Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Palestinian Arab Holiday Calendar

There seem to be no shortages of celebrations and anniversaries in the Palestinian Arab territories. Every week there seems to be another rally celebrating or protesting or commemorating something, often with violent results.

Here is a handy list of events that were commemorated during the past year that were marked either by a news conference, rally, protest or terror attack. For a few of them I included links to relevant postings I've made. I'm sure I'm missing some but it is a good start if you want to join in on the celebrations.

11/15 - Palestinian Independence Day
11/29 - International Day of Solidarity for the Palestinian People (Partition Day)
12/8 Founding of the PFLP
12/9 Anniversary of Founding of UNRWA
12/14 Founding of Hamas movement
12/27 Anniversary of first Qassam landing in Ashkelon (PIJ)
1/7 Anniversary of Founding of Fatah
2/25 Anniversary of "Ibrahimi mosque" massacre
2/? Anniversary of first Bil'in demonstration
3/1 Founding of DFLP
3/3 Anniversary of the killing of Khalid Al-Dahduh (PIJ)
3/8 International Women's Day
3/9 "Andalusia Week"
3/14 Anniversary of arrest of Ahmad Sa'adat (PFLP)
3/17 Anniversary of arrest of Hussam Khader (Fatah)
3/22 Anniversary of Sheikh Yassin's assassination (Hamas)
3/30 Land Day
3/31 Prophet Moses day
4/1 Anniversary of terror takeover of the Church of the Nativity
4/7 International Children's Day
4/12 Artas Lettuce Festival ("a fitting symbol...of the resilience of the Palestinian people")
4/17 Anniversary of the death of Dr Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi (Hamas)
5/1 Workers' Day
5/3 World Press Freedom Day
5/12 Temporary International Presence in Hebron anniversary
5/15 Naqba Day
5/16 Anniversary of the "liberation" of Southern Lebanon
5/29 Anniversary of the PLO
6/4 Anniversary of "occupation"
6/4 World Environment Day
6/23 Anniversary of Palestinian National Initiative
6/25 Anniversary of the capture of Gilad Shalit
7/9 Anniversary of declaring the separation barrier "illegal"
7/13 Palestinian Popular Front anniversary
8/5 Shefa-'Amr massacre anniversary
8/15 Anniversary of Hezbollah "victory"
8/21 Anniversary burning of Al Aqsa mosque
8/27 Anniversary of assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa (PFLP)
9/28 Anniversary of second Intifada
(varies) Qods Day
(varies) Eid al-Fitr
10/23 Mubarak Al-Hasanat assassination anniversary (PRC)
10/29 Kfar Qasim massacre
11/2 Balfour Declaration
11/11 Arafat's death

The EU has given Fatah terrorists over $1 billion this year

From IMEMC:

The Palestinian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affirs [sic], Dr. Ahmad Subuh, on Wednesday announced that the amount of aid donated to the Palestinian Authority (PA) by the European Union (EU) over the past year had reached approximately one billion and eighty million U.S. Dollars.

Speaking during a joint press conference between the European Commission in the West Bank and the Palestinian ministry of Foreign Affairs in the central West Bank city of Ramallah, Dr. Subuh thanked the EU for the aid, adding that the amount donated had increased significantly from last year's total of 980 million US$, and the previous year's total of 880 million US$.

Last month, the White House requested some $435 million in additional aid for Palestinian Arabs, on top of the $137 million it gives to UNRWA annually (out of a budget of some $505 million) and the $77 million requested earlier this year.

That's about $2 billion earmarked for Palestinian Arabs, with no dip in reaction to their electing a genocidal government in 2006 nor in their utter failure to stop Hamas from taking over Gaza this year.

As previously posted, there is a strong direct correlation between the amount of money that the Palestinian Arabs get and the number of murders they commit occur the following year:

All this money is meant to "moderate" the Palestinian Arabs, yet it appears to have the opposite effect.

Things have been relatively peaceful in the weeks leading up to Annapolis, with much fanfare over the evident reduction of violence in Nablus due to an extra few hundred PA security forces being deployed there. But the Palestinian Arabs have shown self-restraint before when it was in their interests, and being in the spotlight before the conference is a strong incentive to lay off the mayhem for a while. (The US gave a single week's worth of relative peace in Nablus a reward of $1.3 million.) This week's renovation of Joseph's Tomb is cosmetic in more ways than one.

I've noted that there was a similar reduction of violence in the weeks before the UN vote on Partition sixty years ago, as the world's attention focused on Palestine. Immediately after the vote, of course, there was a huge surge of terror.

Since this year is a record-breaker in terms of dollars - wait to see how "peaceful" next year will be.

Al-Dura trial update

For those following the French hearing about the infamous Mohammed al-Dura videotape, Media Backspin has the latest:

HonestReporting together with Take-A-Pen covered this afternoon's hearing in France where raw footage of the Mohammed Dura was publicly screened for the first time. HonestReporting/Take-A-Pen's Alain Benjamin, who saw the video in court, discussed by phone the proceedings with MediaBackspin editor Pesach Benson.
What did the raw footage show?

We can definitely say that nobody can say who was shooting at who. Charles Enderlin said in court that the Palestinians started shooting first, but in the end, there's no way we can say what happened that day. You can't tell who did what. The assertion from Charles Enderlin, that the Israeli army killed the boy, is totally wrong. The least he could've said was that the boy was killed--but we don't know by who.

There was a dispute over how much footage was to be screened. Was the full video shown?

Charles Enderlin submitted 18 minutes of footage. The judge, without any prompting from Philippe's lawyers, asked what happened to the 27 minutes. Enderlin said on record in court that he had to manipulate some footage that was not relevant to that day. He said he transferred the footage onto DVD for the court. That was amazing.

So she asked if anyone in attendance had seen the full footage. Luc Rosenzweig was there, stood up , and said he saw a tape that was more than 20 minutes long. Richard Landes also stood up. He saw the footage at Enderlin's office. He said the timer he saw was at least 21 minutes long. The judge basically let that issue rest, but there was serious doubt hanging over the room that the footage was tampered or doctored.

After the hearing ended, how did people react to what they saw?

Not one person believed that the version of France 2 was right. Some people maintained that the footage was staged. Others think the footage was real. Clearly, nobody believed that anybody died.

Does the footage vindicate Karsenty?

Everyone was going, "Wow" and talking about whether he'll take action against France 2 for trying to swindle the court. He can wait for the verdict, or sue France 2 for tampering with the tape. He has quite a few options. Clearly, the judge wasn't convinced by France 2's version. The judge's verdict is to be given on February 27.

For background, see Honest Reporting's summary.

For exhaustive analysis, see Augean Stables.

Jerusalem Protection Law

A small bit of good news:

The Knesset passed the first reading of a bill initiated by Likud Knesset Member Gideon Sa'ar, which requires a two-thirds majority of Knesset Members (MKs) to change the status of Jerusalem.

Currently, it would take 61 of the 120 MKs to change the Basic Law: Jerusalem, which annexed Jerusalem's eastern neighborhoods and the Old City to the capital.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has floated the idea of surrendering parts of the capital to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which demands the entire area of Jerusalem liberated in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The vote in favor of the bill was 54-24, but it must be approved by a committee and pass two more Knesset votes before becoming law. A growing number of Knesset members in Prime Minister Olmert's own Kadima party are against his plan to split Jerusalem. Olmert's close confidant and aide Vice Prime Minister Chaim Ramon has openly promoted handing over parts of the capital to the PA.

