Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 18, 2009

"Honor killing" in Jordan

A Jordanian man was charged on Sunday with premeditated murder after allegedly stabbing to death his 22-year-old daughter because she became pregnant outside wedlock, police said.
“The father and his brother took the girl on Saturday to a doctor because she suffered stomach pains, and everybody was surprised to learn that she was six months pregnant,” a police spokesman told AFP. “On their way home, the father stabbed the girl with a sword 25 times in her stomach, killing her immediately as well as her unborn baby boy.” The source said the suspect has confessed to the crime following the murder, which took place in the Jordan Valley.
“His brother was also charged with premeditated murder, while the victim’s boyfriend is being held in custody for his own protection,” he added.

I guess the first stabbing wasn't "honorable" enough; he had to add 24 more.

Ma'an reports on a JMCC poll that shows contradictory results from the last one I looked at from AWRAD.

According to this poll, Mahmoud Abbas' popularity has gone down a lot as a result of his Goldstone fiasco; Haniyeh's held steady:

The survey released on Sunday by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre (JMCC) indicates that if an election were held today, Abbas would receive just 16.8 percent of the vote, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh 16 percent. A similar percentage said they would vote for Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, who is currently in prison in Israel.

Public confidence in Abbas dropped to 12.1% from 17.8% in another JMCC poll in June. Confidence in Haniyeh held steady at 14.2%.

JMCC also reports that while Abbas’ popularity took a hit, “it seems that the approach of Fatah Leadership to distance itself from the PNA with regards to the Goldstone report helped Fatah in keeping its popularity ahead and more than Hamas’ popularity among the Palestinian public.”

The current poll shows that a 34.6% of the public still trusts Fatah compared with a 17.9% who said they trust Hamas, followed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which received 3.7%, while Islamic Jihad received 2.3%.

(Google reports that the JMCC site is filled with malware, so I could not check the poll results directly; perhaps the wording of the questions is responsible for the diverse results.)

Egyptians upset over translations of poetry to Hebrew

Al Quds has a story about a new controversy in Egypt.

An Israeli publishing house is attempting to translate the works of famed Egyptian poet Iman Mersal, specifically her 2006 work Jughrafiya Badila (Alternative Geography). Egyptian intellectuals and authors are upset, because this implies some sort of normalization with Israel, which is of course a terrible thing for a country that signed a peace agreement with Israel thirty years ago.

Early reports that there was a direct agreement between her Egyptian publisher and an Israeli publisher seem to have been proven wrong.

As the article states, there seems to be a solution:

However, the National Center for Translation of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture found a solution, as stated by the President and university professor critic Gaber Asfour, who explained that he "will not be dealing with any Israeli publisher, because this is a kind of normalization, but we will seek the approval of publishers in English or French in countries other than Israel to get the right translation of it."

Interestingly, the Imad Mersal webpage on ArabWorldBooks.com mentions translations of some of her individual poems into Hebrew.

War is peace, day is night, Syria supports "human rights"

From Syria's news agency SANA:

Syria welcomes the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council's adoption of the Fact-Finding Mission's report on the war on Gaza, a Syrian Foreign Ministry official source said Sunday.

"Hailing the stances of the countries which voted in favor of the resolution, Syria expresses regret over stances of some countries which voted against it and the abstention of other countries which have long claimed that they respect and care for human rights," the source added.

The source said that the double standards of these countries regarding several issues, on top of them the human rights, denies them credibility and objectivity, which should exist when dealing with what they raise regarding the human rights issues.

Meanwhile, Syria imprisoned a blogger for his views:

Consider the case of Kareem Arabji, a 31 year old business consultant who helps manage the online youth forum www.akhawia.net. Kareem supervised Al Mabar Al Hur, a section within akhawia.net dedicated to free ideas, and wrote numerous articles under a pseudonym criticizing corruption and dictatorship in Syria. On June 7, 2007 Arabji was arrested by Syrian security forces and held incommunicado at the Palestine Branch of Military Intelligence in Damascus. He was charged with, "broadcasting false or exaggerated news which would affect the morale of the country.”

Just what outrageous, unforgivable words did Kareem utter that so threatened the Syrian nation? "The press is a very important mechanism to struggle against the corruption, there should not be any restrictions or obstacles to it," he wrote in Akhawia. Or perhaps it was his skepticism of the Syria-Hamas alliance: "Since I was a kid in school we were always taught that the Muslim Brotherhood is a criminal gang, and I agree. And now we proudly consider Hamas, which is a Muslim Brotherhood proxy, as an ally!!!?"

On September 13, 2009, Arabji was sentenced by a Syrian court to three years in prison.

Despite a sustained public relations campaign in the West, Syria remains one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East. Those who voice dissent are regularly intimidated, arrested, tortured and imprisoned. In September 2009 the Jordanian Business Magazine reported that Syria blocks at least "160 web sites, including Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, and the popular online-telephone service, Skype." Cyberdissidents such as Arabji face regular harassment from security forces. Ironically, article 38 of the Syrian constitution allows "the right to freely express one's opinions by spoken word, in writing or in any other medium." But this is little more than hollow rhetoric. The same article also states that expression must be in a "manner that safeguards the soundness of the domestic and nationalist structure and strengthens the socialist system." This clause effectively guts any true form of freedom of expression in Syria.

Abbas admits no one really read Goldstone, anyway

In an internal Fatah meeting where Mahmoud Abbas admits he postponed the Goldstone debate, he reveals something interesting:

President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday defended his decision to postpone debate on South African jurist Richard Goldstone's fact-finding mission on Gaza at the UN Human Rights Council last month.

Defending the PLO's deferment of the report last month, Abbas added, "When the Goldstone report was released, we agreed on it and welcomed it. Arab countries proposed a high-level resolution be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council that protects our rights, and it was opposed by Europe, the US, China, and Russia.

"Then, the US suggested a very low-level resolution which holds us responsible for the war on Gaza. Neither resolution was passed," he said. "It was necessary to find a compromise. We found that it would be better to defer discussion of the report."

The president added that the PA is not a full member of the council, "and we can't submit, or withdraw, or delay a proposal. Everybody was silenced. Then some began accusing us of erring. Who read the report, anyway? Those who were in Geneva didn't read the report, because it needed to be translated."

Abbas added, "Let’s assume we saw the report. Where did we err? Why do we say that? Everybody says we erred. Unfortunately, the fuss about the report started here in Palestine," referring to widespread Palestinian anger at the PA and PLO for what some, including high-ranking Hamas members, termed treasonous. "They said, this is your opportunity to attack them fiercely."

Although he didn't mean to, Abbas admits that the contents of the Goldstone report aren't what matters to Palestinian Arabs. The only important thing is that it can be used as a weapon against Israel, as both the PA and Hamas seized on it...before anyone read it.

Up is down, black is white, Hezbollah supports "human rights"

From M&C:

The Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah condemned Sunday the countries that voted against the UN Human Rights Council's endorsement of the Goldstone report on the Hamas-Israel conflict in the Gaza Strip last December and January.

Hezbollah criticized countries that voted against the decision, specifically the United States, saying that their position clearly shows the 'moral degradation which some countries have reached.'

The party called for all international bodies, human rights associations and judicial institutions to take all proper measures 'to punish Zionist war criminals.'

How Orwellian can the world get?

