Middle East” but this is much different from the doom and gloom he is implying. It is not clear why Israel is threatened by an annual economic growth of 5%, regardless of the growth of the oil rich countries. It is also a fantastic guess on Plocker’s part that Israel’s economic growth would double should trade increase.

Israel’s economy is also far more diversified than that of the Gulf states. Plocker makes a basic error in assuming that the boom in oil prices will continue unabated. It is quite likely that these high energy prices will spur the faster development of alternative energy resources as they become more economically feasible, and the stunning growth that he forecasts would then disappear. The Arab world’s economy is so heavily weighted to energy that it is not a very stable area to subsume Israel’s security interests.

Plocker is an economic editor for Yediot Aharonot so perhaps he can be forgiven for looking at the world through the prism of economics. Even so, how much has Israel benefited economically from its withdrawal from Gaza? The IDF still makes daily forays into Gaza to root our terrorists; Israel is spending money to develop anti-Qassam defenses, Sderot’s economy is close to nonexistent. Israel’s economy has grown since then but how much has been because of the goodwill engendered from the withdrawal and how much would have happened anyway? If Plocker wants to use a purely economic viewpoint to argue for a Palestinian Arab state, these are the questions he should be researching.

Which brings up the weakest part of Plocker’s argument: Israel’s security. It is likely that an independent Palestinian Arab state will, in short order, turn into an Islamist state. Israelis so desperately want peace that they are willing to turn a blind eye to what is happening in the Palestinian Arab world in particular, and the Arab world in general. Only last year Hamas won a popular election and even with the hundreds of millions pouring in to prop up Abbas it is far from clear that a new election would have any different results. An Islamist state on Israel’s eastern and southern borders - with only a few miles between it and the Mediterranean - is not worth any amount of money.

Even if Abbas retains leadership, he has little control over the terrorism that is sure to follow any agreement. Instead of Israeli checkpoints stopping countless terror attacks over the Green Line, Israel would return to being a nation under siege.

Plocker’s wishful thinking comes into full display when he airily says that the powerful oil-fueled Arab states would put billions of dollars into solving the “refugee” problem. Why, exactly, would a peace agreement with Israel make Arab states more likely to help their Palestinian “brethren” when their trillions have failed to do so up until now? On the contrary, the Arab states have made it clear that they want to keep the Palestinian Arabs in as much misery as possible, giving next to nothing to UNRWA and giving more money towards Palestinian terrorism than housing. They have passed laws enshrining discrimination against Palestinian Arabs. They have made it clear that they want to “refugee” problem to fester, not disappear.

And, unfortunately for the Israeli optimists, the reason is because they are still more interested in destroying Israel than helping Palestinian Arabs. While they might allow some Israeli agricultural equipment or medicines to arrive on their lands, they are still living with the ultimate insult to Arab masculinity - the existence of a Jewish state on Arab lands and the constant reminder of their war losses. Economics does not trump the deep-seated bigotry that the average Arab has against Jews having any control over land in the Middle East. Even should Israel help create another terror state next door, there will inevitably be border disputes a la Shebaa Farms and there will always be perceived insults to Arab honor a la Danish cartoons and Israel will always be the lightning rod for Arab anger. No amount of concessions can change that.

Perhaps King David put it best when he said (Psalms 146:3)”Put not your trust in princes…in whom there is no hope.” Israel cannot mortgage its security to the promise of an economic boom that the princes of Arabia may - or may not - agree to.

(cross-posted to Israellycool)

Some PalArabic news

Palestine Press Agency (pro-Fatah) says that a Hamas jeep recklessly hit and killed a 38-year old woman in Gaza City, bringing our 2007 PalArab self-death count to 568.

The same agency reports that Hamas leaders are preparing to escape to Egypt via tunnels if Israel invades Gaza. Brave fighters!

Palestine Today (pro-Hamas) picks up on a Maariv story (also in YNet) that Israel will deduct from the tax revenues it gives the PA the cost of the damage from rocket fire. Of course Hamas won't feel any of that shortfall.

Ma'an (Arabic) reports that Fatah in Gaza is trying to get a massive rally for Monday to commemorate the third anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat. Since everyone loves Abu Ammar they are trying to leverage that into a show of support for Fatah in Gaza.

Al-Hayat al-Jadida (Fatah) said that Mahmoud Abbas demanded Israel to adhere to its obligations under the "roadmap" and called on the US to pressure Israel to do so. Since the roadmap puts as a precondition that the Palestinian Arabs stop trying to kill Israelis this is beyond hypocritical.

Al-Hayat adds another demand from Mahmoud Abbas - that Israel release 2000 prisoners as a "confidence building" measure as well as demolish roadblocks before the Annapolis summit/meeting/gathering.

UPDATE: A Gaza "policeman" was killed during a clan clash. 569.

UPDATE 11/7: An Islamic Jihad leader died from wounds from Hamas last month. 570.

Tenure for a bigot

Nadia Abu El-Haj, who teaches anthropology at Barnard College, has received tenure from that institution.

Much has already been written about her book criticizing any archaeology that indicates a presence of an Jewish kingdom in what is now Israel, even though she has no archaeology experience herself. Her pre-conceived notion that there were never ancient Jews in the Middle East is so overpowering that she essentially dismisses the entire field of archaeology as being hopelessly biased against her version of the truth.

This was the only book she ever wrote, and it seems on its own to be pretty powerful evidence that her scholarship is suspect, to say the least. But what most people haven't caught on to is that more recently she has been doing to the field of genetics what she had previously done to archaeology - to reach the identical conclusion. In an article in American Ethnologist she says modern genetics has disproved the idea that the Jewish maternal line originated in ancient Israel (what she calls "Palestine" even when she is talking about a kingdom that predates that term.)

It is an amazing coincidence that she has looked at two disparate fields, neither of which she is an expert in, and reached the identical conclusion - the Jews have no historic right to live in Israel. The fact that she is of Palestinian Arab origin surely has nothing to do with this eerie juxtaposition of separate proofs by assertion.

Perhaps if her only "scholarship" was concentrated in deconstructing archaeology, a case could be made that she is just doing the same as what other postmodernists do. But the fact that she uses her anthropology background as a blunt instrument to pretend to be a scholar in two separate, specialized fields of which she has no real knowledge shows not only that El-Haj is no scholar, but that she has a purely Jew-hating agenda. It is almost beyond belief that such a person, who can only be described as a bigot, can reach such a level at any university, let alone one as formerly prestigious as this one.

Columbia University (of which Barnard is part) certainly has seen its reputation collapse in the past year.

Suleiman built a synagogue on the Temple Mount?

Arutz Sheva mentions in a meeting between Israeli rabbis and White House officials that

[Chief Rabbi of Haifa and Chairman of the Chief Rabbinate Communications Committee Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv] Cohen also recalled the historical fact that the Muslim Caliph Omar Suleiman built a synagogue on the Temple Mount where Jews prayed, and that it was later destroyed by another Caliph.

Does anyone have a source for this?

