Hamas finds itself innocent. What a surprise.

Al-Arabiya reports that Hamas has investigated itself and found not only that it did nothing wrong, but also that other terror groups didn't either:

The Islamist Hamas movement said Wednesday it has investigated allegations in a U.N. report into last winter's Gaza war and absolved Palestinian armed groups of any atrocities.

Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the Israeli offensive aimed at halting rocket attacks from the territory ruled by the Islamist group.

But Hamas, which along with other armed groups has launched thousands of makeshift rockets into southern Israel in recent years, said a committee it appointed to follow up on the report found no intention to harm civilians.

"The committee worked around the clock to uncover the facts, despite the certainty that there were no violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law that amount to war crimes," said the committee head, Hamas justice minister Mohammed Faraj al-Ghul.

"The Palestinian government has on more than one occasion called on armed Palestinian groups to avoid targeting civilians," said the report by Hamas, which has claimed scores of deadly suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.

"(The armed groups) struck military targets and avoided civilian targets, and any accusations related to this concern errant fire."

The Goldstone report said the firing of the hard-to-aim rockets at southern Israel deliberately targeted civilians and could constitute a crime against humanity.

Hamas, during the war, really did claim to only be targeting military sites. For example, this press release from the al-Qassam Brigades English site detailed the targets of all the rockets fired during the war:

Target	Qassam	Grad	Mortar
Military base "Blmakheem"	0	2	0
Military base "Tal Nouf"	0	1	0
Military base "Al Majdal"	26	47	0
Military base "Sdod"	0	36	0
Military base "Beer Al Saba'a"	0	23	0
Military base "Kiryat Gat"	0	3	0
Military base "Hitsareem"	0	16	0
Military base "Sderot"	88	0	0
Military base "Third Eye"	9	0	12
Military base "Miftaheem"	13	0	0
Military base "artillery"	9	0	9
Military base "Ba'eri"	6	0	0
Military base "Talmi Yusif"	3	0	0
Military base "Nir Oz"	4	0	0
Military base "Ami Oz"	2	0	0
Military base "leadership"	2	0	0
Military base "Mageen"	4	0	0
Military base "El-yahoo"	1	0	0
Military base "Abu Salim"	3	0	3
Military base "Nahil Oz"	10	0	10
Military base "Sufa"	6	0	0
Military base "Nitifut"	31	51	0
Military base "Tsailem"	0	6	0

You can see in the table that Hamas just took names of places like Sderot and Kiryat Gat and Ashdod ("Sdod") where ordinary people were targeted and simply re-labeled them as "military bases." As YNet points out, there are no military bases in Sderot.

Before the war, Hamas was not quite as circumspect. In fact, they would openly brag about targeting civilians. For example, this communique from November 16, 2008:

Al Qassam Brigades executed the following mission:

Day: Friday.

Time: Between 8:50 to 09:10.

Operation: Shelling Sderot settlement by eight Qassam rockets.

Result: Number of settlers were wounded.

There are countless other examples of Hamas proudly taking credit for rocket attacks on civilians.

And if you have the slightest thought that Hamas really considered all of the towns listed above to be "military sites," the Qassam Brigades published a similar scorecard of rockets fired on February 27th, 2008, where many of the same cities are listed without the prefix "military base":

In response to the Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Al-Qassam Brigades declared the following:

Name	No.
Sedrot settlement	30
Meftahim settlement	4
Kesufim settlement	4
Yad Murdakhi settlement	3
Military site Sofa-Rafah	2
Zikim-north of Gaza strip	4
Intelligence site east of Rafah city	2
Military site Nahil Oz-Gaza	3
Natif Etzra settlement	2
Baeri east of Al Buriej camp	2
Kfar Azza east of Gaza city	1
Military site Erez-Gaza	2

The result of the shelling:

1. A Zionist settlers was killed in the Sederot.
2. Huge confusion between the settlers.

The target is explicitly named and celebrated.

It is not hard to find proof that Hamas lies using nothing but Hamas sources.