PalArabs upset that Al Jazeera distorted their national anthem

I am not quite sure exactly what happened, but Al Jazeera ended a report about Hamas with a rendition of the Palestinian Arab "national" anthem that was somehow distorted, causing much gnashing of teeth and claims that it was "perverted."

The lyrics of the anthem are, as one would expect, filled with violence and promises of vengeance:

CHORUS
My country, my country
My country, my land, land of my ancestors
My country, my country
My country, my people, people of perpetuity

With my determination, my fire and the volcano of my revenge
With the longing in my blood for my land and my home
I have climbed the mountains and fought the wars
I have conquered the impossible, and crossed the frontiers
Chorus

With the resolve of the winds and the fire of the guns
And the determination of my nation in the land of struggle
Palestine is my home, Palestine is my fire,
Palestine is my revenge and the land of endurance
Chorus

By the oath under the shade of the flag
By my land and nation, and the fire of pain
I will live as a fida'i*, I will remain a fida'i,
I will end as a fida'i - until my country returns
Chorus

fida'i = one who risks his life voluntarily; one who sacrifices himself; hence the word fedayeen.

Now, who could possibly be the objects of this "revenge"?

I guess that Jews are major characters in more than one "national" anthem!

Open thread - special weekend edition!

Now twice as open!

Enjoy while I try to catch up on my sleep....Shabbat Shalom!

Daily Goldstone 10/16

Testifying on behalf of UN Watch in Geneva at the special session called to condemn Israel, Col. Richard Kemp says

I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

UN votes to bar Jews from their holiest spot

UPDATE: The resolution passed.

The current UNHRC Special Session is not only about the Goldstone report, but also a wide-ranging condemnation of Israel (alone) that intends to, ironically, bar Jews from the Temple Mount.

Here is part of the draft resolution being considered in this session (A/HRC/S-12/L.1):

The Human Rights Council,

Recalling the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,

Affirming the responsibility of the international community to promote human rights and ensure respect for international law,

Emphasizing the particularity of The Occupied East Jerusalem in its rich religious and cultural heritage,

Recalling all relevant United Nations resolutions including Security Council resolutions on Occupied East Jerusalem,

Deeply concerned at the Israeli actions undermining the sanctity and inviolability of religious sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem,

Deeply concerned also at the Israeli policy of closure and severe restrictions, including the permit regime, that continue to be imposed on the movement of Palestinians hindering their free access to their Christian and Muslim holy sites, including Al Aqsa Mosque,

1. Strongly condemns all policies and measures taken by Israel, the occupying power, including those limiting access of Palestinians to their properties and holy sites particularly in Occupied East Jerusalem, on the basis of national origin, religion, sex, age or any other discriminatory ground, which are in grave violation of the Palestinian People's civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights;

2. Condemns further the recent Israeli violations of human rights in Occupied East Jerusalem, particularly the confiscation of lands and properties, the demolishing of houses and private properties, the construction and expansion of settlements, the continuous construction of the separation Wall, changing the demographic and geographic character of East Jerusalem, the restrictions on the freedom of movement of the Palestinian citizens of East Jerusalem, as well as the continuous digging and excavation works in and around Al-Aqsa mosque and its vicinity;

3. Demands Israel, the occupying power, to respect the religious and cultural rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the core International Human Rights instruments, the Hague Conventions, and the Geneva Conventions, and to allow Palestinian citizens and worshippers unhindered access to their properties and religious sites therein;

4. Demands also Israel, the occupying power to immediately cease all digging and excavation works and activities beneath and around Al Aqsa Mosque and its vicinity, and refrain from any acts or operations that may endanger the structure or foundations or change the nature of holy sites both Christian and Islamic in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem;

5. Requests the High Commissioner for Human Rights, pursuant to resolution S-9/L.1 and in the context of her periodic reports, to monitor, document and report on the state of implementation by Israel, the occupying power, of its Human Rights obligations in and around East Jerusalem.

Unlike the sponsors of this resolution, Israel is the only party that is trying to allow equal access to religious places. The rights of Jews to visit their holy spots would be eliminated should this resolution pass (the goal of paragraph 4.)

Not only that, the resolution itself includes outright lies:

Israel does not dig "in" or "beneath" the Temple Mount (although the Islamic Waqf does, destroying priceless archaeological treasures.)

There has never been a place called "East Jerusalem" as distinct from Jerusalem itself. The only people who ever divided Jerusalem were Arabs in 1948.

The implication that Jews have no right to any part of the Old City and no historical ties to Jerusalem.

The implication that archaeological digging and normal construction anywhere in the Old City is endangering the Al Aqsa mosque. (The Arab press always refers to the incredibly important City of David excavations as being "tens of meters" from Al Aqsa for this reason. Also, this is a veiled way to stop Jews from ever building new synagogues in the Old City.)

Urge world leaders to vote "no" to this sickening and, frankly, anti-semitic resolution by clicking here and personalizing the text to emphasize these lies.

UPDATE 2 : Goldstone says he is "saddened" that Hamas violations of human rights law wasn't mentioned by the UNHRC. Extraordinary naivete or trying to save face? 90% of his report slams Israel, what did he expect?

Urge world leaders to vote "no" on Goldstone report

Here.

Muslim Student Union's interesting defense

From AP:

A University of California campus has asked the U.S. Justice Department to look into allegations that money raised at a Muslim student group event went to a terrorist organization.
UC Irvine spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon said Wednesday that the university forwarded to federal investigators a complaint that funds collected at a May 21 speech by controversial British politician George Galloway went to his group, Viva Palistina.
The Zionist Organization of America, which filed the complaint, said in a statement that the Muslim Student Union, which hosted the event, "illegally used the campus as a base for fundraising for the terrorist group Hamas," and the money raised "may have been for the purpose of providing material support and resources to Hamas."

And what does the MSU respond?

Muslim student leaders say the allegations are false. They acknowledged in a statement that they might have mistakenly breached university policy, which bans such fundraisers. But they argued that the Zionist group filed the complaint as part of a smear campaign to intimidate Muslims and create a hostile environment on campus.

They also said:

ZOA and affiliates’ targeted attacks against the MSU indicate nothing more than a bad faith intent at denying MSU their constitutional First Amendment rights of speech, religion, and association.

Here is the webpage for the fundraiser. On another page, MSU says "everyone has the opportunity to contribute to the cause."

Does Viva Palestina support Hamas? Very much so:

In March, Viva Palestina's leader, British MP George Galloway, defiantly handed a bag of cash directly to a Hamas minister (click here to see the video from the Middle East Media Research Institute):

"I, personally, am about to break the sanctions on the elected government of Palestine. By Allah, we carried a lot of cash here. You thought we were all fat. We are not fat. This is money that we have around our waists ... We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of the contents. And we make no apology for what I am about to say: We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine; to the Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh."

So the MSU cannot deny that it raised money for Hamas through Viva Palestina, breaking not only university policy but also US law. Yet somehow it still denies the allegations. And its whiny defense is that since the Zionists are bothering them by pointing out their crimes, they should be let off scot free.

The secret Jooish plan to move Al Aqsa

Iran's PressTV has all the gory details:

Extremist Jewish organizations in Israel have demanded that the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock from East Jerusalem Al-Quds be transferred to Mecca.

Gershon Salomon is seeking the removal of the mosques from East Jerusalem Al-Quds, which Israel occupied during the 1967 aggression and illegally annexed it later despite international opposition, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Wednesday.