Honor/shame and sexual harassment in Egypt

From AFP:

CAIRO (AFP) — From lewd looks to inappropriate touching, experts say Egypt's growing street harassment of women is a deep-rooted and largely ignored problem shackling the country's progress.
Sexual harassment in public areas is not limited to a specific age category or social class, says the independent Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR), which is spearheading a campaign against this "social cancer" in Egypt.
Nor does an outward expression of piety protect from sexual harassment, generally defined as "all unwelcome behaviour of a sexual nature, making women feel uncomfortable and unsafe."
"As soon as I step onto the street, I am surrounded by sexual predators," Rasha Shaaban, 23, from the Mediterranean city of Alexandria told AFP. "I don't feel safe, the problem is getting worse. It has become so bad that I want to leave Egypt."
According to the state National Centre for Social and Criminal Research, sexual crimes are on the rise but while they give no official figures, ECWR says that two women are raped every hour in this country of 80 million and that 90 percent of offenders are jobless men.
There are many contributing factors to the increase in sexual harassment. Rising unemployment may push some men to display their machismo on the streets. The huge cost of marriage and the fact that sex outside marriage is forbidden may also explain the behaviour, experts say.
"Men take out their frustration, not just sexual, against women," Engy Ghozlan, who runs the anti-harassment campaign at ECWR, told AFP.
But some men, who believe a woman's job is to look after the home, say that those out on the street are fair game.
"When (a woman) walks out into the street in tight trousers and tight belts, she deserves what she gets," said Mohamed al-Sayyed, 32, who works as an assistant at an upmarket hairdresser in Cairo.
"The women who come here are different from the ones in my village," he said.
Sayyed grew up in a village near Menya, in the conservative Egyptian south. "My female relatives would never be seen swaying in the street like this," he said, defensively explaining the occasional wolf whistles "and more" he directs at Cairene women.
One sociologist, Dalal al-Bizri, sees a strong link between growing religious conservatism and sexual harassment.
She told AFP that a puritan view of Islam brought over from religiously strict Saudi Arabia is partly responsible for the "culture of hate" against women.
"In the sermons of wahhabi (ultra-conservative) preachers on satellite television, we hear the worst things about women, like the fact that they should not be on the street but at home... that they have an inferior status," Bizri said.

In the Arab honor/shame culture, it is inevitable that men with low self-esteem will try to boost their egos by degrading women. People who are mentally healthy have no need to put others down but those living in cultures where honor is more important than life need to feel superior to others - whether the "others" are women, Jews or infidels. Any admission that they are no better than women is a fatal injury to their bruised self-esteem.

See also my posting that 40% of all Egyptian women have been sexually harassed.
(h/t Watcher)

Checkpoint shooting you won't read anywhere else

A 27-year old Palestinian Arab was mercilessly shot in the back at a West Bank checkpoint by the trigger-happy soldiers there.

This checkpoint, like countless others, limits the movement of innocent Palestinians and causes untold misery among the population as they have to humiliated as they pass through.

Of course, since this checkpoint was built and manned by Palestinian Arabs in Qalqiya, this incident will go largely unreported; no "human rights" organizations will count this incident as evidence of oppression, and no left-wing Israelis or Europeans will dare go to monitor the activities there.

When Zionist lions attack!

From the pro-terror "news" site IMEMC:

Israeli soldiers told the villagers of Al Fourdess village, located to the east of Bethlehem, in the southern part of the West Bank, that a Lioness had escaped from the settlement of Qedumem, built illegally on the village land.

...Palestinian villagers from Al Fourdess added that now they have to fear not only the settler and their violent attacks on the locals, but now they also have to fear the ferocious animals kept as pets by the Israeli settlers.

The last wild Zionist animals that terrorized poor Palestinian Arab villages were pigs and wolves.

Bahrain Crown Prince: Iran wants nuclear weapons

This is a first:

LONDON, 3 November 2007 — Bahrain’s crown prince has claimed that Iran is developing atomic weapons or the capability to do so, the first time a Gulf state has openly accused Tehran of lying about its controversial nuclear drive. In interviews with correspondents for British newspapers in the capital Manama, Sheikh Salman ibn Hamad Al-Khalifa also urged a diplomatic solution to the standoff between the West and Bahrain’s close neighbor.
“While they don’t have the bomb yet, they are developing it, or the capability for it,” the crown prince said, warning that “the whole region” would be drawn into any military conflict over this issue. “There needs to be far more done on the diplomatic front,” he added, according to The Times. “There’s still time to talk.”
“We need to be very well aware that this could escalate. And we think that is not advisable,” The Daily Telegraph quoted Sheikh Salman as saying.

Of course, Iran denies that Bahrain did any such thing. From IRNA:

Bahrain Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa deplored a British daily action in distorting the Bahraini crown prince's words concerning Iran. In a meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki here on Saturday afternoon, on the sidelines of Iraq neighbors foreign ministers meeting, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa said, "The crown prince's words published in a British daily is 'distorted' and we officially reject them."

Referring to the aims of a number of media in creating pessimism and misunderstanding among neighboring countries, the Bahraini foreign minister said, "Ties between Iran and Bahrain are very deep and strong and such efforts cannot stop its growing trend."

Exactly how are women treated in Saudi Arabia?

Last Tuesday I quoted Saudi King Abdullah as telling a reporter that "Islam has given the most rights to women in the world and they are strong and important participants in our society."

Today, the Arab News, to its credit, publishes an article by a Saudi woman that takes issue with this idea:

When Is a Saudi Woman Considered an Adult?
Maha Akeel, Arab News

It is surprising and frustrating to see that women in Saudi Arabia, despite all their achievements, continue to be treated as underage dependents who need and are forced to be managed by their male guardians.

It is necessary at this point of Saudi women’s history to address this important issue.

We cannot claim that a Saudi woman has all her Islamic and civil rights when the system insists on considering her immature, irresponsible and dependent on her male guardian no matter how old she is, how highly educated and intelligent she might be or what she has achieved in her professional career. At what age and under what circumstances is a woman in Saudi Arabia considered an independent, sane, responsible adult?

We see story after depressing and humiliating story in our daily life and reported in the newspapers of how women struggle to go about their normal life without unnecessary complications, let alone fighting for their rights in the courts or other government institutions. Why does a young intelligent, ambitious woman needs her guardian’s permission to enroll in a university or apply for work? Does the system even realize that this male guardian does not necessarily have the best interests of the woman when he denies her the right to an education and a job?

At what age is a woman considered old enough to decide to marry whom she chooses legally even if her male guardian objects because he might have ulterior motives for not giving his permission, or might force her to marry someone she does not want? Why is it that the system and society do not raise objections to a father marrying his 13-year-old daughter to a 70-year-old man but objects to a 40-year-old woman deciding to marry someone suitable against her father’s wishes because he would like to continue benefiting from her teacher salary? Or why does a court forcefully divorce a happily married couple because some male relative of the wife objects to the marriage while in another case a woman is forced to stay married to a man she does not want? Where is taking the woman’s own opinion in the matter? Doesn’t an adult, mature woman have a say in matters concerning her own private life? Why is it only the man’s wishes are looked at?

If these are some extreme and rare examples of male guardians abusing their authority over the women in their care, what about the daily obstacles women face if they want to purchase property, apply for divorce, gain custody of their child, or travel abroad? In all these cases, she needs a male guarantor or a male representative or permission from her male guardian. A working woman with sufficient salary and funds cannot purchase a car in installments without a male guarantor signing the papers with her. A woman cannot argue her case without a male representative or finalize legal procedures because judges do not recognize her ID card and insist on two men identifying her. A woman, even a 70-year-old woman, cannot travel abroad without the written, signed and notarized permission of her male guardian, who might be her son or nephew. Is this the respect we give our mothers, and we know how highly respected mothers are in Islam?

Simply going to school or to work or going to a hospital for medical emergency or even shopping is an ordeal for women because we have to worry about how we will get there without that “reliable” male driver we so depend on who might be a criminal or a pervert. How can we trust a woman to raise a child, teach our children and treat our illnesses but we cannot trust her to be a responsible adult behind the wheel? We have asked for our right to be licensed to drive a car like any other Muslim woman in the world because we know there is no religious basis for denying us that right.

Yet, we are told that society would not accept women driving on the roads. Assuming that is true, what is being done about that? Are there any real proposals from society to make driving by women easier and safer such as, for example, discussions in schools, training women to be police officers on the roads and in police centers, setting an age limit or hours of the day or specified zones for women to drive in or even, resorting to the same requirement, having her male guardian’s permission to drive?

Again, the issue is at what age and under what circumstances does the system and society recognize a woman as a responsible, independent adult who can make her own decision and choices and have full rights as a citizen?