The bad news? This bill still has a ways to go before becoming law.

And, unfortunately, the Knesset has ignored its own laws before. I recently blogged about a 1977 law that makes giving land away a grave crime, and it was clearly never enforced during Camp David or Oslo.

So while it is a good sign, Israel needs to be far more forceful about its rights to Jerusalem.

"A hellish, covetous power"

You gotta hand it to Iranians; they certainly don't bother with political niceties:

Hellish covetous power seeking to weaken Islamic Revolution

Head of Assembly of Experts and Chairman of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said here Wednesday that a hellish power in the region is determined to loot Iran's rich natural resources by weakening the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Given the goals behind the US masterminded greater Middle East plan, he said the plot was to bolster Zionist regime and weaken Iran but this was to no avail, Rafsanjani said.
Devoted Iranian nation are the bastion in the campaign against enemies and it is the duty of the officials to be at their services by all means, Rafsanjani said.

See how pragmatic this Iranian "moderate" is?

Is Zionism colonialism?

In the comments section of Israellycool, a Palestinian Arab has asked me to engage in a dialogue with him centering around :

I am coming from the angle that Zionism is a colonial, imperial, and facist ideology. (And I do not mean to insult you personally). This does not mean that I am calling you a pro-colonialist/imperialist/fascist - afterall, there may be other sub-facets of Zionist that you like, perhaps like community, sense of purpose, or what not. But at its core, I believe that this is what it is, but at the same time, this is why I wanted to discuss this matter with another Zionist. To be blunt, I want to sell you on my logic, as I am sure you want to sell me on yours. I think this needs to happen somewhat.

As his questions are broad and they cut to the very core of the differing viewpoints between Zionists and anti-Zionists, I agreed to address them.

His first contention, often stated as fact (especially by Arab academics like Joseph Massad,) is that Zionism is a colonial ideology. We will need to start with a basic definition of colonialism or else we will not get anywhere.

The dictionary definition is:

A policy by which a nation maintains or extends its control over foreign dependencies.

Wikipedia's definition is more expansive:

Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonising nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population (see also cultural imperialism). It is essentially a system of direct political, economic and cultural intervention by a powerful country in a weaker one. Though the word colonialism is often used interchangeably with imperialism, the latter is sometimes used more broadly as it covers control exercised informally (via influence) as well as formal military control or economic leverage.

In both these definitions, a colonial project is one that is imposed by a powerful nation onto a less-powerful territory.

We will also need a definition of Zionism. This is actually harder than it looks. A very good start would be:

Zionism is the national revival movement of the Jews. It holds that the Jews are a people and therefore have the right to self-determination in their own national home. It aims to secure and support a legally recognized national home for the Jews in their historical homeland, and to initiate and stimulate a revival of Jewish national life, culture and language.

From the Arab viewpoint it is easy to conflate Zionism with the colonialism (and imperialism). The Zionist movement started at the same time that European powers were heavily involved in colonizing many parts of the world, including the Arab world. To make matters worse from the Arab viewpoint, the colonialist mindset of the British is certainly a large reason why Zionism succeeded politically - they felt that Zionism would be a way to gain a foothold in a critical part of the world without having to colonize it themselves. And it would be folly to deny that there was an element of bigotry in play here as the Western world uniformly looked at Arabs as untamed savages.

In other words, the Arabs feel that Zionism has the same effect as colonialism, therefore they conclude that the two are functionally identical.

However, Zionism is more like anti-colonialism: it is a national liberation movement, with the nation being the Jewish nation. Zionism's 's intent is not to rule over others nor to subjugate others. The vast majority of early Zionists wanted to re-build the Jewish national home in the same place that the original home was, the biblical Land of Israel. Judaism had maintained a strong emotional tie with ancient Israel; daily prayers long for a return to Zion;Jews annually mourn for the destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem; and not only Jews had maintained a continuous presence in their original homeland, but Jews had returned there in much smaller numbers throughout the ages.

Definitionally, they two aren't even close. The Zionists didn't want to offer allegiance to the British Empire, they wanted to be independent of it. The colonialist requirement for a "metropole", or mother country, doesn't exist in Zionism.

The Arab motivation to apply the colonialist label to Zionism purposefully ignores the definitions or goals of the Jewish national liberation movement and instead tries to fuzz the definition so that the metropole is the entire Western world. Israel indeed has the hallmarks of a modern, Western nation and more closely identifies with the West and the ideals of democracy and liberalism than with the Arab world. And in more recent decades, when the word "colonialism" has turned into a dirty word, the Arabs have been keen on using it as a weapon against Israel among the nations that have the most colonial guilt.

The conscious use of inaccurate and inciteful terminology ("racism" is another favorite) is but one weapon used by Arabs and their supporters in order to delegitimize Israel and Zionism. Deep down, the Arab leaders know this to be true as they consciously adopt Zionist terminology and methods to sell their own Palestinian Arab national movement (for example, "diaspora"and "right of return") - if Zionism is so inherently abhorrent, why would they choose to mimic Zionist methods? The reason is because they know that Zionism was a remarkably successful national liberation movement, not a colonialist ideology. In Algeria, the French could be expelled because they had somewhere to go; this cannot work against the Zionists because Jews have traditionally been the ultimate stateless people and the entire point of Zionism is to rectify that.

The Palestinian Arabs have turned into a modern stateless people due to the decisions of Arab leaders to keep them in that state and therefore artificially turn them into the "Jews" of the Middle East, with an amazing and transparent program of discrimination that mirrors the Jewish experience in Europe. Combined with an incessant diet of hateful rhetoric and incitement against Zionism, of which the "colonialist" label is only a tiny part, they choose to keep Palestinian Arabs in misery knowing that they will not be blamed as long as the Zionists are still around.

Israeli diplomat criticizes UN special committee at the UN

A number of blogs last week mentioned Dan Gillerman's masterful criticism of the UN Human Rights Council.

Apparently, he is not the only Israeli diplomat who is proud to stand up for Israel and speak the truth at that worthless organization.

Gershon Kedar is an Israeli diplomat who had the opportunity to answer yet another set of absurd allegations from yet another UN "special committee" yesterday. Here's how his words were recorded by the UN:

GERSHON KEDAR ( Israel) said it was ironic that the Committee would spend three days debating the report of the “misnamed” Special Committee, for the work of that Committee was “superfluous” and “replete with duplication bordering on plagiarism and one-sided propaganda”. It was no wonder that barely one half of the entire membership supported the renewal of the Special Committee’s mandate. Its lack of relevance had been recognized as “charades” by at least some. ...
He said that, when the resolution relating to the question was passed later in the week, the Palestinian representative should not suffer the delusion that the Palestinian people were receiving real support or even empathy. The resolution was little more than “lip service”. Israel’s legitimate security policies could not be changed by those resolutions; indeed, all those who supported peace should be concerned by such one-sided resolutions that blindly and routinely supported one party to the conflict. They poisoned the atmosphere, created false hopes and encouraged unrealistic demands. Such was the context under which the Fourth Committee was conducting its discussion today, and its discussion on any resolutions that might emerge as a result.
Israel was willing to cooperate with all legitimate human rights organs, bodies and rapporteurs whose mandates did not pre-determine the results of their investigations, he said. Israel had received and cooperated with rapporteurs concerning housing, “arbitrary killings”, displaced persons and health. It had also cooperated with the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Special Committee, however, was “a relic from a bygone era”, whose existence could not be justified morally, intellectually or politically. Its real agenda was not to help the Palestinians, but to harm Israel.
He added that, in principle and in practice, the Committee allowed itself to ignore reality and flagrantly refrained from dealing with human rights violations of Palestinians, which was a taboo subject because it contradicted the Committee’s raison d’etre. Also, the Hamas military takeover of Gaza had been dealt with in the report in two sentences. In addition, the Committee did not refer to the numerous cruel and vindictive human rights violations during the intra-Palestinian fighting, which meant that Member States were not informed about wounded Palestinians being shot to death while being treated in hospitals, or Palestinians being thrown to their deaths from high-rise buildings in Gaza. Nor were they told of the numerous and deliberate maiming of political and military rivals and their families, often by being shot in the knees. Negative statements about Palestinians were “beyond the pale” for the Special Committee for one reason –- that Israel could honestly not be blamed.
Yet the Special Committee had still managed to concoct a fanciful connection, he said. Although Israel had completely left Gaza in 2005 and was not involved in the intra-Palestinian fighting, the report blamed Israel and referred to the situation as “a direct consequence of the Israeli occupation”. Such political and intellectual bankruptcy should not be tolerated in the United Nations system.
Although the Special Committee claimed its report reflected the substance of the information that had been gathered, it was replete with lies, false claims and uncorroborated accusations, and patently ignored any information that did not fit its one-sided ideological agenda, he said. Thus, while Israel’s anti-terror measures were widely covered, it never mentioned Palestinian terrorism against Israel despite that information being widely known. Worse still, an earlier report of the Special Committee (document A/61/500) issued after last year’s general debate in the Fourth Committee, included accusations that could only be described as tantamount to the worst type of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories common in the Middle Ages. It included an allegation that “drugs and prostitution were allowed, if not encouraged, in the Occupied Syrian Golan” to infect clients with HIV. Insinuating deliberate malpractice, it also reported that a sick child had died in the hospital after receiving such an injection.
The parallels between such baseless claims and insinuations about Jews poisoning the wells of non-Jews and killing non-Jewish children for religious purposes were clear to all, he said. Those modern-day blood libels were outrageous and disgraceful from any source, but much more so when they came from an organ of the United Nations. His country found consolation in the fact that, because the Special Committee was such a marginal and even trivial body, it was unlikely that many people outside this room had ever heard of it, much less had or would read its reports.
He said that notwithstanding the Special Committee’s malicious attempts to de-legitimize Israel, the United Nations potentially had much to offer both Israel and the Palestinians in their renewed efforts to resolve their differences. Its potentially heightened relevance, however, was mitigated by the continued existence of the Special Committee and other United Nations organs and mandates, whose sole purposes were anti-Israeli propaganda apparatuses. He called on Member States to reject the report of the Special Committee and end its ill-conceived and ill-managed mandate.

Nice job, Mr. Kedar!

November Qassam calendar

As usual, this is far from complete, and it is more to show how ignored the Qassam issue is rather than to show how many are being fired. Many Qassams never make it in the news, and the rare times that the IDF publishes statistics shows that I am usually undercounting by about 50%.

This list does not include mortars being shot from Gaza, which are usually much more numerous on any given day.

Previous calendars:

October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February

Freedom of the press, PalArab-style (X)

A British reporter details three incidents where Hamas stopped him from doing his job - and yet he still does everything he can to softpedal it.

From the Times (UK):

"I was arrested by Hamas"
Today I was detained while watching a demonstration by female students Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip.

They had gone on strike at noon in protest against the killings in the rally yesterday, and they had made their way to a nearby police station where they were singing and chanting. In particular, they yelled: 'Shia, Shia, Shia,' which is a reference to Hamas being funded by Iran.

Within a few minutes, baton-wielding police laid into the girls. Some fell to the ground, but most ran away.

As this was happening, some other members of the police force grabbed me and dragged me into a cell. They pushed me against the wall, and one of the officers shouted: 'Hit him, hit him, hit him' in Arabic.

They snatched the camera from me, and one of the police officers urged his colleagues to break my camera. Then, my cameraman was dragged into the room too.

Another police officer, more senior than the others, eventually arrived and insisted on viewing the videotape that my cameraman had. I kept telling them that I was a journalist and that I would telephone the chief of police unless I was released, and eventually they did so.

Today's incident follows two previous incidents yesterday, in which my activities as a journalist were deliberately curtailed.

The first took place just as gunfire erupted at the Gaza City demonstration yesterday. We were filming police officers standing by their station, when several officers rushed over, fired shots in the air, snatched my camera and dragged me into the police station, where they threatened to smash my camera and hit me.

When I convinced them that I was a British journalist they let me go, but only after telling me to leave the area.

The second incident took place shortly afterwards when I went to the Shifa Hospital where those wounded in the fighting were being taken.

While we were filming, the police arrived at the hospital. They had orders to clear the hospital of all cameramen, and they took my camera. The officer who seized my equipment was very polite to me. He told me that I would be able to get the camera back only if I went to the police station in an hour and a half's time.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the press to operate in the Gaza Strip. This is very much a reflection of the high level of tension that exists at the moment.

But by comparison with some of the treatment I've had in other parts of the world, this was relatively mild.

Of course, this intrepid reporter didn't bother to ask the obvious question: if a British journalist is treated this way, how is Hamas treating Arab journalists?

A correspondent for the Ramallah-based Palestine radio was attacked and beaten by the de facto government's police in Gaza City while he was covering the Fatah-organized rally in Gaza City marking the third anniversary of the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in which seven people were killed and scores injured, he told Ma'an via telephone.

Thirty-year-old Tamim Abu Mu'ammar told Ma'an that he was trying to send a report by telephone to the Palestine radio in Ramallah about the attacks on the rally when the de facto government's police beat him with clubs and rifle butts.

He said they searched his cell phone and ordered him to leave the scene, threatening to attack him if they saw him again.

Mu'ammar said his whole body was covered in bruises.

PCHR adds:

The police also chased rally participants and beat them with batons and sticks. In the meantime, several journalists were attacked, including:

- Khaled Jamal Bolbol, a photographer for Zoom Press. He was beaten and his camera was broken and confiscated.

- Mohammad Sawalha, a photographer for Abu Dhabi Satellite Station. He was detained and his camera tape was confiscated.

- Mowafaq Matar, a journalist for Al-Hayat Newspaper. He was detained and pictures were erased from his camera.

Palestine Press Agency reports that more journalists were arrested last night by Hamas.

Business as usual in Hamastan.

Museum for Palestinian Arab suffering

Rashid Shaheen, in the Arabic edition of Ma'an, calls on turning the Arafat shrine in Ramallah into a "Yad Vashem" of Palestinian Arab suffering, for visiting dignitaries.

This is a great idea.

A museum showing a good, accurate history of how Arabs migrated en masse to Palestine in reaction to the economic boom from Zionism starting in the late 1800s; how they benefited from the Jews and raised their standards of living compared to all Arab countries, and then how their leaders started using them as fodder for political purposes and started what is now some eighty-odd years of suffering at the hands of their Arab "brethren" would be a good start, and a story that needs to be told.

The deadly fighting between the Husseinis and Nashashibis in the 1930s, and how the hundreds of deaths that resulted are now referred to fondly as a "Great Revolt," would be able to teach generations of Palestinian Arab children about how the current infighting has a long history behind it.