The founder and leader of the ultra-Orthodox Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement plans to have Israeli engineers transfer the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock to the Muslims' holy city of Mecca, the daily added.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original alleged YNet article, in Hebrew or in English. The best I could find was an article in a Turkish website that claimed the same thing.

My section of the Elders was lobbying to have the mosques transferred to Ramallah, but we were voted down by the secret Gulf section who showed that our Saudi allies were amenable to such a move, in order to gain more tourist dollars.

The flatbed trucks and helicopters are being procured now.
(h/t Meryl Yourish via email)

Goldstone and the Abu Askars

I just looked at the testimony of one of the Goldstone witnesses, Mohammed Abu Askar. While the report did mention that he was a Hamas member it stressed that he was not a member of the Qassam Brigades. He testified concerning the Fakhoura school incident.

Here is a prime example of how credulous the commission was of his testimony, concerning his oldest son Khalid who was killed in the attack:

Khalid is a newlywed groom. He got married 15 days before the war, and such grooms, as you know, are, are, happily spend their days as newlyweds, and they do not really have time to go to war or other, or to be wanted. He's also quite young. He was only 18 years old. Again I say that what was being targeted was a child.

The final report mentioned Khalid's newlywed status, in an effort to show that the IDF could not have possibly been targeting him legitimately:

686. It would appear that shortly after the attack the Israeli armed forces received some information that two Abu Askar brothers had been killed. That much is indeed true. However, the use made of that information appears to the Mission to have been knowingly distorted. The brothers were Imad and Khalid, not Imad and Hassan as asserted. One was a 13-year-old boy, the other was a recently married 19-year-old. The certainty and specificity with which the Israeli authorities spoke at the time make it very difficult for them to suggest now that they had simply mixed up the names.

Could Khalid and Imad have been shooting mortars at the time from the street? It is difficult to think that Imad was involved, but it is certainly a possibility.

First of all, Mohammed Abu Askar understated the ages of both his sons: Khalid was 19 (born December 12, 1989), and PCHR indicates that Imad was 14, not 13.

Secondly, the al-Qassam Brigades has an unusually detailed obituary for Khalid, indicating that he was quite well known. It says that he was an avid attendee at mosques from a young age, that were festooned with "jihad slogans." He joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 2004, meaning he was (almost certainly) 14 at the time. More importantly, he wanted to join the Al Qassam Brigades at the same time, but was rejected because he was too young, causing him to throw a temper tantrun and lock himself in his room. He demanded again to join the Qassam Brigades when he entered high school and this time he was accepted.

Khalid was already involved in terror attacks when he was 16, participating in "dozens of ambushes." He attempted "martyrdom operations" against Israelis at least three times, in March, April and June 2008 (one at Kerem Shalom) but they were not successful.

He fought with the Qassam Brigades even after his marriage in December, fighting with Ayman Ahmed ‘Amer al-Kurd who was killed (#758 on PCHR English list.)

Given that history, is it so far-fetched that young Imad would have the same burning desire for martyrdom at an early age that Khalid had, and that he would tag along with his older brother that he idolized as he sought revenge for the destruction of their family house earlier that day? One could argue otherwise, but any fact-finding mission should at least have considered this.

More to the point: The Goldstone Commission accepted their father's testimony without any skepticism, even after Mohammed claimed that he saw over 6 mortars fired (the final report says they were only aware of four.) It mentioned the utterly irrelevant fact that Khalid was a newlywed but ignored the quite relevant fact that he was a well-known al-Qassam Brigades member. It didn't think anything strange about the discrepancy of ages, even as it noted his correct age after hearing Mohammed's testimony that he was 18 (using his young age as to score a propaganda point.) Finally, it believed the father when he claimed that his son wasn't fighting after his wedding.

Goldstone seized on the inconsistent Israeli position between the immediate aftermath of the incident and the later clarifications that the IDF made as proof that the IDF claims were not credible, but the inconsistencies of an admitted Hamas member who raises his sons to be martyrs is not considered at all.

Daily Goldstone 10/15

Some good stuff out there, as the UNHRC convenes to yet again condemn Israel (and ignore Hamas, directly ignoring the parts of the Goldstone report that are inconvenient.)

Warren Goldstein in the Jerusalem Post attacks Goldstone on legal and procedural grounds:

The Mission's findings were based on accepting the allegations of only one party to the conflict. The Mission did not try to cross-examine or challenge the witnesses in any real way. There is a lengthy, fascinating article by Jonathan HaLevi of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in which he analyses in detail the methodology employed by the Mission in respect of witnesses. He demonstrates that there was a lack of adequate cross-examination of the testimony of the witnesses. Unproven allegations of Hamas officials were accepted as established facts. Even the most basic questions were not asked; when, for example, allegations were made of Israel's bombing civilian installations, witnesses were not asked whether there were Hamas fighters or weaponry in the vicinity, or whether any attacks had been launched from the area.
[Another] procedural injustice which undermines the integrity and credibility of Judge Goldstone and the three other members of the Mission: There simply was not enough time to do the job properly.
Any lawyer with even limited experience knows that there was just not sufficient time for the Mission to have properly considered and prepared its report. One murder trial often takes many months of evidence and argument to enable a judge to make a decision with integrity. To assess even one day of battle in Gaza with the factual complexities involved would have required a substantial period of intensive examination. According to the Mission's Report, the Mission convened for a total of 12 days.

The Forward notes the contradictions that Richard Goldstone states in his interview published last week:

“We had to do the best we could with the material we had,” he said during the interview. “If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”

And: “I wouldn’t consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.”

Nothing proven? Allegations? The air of tentativeness that hung over Goldstone’s remarks that day was surely missing from the stark and disturbing legal conclusions in the report, in which Israel was told flat out that it had violated international law by targeting civilians — “the people of Gaza as a whole.”

Nor is there anything tentative about Goldstone’s words in a New York Times opinion article published after the report was released, in which he wrote, “Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.”
It is difficult to know what to make of these contradictory statements, except that it’s obvious Goldstone is trying to climb down from the dangerous perch he had built.

Finally, Yaacov Lozowick publishes an email exchange he had with an Amnesty International press officer, and in the thread Yaacov explains in a personal way why the Goldstone report is so fundamentally offensive to Israelis as well as why it is fundamentally flawed:

The findings as they were announced by the members of the mission, before anyone had had a chance to read them, were ridiculous. I apologize for being so blunt, but I see no softer way to say it. Their methodology was, a-priori, never tenable. The moment they allowed themselves to make statements about Israel's intentions, as against Israel's actions, they demonstrated their biases and intellectual shoddiness. The only way to know about Israel's intentions is by researching those intentions: the decision-making process, the plans drawn up, the orders given and so on. These things can't be inferred from the results, they can't be learnt from talking to Palestinians, and they certainly can't be deduced from ruins of homes which could have been knocked down by all sorts of things including Hamas weapons.

If the Israelis won't give you access, you can't say what they were thinking, not unless you have access. Sad, perhaps, unfair, perhaps, but true. Someday, 50 years from now, historians will be able to pore over the documents whether the authorities like it or not, because we're a democracy. At the moment, however, if the Israelis refuse to talk and to cooperate, there's no way to say what they were thinking.