Anniversary of Balfour declaration

Israel Matzav does a great and thorough job discussing the history and importance of the Balfour Declaration from November 2, 1917.

The Palestine Post had this to say at the 25th anniversary, during the depths of the Holocaust:

Notice how even then, as Jews argued that the immediate establishment of a state would save countless lives from the Nazis, they still bent over backwards to point out that Jewish immigration to Palestine helped the Arab community and did not displace a single person. Notice also that even then it was assumed that the Palestine spoken of in 1917 included Transjordan. (See also my posting on Eastern Palestine.)

In 1947, on the eve of the UN Partition vote, the Arabs decided to strike on this anniversary, As usual, the strike ended up helping the Jews more than it hurt them:

But while the real Palestinian Arab people took advantage of a nice day off by visiting Jewish shops, their self-declared thought-leaders looked at things a little more violently, figuratively bashing Balfour's head with Arab hammers:

The Jewish claim on Palestine does not depend on the Balfour Declaration, of course, but it was an important moment in modern Zionist history that illuminates much about the conflict.

60 years ago: US probing Saudi oil profits

In 1947 there was concern in the Senate that perhaps the Saudi King Ibn Saud was skimming too much profit off of each barrel of oil he exported.

The US was being charged for oil at the time $1.65 a barrel, 15 cents more than the French.

It appears that at the time the King took some 43 cents for each barrel, but at least one observer felt that he was really skimming far more.

From AP, published November 3, 1947 in the Palestine Post:

Yesterday, oil closed at over $94 a barrel.

Today's Arab fantasy, part 2 - US planes nuked Syria nuke plant

From the Jerusalem Post:

The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two strategic US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a nuclear site under construction.

The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.

The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.

This feeds the longstanding Arab fantasy that Israel is just a puppet of the US (the exact opposite of what they tell gullible Westerners.) The idea that dhimmi Jews can effectively defeat the mighty Arabs is too painful to the Arab psyche to even contemplate; instead they have always told themselves that it was US power that inflicted damage.

The tactical nuke part is a nice touch. This may have been fabricated in expectations that IAEA inspections that may find traces of radiation, and this way they can claim that it was a US nuke that caused it. Or it just might be another way to lick the bruised wounds of their egos.

Today's Arab fantasy, part 1

From IMEMC:

The Al Aqsa Foundation for rebuilding Islamic Holy Sites, warned on Thursday from the dangers of new Israeli excavations carried only fifty meters away from the southern wall of the Al Aqsa mosque, and only a few meters away from the walls of the Old City.

The Foundation stated that the excavations are shaking the ground and causing damages to Palestinian houses near the site.

Also, the foundation reported that the Israeli authorities are conducting these excavations in order construct trade and tourism facilities, and that some of these facilities start underground. The excavations re also carried out to create a tunnel to link these facilities with Al Mughrabi Wall and the Western Wall.

In an urgent press release, the Foundation said that its field teams toured on Wednesday some of the entrances of Silwan town, especially the main entrance which is only a few meters away from the Mughrabi Gate, and observed the excavations which are carried out by huge machines and are heavily shaking the ground which inflicts serious danger to the foundations of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and endangering the houses of the residents in Silwan.

So how close is Silwan to the Temple Mount? Another anti-Israeli site provides a helpful map:

Since the Arabs know that screaming about "excavations" can bring world Muslims to riot, and since they also know that most people don't know enough about geography to see the absurdity of the claims that excavations that occur so far away threaten so ca-called "Al-Aqsa" mosque, they can lie with impunity and get away with it.

Big Satan, little satan

My earlier posting about the critical review given to "The Israel Lobby" by left-wing writer Stephen Zunes gave him too much credit. His major points came directly from Joseph Massad, the infamous Columbia associate professor who is effectively anti-semitic.

It is instructive to look at the argument a little closer, seeing that it is from an intellectual Arab perspective that is being parroted by gullible or malicious left-wing useful idiots like Zunes.

Massad wrote his critique of the "Israel Lobby" paper last year for Al-Ahram:

The underlying argument has been simple and has been told time and again by Washington's regime allies in the Arab world, pro-US liberal and Arab intellectuals, conservative and liberal US intellectuals and former politicians, and even leftist Arab and American activists who support Palestinian rights, namely, that absent the pro- Israel lobby, America would at worst no longer contribute to the oppression of Arabs and Palestinians and at best it would be the Arabs' and the Palestinians' best ally and friend. What makes this argument persuasive and effective to Arabs? Indeed, why are its claims constantly brandished by Washington's Arab friends to Arab and American audiences as a persuasive argument? I contend that the attraction of this argument is that it exonerates the United States' government from all the responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world and gives false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on their side instead of on the side of their enemies.

From the funhouse mirror perspective he is essentially right - the US policies towards the Arab world would hardly be different without the Israel lobby. His problem is not primarily with Israel but with America.

The record of the United States is one of being the implacable enemy of all Third World national liberation groups, including European ones, from Greece to Latin America to Africa and Asia, except in the celebrated cases of the Afghan fundamentalists' war against the USSR and supporting apartheid South Africa's main terrorist allies in Angola and Mozambique (UNITA and RENAMO) against their respective anti-colonial national governments. Why then would the US support national liberation in the Arab world absent the pro-Israel lobby is something these studies never explain.

Massad is where leftist intellectualism and Muslim fundamentalism meet. The "national liberation" movements that he refers to must mean the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. There is no doubt that Egypt, Syria and the rest of the Arab countries are autocratic dictatorships with little regard to human rights, but there is equally no doubt that the alternatives would be worse from anyone who is not a Muslim terrorist or sympathizer.

The US supported the independence of Jordan, Syria, Egypt and all the others who emerged from the Ottoman Empire and colonial rule. Massad doesn't seem interested in Arab independence - he is interested in replacing these independent states with fundamentalist ones, all in the name of "liberation." He skillfully uses leftist talking points to help build an Arab world that is fully aligned with terror.

This following paragraph is particularly enlightening in more ways than one:

Finally we come to the financial argument, namely that the US gives an inordinate amount of money to Israel -- too exorbitant a cost that is out of proportion to what the US gets in return. In fact, the United States spends much more on its military bases in the Arab world, not to mention on those in Europe or Asia, than it does on Israel. Israel has indeed been very effective in rendering services to its US master for a good price, whether in channelling illegal arms to central American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, helping pariah regimes like Taiwan and apartheid South Africa in the same period, supporting pro-US, including Fascist, groups inside the Arab world to undermine nationalist Arab regimes, from Lebanon to Iraq to Sudan, coming to the aid of conservative pro- US Arab regimes when threatened as it did in Jordan in 1970, and attacking Arab nationalist regimes outright as it did in 1967 with Egypt and Syria and in 1981 with Iraq when it destroyed that country's nuclear reactor. While the US had been able to overthrow Sukarno and Nkrumah in bloody coups, Nasser remained entrenched until Israel effectively neutralised him in the 1967 War. It is thanks to this major service that the United States increased its support to Israel exponentially. Moreover, Israel neutralised the PLO in 1982, no small service to many Arab regimes and their US patron who could not fully control the organisation until then. None of the American military bases on which many more billions are spent can claim such a stellar record. Critics argue that when the US had to intervene in the Gulf, it could not rely on Israel to do the job because of the sensitivity of including it in such a coalition which would embarrass Arab allies, hence the need for direct US intervention and the uselessness of Israel as a strategic ally. While this may be true, the US also could not rely on any of its military bases to launch the invasions on their own and had to ship in its army. American bases in the Gulf did provide important and needed support but so did Israel.

Massad now gives a powerful argument for Israel as an effective ally of the US. He even understates Israel's ability to do anything unilaterally, making the assumption that both the Six Day War and the Osirak raid were really American initiatives carried out willingly by their Israeli puppets.