A section showing how Israel didn't allow UNRWA to build any refugee camps in Israeli territory, explaining how treating its Arab citizens in such a way was an insult and insisting on building them real homes in real towns and living in dignity, and comparing them with how they were treated in Arab countries, would be instructive.

Another section can describe how no Arab countries save Jordan will allow Palestinian Arabs to become citizens, even though they can become citizens of Western countries. An entire wing can cover Lebanese discrimination, and another on how Egypt treated Gaza from 1948-67. Statistics showing Palestinian Arab mortality rates and life expectancy before and after Israel controlled the territories could be a highlight.

There are countless other examples of Palestinian Arab suffering that need to be told, and a museum in Ramallah associated with the tomb of one of the biggest sources of their suffering would be quite appropriate.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is what the writer had in mind.

HRW on Egyptian religious discrimination

From McClatchy Newspapers:

CAIRO, EGYPT - Citing a long list of chilling testimonials, human rights groups Monday called on the Egyptian government to stop discriminating against converts from Islam and members of some religious minorities who want their faiths reflected on their national identity cards.
Egyptians must list their religion on their ID cards, which are required for enrolling in a university, starting a job, opening a bank account and most other aspects of public life. But authorities, drawing on Islamic law, essentially refuse to acknowledge Muslims who convert to other faiths and recognize only the three "revealed religions": Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Egyptians who belong to minority groups such as the Baha'i often find themselves stateless if they refuse to list "Muslim" or "Christian" on their IDs.
Two advocacy groups, Human Rights Watch and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, spent two years documenting such cases and released their joint report Monday in Cairo.
The report's authors stressed that they weren't seeking new laws or provoking a debate on Islamic doctrine. They say they merely want authorities to apply existing civil law, which permits Egyptians to change or correct information on their ID cards. As it stands, the activists said, many Egyptian officials take it upon themselves to refuse the changes. In several cases presented in the report, Egyptians faced harassment, job termination and detention for challenging the authorities.
The report is filled with examples such as elderly Baha'i retirees unable to receive their pensions, Baha'i parents unable to get their babies immunized, mixed-faith couples prevented from marrying, and the children of Christian converts being forced to study Islam in public schools. In some cases, families paid for bogus documents in order to conduct their lives and later were prosecuted for forgery.

Three years ago, Arab leaders didn't mourn Arafat

In the glare of the rallies and shootings celebrating Arafat's death, people tend to forget that even Arabs were sick of the old turd. From the November 18, 2004 Al-Ahram:

Relief is perhaps the best way to describe the private reaction of most Arab officials to the sudden and somewhat ambiguous death of Yasser Arafat, the icon of the Palestinian struggle for the past 40 years.

In public, before their own constituencies, these same officials laid on what they felt obliged to provide: a red carpet funeral. Most major Arab leaders and senior representatives were on hand in Cairo to pay their last, and somewhat belated respects to a man they had largely forgotten during his nearly three-year siege in Ramallah.

But beyond the honours of a brief state funeral, Arafat received very little recognition from his fellow Arab leaders. Official statements eulogising the Palestinian leader sounded more like a simple notification of another death, rather than any genuine outpouring of grief at the loss of a revolutionary hero.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, certain Arab diplomats, in particular those from countries with direct borders with the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, were explicit in expressing their relief at the death of Arafat. For them, his passing marks the end to the presumptuous obstacles that the Palestinian leader had thrown up on the road to a settlement with Israel, largely for the sake of his own glory. Some see his death as heralding an end to the oppressive control that he had exercised over the Palestinian resistance movements, including Hamas and Jihad. Other diplomats are breathing a sigh of relief at the demise of a leader they considered too self-centred to really care about the misfortunes of his own people.

In six interviews conducted by Al-Ahram Weekly since Arafat's death, there was not a single word of sorrow expressed by any Arab diplomatic source. Indeed, for many, Arafat's death would seem to mark not an end, but a new beginning. This sentiment was also expressed by some Palestinians, who were known for their opposition to Arafat's authoritarian style of rule.

Here is a rare time that the Arab nations were more pragmatic than the Palestinian Arabs themselves. Of course, Arafat's successors didn't seize the initiative to improve the situation and that's how we got to today, where any number of groups can effectively veto any "peace" agreement on the PalArab side.

Even so, it is instructive to look back and see past the nostalgia being shown by the Palestinian people who were so thoroughly screwed by the man they all claim was a hero.

Fatah spokesman: We want peace, but not that much

Palestine Press Agency reports (autotranslated):

Ahmed Abdel Rahman, advisor to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said today that the willingness of the Palestinians for peace does not mean relinquishing one inch of the West Bank and the city of Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

...He reiterated his assertion that Abu Ammar (Yasir Arafat) was killed because of his refusal to waive Jerusalem.

Israel should say the exact same thing: it wants peace but not at the expense of compromising. It would be fun to compare the world reactions to each statement.

The second paragraph quoted was just to emphasize the distance between Palestinian Arab beliefs and reality. The question is: Why does the world coddle their fantasies?

Detroit, the Islamic City (and more University of Michigan trivia)

Followups to the posting on the theft of Israeli flags at the University of Michigan/Dearborn have shown that the university doesn't even pretend to hide its biases.

Here is a lecture from last week(Google cache):

Detroit, The Islamic City

Description:
Middle Eastern Cities Colloquium Series lecture by Andrew Shryock. Detroit has been home to Muslim communities for over a hundred years. The city's first purpose-built mosque was established in Highland Park in 1921. Today, there are over 50 mosques in greater Detroit, and many areas (Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Hamtramck) have large, influential Muslim populations. Using materials drawn from the "Building Islam in Detroit" project, I will show how Muslim spaces have been created and transformed in Detroit over the last century. The mosque, as a physical object and a spiritual aspiration, is key to understanding larger processes of identity formation that make it possible to know Detroit (to inhabit, historicize, experience, and envision it) as an Islamic city.

The Center for Arab-American Studies at the university refers to Jerusalem as being in Palestine.

(h/t Anti-Racist Blog)

Shy Guy over at Israellycool comments about a few other facts about U of M:

- It employs the dishonest academic Juan Cole.
- It published a study finding no relation between Islam and terror.
- It is building Islamic footbaths in public university bathrooms.

Their Center for Middle Eastern and North Africa Studies has a program of extending their pro-Arab propaganda throughout Detroit's public schools. Typically, their idea of even-handedness is to give equal time to the claims of Syria, the PLO, UNIFIL, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel and then ask kids to decide who they think has the best claim.

Erekat = Hypocrite

The latest proof that Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the PA, remains a hypocrite and a liar:

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Monday rejected Israel's demand that the Palestinians acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state.

"There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined," Erekat told Radio Palestine.

Besides the utter foolishness of such a statement (how about Saudi Arabia? How about Iran?), perhaps it would behoove Erekat to peruse the 2003 Palestinian Constitution, Article 4:

1. Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect and sanctity of all other heavenly religions shall be maintained.
2. The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be the main source of legislation.
3. Arabic shall be the official language.

Previous examples of his lies can be found here and here.

3 killed in fresh Fatah/Hamas clashes

Palestine Today (Arabic), a pro-Hamas news site, says that three Fatah supporters were shot and killed during a pro-Fatah rally today commemorating Arafat's death.

Which brings our Palestinian Arab self-death count for the year to 577.

UPDATE: Palestine Press Agency quotes Palestine TV saying the number of dead is now 7. 581.

UPDATE 2: Up to 9. Plus more than a hundred wounded. 583. (UPDATE 2a: They've backed off again to 7. 581.)