Since Goldstone and his colleagues made clear from the moment of publication that they had found Israel had intentionally targeted the Palestinian population, at that moment their intellectual credibility was destroyed. The Israelis then followed up by reading the report and demolishing its findings, but the rejection didn't have to wait.

I suggest, Neil, that you stop and think about this before simply writing me off. I'm being very serious here, and I'm telling you something very fundamental, and that is that Israel did not have the intention of hurting the civilian population of Gaza, You don't know me, you certainly don't know my sources of information, but I assure you the reading of the Goldstone commission (which I'm slowly reading - it's ghastly) is factually wrong. It's not true. You can wave the report from now till doomsday; you can take comfort in the large numbers of people around you who agree with you; you can talk about international law and human rights to your heart's content - none of this can change the reality, which is that the basic finding of the Goldstone fact finding mission is a blatant lie. Since it was clearly stated up front, it's no wonder that the official Israeli responders, who do know the facts, sharply rejected it.

Remember: Israeli intentions are about Israelis. The Israelis had them, the Israelis decided upon them, the Israelis know what they were. Take a deep breath and count to ten before you tell us what we were thinking - as the Goldstone team so foolishly did.

[W]hen our government takes steps most of us thought it should take, that's us who is responsible. And it's we, too. Not to mention that when you talk of the IDF, that's us and we in the most simple meaning: it was I when I was young, it's my son right now (and in Gaza last January), and I guess it will be my grandsons in the wars we'll still be waging 30 years from now.

Finally, here's a thought for you. Over the years prior to the Gaza campaign, as the Palestinians shot more than 10,000 projectiles at Israeli citizens in the Sderot region,we did our best to look away. It was far from the large cities; doing something about it would have inevitably have included hurting Palestinian civilians because Hamas uses them as shields; doing something would have brought the rage of Amnesty and HRW and the UN and the BBC on our heads... so we dithered. Year in and year out we refrained from action. Eventually, we began to admit to ourselves, this callousness of ours was eating away at who we are, at those Kol Yisrael statements I told you about. It became harder and harder to look ourselves in the eyes, knowing that we were preferring the suffering of the few to the trouble to all.

Eventually, our patience broke, and we acted. WE acted. In OUR name. So far as WE can tell, most of the actions WE took were moral, legal, and justified; if there were minor exceptions, WE'll deal with them. At the moment, close to a year later, it even seems to have worked, and no-one, not Israelis nor Palestinians, are getting killed. And we're whole again.

Goldstone then and now

From Ma'an, June 9:

There were also problems in collecting information in Gaza, [Goldstone] said, explaining that Hamas-allied security forces accompanied his 15-member team during their five-day working visit to Gaza last week, potentially inhibiting the ability of witnesses to speak freely, according to AP.

Ma'an, September 16:

Goldstone insisted that "Hamas didn't follow us at all," much less "at every stage" of the visit. "They were nowhere near any of the interviews we held, and there was just no question; there was no issue."

He added, "Had they attempted in any way to do that, I would have found that objectionable and I would not have accepted it - but it just didn't happen."

Here's a link to the original AP article. It is a little less clear whether AP was quoting Goldstone or not:

A veteran U.N. war crimes investigator acknowledged his probe of possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas - which included interviewing dozens of victims and poring through the files of human rights groups - is unlikely to lead to prosecutions.

Israel has refused to cooperate, depriving his team access to military sources and victims of Hamas rockets. And Hamas security often accompanied his team during their five-day trip to Gaza last week, raising questions about the ability of witnesses to freely describe the militant group's actions.

Middle East Mickey Mouse Moments

Yesterday, Palestinian Arab prime minister Salim Fayyad said that Palestinian Arabs will not accept a state where they would not have essentially 100% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and a full military. He referred to a state that doesn't meet these demands as a "Mickey Mouse state."

Also yesterday:

During the session of the UN Security Council devoted to discuss the situation in the Middle East, Al-Malki said the Palestinian Authority was ready to look into violations of human rights and possible war crimes committed by the Palestinians side.

“We take the charges seriously,” he said, “We stress our willingness to abide by the rule of law and affirm our commitment to conduct investigations through local legal mechanisms to handle this important issue.”

De facto government forces in the Gaza Strip [Hamas] have also indicated their willingness to investigate allegations outlined in the Goldstone report, in an effort to ensure the document’s allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel during last winter’s war on Gaza are fully investigated.

In fact, Hamas leader Haniyeh said “We are for a serious, national effort ahead of dealing with this document and implementing its recommendations.”

Don't you dare refer to these nascent PA and Hamas probes as "Mickey Mouse investigations." I'm sure that they will be done with the utmost concern for legal process, not to mention the human rights of Israeli victims of rocket and other terror attacks.

Why would anyone think otherwise?

The antagonizing dance

Those Jews keep coming up with innovative criminal acts.

From Ma'an:

Last week a group of extremist Jews attempted to gain access to the compound housing the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but were prevented from doing so by Israeli police. The group performed religious rituals in the streets adjacent to the site, using dance ceremonies to antagonize local shop owners...

I hope that this is placed front and center on the special UNHRC session today as the severe human rights violation it must be. Dancing by Jews in the area of the Temple Mount should be criminalized, of course, because (like their walking, prayer, meditation and breathing) it antagonizes a billion Muslims.

By definition, anything that Arabs or Muslims find offensive must be, in fact, illegal. That is certainly the premise behind the UNHRC, which seems dedicated to the elimination of just one such instance of this offensiveness.

Daily Goldstone 10/14

Alan Dershowitz notices what I noticed:

With so much (though not all) of the civilized world justly condemning (or ignoring) the Goldstone report for its distortion of the facts and its one-sided condemnation of Israel, Richard Goldstone himself now seems to be backing away from the report’s conclusions—at least when he speaks to his Jewish audiences.

In an interview with Jewish Forward, Goldstone denied that his group had conducted “an investigation.” Instead, it was what he called a “fact-finding mission” based largely on the limited “material we had.” Since this “material” was cherry-picked by Hamas guides and spokesmen, Goldstone acknowledged that “if this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.” He emphasized to the Forward that the report was no more than “a road map” for real investigators and that it contained no actual “evidence,” of wrongdoing by Israel.

“Nothing proven!” No “evidence!” Only “a road map!” You wouldn’t know any of that, of course, by reading the report itself or its accompanying media release. In the text of the report itself, Goldstone neither sought to clarify nor explain what he now claims is the limited scope and legal implications of the report. The language of the report reads like a judicial decision, making findings of fact (nearly all wrong), stating conclusions of law (nearly all questionable) and making specific recommendations (nearly all one-sided). According to the Forward:

“…the report itself is replete with bold and declarative legal conclusions seemingly at odds with the cautious and conditional explanations of its author. The report repeatedly refers, without qualification, to specific violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed by Israel and other breaches of international law. Citing particular cases, the report determines unequivocally that Israel “violated the prohibition under customary international law” against targeting civilians. These violations, it declares, ‘constitute a grave breach’ of the convention.”

It is as if there were two entirely different “Goldstone Reports.” The first submitted to the United Nations and the second to the Jewish community. In speaking so differently to different “audiences,” Goldstone is reminiscent of Yassir Arafat, who perfected the art of double-speak, by using bellicose language when addressing Arab audiences and more accommodating language when addressing western audiences.