Ultimately, his hatred of America is far greater than his hatred of Israel (which is legendary.) Although it appears that he was born in the US he clearly considers the United States to be the real source of evil on the planet, with Israel just an appendage.

This is not particular to Massad - the entire Arab world looks to the United States as the "big Satan" even as they are happy to keep taking money and weapons from us. Israel is a lightning rod for their hate, and the fact that dhimmi Jews control what they consider Arab land is certainly a contributing factor for their misoziony, but if Israel didn't exist their hatred for America would not be abated at all.

It is interesting that leftists have adopted this anti-American, pro-terrorist line of thinking at the same time that the Arab intellectuals have started framing their arguments in leftist terms. It is also ironic that if the "liberation movements" that Massad champions would win control of their countries, Massad and his fellow Christian Arabs would be at the mercy of the jihadists.

News From Tomorrow

If for some bizarre reason a Palestinian Arab state is created, here are the headlines that we can expect to occur daily:

* Fatah has announced a new military campaign against Israel where they will shower Israel with hundreds of rockets.

* A former PA official is in the hospital after being tortured by Hamas gangs in Gaza.

* Six people were injured from gunshots during a funeral of a terrorist, including a child.

* A car was torched near Hebron belonging to a captain in the PA security services

Of course, these headlines all come from today. But why exactly would things get any better if the PalArabs had their own state? Which of these daily events would stop because the amount of self-government increases? What exactly is the magic ingredient that turns animals into responsible human beings just because you give them more responsibility?

It is more likely that things would become much, much worse. Yet somehow this likelihood doesn't enter into the calculus of those who are hell-bent at giving the Palestinian Arabs their own state.

Alluring Zionist IDF strippers shooting innocent rock throwers

Dave from Israellycool finds an Arutz-7 article from 2001 that is worth repeating:

The Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida carried a story this week about IDF tactics that surpassed all previous accusations of supposed Israeli deviousness - poisoned candies, hormone-laced gum, poisoned wells, magnetized belts - in its bizarreness.

According to an Al-Hayat Al-Jadida front page report, the IDF has turned to using armed, female strippers in its war on upstanding Palestinian boys. The newspaper reports that when the Arab rock-throwing begins, IDF soldiers run for cover. Then, the story continues, after some time of hiding, an Israeli woman stands up on top of a barricade and begins to perform an alluring strip tease. Innocent Arab teenage boys, distracted from the business of rioting, are enticed to approach, when, according to the newspaper, the woman - an IDF soldier - shoots them with a pistol she had hidden in her underwear.

I'm more impressed that the IDF has devised a pistol that is invisible under skimpy underwear than I am that they employ beautiful, irresistible strippers to shoot PalArab boys.

Panning Walt/Mearsheimer from the radical left

Radical left publication Tikkun, a heavy critic of Israel and America, prints a review by Stephen Zunes that finds "The Israel Lobby" to be complete garbage.

The funny part is that Zunes' argument mirrors the arguments that some radical Arabs have made against the book - that America's policies are so reprehensible in total that blaming the Israel Lobby alone absolves the US for its supposed awful foreign policy. So this is an argument that US policy is uniformly reprehensible and not only in the Middle East!

The overbearing power and McCarthyite tactics wielded by the American Jewish establishment against critics of Israeli government policies—particularly against prominent Jewish progressives like Michael Lerner—has made critical discourse about U.S. support for the Israeli government extremely difficult. As a result, it is all too easy to buy into the arguments put forward by John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt in their newly-released book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007) that the ‘Israel Lobby’ is primarily responsible for the tragic course taken in U.S. Middle East policy. The Tikkun Community has recently sponsored a series of public events with the authors, and Rabbi Lerner wrote a lengthy piece in the September/October issue of this magazine largely defending their perspective.

As a political scientist and international relations scholar specializing in the United States’ role in the Middle East, I must disagree. I am in no way denying that the Israel Lobby can be quite influential, particularly on Capitol Hill and in its role in limiting the broader public debate. However, it would be naíve to assume that U.S. policy in the Middle East would be significantly different without AIPAC and like–minded pro–Zionist organizations...
Mearsheimer and Walt, along with their defenders, fail to make the distinction between the undeniable fact that ‘the Lobby’ has limited debate (particularly within the Jewish community) regarding U.S. policy toward Israel and the question as to whether it is the major reason for U.S. policy being the way it is. As Professor Massad puts it, the Israel Lobby is responsible for “the details and intensity but not the direction, content, or impact of such policies.” Indeed, as I pointed out in my article “Is the Israel Lobby Really That Powerful?” [Tikkun, July/August 2006], U.S. policy toward both Israel/Palestine and the region as a whole is quite consistent with U.S. foreign policy toward Latin Amer-ica, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.
Any serious review of U.S. foreign policy in virtually any corner of the globe demonstrates how the United States props up dictatorships, imposes blatant double-standards regarding human rights and international law, supports foreign military occupations (witness East Timor and Western Sahara), undermines the authority of the United Nations, pushes for military solutions to political problems, transfers massive quantities of armaments, imposes draconian austerity programs on debt–ridden countries through international financial institutions, and periodically imposes sanctions, bombs, stages coups, and invades countries that don’t accept U.S. hegemony. If U.S. policy toward the Middle East was fundamentally different than it is toward the rest of the world, Mearsheimer and Walt would have every right to look for some other sinister force leading the United States astray from its otherwise benign foreign policy agenda. Unfortunately, however, U.S. policy toward the Middle East is remarkably similarly to U.S. foreign policy elsewhere in the world.
...Mearsheimer and Walt correctly observe how Washington’s support for Israel despite its human rights abuses against the Palestinians “makes it look hypocritical when it presses other states to respect human rights,” but there is no mention of the equally hypocritical U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, and other repressive Arab regimes. Similarly, they are accurate in observing how “U.S. efforts to limit nuclear proliferation appear equally hypocritical given its willingness to accept Israel’s nuclear arsenal.” But is this any more hypocritical than signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with India or selling sophisticated nuclear–capable fighter bombers to the Pakistani government in spite of those countries’ nuclear arsenals?

As a result, the idea that U.S. policy would somehow be “more temperate,” (again to use the words of Walt and Mearsheimer) were the Lobby not so powerful falsely assumes that U.S. policy toward other Third World regions in which the United States had strong strategic, geo–political and economic interests has historically been more temperate than it has been in the Middle East. This is particularly important to keep in mind given that their argument about the Lobby’s influence goes beyond that of Israel and Palestine to include the rest of the Middle East as well, including the Persian Gulf region, in which the United States has had hegemonic designs since before modern Israel came into being.
...
In any case, it is incorrect to assume that most members of Congress stridently defend the policies of the Israeli government because their careers would be at stake if they did otherwise. Indeed, the majority of the most outspoken congressional champions of the Israeli government are from some of the safest districts in the country and need no support from pro–Israel political action committees (PACs) or Jewish donors in order to be re–elected. In last year’s article, I examined a number of cases in which members of Congress allegedly had been defeated as a result of their standing up to AIPAC and made the case that their position on Is-rael was actually just one, and not the most significant, factor in their defeat.

In 2006, ‘pro–Israel’ PACs and individuals are estimated to have contributed more than $9 million to party coffers and congressional campaigns. While that is a significant amount, it ranks significantly below that of PACs and individuals supporting the interests of lawyers ($58 million), retirees ($36 million), real estate interests ($33 million), health professionals ($32 million), securities and investment interests ($29 million), the insurance industry ($21 million), commercial banks ($16 million), the pharmaceutical industry ($14 million), the defense industry ($13 million), electrical utilities ($12 million), the oil and gas industry ($11 million), and the computer industry ($10 million), among others. If campaign contributions had such a direct impact on policy as Walt and Mearsheimer claim, Congress should therefore have a strong and consistent pro-labor agenda since contributions given in support of unions representing public sector workers, the building trades, and transportation workers each were significantly higher than the total contributions given in support for the Israeli government. Furthermore, with rare exceptions, PACs allied with the Israel Lobby do not contribute more than 10 percent of the total amount raised by a given campaign.