UPDATE 3: I had missed this story from PCHR:

In another incident, at approximately 02:00 on Saturday, 10 November 2007, Ahmed Suleiman Abu Meghassib, 25, from Wadi al-Salqa village in the central Gaza Strip, died from a wound he had sustained on Wednesday, 7 November 2007. Abu Meghassib was wounded by a gunshot to the back fired by Palestinian militants when he attempted to prevent them from getting close to his house to fire at military posts of Israeli occupation forces.

582.

UPDATE 4: Wafa, the PA news agency, reports that Hamas is controlling access to hospitals to minimize the number of reported deaths. They give an example of a 14-year old boy who was officially listed as dying in a car accident who had three gunshot wounds. Palestine Today lists at least two minors killed. I'll wait to update the list when things clear up a bit.

UPDATE 5: I had in fact counted the death from Update 3. 581 again.

UPDATE 6: A 21-year old man, Marwan Alnono, died from Hamas gunshot wounds from the demonstration. 582.

The lack of an honest mediator

Batya from Shiloh Musings makes an important point:

There won't be any conflict mediation at that Annapolis Conference. There are no "third-party neutral" mediators. U.S.'s Rice and Europe's Blair have very well-defined and well-publicized agendas. Actually they have the same aim. It's not "conflict resolution." It's the establishment of another Arab State in the Land of Israel.

This is, in a nutshell, why Annapolis is a pre-ordained disaster - because the outlines for a "solution" have already been determined by the "third parties" and the entire point is how to prod Israel towards this "solution."

On Saturday, "moderate" Fatah terror leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged that mass-murdering terrorist Yasir Arafat will one day be re-buried in Jerusalem. Is there any possibility that Condi Rice made a phone call to him gently chiding him for saying something inflammatory? Is there anyone in the Bush administration or EU who would publicly condemn the idea of having Arafat's rotting, syphilitic corpse moved to be interred in the holiest ground on the planet?

It is hard to imagine a more disgusting idea to Jewish and Israeli sensibilities than the thought of burying the architect of modern terror near the Temple Mount. Just the mention is enough to evoke retching. From a purely political viewpoint is no less inflammatory - it prejudges that Jerusalem is "Palestinian" land that they can use as a burial ground with impunity.

If an Olmert would make a mildly parallel suggestion, that one day the Israeli flag would fly over the Temple Mount, he wouldn't even have to wait for the Arab world to react before he gets the phone call from Condi about how "unhelpful" such a position is.

The US has changed from an honest broker into an advocate of Arafat's original plan to destroy Israel in "stages." A good part of this is because the Israeli government itself has embraced that same philosophy, but it is not clear that this would have happened without Bush's declaration years ago that there should be another hostile Arab state on the west and south of Israel. American pressure since then has been overwhelmingly against Israel, helping make the idea of another terror state a fait accompli.

This is not mediation - it is nothing but pressuring one side to give up land vital to its security as well as culture, history and religion.

Israeli flag stolen from U. of Michigan twice

From the Michigan Journal (College newspaper, Dearborn):

During last week's Global Fest, the Israeli flag was stolen twice from the University Center.

Student Activities Office (SAO) hung between 55 and 60 different flags around the UC representing different nations.

These flags were hung earlier in the week before Global Fest. According to SAO, the Israeli flag was ripped down early Tuesday morning.

SAO then filled the missing space with another 3 x 5 ft. Israeli flag.

This second flag was then stolen again the next day on Wednesday.

None of the other flags were touched.

A mass e-mail from Vice Chancellor of Enrollment and Student Life Stanley E. Henderson went out to all registered students on Thursday.

The e-mail explained the "Expect Respect" program, informed students of what had happened and also encouraged students to attend today's Difficult Dialogues series.

The e-mail stated that the administration considers the stealing of the flag "more than just a theft," and "it is a violation of who we are as a university."

The administration rejects the notion that any nation could be singled out for such disrespect on our campus.

As for punishment, the e-mail states, "As a university we must condemn this action in the strongest tears and be clear that his cannot be tolerated."

Henderson confirmed that the Israel flag disappeared last year as well. "Last year the flag went missing went they were being taken down. It was up during Global Fest. This year the flag went missing before Global Fest even started," said Henderson.

Seems pretty clear-cut that this was a political act meant to intimidate any Zionist students, right? Three times over two years, only the Israeli flag, and Dearborn being the home to the largest Arab community in America -can anyone reasonably think this was other than a hate crime?

Well, the student editors managed to figure out a way to insult their own intelligence:

Reaction to flag theft overblown

...In this case, it seems that the administration is more concerned with punishing the motivation, not the crime itself.

If someone stole any country's flag from the UC, would the crime be treated similarly? Or if someone stole food from McKinley Café and said their motive was that they were starving due to a lack of money after purchasing this semester's books, would the school let them get away with it? Doubtful. Both would be treated as thefts and dealt with based on the values of the items stolen.

We don't condone the theft, but we think that the university should be consistent in its punishment and that the motive should play a less central role in deciding how to deal with the thief. The school has no proof that this was a hate crime, only an assumption. Without hard evidence, its presumptious [sic] to treat it as such.

Is it any wonder that these rocket scientists on the editorial board don't even know how to use spell-check?
(h/t Anti-Racist Blog)

November 11, 1947: State Dept. hedges on partition

As we continue to go through the Palestine Post archives from sixty years ago, there were four notable article on the front page that once again seem to come from today's headlines.

Firstly, the US State Department, even then tilting towards the Arab viewpoint, was showing more public resistance to the idea of partition:

I mentioned that at that time there was a terrible cholera epidemic in Egypt (and it was now starting to spread through the rest of the Middle East.) Even so, Egypt has refused to accept help from Hebrew University in the early stages of the epidemic. The Times of London noticed that Egypt instead waited to get vaccines from the Haffkine Institute in Bombay, and it mentioned a fact that the Egyptians probably didn't realize: Dr. Haffikine was a Jewish Zionist.

Meanwhile, the Post made fun of Egyptians and their Zion-phobia:

And yet another Muslim country pledged to help Arab Palestine by killing all the Jews - this time, Iraq:

The deja vu continues...

The miracle Allah-ear

Remember a couple of years ago a British ice-cream company had to replace its logo because some Muslims felt that it resembled the Arabic word "Allah"?

Then we heard about the "Allah-fish", where the same swirls were seen:

Well, there's a regular Allahpalooza going on, because now Muslims are seeing things in their babies' ears. In Ramallah, a baby was born a few weeks ago with an ear deformity that makes it appear like the word Allah.

From Palestine Today, in auto-translation:

Often heard about an oddity in the universe and anecdotal talked with the people in their lives, a child born Pracejn or Unsoder twin, or a child born with three legs ...

The city of Ramallah in the West Bank weeks ago saw the birth of a child wrote Majesty the word "God" in his ear, in Arabic, so that anyone can read easily, and without careful consideration.

The grandmother discovered the child Houcih ordered the Divine in dignity authorized her grandson after five weeks of birth.

Says the father of the child who is an officer in place to sell the clothing city of Ramallah that this label that has characterized the order, and leaves a message from God ", and expressed the hope that the best Fall him and his family.

In the view of the child's mother that this Mecca addressed by God created is a miracle requires reflection, and increasing closer to God, and from what anger.