Goldstone apparently lacked the courage to stand up to the other members and staffers of his commission and to insist that his clarifying language be included in the report itself. Nor did he have the courage to file a dissenting or concurring statement. Instead, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth, sending one message to those who read the actual report and a very different message to those who read his words in the Jewish Forward (and the New York Times for whom he wrote a more ameliorative op-ed on the day after the release of the Report). In doing so, he is trying to have it both ways.

Goldstone went so far as to tell the Forward that he himself “wouldn’t consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.” This is total nonsense. Goldstone has put his imprimatur—and his reputation—behind the reports’ conclusions. The only reason anyone is paying any attention to yet another of the serial condemnatory reports by the United Nations Human Rights Council is because Richard Goldstone—a “distinguished” Jew—allegedly wrote it and signed on to its conclusions. If he really doesn’t stand by its conclusions—if he doesn’t care one way or another whether they are true or false, proven or unproven—then no extra weight should be given to its findings or conclusions because of the “distinguished” reputation of its Jewish chairman.

But weight is being given by some to its “unproven” and uninvestigated allegations which Goldstone admits may be wrong. There have been calls for boycotts, divestments, war crime prosecutions and other forms of condemnation based on the conclusions reached (or not reached, depending on which side of Goldstone’s mouth one is listening to) by the Report.

If Goldstone stands behind what he told the Forward, then he must come forward and condemn those who are treating his report as if the allegations were based on “evidence” and “proven.” Don’t hold your breath, because such a statement would be heard by both of Goldstone’s audiences at the same time.

Even PalArabs are sick of their leaders

The Arab World Research and Development group (AWRAD) just released a surprising poll of Palestinian arabs that shows that when Hamas and Fatah fought over how to handle the Goldstone Report, they both lost support.

Some findings:

Only 21% are closely following the Goldstone report arguments between Fatah and Hamas, and only 3.5% say they are familiar with the actual contents of the report.

They were fairly evenly split over whether the report was "fair" (presumably to them.)

The surprising part, considering the huge amount of vitriol directed at Mahmoud abbas over the past couple of weeks, is that more PalArabs (33%) feel that the PA is handling the report issue well than the 22% who feel that Hamas is handling it well politically. The majority were very turned off by how Hamas and al-Jazeera were slamming Abbas and the PA over the report.

As a result of the public spat between the two, support for Fatah has decreased from 45% to 39%, while support for Hamas went down from 17.5% to 13.5%.

Even Palestinian Arabs are getting sick of their leaders.

Evolution of IDF on Hamas KidTV

Someone is posting a lot of Hamas' kid TV shows on YouTube (not translated.) It is interesting to compare how Hamas characterized the IDF during Cast Lead and how it does it now.

During the operation, Hamas showed IDF soldiers as hapless, bumbling and incompetent, as this clip shows of a fearful soldier who gets killed as he realizes he ran out of ammunition:

The only blood in that videoclip was Israeli, as opposed to how Hamas now shows the war to Gaza children.

Now, Hamas is changing its kiddie propaganda focus towards a heartless but very efficient IDF that targets hospitals, UNRWA schools and civilians. (The fighting starts at the two minute mark; I'd love to know the translation of the "Olmert" and "Livni" characters.)

Hamas member has a prophecy of doom

Firas Press reports that a Hamas member had a dream:

A member of the Qassam Brigades told those close to him the details of the vision he saw in a dream, that soon there will be a fierce battle with the occupation in which thousands of martyrs will fall, and thousands of homes destroyed, and that the [Hamas] army will be bulldozed and there will be destruction of entire regions off the face of the earth.

This vision has spread among the elements of the Qassam Brigades like wildfire, and became a hot topic at their meetings and gatherings. The vision has had a clear negative impact on the morale of al-Qassam Brigades and Hamas members, prompting their leaders to discuss the vision at the highest levels.

They are forming a commission of inquiry to uncover the circumstances of the vision, considering that it may have security implications, and that Israeli intelligence may be behind the promotion of this vision.

The group has also distributed several internal memos on this matter, demanding that the elements of al-Qassam to not spread such stories, and saying there was no signs on the horizon of the next war, and Israel has learned a hard lesson after the recent war in Gaza.

A new avenue for psy-ops! The Mossad should create a video of this dream and upload it to Arabic sites immediately; it would magnify the impact tremendously.

The latest Hamas martyr wasn't killed by Israel

From Ma'an:

The brother of senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri has died in an Egyptian prison as a result of torture, Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa television announced on Tuesday.

According to Sami Abu Zuhri, his brother Yousef Hamdan Abu Zuhri died of internal bleeding after being tortured during interrogation by Egyptian security forces.

Abu Zuhri said his brother was held in the Egyptian port city of Al-Arish in April on his way to Cairo from Gaza. Sami claims his brother was subjected to intense torture in an attempt by Egyptian authorities to extract information about Hamas in Gaza.

Egyptian sources said that Yousef was originally detained after he entered Egypt through a smuggling tunnel, and was taken by the security forces to Al-Arish.

Most interesting is that the Al Qassam Brigades website has already set up a (so far incomplete) page adding Abu Zuhri to their list of "martyrs." As far as I can tell, this is the first martyr who was killed by Egypt on that Hamas list.

Video of Hezbollah hiding weapons

From Israel's MFA:

On the evening of October 12, 2009 a large explosion took place in the house of a senior Hizbullah member which was being used as an arms cache in Tayr Filsay, a village approximately 15 km east of the coastal city of Tyre and south of the Litani River. During the explosion, a number of people were injured, including the home's owner, Said Issa.

Following the explosion, Hizbullah began to remove the remaining weapons from the cache, isolating the scene and preventing UNIFIL or LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) access.
Pictures taken by an UAV of the Israeli Air Force after the explosion of a Hizbullah weaponry warehouse on Monday (Oct. 12) in Tyre in southern Lebanon, show Hizbullah operatives smuggling Katyusha rockets and other weaponry out of the destroyed warehouse into another one in southern Lebanon.
The video filmed by the UAV that was directed to the location of the incident after the explosion, clearly shows a large number of people arriving at the scene and loading Katyusha rockets and other weaponry onto trucks. Afterwards they cover the weaponry in order to hide it and drive with it to another weaponry storage in the village of Dir Kanun A-Nahar, where they unload the weaponry. Later Lebanese army and UNIFIL forces are seen arriving at the site of the explosion.

UNIFIL=Useless.

UNHRC will meet on Goldstone this week

From Reuters:

The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an extraordinary meeting this week on the occupied Palestinian territories, providing another chance for Israel's critics to discuss a Gaza war crimes report.

"The holding of the special session is at the request of Palestine," the United Nations said in a statement circulated on Tuesday in Geneva, where the 47-member body is based.

AP helpfully adds:

It will be the sixth time that Israel has been the subject of a special session by the Geneva-based council. Each previous session has resulted in a resolution critical of Israel.

Is there any chance the debate would say anything negative about Hamas? After all, the report does condemn Hamas rockets, right?

Of course not. Look at the UNHRC press release about the session:

The Human Rights Council will hold a Special Session on the "human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and East Jerusalem" on Thursday, 15 October 2009, starting 3 p.m. in Room XX of the Palais des Nations.

The holding of the Special Session comes at the request of Palestine. The request is co-sponsored by the following 18 Member States of the Human Rights Council, namely Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

The session is only about the human rights of Palestinian Arabs, not the human rights of Jews who had been subject to years of terrorist and rocket attacks before Israel decided to put a stop to them.