The vast majority of the (admittedly few) House members who refuse to follow AIPAC’s line are easily reelected. For example, every Democratic member of Congress who refused to support the July 2006 House resolution supporting Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, a resolution subjected to vigorous lobbying by AIPAC, was reelected by a larger margin than they were two years earlier.
...Perhaps the most misleading argument put forward by Walt and Mearsheimer is their claim that the 2003 invasion of Iraq “was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.” This is ludicrous on several grounds. First of all, Israel is far less secure as a result of the rise of Islamist extremism, terrorist groups, and Iranian influence in post–invasion Iraq than it was during the final years of Saddam Hussein’s rule, when Iraq was no longer a strategic threat to Israel or actively involved in anti–Israeli terrorism. Indeed, it had been more than a decade since Iraq had posed any significant threat to Israel and both Israel’s chief of intelligence and the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff made public statements in October 2002 emphasizing how Israel’s military strength had grown over the previous decade as Iraq’s had grown weaker.
...While a disproportionate number of Jews could be found among the top policy makers in Washington who pushed for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, it is also true that a disproportionate number of Jews could be found among liberal Democrats in Congress and leftist intellectuals in universities who opposed the invasion of Iraq. Furthermore, it is absurd to imply that those who were most responsible for the decision to invade Iraq—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President George W. Bush—would place the perceived interests of Israel ahead of that of the United States. And they were perfectly capable of making such a stupid and tragic miscalculation on their own.

The entire article is like a funhouse mirror that in some sections accidentally show things accurately.

Holocaust denier to speak at University of Oregon

Hate speech on American campuses masquerading as "free speech" is now hitting epidemic proportions. (Hat tip - Anti-Racist Blog)

Critics of a speaker widely viewed as one of the nation’s most prominent deniers of the Holocaust say they will counter his talk in Eugene on Friday with a competing event and a later symposium.
Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, will speak on “The Israel Lobby.” His visit comes at the invitation of the Pacifica Forum, a local discussion group founded by retired University of Oregon professor Orval Etter.
Weber, a historian who grew up in Portland, describes himself as a Holocaust revisionist. But detractors point to Weber’s own writings in labeling him a white supremacist, racist and anti-Semite.
“People may think I’m wrong or I’m right, but they should have a chance to hear what I have to say,” Weber said in a telephone interview from his institute’s office in Newport Beach, Calif.
Local critics affiliated with Community Alliance of Lane County have scheduled a free speech vigil to be held just outside the UO hall where Weber will speak. “We are operating under the theory that the best response to hate speech is more speech,” volunteer Michael Williams said. “We want an opportunity for the community to show its opposition to the kinds of things that Mark Weber stands for.”
Williams said opponents don’t plan to shout slogans or prevent people from hearing Weber’s talk. “We will have a presence that is unavoidable but not obstructionist.”
David Frank, a professor in the Honors College at the UO, said he and two faculty members are planning a Holocaust symposium in response to Weber’s talk.
Weber “has the right to come to campus and make preposterous statements,” Frank said. “But we have a responsibility as scholars to demonstrate the expertise and research that shows his claims are not only false but dangerous.”
Weber’s speech is not the first to draw charges of anti-Semitism against the Pacifica Forum, which last year sponsored multiple talks by Valdas Anelauskas, a resident of Eugene and native of Lithuania who describes himself as a journalist, researcher and “white separatist and racialist.” Anelauskas dedicated one of his lectures to a Holocaust denier.
Weber’s institute “has been battling Israel and the Jews for a long time,” Etter said. “They sort of lead the parade against those who say any extensive criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.”

Etter said he welcomes the controversy sparked by Weber’s appearance because it will “improve understanding in this community about what’s been going on for a long time in regard to Israel and the Israeli lobby .... This will be another pinnacle of free speech.”

Why exactly does Weber have the right to speak on campus? He has the right to speak on a soapbox in a park; he has the right to create a website or radio show to air his hate. But why, exactly, does a college have the obligation to host racists?

Because of this:

The forum has access to UO space because he and forum colleague George Beres are former UO employees, Etter said.

We'll see if the KKK can find a former UO employee to sponsor them as well and give them some more legitimacy.

Halachic discussion of Halloween

A serious discussion by Rabbi Michael Broyde. Not a huge halachic treatise but relevant.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad pointed me to this story.

UN almost admits UNIFIL worse than useless

From JPost:

Hizbullah has succeeded in rearming itself and has obtained missiles with a range of 250 km., a UN report on the implementation of UN Resolution 1701 stated. Such missiles would be capable of striking areas south of Tel Aviv.

Weapons smuggling from Syria into Lebanon, in violation of 1701, is continuing as well.

According to the report, which was quoted by Army Radio, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called the continued arms smuggling "grave."

The report also noted that according to information provided by Israel, Hizbullah was rearming itself south of the Litani River, and that given this development, UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese army were increasing their efforts to patrol the area.

Further, Israeli intelligence passed on to the UN stated that the number of land-to-sea missiles in Hizbullah's stockpile has tripled.

So the new, improved UNIFIL managed to let Hezbollah do pretty much all it wanted to, and now it is a bigger threat than it was last summer. Resolution 1701 is yet another worthless piece of paper generated by that august institution.

Way to go, UNIFIL!

Gulf News slams Giuliani - and makes him look great

I cannot imagine a better advertisement for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign than this editorial in the Gulf News (UAE):

Giuliani is Mideast's worst nightmare

By Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf News
Published: October 29, 2007, 23:51

President George W. Bush's approval ratings may be in the doldrums and he's only got just over another year to go, but before we order the celebratory fireworks here's a thought. The next American president could make this one look like a boy scout.

As the months pass, the next election looks like a race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani for the Republicans. I'm no fan of the coolly calculating Clinton but given the alternative, she's the one I'll be rooting for.

...Here's the problem. Whereas post 9-11 Giuliani was generally considered a competent, nice-guy keen to roll up his sleeves in order to put his city to rights, in recent months the mask has come off. In short, Giuliani is no benign patriotic do-gooder. He's a hawkish, sabre-rattling, pro-Israel, nationalistic neocon.

A clue to Giuliani's leanings emerged during the visit of Prince Al Walid Bin Talal to Ground Zero in October 2001. Bearing a $10 million donation for disaster relief, the Saudi prince suggested the US reexamine its Middle East policies and adopt a balanced stance towards Palestinian aspirations. Giuliani's response was to hand back the cheque.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards has joked President Giuliani would be like President Bush on steroids. Unfortunately, this is no joke.

Giuliani makes no bones about the fact he would use military force to set-back Iran's nuclear programme. In September, he promised to use America's military might to prevent Iran pursuing its nuclear ambitions should he be elected president.

His senior foreign policy adviser Norman Podhoretz has spelled out this message, advising that Iran be bombed with cruise missiles and bunker busters. "None of the alternatives to military action - negotiations, sanctions, provoking an internal insurrection - can possibly work," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Giuliani is talking tough when it comes to Pakistan, too. He recently urged the president to be more aggressive in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden within Pakistan even if such a move would result in alienating the Pakistani government.

On Iraq, Giuliani has been consistently gung ho. He supported the war from the outset, backed the so-called surge and believes American troops should stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

And if my worst fears are realised and Giuliani moves into the White House there will be no Palestinian state for the foreseeable future either. He has declared in no uncertain terms his antipathy towards a two-state solution because a Palestinian entity would "support terrorism" and threaten US security.

It's also worth recalling that in 1995, he banned the former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat from attending events held in New York to celebrate the UN's 50th anniversary and ordered his removal from a concert held at the Lincoln Centre. It's not surprising that a panel of eight Israeli experts assembled by the daily Ha'aretz determined Giuliani is the best presidential candidate for Israel.