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Hamas plans response to Goldstone this week

According to Palestine Press Agency, Hamas "miniter of justice" Mohammed Faraj al-Ghoul announced that Hamas has prepared its own response to the Goldstone report, 52 pages worth. He said that the response will be professional and adhere to international standards.

Meaning, the international standards that blame Israel for everything.

al-Ghoul also says that the fact that Israel paid $10.5 million to UNRWA in compensation for inadvertent damage done is proof that Israel is admitting to "committing war crimes and crimes against humanity." He goes on to say that he hopes that the UN will not be taken in by this "bribe" and will continue to hate Israel as passionately as it did before.

Laughably, al-Ghoul said that Hamas set up a committee of inquiry to investigate any alleged violations and worked around the clock to uncover the truth, opened its doors wide open to receive public complaints, and investigated to the greatest extent and the pursuit and prosecution of abusers by Palestinian law. I can just imagine how welcome any resident of Gaza would feel about entering Hamas headquarters to lodge a formal complaint against Hamas.

He also said that Goldstone only specified some 36 incidents, while Hamas has been documenting over 1500 such crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of genocide, the crimes of aggression, "all of which were monitored and documented in full accordance with international standards and which will surprise the occupation."

Which is an interesting tack. Israel should prepare a dossier of Hamas war crimes that Goldstone missed, which is pretty much all of them.

Playing strictly defense is no way to win a battle.

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Arab satellite removes Iranian TV

From Reuters:

Iran's Arabic-language television network Al Alam said on Wednesday it has again been taken off air by a Saudi-based satellite operator amid simmering tensions between Shi'ite Iran and U.S.-allied Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia.

Analysts say Riyadh and several other Arab governments allied to the United States are worried about a rise in Tehran's influence in the region through Shi'ite minorities.

Al Alam said in November that both the Saudi-based Arabsat network and Nilesat in Cairo had halted its broadcasting. In a statement on Wednesday, it said Arabsat later resumed broadcasting, before halting it again. It did not give details.

The Saudi/Iran hatefest is definitely must-watch TV.

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Obese PalArabs beg Abbas for surgery

Now that Mahmoud Abbas has personally sponsored weight-loss surgery for a morbidly obese man in the territories, he may have opened up the floodgates of fat.

Firas Press reports on a woman who lives near Ramallah who weighs over 400 kg - nearly 900 pounds! She heard about Abbas largesse for the large and is now demanding the same for herself.

40 year old Fadwa Ahmad Jibril Alrushdi has been stuck in her bed for six years now. She is demanding help, saying that she has gained 50 kg just since last Ramadan!

Poor Abbas. Now every fat PalArab will be bugging him for their right to surgery, and he'll have to figure out new ways to cook the books so that EU and US money will go to help them.

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Hamas leader grovels for Saudi forgiveness

Firas Press publishes a letter from Hamas "political" leader Khaled Meshal to Saudi King Abdullah, where he politely grovels and begs for a meeting.

The letter says, in part,

I have written you a letter from my heart and mind, in the month of Ramadan two years ago, and knocked on your door many times, but have only received silence. Do you know - may God prolong your age -- Why all this insistence (not to speak to me)?

First, we have confidence and good thoughts for you, you are by virtue of your great qualities of dignity and a genuine spirit of Islamic, Arab, and the special status of the Kingdom on the Arab, Islamic and international levels, as you have become the subject of hope for many of the sons of Arabs and Muslims, and we are the sons of Palestine, where the Al Aqsa Mosque is, which is the brother of the soul of the Two Holy Mosques!!

I cannot translate the whole thing but it is filled with flowery language and compliments.

Meshal makes clear that he knows exactly why he has been spurned: firstly because of how Hamas acted after the last unity agreement that Saudi Arabia brokered, and secondly because of Hamas' close ties with Iran.

As we have noticed many times before, the Gulf nations seem to have had lost their patience with the Palestinian issue years ago. While they will publicly proclaim their solidarity, years of not paying their pledges to help speak louder than words. And Hamas is regarded in even lower terms than the PA because of its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, its Gaza coup and its ties to the Shiites in Iran.

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Hamas says it will sue Israel for "organ harvesting"

Hamas has embraced lawfare in a big way.