For all of Goldstone's claims that he had the right to expand the mandate of the commission to cover all human rights abuses by all sides, it is obvious that the UNHRC is only interested in the parts that castigate Israel. This is why Hamas, the PA and their panoply of like-minded abusers of human rights are so keen on getting the Goldstone Report on the agenda of the UNHRC: because they know that this sham of an organization has as little interest in real human rights as they do.

Does anyone think that Goldstone will raise his voice to mention that Hamas violated human rights, too?

Syria's saber-rattling anti-Israel conference

There was a conference in Syria over the weekend called the Arab-International Golan Forum. Its purpose was pretty much to insult and incite against Israel as much as possible in a 48 hour period.

Among the charges leveled:

For his part, the liberated captive Medhat al-Saleh said that the Israeli occupation forces are applying a systematic killing policy against all the Arab prisoners through neglecting their health conditions.

"All Arab prisoners are subjected to solitary confinement and all forms of torture in the complete absence of the basic and minimum health and human conditions," said the liberated captive Amaal Mahmoud.

Head of the Mine Victim Rehabilitation Committee in the occupied Golan Omar al-Heebi pointed out to the high risk of the mines Israel planted in Quneitra before it was liberated, which caused lots of injuries and claimed many lives.

Israel steals around 800 million cubic meters of the occupied Golan water annually, and it has so far constructed 10 dams to transfer water to al-Naqab desert and Dimona reactor, thus making the amount of the stolen water exceed 31 billion cubic meters since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, said Arsan Arsan, director of Water Resources Department in Quneitra.

He also pointed out to the danger posed by the dams Israel has built on the rivers running towards the liberated part of the occupied Golan, particularly Ein al-Hamra dam and al-Mansoura dam 1 km to the west of Quneitra city.

They also accused Israel of contaminating Syria with nuclear waste, and the final resolution called on Syria to "liberate" the Golan via all means of resistance, meaning this Syrian sponsored conference called for war with Israel.

Needless to say, the world media ignored this.

One of the more interesting charges leveled against Israel was that it displaced a half a million Syrians since 1967. Given that the Golan had less than 200,000 people in 1967, this is a pretty amazing feat.

Perhaps more interesting is that these displaced people and their descendants are living in Syrian "refugee" camps over forty years later. Of course, displaced persons are not legally refugees, and there is nothing stopping Syria from building new towns for these people to live in.

Syria, like the other Arab nations, prefer to use people as political cannon fodder against Israel rather than helping them rebuild their lives. Syria's practice against this group is even more egregious and cynical, as these people are full citizens of Syria and should have equal rights. Syria chooses to let them fester so that they can whine about Israeli "ethnic cleansing" decades later.

It is instructive to compare the daily lives of these Syrian citizens with those of the Arabs who stayed in the Golan and now "suffer" under "occupation."

Abbas: Hamas leaders escaped Gaza in ambulances

Mahmoud Abbas, in a speech at the American University today, accused Hamas leaders of escaping Gaza in ambulances and hiding in the Sinai during Operation Cast Lead, according to Palestine Press Agency.

Abbas also said that the PA warned Hamas in Gaza a week before the operation that Israel was serious and that Hamas should extend the truce, and that Hamas ignored these warnings. Abbas says he then appealed to Hamas leadership in Damascus and was similarly rebuffed.

During the war there were a number of reports that at least one Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, had escaped to Egypt via an ambulance. Even two weeks after the war people were wondering where he had disappeared to.

The Goldstone Report, not very convincingly, says it found no evidence that Hamas used ambulances illegally during the war.

The journalist who is trying to start an intifada

Throughout the events on the Temple Mount over the past couple of weeks, there was plenty of incitement by Palestinian Arab clerics like Sheikh Tamimi and Sheikh Raed Salah, who publicly claim daily that Israel is planning to divide and destroy the Temple Mount.

However, carefully reading the Arab news media, none of them were able to point to anything that the Israelis actually did that upset the Temple Mount's status quo. All news accounts showed that the Jewish (or foreign) visitors did nothing disrespectful and that the fighting began when Arab worshipers attacked the visitors after being whipped up with rumors from the previous week that extremist Jews were planning to "storm" the Al Aqsa Mosque. As Ma'an reported initially:

On Thursday, the Al-Aqsa Foundation had warned of an impending incursion. Officials in Jerusalem said extremists were preparing to break into the holy Muslim area, and accurately predicted that the break-in would occur on Sunday under the pretext of celebrating a religious holiday.

Confrontations erupted after groups of Israelis broke into the compound, reportedly under the guard of Israeli police. Palestinians hurled stones, chairs, and shoes at the Israelis, while police tried to disperse the Palestinians by force, injuring nine people right away, and four more throughout the morning.

Ma'an later changed the story but even now it is clear that the violence was started by the Arabs:

According to witnesses, clashes broke out after a group of about 150 Israeli settlers entered the Al-Aqsa compound on Sunday morning, reportedly under the guard of local authorities who also escorted the group away from the area when worshipers began to protest.

It turns out though that Khalid Amayreh, an Arab journalist who has a long history of insane hate against Israel, specifically lied about what happened at the time - to the Islamic world as a whole, at Islamonline.net:

Dozens of Palestinians were hurt, two seriously, on Sunday, September 27, when crack Israeli policemen attacked worshipers who had just repulsed an attempt by Jewish extremists to hold Talmudic rituals at al-Haram al-Sharif.
“When the zealots were repulsed rather peacefully, the police became very outraged,” Mahmoud Abu Atta, an eyewitness, told IslamOnline.net.

“As many as 70 policemen attacked us indiscriminately, young and old, with full force, using rubber-coated bullets, truncheons, tear gas and even poisonous gas.”
Eyewitnesses said tension began when dozens of Jewish religious zealots, disguised as tourists, stealthily entered Aqsa esplanade through its western gate, known as Bab el-Majles.

The intruders soon began, under police protection, performing Talmudic rites and making slogans calling for the destruction of the Islamic holy shrine.

Muslim guards as well as ordinary worshipers chased the Jewish zealots out.

“The police chased worshipers inside Aqsa Mosque, where the soldiers fired heavily into the holy place, causing many people to suffocate as a result of gas inhalation,” said Atta.

“I saw the police gang up on young people, beating them mercilessly. The police were not out to maintain law and order. They just wanted to retaliate and punish us for repulsing the fanatical settlers.”

Atta said the worshipers sought desperately to defend themselves against police brutality, using little stones, shoes and chairs.
“Hence it is the responsibility of the entire Umma to protect and safeguard this holy place from Zionist plots and evil designs,” Sheikh Sabri told IOL.
Israeli religious leaders, including Knesset members, are making no secret of their schemes regarding Al-Aqsa.

Amayreh, using the time honored journalistic method of finding an "eyewitness" willing to lie to fit his agenda, helped stoke the hatred throughout the Muslim world.

He, and other Islam Online reporters, regularly expose dastardly Zionist schemes to destroy Al Aqsa, doing everything they can to push Arabs to violence.