A recent article on the front page of the New York Times titled "Mid-east hawks help to develop Giuliani's policy" enlightens us as to the former mayor's new best friends. "Mr Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers," the article reads.

His team, says the article, includes "Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran as soon as it is logically possible; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinising American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin who has written in favour of revoking the United States' ban on assassination".

Giuliani recently took the Democrats to task for avoiding use of the term "Islamic terrorism" during four debates; an omission he describes as taking political correctness to extremes.

A Giuliani presidential tenure would also be extremely bad news for Americans who value the few civil liberties they have left. He strongly backs the controversial Patriot Act; is an advocate for wire-tapping and domestic spying, and isn't sure whether "water-boarding" or sleep deprivation should be considered as "torture".

He has also promised to appoint "strict constructionist" judges to the Supreme Court to allay the fears of conservative Republicans and the religious right that he is pro-abortion.

The Gulf News has put all of the best things about Rudy Giuliani in a single article (even though it was exaggerating a bit.) And judging from the comments that the article received, it appears that other readers agree:

Your description of Giuliani's attributes has just converted me into a voter for Giuliani. I was teetering about who to support, but your article has shown me the light. It has highlighted all the positive attributes required of the next president.
From a reader
Pleasanton,USA
Posted: October 30, 2007, 05:52

Are you actively trying to win Giuliani the nomination? I don't support Giuliani as the nominee. He is not conservative enough.
Dave
Minneapolis,USA
Posted: October 30, 2007, 05:47

I don't know women who are set to vote for Hillary. Even I will vote for Rudy over Clinton if they were the only two choices. Clinton has no principles at all.
Rachel
California,USA
Posted: October 30, 2007, 05:31

Bush offers a half-billion for the "moderate" terrorists

From the Washington Post:

President Bush has proposed a sixfold increase in aid to the Palestinians, including $150 million in direct cash transfers to the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to bolster the government in advance of a Middle East peace conference planned for later this month in Annapolis.

The $435 million in additional aid, on top of $77 million requested earlier this year, has attracted little notice in the president's $45.9 billion supplemental request last week to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if approved, it would constitute the administration's largest amount of direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. Previously, the administration had limited cash transfers to $50 million at a time.

Let's get a quick timeline together:

* US gives some $70 million annually to the moderate terrorists of the PA, including weapons and training for their security forces to keep out the extremist terrorists.
* The extremist terrorists win an election and take over the government.
* The US and EU balk at this new Hamas government so Abbas is installed as a figurehead president to receive more money.
* Hamas goes to war with the moderate terrorists, with all their US-supplied weapons and training. Fatah runs away from Gaza with barely a skirmish.
* The US and EU decide to reward the moderate terrorists by allowing them to form an undemocratic government and ignoring Gaza - and they pressure Israel to give this government a couple of hundred million dollars.
* Moderate terrorists continue terrorizing, with suicide attacks thwarted by Israel, with press restrictions, with continued incitement against Israel on moderate terrorist TV.
* Now the US decides that the reason that the moderate terrorists lost the the extremists is not because they have no motivation, not because they have no desire for peace with Israel, not because Fatah in reality only controls a small area around Ramallah while Hamas is more popular everywhere else - the real reason is because the US didn't give Fatah enough money to begin with.

As the expression goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. The US has zero influence on Palestinian Arabs in any meaningful way - in fact, all evidence points to the fact that they hate the US with a passion. Whomever the US supports will actually automatically lose prestige in the Arab world. The only thing the US has is money, and it therefore thinks that money can solve all problems.

For thirty years the US has singlehandedly propped up the Egyptian government with tens of billions of dollars to influence Egypt to adhere to its peace treaty with Israel. This may have brought a temporary end to war but it has hardly brought peace - Egyptians remain the most anti-semitic and misozionistic people on the planet. The idea of normalizing relations with Egypt, so sought after by Israel in the 1970s, is laughable today. Egypt is a single bullet away from being taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. Three decades of "peace" has not moderated the Egyptian people one bit. The only reason there is not a state of war now is because a series of autocratic rulers have worked to ensure that the money pipeline remains open.

This is hardly a model for Israel-Palestinian Arab peace. Gaza, Al Aqsa Brigades, a weak non-democratic government - all these show that any money the US gives to Mahmoud Abbas will end up going to the terrorists, one way or another, and will impede peace rather than promote it.

Last September, CAMERA came out with a report showing an amazing correlation between the amount that Palestinian Arabs receive and the number of murders they do the following year:

The idea that the US can solve this problem with money is not only wrong, it is exactly the opposite - if the US wants to increase terror, the surest way is by increasing "aid".

Gaza beauty salon bombed, and other peaceful news

Some of the latest headlines from the peaceful PalArab territories:

- A blast ripped through a beauty salon early on Wednesday in Gaza City, causing severe damages to the shop and other nearby houses. The Gaza morality police keep up their campaign of terror.

- Hamas claims that Fatah stormed a house in Nablus arresting two Hamas members, Fatah claims they peacefully surrendered.

- Three Fatah police officers were injured on Monday night in Hebron when "unidentified attackers" ambushed them.

- Gunmen on Tuesday afternoon broke into the house of the former Palestinian Attorney General Hussain Abu Asi in Gaza City and kidnapped his son.

If only Israel would give in the Arab demands, the Palestinian Arabs would be able to terrorize each other much more easily.

UPDATE: A Hamas member died from wounds last month in the clashes with the Hillis family. The 2007 PalArab self-death count is now 567.

PalArab "human rights" organization against human rights

Some 13 or so Arabs of Palestinian descent, who have lived in Iraq for decades, apparently were trying to illegally immigrate to Italy when their boat capsized, killing them.

BADIL, a PalArab organization that purports to help these Iraqi refugees in the guise of calling them Palestinian refugees, made this statement in response:

BADIL calls upon states, the PLO, UNHCR, UNRWA and NGOs working for Palestinian refugees to:

1) Provide Palestinian refugees in and from Iraq with temporary protection and/or relocation opportunities, especially in Yemen which has indicated its willingness to welcome the refugees;

2) Inform, consult and respect the wishes of the refugees;

3) Request Israel to permit the immediate return of Palestinian refugees from Iraq to their homes of origin and redouble efforts for durable solutions;

4) Ensure that any from of protection recognizes, respects and protects the right of return of Palestinian refugees, for example through registration with UNRWA of entitled but previously unregistered persons.

Notice anything strange?

That's right - the leading organization that pretends to help Palestinian Arabs refuses to ask Arab countries, or any others for that matter, to allow them to become naturalized citizens.

This is not an oversight. All of these organizations that pretend to support "human rights" for PalArabs have a larger agenda that trumps helping them: keeping them stateless and miserable indefinitely in the name of "the right of return."

The fear that these supposed advocates have is obvious: Palestinian Arabs will stop identifying as such in a generation or two if they are allowed to become re-integrated with the larger Arab world as they were before 1948. The most effective weapon that the Arab world has against Israel's existence would disappear as the "refugees" disappear.

So we see yet again that "Palestinian human rights" organizations care more about destroying Israel than about human rights. It is right here in black and white.

Lebanese TV: Jews use drugs to take over the world

MEMRI doing what it does best.

A Lebanese TV station that is apparently associated with Syria has aired some quite interesting programming, based on my own "Protocols." Every single anti-semitic slander finds its way into this slick production, complete with lots of video of Jews praying at the Kotel.

TV Channel Affiliated with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Beri in a Show Dedicated to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Jews Use Drug Trafficking to Take Control of the World and Subjugate Other Nations

Following are excerpts from a Lebanese TV report on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The report aired on NBN TV on October 22, 2007.