15-year old killed by Hamas

Hamas got into an argument with the Ayad family east of Gaza City. Apparently, Hamas wanted to use their home to store explosives or fire rockets, and the Awads disagreed. This resulted in a gun-battle, killing the Ayad's 15-year old son, Mohammed Jawad.

This has only been reported in the Palestine Press Agency website. Other news sources are either pro-Hamas or cannot get press passes to report news from Gaza without harassment; PPA seems to rely more on underground pro-Fatah reporters and citizens, so it is somewhat less reliable. A number of readers in the comments section confirmed this incident.

My count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other this year is now at 573, with 40 of them women and 42 of them children.

UPDATE: PCHR reports that two were killed and four wounded in those clashes. 574.

Another inconvenient bump on the road to Annapolis

Reuters reports:

Hamas Islamists, who seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, would take over the West Bank if Israel pulled out of the territory, a senior Hamas leader said on Friday.

The comments by Mahmoud al-Zahar contrasted with remarks by Ismail Haniyeh, who serves as prime minister of a Hamas-led government dismissed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"Israel says the party in Ramallah (Fatah) serves Israel, and if Israel quits the West Bank, Hamas will take it over. And we say this is true," Zahar said at a rally for Hamas supporters in Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

"We say to those in the West Bank take a lesson from what happened in Gaza," Zahar said, an indirect reference to the fierce violence that led to Hamas's takeover of the coastal strip.

So if Israel gives up territory, Hamas is poised to take over the vacuum that would result as the PA "security forces" do not have the motivation or the ability to stop the Islamists.

Last week the scope of Hamas' organization and financial power in the West Bank started to become apparent:

...The initial examination of the seemingly innocent material, which was mostly confiscated at charity foundations and mosques, produces a scary picture: A giant octopus that controls hundreds of millions of dollars coming in from all over the world – an apparatus that looks exactly like the one that led to Hamas’ Gaza takeover within several days is also up and running in the West Bank.

The US is pretending that spending money will solve the problem but the PA's problems run much deeper - starting with a base of citizens who have a pathological hatred for Israel.

This little inconvenient fact won't slow down the Annapolis train, though. Too many egos are too highly invested in that folly to care that rather than bringing peace it will be a step closer to major conflict.

Freedom of the press, PalArab style (IX)

The moderate PA "security" forces have arrested the director of Al-Amal TV today. The Ma'an News website has shut down in solidarity and shows this message:

Palestinian security arrests Mu'taz Al-Kurdi, member of Ma'an's board of directors and director of Al-Amal TV in Hebron

Ma'an News Agency expresses its deep disappointment and indignation at arrests of journalists.

Al-Amal TV suspended it's broadcast on Friday in protest of the detention of their director.

Ma'an also announces the suspension of its work in protest. Several of Ma'an's local partners in TV and radio will also halt their broadcasts today in protest and solidarity with our colleague Mu'taz Al-Kurdi and Al-Amal TV.

Things are right on schedule for creating a Palestinian Arab state in Annapolis!

More déjà vu from November 10, 1947

The November 10, 1947 Palestine Post has a few more headlines that are eerily familiar.

Then, as now, there was much high-level discussion on how exactly to divide up Jerusalem:

Notice that Jerusalem had a solid Jewish majority in 1947.

Note also that (as now) clearly this committee was advocating "transfer"of Jews away from their homes in the "Arab section." Then, as now, the word "transfer" is considered tantamount to ethnic cleansing only when it is Arabs being transferred, never when it is Jews.

In November 1947, as now, feuding Palestinian Arab factions managed to start talks between them to try to stop killing each other and more effectively fight the Jews:

Then, as now, there was overt anti-semitism in Great Britain:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Fun Fatwa Friday: Jesus never drank wine

From Islam Online's fatwa section:

Q: How would you respond to someone who says, "I don't see the wrong in drinking as Jesus himself drank, when he turned water into wine?"

A: Salam, dear questioner.

Thank you for your question.

Argument Based on Assumptions

As with many such arguments, it is based on the assumption that something is true, in order for the argument to make sense.

In other words, it is assumed as fact that Jesus drank wine because it says in the Christian Gospels that he did so.

If, however, such a thing is not accepted as a fact, then the whole argument falls down. There is no mention in the Qur'an of Jesus (peace be upon him) drinking wine, so Muslims have no belief that he did so.

Christians, for example, will tell us that Jesus died on the Cross. In the Qur'an we are told that:

*{… of a certainty they crucified him not.}* (An-Nisaa' 4: 157)

The Qur'an does not contradict itself. How could Almighty Allah make mistakes? If we read in many places that it is forbidden to drink alcohol and any intoxicants, then it would be a contradiction to believe that Jesus, one of the Prophets of Islam, did something which was forbidden.

...In other words, neither the Torah nor the Gospel can be relied upon as reliable sources. Why is this? It is because both the Torah and the Gospel were revealed to a specific people at a specific time in their history.

The Qur'an, though, was revealed for all people and for all time and that is why Allah has not allowed it to be corrupted through translation or any other means.

To say to a Muslim, then, that Jesus says such and such, because it is recorded that he says it in the Gospels, is not an argument that will convince them. Muslims believe that the only reliable record of anything Jesus said or did is to be found in the Qur'an.

Nice to know that Muslims don't fall into the trap of making assumptions the way Jews and Christians do.

Pity the poor Hamas "moderate"

Ahmed Yousef, advisor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, is the West's point man when trying to make Hamas look more moderate.

He's the one who wrote the Washington Post op-ed last June trying to convince Americans that Hamas was the same as Fatah and deserved a chance. He's the one who the New York Times honored with another op-ed where he asks the world to give the "hudna" a chance ("Pause for Peace.") He was glowingly depicted in the Christian Science Monitor as "moderate and cooperative."

Earlier this week, Asharq al-Awsat wrote about the divisions in Fatah and Hamas, and it wrote "Some sources within the movement had severely criticized Yousef for his declared statements and positions, some going further to describe them as 'Fatah-inclined'."

Oooh, that's gotta hurt.

But he lived up to his reputation on Wednesday when he told reporters that the Hamas charter is obsolete, that Hamas would attend the Annapolis conference if invited and that being friendly with the United States is in Hamas' interests.

Predictably, today Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar denied everything Yousef said, saying that Hamas was against the Annapolis meeting and that its charter calling for the destruction of Israel is still in effect.

It certainly isn't easy trying to show Hamas' moderate side when that side is nonexistent.

November 9, 1947: "Arab threats are empty"

As the UN partition of Palestine loomed, a team of American "experts" opined that there is no way that the combined Arab armies would attack the Jewish state. As printed in the November 9, 1947 Palestine Post:

It is instructive to read this article now and see where these experts were wrong.

Militarily, they were quite correct. Although they ignored Egypt's army (as well as Iraq's), their estimation of the weaknesses of the Arabs besides Jordan were pretty accurate.

They were experts as far as facts on the ground as well as the relative capabilities of the armies. Their failure was in making assumptions as to how the Arab side thinks. Like countless other "experts" before and since, they assume that the Arab side would be logical when deciding whether to attack the Jewish state. They took no consideration of the importance of pride and honor to the Arab mind, which is often the exact opposite of logic.

The idea of a Jewish state in their midst was simply unacceptable, and the thought of defeat as not entertained. Making the assumption that the Arab side thinks the same way as Westerners would when weighing starting a battle is a major, and literally fatal, mistake.