Amayreh followed up with a "man in the street" interview specifically asking Arabs if they want to see a third intifada in the face of these Zionist plots to have Jews visit their holiest site:

"There is no question that we need a huge uprising in order to extricate ourselves out of the present predicament.
"We need an intifada not only in occupied Palestine but all over the Arab world. We need an intifada against the Israeli occupation, the Palestinian Authority and the corrupt Arab regimes."
"In physics, excessive pressure leads to explosion or implosion. I think the frustration level in occupied Palestine has reached the explosive point."
"I think a religious intifada can be expected if Israel continues to provoke Muslims as it has been doing of late.
"If the cause of Al-Aqsa Mosque won’t provoke Muslims, then what would provoke them?

"However, we need more than just a willingness to die as martyrs for Al-Aqsa. We also need to carefully plan the outcome of any prospective intifada. We must carefully and thoroughly study the first two intifadas and make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes."
"I think if Israel goes too far in its efforts to take over parts of Al-Aqsa Mosque, an intifada, even a big one, will be inevitable.
"After all, Muslims, especially Palestinians, wouldn’t just sit idle while their holiest place is desecrated and raped by the herds of Zionism.

"But, let me be frank about his. The Palestinians alone can’t defeat Israel. We need to have meaningful and tangible Arab-Muslim support in order to be able to wrest our rights from Israeli hands."

Amayreh is also very much against the PA, moderate Arab governments and any peace with Israel, so he makes sure that the seemingly random interviewees adhere to his own politics and radicalism.

In short, Khalid Amayreh is waging a campaign to start a new wave of terror against Israel under guise of his being a "journalist."

Hamas loves Goldstone

From Ma'an:

A children's mock court in Gaza sentenced President Mahmoud Abbas to life in prison and removed him from office for the crime of delaying international action on a United Nations report on war crimes.

This latest expression of public outrage at Abbas was staged by the Palestinian Child Parliament, an organization said to be linked to Hamas.

In early October Abbas’ envoy withdrew a motion from the UN Human Rights Council calling for further action on Judge Richard Goldstone’s report on Israel’s winter assault on Gaza which left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead. Palestinians have been outraged over the decision.

During the mock trial a child acting as “prosecutor” in the trial said Abbas was charged under Palestinian law with the crime of “high treason to the Palestinian people’s interests” under the Palestinian Basic Law and the Penal Code.

“Abbas insisted on withdrawing the resolution, despite support from 33 countries for report and this would clearly condemn Israel," the prosecutor said.

The judge then heard arguments from human rights organizations who explained their efforts to compile and propose the report, and their shock when it was withdrawn from the Human Rights Council.

This Hamas version of a show trial is of course meant for Hamas to score political points against Fatah, but it also shows clearly that Hamas is not frightened at all about any repercussions that it might suffer from the Goldstone Report.

Because it would not suffer any.

Hamas initially criticized the Goldstone Commission because it was led by a "Zionist" and it felt that the cards were stacked against it. Now that the report was released, Hamas is secure in the knowledge that the report is one-sided against Israel, despite Goldstone's insistence that he looked at Hamas crimes as carefully as he looked at alleged Israeli crimes.

Open wide thread

Weird family stuff kept me from blogging today, so have at it.

Goldstone Report website launches

A new website, set up by prominent bloggers and writers, goes into detail on the Goldstone Report's problems. The main organizer is Professor Richard Landes, historian and writer of the Augean Stables blog and Second Draft site. Many other people, including myself, contribute to the website. As the website says:

Those of us who have constructed Understanding the Goldstone Report, have been following the claims under contention since the events themselves almost a year ago, and have read the report in detail. We offer a wide range of analysis, from careful examination of specific incidents and controversies to broader legal and conceptual issues. In so doing, we have come to the following conclusions:
The report violates international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact-finding, replicating earlier UNHRC biased statements.
The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case.
The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; the report reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies.
At the same time, the Commission inexplicably downplayed or ignored substantial evidence of Hamas’ commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of terror, including specifically its victimization of the Palestinian population by its use of human shields, civilian dress for combatants, and combat use of protected objects like ambulances, hospitals and mosques.
The Commission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.
The report contains numerous gratuitous digressions into issues beyond the purview of a fact-finding commission that are inaccurate and profoundly hostile to Israel and Jews.
The Commission distorted legal standards, imposing on Israel standards that reverse their generally understood and applied meaning, while ignoring important rules of international law that put the onus of responsibility on an organization as base, by Goldstone’s own standards, as Hamas.

Check it out.

Abbas' thin skin

PA president Mahmoud Abbas, known best for doing nothing and waiting for things to be handed him on a silver platter, really doesn't like criticism.

He's gotten plenty of it with his wishy-washy reaction to the Goldstone report, first saying he had no problem with delaying the report debate for six months, and then trying to switch gears under withering complaints from the entire Arab world who know that Goldstone is the best thing to happen to Palestinian Arabs in years. (It is notable that Hamas, supposedly "even-handedly" criticized by Goldstone, is in the forefront of criticizing Abbas for the delay, with very little worry about any negative fallout from the report.)

Former Ambassador to Egypt Nabil Amr lashed out at Abbas last Friday, blaming him for the fiasco. Abbas responded by withdrawing Amr's bodyguards who were paid by the PA.

Al Jazeera was also critical of Abbas, and now apparently Abbas had the brother of the network's director arrested as well.

PA leaders might tell the West what a great democracy they want to build, but they always end up acting like two-bit dictators.

Veiled criticism

From Al-Arabiya:

A group of MPs and an Islamist lawyer waged an unprecedented legal battle against one of Egypt's top Imams on Saturday after he issued a ban on women wearing the burka, or face veil, at any schools affiliated to al-Azhar, the world's top Sunni Islam institution.

A Muslim brotherhood lawyer, representatives of Egypt's lower house of parliament and the Sawaseya Center for Human Rights joined forces to file a lawsuit against Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar over what they called his "unconstitutional" ban that violates personal freedom and contradicts the principle of equality for all citizens.

The group also sought action against the country's minister of higher education and the president of Cairo University for their role in the recent decision to ban female students from wearing the burka in al-Azhar affiliated schools and in Cairo University dorms.

“We have a ruling from the Supreme Administrative Court to the effect that women have the right to wear the niqab (Arabic for face veil),” Muslim Brotherhood lawyer, Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maqsoud, told Al Arabiya.

“It might not be an obligation in Islam, but it is also not against Islam. So, women have the right to wear it when and where they choose,” Abdel-Maqsoud argued, adding that they would continue to fight the ban until the court annuls it.

Article 2 of Egyptian law states Islam is the religion of the state and is the main source of legislation while article 48 stipulates that freedom of expression is granted to all citizens and that they have the right to express their opinions in oral, written or visual forms.

Al-Azhar's Deputy Chairman, Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, slammed the Muslim Brotherhood and said they do not have the right to file lawsuits since they are an outlawed group and added the matter was an internal policy that they have no right to object to.

“The decision to ban the face veil was approved by al-Azhar's Supreme Council,” Abdel-Aziz told Al Arabiya. “This is none of their business.”

Abdel-Aziz added that the decision was not to impose an absolute ban on the burka, but only to regulate its use in certain places.

“Women can wear the face veil anywhere, but not in al-Azhar schools. If she does not want to show her face in front of men, al-Azhar schools are not co-ed. Therefore, there is no point in wearing the face veil in class.”

Supporting Tantawi’s argument, Abdel-Aziz stated that the face veil is not obligatory in Islam and that this is what they say to all detractors of the decision.

“The majority of senior scholars are in consensus that it is not ordained by God. Plus, I believe the lecturer should be able to see the faces of students,” he concluded.