Maria Maalouf: On land and in the heavens - the use that American and Israeli Zionism makes of the weapon of drugs in order to thwart intifadas and revolutions cannot be justified by the American claims about the intensification of the struggle on land, as long as the Jews purport to have their own private god in the heavens, who commanded them to annihilate the nations and peoples of the world, using drugs and causing anxiety, and numbing the mental, psychological, and physical capabilities of non-Jews, as written in the Talmud or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Isn't it true that these Jewish plots to corrupt the peoples were described by American "plot-disrupters," such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford, and even by some Jews, like Alfred Lilienthal, and even Karl Marx, who, more than 150 years ago, exposed in his book On the Jewish Question that there was an instinct within the Jewish individual that drives him to take control of the world, by means of illegal money – which is known today as "money laundering."

[...]

Narrator: The Koran said about them: "They strive to spread corruption throughout the land." Spreading the corruption throughout the land is the declared goal of the Zionist hands of evil, which are infiltrating the world. The Zionists have summarized their destructive principles in what has become known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which contains their secret plan to subjugate the entire world by spreading chaos and promiscuity among the nations, by imposing corrupt and depraved ideologies on human minds, and by destroying the foundations of religion, nationalism, and morality. Since the occupation of Palestine, the Zionist policy has supported and spread drug abuse in the holy lands, and has acted to get rid of the legal procedures meant to prevent this, and refrain from prosecuting drug dealers and traffickers. The Israeli prison authorities turn a blind eye to smuggling, and even facilitate drug abuse among the Arab detainees, and they clamp down upon Palestinian NGOs trying to curb drug abuse.

In addition to the provoking of civil strife and to the poisoning of minds, the Jews have turned to physical poisoning. They became known in history for poisoning wells. They are also known for adding certain amounts of harmful substances to medicine and alcoholic beverages, as well as to flour and its products, and to other products that the Jews export – directly and indirectly – to unfriendly peoples, if not to all peoples. Drugs were the Jews' method of wearing down the German people, which led to the Nazi extremism, in which the Jews themselves played a role. In addition, they carried out widespread drug dealing in Czarist Russia since the 17th century. This was in accordance with the Jewish Talmud, which says that the Jews must devote their greatest efforts to prevent other nations from ruling the land, so that the rule would be in the hands of the Jews alone.

In The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the end justifies the means, and when the forces of society are in a state of disarray, the power of the Jews is stronger than that of anyone else. Moreover, the ninth Zionist protocol states in a banal way that any revolution against the Jews must be made [as futile as] a dog barking at an elephant. The third Zionist protocol states that other nations must be left sick, poor, and lacking any determination or strength. Naturally, drugs are the most effective means to accomplish this goal.

The American thinker Benjamin Franklin, in his famous 1789 manifesto, the American industrialist Henry Ford, who wrote The International Jew, and others like them warned of the danger posed by the Jews, who destroy morals. In an indirect reference to drugs, Franklin said about [the Jews]: "They destroy morale in any land they settle." He described them as "bats" and "blood-suckers," and said that if they are not kept away from the children of America, these children – according to Franklin – would end up as workers in fields for the feeding of the Jews.

[...]

Maria Maalouf: I have a final question about what is written in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: "The Jews are entitled to treat the other peoples as animals, to corrupt them, to tear countries apart, to destroy the other nationalities, and to spread promiscuity and chaos." Some believe that the spreading of drugs is one of their means of taking control of non-Jewish peoples.

Hussein Al-Kheishan: I believe this is true, we must consider our responsibility – what we should do to overcome this plague, which is killing our society.

Anyone who thinks that Nazi-style Jew-hatred no longer exists today is deluded. And it is not just being spread in tiny underground newspapers or obscure websites, but it is being broadcast in slick packages on TV throughout the Arab world.

Extremist warmonger Mahmoud Abbas speaks

Time once again to call a spade a spade: Mahmoud Abbas is an extremist by any definition.

[Abbas] told the [Al-Sharq Al-Awsat] news agency that he will not give any concessions in the Annapolis peace conference, he added.

Abbas called on the Arab countries to avoid taking any steps towards normalization with Israel before they withdraw from all the Palestinian territories they occupied in 1967, and before a just solution for the refugee problem is found on the basis of UN resolution 194.

Regarding Hamas' position towards the Annapolis conference, Abbas said "It is the Palestinian Liberation Organisation that takes part in the conference not the government or the Palestinian Legislative Council."

Combining this with Ahmed Qureia's statements earlier we see that Abbas is not even pretending to represent the Palestinian Arab people at Annapolis - but even so, he might refuse to go unless Israel offers everything up front.

He will use the fiction of only representing the PLO to avoid any Western pressure, claiming that he cannot commit to any concessions (and officially giving Hamas veto power) but he still turns around and asks Israel to agree to give everything to this admittedly non-representative group.

And, meanwhile, instead of encouraging peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors - the same level of "peace" that Israel has with the PA, meaning official mutual recognition - he is advocating remaining in a state of war.

If he keeps this up, he might get the next Nobel Prize.

PalArabs demand timetable for a state

More demands from people who have a limitless appetite for them:

The chief Palestinian peace negotiator threatened on Tuesday that there would be no talks with Israel unless a deadline is set for establishing a Palestinian state — the first indication the Palestinians could scuttle a U.S.-sponsored peace summit over the issue.

Reading between the lines, Ahmed Qureia is saying that their statehood is not in the least bit dependent on their actions. Israel can ask for security guarantees or anything else and the PalArabs might pretend to agree or not, but no matter what there will be a state by some future date.

It is like a juvenile delinquent telling his parents that he demands a new car on his sixteenth birthday regardless of whether he gets good grades, stays in school, goes to prison - it all doesn't matter because he deserves it. And if he doesn't get it, well, he will make life miserable for everybody.

And the world that has spoiled this kid rotten from day one - the world that has given billions of dollars in free food, free education and willful ignorance of the kid's crimes, the world that has taken the kid's side whenever he got into a fight and that bailed him out every time he got into trouble - that world is falling all over itself to buy a Ferrari.

Before his temper tantrum.

Recent MSM failures

I try to dig up news that others have missed, but this is still not an excuse for the professional journalists to ignore stories that are available and are clearly newsworthy. Here is a round-up of recent postings I wrote that completely flew under the MSM radar, judging from mentions in Google News:

"Kill Jews Everywhere" - Although I got this out of the English-language Ma'an newspaper, and Arutz-7 put it into a newsbrief, this story where Hamas/PRC terrorists threatened Jews worldwide is nonexistent on Google News.

More Holy Temple Denial, where the former Mufti of Jerusalem denied that there was ever a Jewish Temple at the site of the Temple Mount, was only mentioned in a couple of Israeli newspapers and a simgle mention in EarthTimes (UK). EarthTimes credits UPI but the absence of this story from the thousands of newspapers indexed by Google means that every single one did not think that this story was worth mentioning.

Why the horrible Israelis inspect Gaza-bound sugar, mentioned the fact that Gaza terrorists have imported potassium for explosives in sugar shipments. This was only mentioned in Ha'aretz and Israel Insider.

Two Jewish professors at Columbia targeted - this story was only mentioned in the New York Post and NY1.

Another day, another "protection racket" threat by Fatah - Ahmed Qureia's threats of war should the conference not go the way he wants was only covered by YNet.

Saudi king insults everyone's intelligence in Britain, where the Saudi king speaks hypocritically about "human rights" and says many other outrageous things about Israel, women and terrorism, was only mentioned by Arab News and Bits and Pieces. Even the BBC did not seem to put its own interview on the web, in either transcript or full video form.

This is only from the past week.

The mainstream media has no interest in looking for real stories - they are mindlessly following the lead from wire services and a couple of influential newspapers, whose agendas clearly do not include stories such as these. When it comes to the Middle East or anti-semitism they have already decided what they want to think and these items - which upset the applecart of complacency that the "even-handedness" coverage encourages - just do not fit into the story they want to say.