Similar "experts" are still endemic throughout the world, where they predict with confidence that the Arab side will certainly make certain compromises because it makes the most sense. As with these 1947 experts, they almost always know more about current factual circumstances than they do about history, and they fail to draw the proper conclusions from the correct facts.

al-Ha'aretz admits it will ignore scandals against people it likes

In an scathing op-ed in the Jerusalem Post yesterday, Isi Liebler slams Ha'aretz:

CURRENT EDITOR David Landau is an observant Jew wearing a black kippa. He made aliya from London and is a highly talented writer....
Since he assumed the role of editor at Haaretz, the newspaper's traditional bias relating to the Israel-Palestinian conflict has intensified.
Landau concentrates much of his wrath on religious Zionists, regarding those who settled across the Green Line as messianic lunatics and the greatest threat to Israel. This obviously makes him a darling of the ultra-Left.
Today Landau allegedly even refuses to correct articles containing blatantly false information if they conflict with his political agenda. According to the Web site of the highly respected American Jewish media watchdog organization CAMERA, not only did Landau decline to consider its complaints regarding alleged falsehoods published in Haaretz, he even went on record informing the JTA that "as a matter of principle" he had instructed his staff not to respond to criticism from CAMERA because they were a "McCarthyite" organization.
NEEDLESS to say, this casts an ugly shadow on a daily newspaper purporting to represent the highest levels of journalistic integrity. It is now widely accepted that many policies promoted by Haaretz are effectively supportive of Israel's adversaries.
In fact, Nahum Barnea, the distinguished Yediot Aharonot columnist, went so far as to describe senior Haaretz journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Haas and Akiva Eldar as failing to pass the "lynch test" - i.e., even failing to condemn Palestinians when they murdered two Israelis in a lynch mob in Ramallah at the onset of the second intifada.
More recently, consistent with frequent Haaretz depictions of Israel as a racist entity, the paper's chief Arab affairs expert, Danny Rubinstein, told a UN body that Israel was indeed an apartheid state.
...BUT IT was only recently that Landau threw away all semblance of journalistic integrity and publicly confessed to crossing the ultimate red line that distinguishes reputable journalism from propaganda.
According to The Jerusalem Post, at the recent Russian Limmud Conference in Moscow, Landau, one of the few non-Russian-speaking participants, dropped a bombshell. He stunned those present by boasting that his newspaper had "wittingly soft-pedalled" alleged corruption by Israeli political leaders including prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, when, in the opinion of Haaretz, the policies of those leaders were advancing the peace process.
When participants challenged him concerning the morality of such an approach, Landau responded with the extraordinary assertion that "more immorality happens every day at a single roadblock [in Judea and Samaria] than in all the scandals put together."
He then unashamedly assured those present that Haaretz was ready to repeat the process in order "to ensure that Olmert goes to Annapolis."
...THE ISRAELI Press Council code of ethics contains clauses explicitly condemning such practices. Article 40 (and 16a): "A newspaper or a journalist shall not refrain from publishing information where there is a public interest in its publication, including for reasons of political, economic or other pressures."
Article 7: "Mistakes, omissions or inaccuracies which are in the publication of facts must be corrected speedily…."
If in the face of such violations of their charter by the editor of one of their most prestigious newspapers the Press Council fails to publicly condemn such behavior, it should be dissolved and the public must demand an accounting.
Exploiting a newspaper as a propaganda vehicle for a clique of leftist ideologues willing to do anything, including suppressing or "soft-pedalling" information about potentially criminal actions in order to pursue a private agenda must not be tolerated in a country which purports to adhere to ethical and democratic norms of conduct.

Israel Matzav asks if even the most left-wing American publications would do something like this.

Yisrael Medad wrote a letter to the Jerusalem Post saying that this is old news:

Isi Leibler's drubbing of Haaretz editor David Landau for his remarks at a recent Limmud Conference in Moscow comes, unfortunately, two years late ("Shame on 'Haaretz,'" November 7). Landau's admission that he ordered the low-keying of corruption by Israeli political leaders in order to protect the peace process - known as the "etrog behavior" of left-wing journalists, a phrase coined by Amnon Abromovitch - was first uttered at a Limmud conference in Nottingham, England. It was proudly declared in response to a question I had put to him from the last rows of a lecture hall filled with almost 300 people about the journalistic ethics of the absence of criticism of political corruption.

Like now, also then: When challenged, Landau declared that the "peccadilloes" of Ariel Sharon were minor compared to the greater damage, in his opinion, caused by revenant Jewish residents in the communities throughout Judea and Samaria.

His remarks were generally accepted, which caused me disappointment in the morality of the participating British Jews.

Augean Stables comments:

Landau’s boast that he had intentionally “soft-pedaled” allegations of corruption against Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert in order not to weaken their support as they worked toward a peace process should jolt any observer who understands the value of a responsible free press in a democratic society. The fact that Landau felt comfortable airing such a transgression is perhaps more alarming. It suggests an atmosphere among journalists in Israel, indeed across the West, that condones the promotion of a certain ideology at the expense of the standards that should serve as a guide to Western media.

Everyone has biases, of course, and it is perhaps too much to ask for journalists to banish all their biases when they report. It is literally impossible. Decisions must be made not only in the writing but also in how much prominence to give a story, which photos to publish, how the headline is phrased - it is not an enviable job to be objective when working under such limitations.

But there is a huge difference between the subconscious bias, mostly left-leaning, that most journalists have and a de facto policy of bias that Ha'aretz is not only admitting but boasting about. Landau is bragging about his own immorality in the pursuit of his version of "the higher good," which he is deciding for the benefit of his reading public and of Israel itself. This is not just another case of media bias - this is a scandal that should shake the foundations of Israeli journalism.

When Edmund Burke, referring to the press, said "Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all," he was making the assumption that there is at least a pretense of objectivity that underpins journalism. Ha'aretz is succeeding making the Fourth Estate irrelevant, as those members of the press who consciously try to exercise power will be the ones who lose it.

Egyptian intelligence minister blames Israel for Gaza weapons smuggling

Palestine Press Agency writes that Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman blames Israel for the smuggling of weapons into Gaza (autotranslated, cleaned up):

Egypt says that one of the main sources [from which] Hamas receives arms and ammunition are Israeli army soldiers who sell them weapons and ammunition. Suleiman added that most of the smuggling of arms and explosive materials for the Gaza Strip are by sea and soldiers of the Israeli Navy failed to stop them.

Remember that Egypt stands to lose some $200 million in US handouts if it does not do more to stop the huge smuggling operations into Gaza, and any doubts they can plant about the reality would help their case.

Just yesterday, one of those mythical smuggling tunnels from Gaza to Egypt collapsed, injuring 3.

1977 Israeli law: Attempting to give away land a capital crime

Martin Sherman in YNet notices:

The following is a verbatim quotation from the existing law in Israel:

A person who, with intent that any area be withdrawn from the sovereignty of the State or placed under the sovereignty of a foreign state, commits an act calculated to bring this about, is liable to life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Israeli Penal Code – 1977, Section 97(b)

Read the whole article.

Interpol:arrest Iranians involved in Argentina bombings

From AFP:

Interpol's decision to uphold arrest warrants against five Iranian suspects in a deadly 1994 bombing against a Jewish organization in Argentina was welcomed by Israel Thursday, but slammed by Iran.

"It sends the following message to the terrorists - that even if takes time, they need to know that they will eventually be brought to book," Israel's ambassador to Argentina Raphael Eldad told public radio.

Iran, which had fought hard to have the arrest warrants lifted, reacted angrily to the decision taken by a two-thirds majority at the world police body's annual general assembly in the Moroccan city of Marrakech.