It is not only extremist Muslim Brotherhood types who are criticizing Al Azhar for their ban. An article written by a woman in the Saudi Gazette justifies the face-covering in a fairly transparent slam at the school decision.

As is obvious from these narrations, Muslim women have a historical precedent of covering their faces that goes back to the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) that is independent and completely exclusive of cultural or any other influence. May Allah enable the women of our time to follow those who have preceded them in faith, despite the discouragement and deviation of those who hate to see them doing so

This is turning into a fairly contentious issue.

How an Arab rumor gets started

Palestine Today reports that Republican congressional candidates were shooting at pictures of Yasir Arafat at a gun range in Florida on Sunday.

It illustrated the story like this:

If you look at the actual article and video, though, you would see that members of the Southeast Broward Republican Club held a meeting at a shooting range, and one of the targets had a rocket-propelled grenade and a keffiyeh , that the reporter helpfully said was "the kind of headdress worn by the late Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat." Here is what it really looked like:

Now, I personally would have no problems shooting at a target picture of Yasir Arafat. Still, this is a prime example of how false rumors get started in the Arab world and how poor some Arab media is at transmitting the truth (which is hardly unique to Arabic media, admittedly.)

Some of these rumors stick and some don't, but the ones that stick sometimes have deadly results.

Egyptian MP calls on Muslims to attack Israeli embassies worldwide

From AFP:

An Egyptian Islamist MP called on Sunday for the storming of Israeli embassies around the world if Israelis entered Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
Subhi Saleh, an MP affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest but banned opposition group, said Israeli embassies "in every country" should be stormed if Israelis enter the site.
"Embassies have diplomatic immunity but our holy places have divine immunity, so if they enter Al-Aqsa let us enter their embassies," he said during a heated meeting of his parliamentary bloc.
Tensions over the compound turned violent on September 27 when Palestinians hurled rocks at a group of visitors whom they suspected of being rightwing Jewish extremists.

The Arabic version of the report translated "storm" as "attack."

Keep in mind that Israelis did nothing to disrupt the status quo on the Temple Mount before the rioting began.

Weekend-long open thread

For my readers who celebrate Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, have a great yom tov!

For the rest, here is a long open thread for the weekend. I hope to be back Sunday night.

An early Arab attack on Petah Tikvah

I just came across a book called New Judea, published in 1919, discussing what Palestine was like at that time from a Jewish perspective. This episode, about Petah Tikva, was interesting:

ln the course of a conversation, the old agriculturist related many episodes connected with the early history of the colony, one of which impressed itself on my memory. "It was a short while after we came to occupy this land," he said, "before a permanent buildings was completed, and we were all squeezed together in one old Arab mud hovel called "hushot." The place was then wild, and we were busy cleaning away stones, grading the land, making roads, defining the boundaries of our colony and ploughing the hard soil."

"l was watching a field of wheat whose green crops had just made its appearance. One day while patrolling the wheat field, I noticed the Arab Sheikh, of the neighboring village, El Yehud, had turned his horses into our wheat. I chased the horses away and went over to the intruder and warned him not to do it again, as we would hold him personally responsible for all damages. The Sheikh glanced at me scornfully and turned away. A few weeks passed, the wheat field was already proudly waving in the air. l saw from a distance one early morning the Sheikh wrapped in a black "Abba" and a large "Kephiyah" on his head coming toward the colony. l gave a signal to my comrades. In a few minutes they were up and we assembled behind a cactus hedge to decide what steps to take with the treacherous intruder. After some discussion it was decided that we must once for all show the marauding neighbors that we do not fear them and that we are ready to repell and punish all attacks made on this colony. While reaching this decision we noticed the same Sheikh leaving the highway and turning his horse into the wheat. A few of us immediately jumped on our horses and chased after the intruder. He began to run and we followed him until we brought him to a stop. We brought him and his horse back to the village, where he was given a good thrashing, and we sent him off to his home warning him that if this happened again his punishment would be much more severe. He stared at us with an expression of vengeance and then spirited away among the hills. About a month passed and nothing was heard of the Sheikh. One morning we learned from one of our Arab laborers that we were to be attacked on a certain night of that week by the tribesmen of the Sheikh. Not knowing how many were coming, we despatched one of our men to the neighboring colonies for assistance. We did not notify the authorities in Jaffa, thinking it would be more effective and would make a better impression on the Arabs if we convinced them once for all that we did not fear them and that we could use firearms better than they. Pretending that it was a holy day, we dismissed all the Arab laborers for a few days so as to be sure that our enemies would not be informed of our plans, for we discovered that they were spying on us. On the afternoon preceding the night of the expected attack, a score of men and women, comrades, from Rishon L'Zion, Ekron and Katra, mounted on fine horses and armed with new guns at their backs, revolvers at their girdles and belts with cartridges around their waists, rushed on our villaee like a company of trained cavalry ready to close in on the enemy. They dismounted from the horses and sat down to consult with us about our plan of warfare.

"Towards evening each man was assigned to a strategic position. We knew that they were coming down the main road and that they were to use our field of wheat as the fighting ground. Some of us concealed ourselves near the entrance of the village, behind piles of stones, other in ditches and behind hills; while still others were encamped behind the village houses that were in process of erection, and on the roof of the hut we were occupying.

"The expected hour came. The vanguards, who were patrolling about the fields, having heard from a distance the trotting of horses and wild voices of people, signalled to us, They are coming! Be ready for action! As soon as the enemy entered the grounds of the village two shots were heard. We knew it was the signal for action. A volley of fire from our comrades of the lower side of the colony broke out. The marauders were quickly encircled by our men and they surrendered before we had a chance to fire a shot at them. They were completely taken by surprise. We made prisoners of about twenty Arab ringleaders, including the Sheikh, bound their hands and feet and took them the next day to Jaffa, where we gave them over to the authorities. The others did not need much warning. They were glad to be allowed to get away.

"Since that incident," continued my new friend, "we gained the respect of our neighbors, and we have no organized attacks, except now and then individual robberies that may happen anywhere.

Keep in mind that the area of Petah Tikva was legally purchased around 1883.

Today's PalArab news

The PA shut down Gaza University after Hamas fired its president and replaced him with a Hamas member.

Firas Press reports that a settler shot and killed another settler in Israel. In fact, the shooting was between teenage Israeli Arabs. Are they saying that Arabs in Israel are illegal settlers? (It is obvious that Firas thought that the pair was Jewish.)

Haaretz mentions that Netanyahu may give some concessions to Abbas for his postponement of Goldstone report discussions at the UN, and an op-ed in Firas Press calls this "poison in the honey."

An Arab lawyer was stabbed at a Hebron court, the result of a family dispute. "The police urged the public to settle disputes through the judicial system, not through revenge."

Boycott protein!

Humor from Jonathan Kay in the National Post:

Support Palestine by boycotting protein!

Jonathan Kay

For years, Canada's anti-Israel activists, church groups and unions have been urging us to boycott every Israeli product under the sun — from wines, to academics, to fruit, to high-tech goods, to films.

It is time to take the campaign to the next level.

This week, the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to three scientists — including a woman named Ada Yonath.

Yonath is not only the first woman to win a chemistry Nobel since 1964, she also happens to be a citizen of the Zionist entity — which means her research is a subject of concern to all social-justice-loving activists.