Saudi king insults everyone's intelligence in Britain

Saudi King Abdullah spoke to the BBC before his trip to Britain and made some amazingly hypocritical statements. Of course, the Beeb couldn't be expected to call him on them, as the formerly great kingdom submits to the current Kingdom, its largest trading partner. (The transcript in not online, but a small part of the video is.)

“We don’t want concessions. We are people with rights and we demand our rights,” the king told the BBC when asked whether he expected any Israeli concessions in order to reach a Middle East peace settlement....

Speaking about the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference, the king said he believed that the conference would fail unless the Palestinians’ needs were taken more seriously. He emphasized the return of Palestinian refugees to their country. “This is a humanitarian condition for peace.”

Too bad the interviewer was too ignorant to point out that it is a wee bit hypocritical for Abdullah to whine about Palestinian Arab rights when the Kingdom itself refuses to give citizenship to Palestinian Arabs, even as hundreds of thousands have helped build his country. It is truly bigotry.

And even so, he pretends to identify with them saying not that Palestinian Arabs have rights, but "we are people with rights." For all the incessant whining that the US and Europe aren't "evenhanded" when it comes to the Middle East, this basic standard is completely thrown out the window by his own words as he sheds even the pretext of objectivity on this issue.

Not to mention that to hear the Saudi king talk about "rights" from one of the most repressive regimes on Earth should cause anyone overhearing to vomit on the spot.

His insulting words didn't end here, though:

In the BBC interview, King Abdullah said it would take 20 to 30 years to defeat terrorism. “My advice to all countries including Britain is that they should not show any leniency in fighting terrorism,” he said. The king also revealed the recent arrest of some terror financiers in the Kingdom and said Al-Qaeda continued to be a big problem for Saudi Arabia.
...The BBC also reported that King Abdullah is annoyed that the rest of the world has largely failed to act on his proposal to establish an international counterterrorism center. “Everybody has accepted the proposal but then did nothing to implement it,” the king said.
“This center, under the umbrella of the United Nations, will collect information related to terrorism. We have learned from our experience that the speedy dispatch of information is the main factor in combating terrorism,” he explained.
...King Abdullah also said that Saudi Arabia had provided intelligence information to British authorities about a possible terrorist attack in the UK. “We sent information to Great Britain before the terrorist attacks in Britain, but unfortunately no action was taken and you know what happened,” the king said about the deadly July 7, 2005 bombings.

One British newspaper, Bits of News, described the reaction to this last statement as "Whitehall officials have been almost as quick to offer embarrassed, low-key denials as government ministers have been to placate the King with sycophantic, simpering, clichéd words promising friendship and cooperation."

Notice also the outlines of Abdullah's proposal for a "counterterrorism" center. Under UN auspices, it would ensure that Islamic terror would be downplayed and nothing would be able to impede the spread of Saudi Wahhabi Islam that has inspired so many jihadists.

Then, with a straight face, Abdullah continued:

“Islam has given the most rights to women in the world and they are strong and important participants in our society,” he said when asked about the condition of women in Saudi Arabia.

Coming from a country where women are not allowed to drive, where they cannot testify in court, where they cannot vote and where they make up a tiny percentage of the workforce, this is a statement that an ordinary journalist would have demolished.

But the obnoxious King can say such absurd things with impunity, because his wealth and control over worldwide energy resources burnish the fiction that he is an ally in the war on terror, rather than the enemy.

Abdullah came to the UK with an entourage of 400 people, on four planes, taking 84 limousines from the airport. He personally gets rich off of Western petrodollars and uses his wealth skillfully to keep the West in permanent submission to his will. Saudi influence in First World governments far outweighs the fabled "Israel lobby".

This rush to placate the Kingdom in its most wretched hypocritical glory is disgusting. But it will continue as long as we keep having to buy oil.

PA TV's vision of "peace"

The PA television has been playing a music video that shows, even while Abbas and Olmert are preparing for a "peace conference," what the Palestinian Arab concept of "peace" is:

The lyrics make it quite clear:

"Oh mother, they destroyed our house
The house of my brother and my neighbor [2X]
Do not be angry, oh mother, we got more stones [2X]
We are Palestinians, we are not terrorists [2X]
"We have the right, oh mother, we want to bring our home back
Hand in hand, and arm in arm, we will protect your land, Palestine
We will pray in Al-Aqsa and the [Church] of the Nativity, Islam and Christians
[2X]
"We will liberate [Palestine] the Land of Religions.
And we will build Jerusalem of the homelands.
We are the sons of glory, oh mother....
"We are Palestinians we are not terrorists
We are the students of freedom we are not terrorists
"Oh Arab, oh noble son, your blood is in my blood and your business is my business
Peace will be achieved through unity, oh my brother and cousin
The land is Arab in history and identity
Palestine is Arab in history and identity
We will live in peace, oh mother, and our lives will not be wasted
"Oh mother, they destroyed our house
The house of my brother and my neighbor [2X]
Do not be angry, oh mother, our rocks increased [in number]
"From Jerusalem and Acre, from Haifa and Jericho and Gaza and Ramallah [2X]
From Bethlehem and Jaffa, from Be’er Sheva and Ramla, [2X]
from Nablus to the Galilee, from Tiberias to Hebron." [2x]

So the Palestinian Arab concept of "peace" is where there are no Jews in the land of Israel, only Palestinian Arab Muslims and Christians. The "land of religions" only includes two religions, in this very "peaceful" song that broadly implies a Judenrein Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.

Wonder where the Jews are in this oh-so-peaceful place?

Monday links

Michael Medved at TownHall: Why Not Ask About Pakistan's "Right to Exist"?
14 million refugees? Nah, who cares?

Blogger News Network: The Desert Bloom - An Insult to Human Dignity?
Deconstructing Ahmadinejad

Reform Judaism Magazine: The Protocols of Hamas
Well known but worth repeating

Islam Online covers the Italian seizure of the Koran-imprinted toilet seats:

Al-Khalidi smelled a rat in the Italian company's act.

"Inscribing the toilet seat covers with Ayat Al-Kursi (The Verse of the Throne) and putting the noble verse in the nastiest place was not unintentional," he said.

On how he learnt about the matter, Al-Khalidi said a fellow Italian Muslim happened on the sacrilegious pieces as he went shopping in Latina on Wednesday, October 24.

Al-Khalidi said he does not buy the company's excuses that it did not know what the Arabic words written on the cover seats really meant.

"This is not about art and beauty as the company claims; this is a crime," he said.

Sultan Knish: Dealing with the Devil
For those who want a decent analysis of the conservative blog war over anti-Muslim racists in Europe.

Palestinian Police Phunnies XXVIII

Yeah, I know it's been a while since my last one, but this one is too good:

Police officer in Gaza accidentally kills himself

A Palestinian traffic police officer affiliated to the de facto Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip died on Monday as a result of the misuse of his weapon.

Palestinian police in Gaza issued a statement naming the deceased as twenty-three-year-old Safwat Abu Al-Naja from Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Which brings my 2007 PalArab self-death count to 566.

Meanwhile, the 80,000 PalArab policemen are being threatened by PM Fayyad, who says that he will slash their numbers by 30,000 (which still means that there will be some 20,000 more of them than allowed according to a 1995 agreement with Israel.)

Under pressure from the US and EU, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayad recently agreed to reduce the number of policemen in the West Bank by half.

Previous attempts by the PA leadership to lay off thousands of policemen were called off for fear of a mutiny inside the Palestinian security services.

According to the new PA plan, all policemen over the age of 45 would be forced into retirement. In addition, thousands of men and women whose names appear on the payroll of the security forces but don't do any work would be fired immediately.

Only in the Western-financed welfare state of the PA would the idea of firing people who do nothing be controversial. Of course, if their salaries would be paid by PalArab taxes rather than EU and American handouts, this opinion might change.