"Iran strongly denounces the decision of Interpol to uphold the warrants requested by the Argentine judiciary," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in a statement issued in Tehran.

"Although the issuing of such warrants by Interpol does not amount to a confirmation of Argentina's claims of Iranian involvement in the AIMA [Argentine Israeli Mutual Association] bombing, we were not expecting this professional body to tarnish its legal status by accepting the political will of the Zionist regime," he said.

"Transferring the pressures from the Argentine government to Interpol in order to fulfil political aims is a matter of great sorrow, and is contrary to international law and utterly rejected and unacceptable," said Hosseini.

He added that Iran would continue "to fight through legal channels for the rights of its citizens" facing the arrest warrants, who include former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian and former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezaei, as well as three diplomats.

Arrest warrants were initially issued against three other senior Iranians, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, in November last year, but they were lifted by Interpol's executive committee in March.

The Israeli ambassador acknowledged that there was no immediate prospect of any arrest being made in connection with the July 1994 bombing, which leveled the seven-floor AIMA building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.

"I hope that the arrest warrants will be carried out, but I am not very optimistic, as Iran is not in the habit of cooperation in this sort of affair," Eldad said.

In a statement after Wednesday's meeting, Interpol president Jackie Selebi insisted that the agency had treated both sides "fairly and impartially" in reviewing the arrest warrants.

Argentina's chief prosecutor Alberto Nisman rejected any suggestion that the warrants were politically motivated, and also acknowledged that it was unlikely that Iran would extradite the suspects.

85 were killed in two bombings at Jewish centers in Argentina in 1994.

Australia's defense minister gets it

I'll leave Aussie Dave (whose blog I am now a contributor to) to give more context to this, but this was nice to read:

THERE is a direct link between security in the Middle East and Australia’s security situation, according to Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson.

He described the situation in Israel as vital to Australia.

“No longer can we accept the fact that this has nothing to do with us, it has everything to do with us,” Dr Nelson told the State Zionist Council of Victoria’s Annual Assembly last week.

Dr Nelson, the member for Bradfield – an electorate in Sydney’s north with a 4500-strong Jewish population – and a strong supporter of Israel, told the assembly that despite being located so far from Israel, the tiny Jewish country is vital to Australia’s security interests.

He told the audience that Israel’s survival and growth was important and that it would be “a bulwark against the kind of madness that is being promoted by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ambitions of the Iranians”. He also said he hoped the upcoming peace talks between Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be fruitful.

Saudi king talks peace, presents sword to Pope

One year ago, Pope Benedict XVI inflamed the Muslim world by quoting a Byzantine emperor from 1391 as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The Muslim reaction was, predictably, violence, with at least two killed and many more cases or arson and threats.

Now, the Saudi king has visited the Pope discussing "peace, justice and moral values." And the King didn't come empty-handed - he gave the Pope "a traditional Middle Eastern gift — a golden sword studded with jewels."

The King, representing Islam as the "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, " certainly showed his esteem for the Pope and for his calls for peace - by giving him a weapon.

November 1947 and Annapolis déjà vu

I have been looking at the pages of the Palestine Post from sixty years ago, in the run-up to the UN vote on partitioning Palestine. Reading the stories then, and comparing them to what is happening today in anticipation of Annapolis, one gets an intense feeling of déjà vu.

Sixty years ago in October and November there was a lull in Arab terror attacks against Jews. All actions seemed to be taking place diplomatically. Arab leaders were trying to do everything possible to stop the vote or influence nations to vote against it. It appeared to be a losing battle, already the Soviet Union and the White House were supporting it (although the State Department was ambivalent), but that didn't stop Saudi Prince Faisal from declaring to the Russian UN delegate that if partition passed, Saudi Arabia would quit the UN.

The relative quiet in Palestine seems even starker relative to violence in the rest of the Arab world: over 250 had been killed in one day in Syrian factional fighting in early November.

The Arab leaders were specifically refraining from inciting the masses in order to put their best face forward as the world watched. They made it very clear, though, that should partition pass they would start a campaign of terror and war against the Jews to ensure that a Jewish state can never be created. Westerners were not as impressed with these threats, thinking it was all just so much Arab hyperbole.

Today we are in a similar waiting period. The "moderate" Palestinian Arabs have already made their demands clear and they have made their threats equally clear should things not go exactly the way they want in Annapolis.

Most people now think that Annapolis will be a failure. But not as many people are thinking ahead to the day after. To get an idea of what might happen, look at what happened immediately after the vote (from Time):

While city crowds celebrated, Arabs ambushed two buses in an orange grove southeast of Tel Aviv, sprayed them with gunfire. Five Jews died, 14 were wounded. Arab prisoners attacked Jews in Acre prison. In Damascus, Syria, Moslem youths stoned the U.S. Legation, tore down the U.S. flag, and then looted the Russian-Syrian Cultural Center.
In Cairo, Arab League Secretary Abdel Rahman Azzam Pasha joined other Arab leaders in promising warfare on the Jews: "I cannot say where and when I will place my troops. I can only say we will fight and are preparing for victory." Azzam Pasha had just returned from a flying visit to Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud. In Azzam Pasha's pocket, said aides, was Ibn Saud's promise to use most of his U.S. oil royalties (about $20,000,000 a year) to modernize his Bedouin army and to arm Palestinian Arabs for the war on Zionism.
The Arab Higher Committee for Palestine pushed a recruiting drive for Arab soldiers, setting a quota for each Arab village: a minimum of 30 men from each, up to 120 in the larger ones.
The Arabs planned uprisings, an economic blockade, concentrated attacks on outlying Jewish settlements and pinpoint attacks against the long exposed borders of the crazy-quilt Jewish state. The Arabs seemed resigned to the prospect of an armed struggle. They regarded partition in its present form as so outrageous that there was no alternative.

Like making compromises for peace.

How do you treat a hostile entity?

If you are Israel, you help it build sewage treatment plants:

Ahead of the winter and fearing that sewage cesspools in Gaza could once again spill over and flood nearby villages, the IDF Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) has stepped up efforts to enable the Palestinians to complete the construction of a new sewage plant in the coming months.

...Defense officials explained that the decision to expedite the construction was made despite Hama's control over Gaza.

"We are doing this to help the Palestinians and to prevent another overflow," a defense official said. "There are security risks involved, but this is an important project and it is our job to figure out how to deal with them."

...To help facilitate the new plant's construction, the IDF has tracked down non-metal pipes that can be used in the facility without fear of their going toward Kassam rocket production, as metal pipes imported into Gaza have in the past.

In addition, the IDF has allowed the Palestinian water authority officials to work alongside the border fence near Beit Hanun, even though the construction has been used in the past as a cover for the launching of rockets and attacks against Israel.

When in history has any nation so bent over backwards to help its implacably hostile neighbor? Look at all the resources the hated IDF is giving to helping Palestinian Arabs who support Israel's destruction.

In the past, Hamas and others have used this very same Israeli generosity and benevolence against it. And even so, Israel continues to assist the terrorists and their supporters for humanitarian reasons.

Anyone who tries to claim that the conflict is symmetric, that both sides are equally at fault or that both sides are equally intolerant, would need to provide examples of Arab benevolence helping Israel. The very absurdity of imagining an Arab government donating money to Zaka or Hadassah Hospital or Mogen Dovid Adom is proof enough that there is no moral comparison between the two sides.