According to Ma'an:

The de facto government in the Gaza Strip began collecting the testimonies of families whose sons reportedly had their organs harvested by Israeli soldiers, Gaza's Minister of Justice Muhammad Faraj Al-Ghoul said Wednesday.

"We have started collecting documents and information which prove that the Israeli occupation has stolen the body parts of martyrs. We intend to prepare a complete legal file to be used in suits against the Israeli government in international courts,” Al-Ghoul told reporters in Gaza.

The announcement follows months of on and off accusations and a building pile of reports from Israeli and international reporters alleging a series of incidents involving the theft of organs from young men in Israeli custody.

Al-Ghoul said announcements would be printed in the local papers asking families and victims of the harvesting come forward and testify at the offices of the ministry.

Even without a single credible witness, Hamas wins a PR victory.

I am not a fan of lawfare on either side, but if it is a weapon in a war it seems silly to cede the weapon completely to the other side.

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Funny: Arab MKs defining "refugees"

Palestine Today reports that the Knesset passed a motion that any future peace deal with Arab countries include compensation for Jewish refugees.

Two Arab MKs, Talab El-Sana and Jamal Zahalka, objected - because they don't think there were any Jewish refugees from Arab countries!

Zahalka's argument is nonsensical. He claims that the word "refugee" refers only to people who are forced to leave their country against their will, and that they must want to return to that country. The only problem is that this is a complete fabrication, as the UN definition of "refugee" is "any person who is outside their country of origin and unable or unwilling to return there or to avail themselves of its protection, on account of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group, or political opinion."

It is not news when a politician lies, but to lie so egregiously seems to be the particular skill of Palestinian Arab politicians.

El-Sana said that by the UN's definition of the word "refugee" the Jews wouldn't qualify, because they weren't seeking asylum from persecution. This is news to the hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries whose lives turned into hell after 1948. It is also amusing to hear a Palestinian Arab try to talk about the definition of "refugee" when the real definition of "refugee" would exclude nearly all Palestinian Arabs alive today.

As the quoted article notes laconically that "For particular, political reasons, the Convention puts Palestinian refugees outside its scope..." So for El-Sana to quote the UN definition of refugees when his own people do not qualify is just another example of how, to Palestinian Arabs, laws are malleable to their own desires.

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The independence of the IDF's Military Advocate General corps

Many people have criticized the IDF's military justice system as not possibly being independent and fair, being that it is a part of the IDF. They use this as evidence that, for example, the upcoming rebuttal of the Goldstone report cannot be unbiased.

In fact, the IDF's Military Advocate General and the MAG Corps are completely independent. They do not report to the IDF structure; rather they report to the government directly. The leader is appointed by the Minister of Defense.

As the MAG webpage describes him:

The Military Advocate General is a member of the General Staff, but has complete legal independence and is not subject to the direct orders of the Chief of Staff or other superior officers.

The Military Advocate General is appointed by the Minister of Defense on the recommendation of the Chief of Staff.

The decisions and legal opinions of the Military Advocate General are considered determinative in all areas relating to law and the military and must be adhered to by all bodies of the military.

As the State of Israel's report on Cast Lead put it:

IDF military lawyers were involved in advising commanders on international law aspects of the Gaza Operation. The IDF structure ensures that the IDF legal advisors can provide frank and professional advice. All legal advisers belong to the MAG Corps and are not subordinate to the commanders they advise. According to Israeli law, the head of legal services in the IDF, the Military Advocate General has an independent status outside the military hierarchy in relation to all legal issues. In principal legal aspects the MAG is subject to the guidance and supervision of Israel’s Attorney-General and regularly consults with the Attorney General. In addition, IDF activities, including during active combat, as well as all MAG and Attorney General decisions are subject to judicial scrutiny and review by Israel’s Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice. As discussed below in Section V.C(5)(c), the High Court of Justice regularly reviews such activities and decisions, and intervenes in appropriate cases.

...Israel’s legal and judicial apparatus is fully equipped and motivated to address alleged violations of national or international law by its commanders and soldiers. Such allegations are reviewed through a multi-tiered system of independent and impartial proceedings before Israeli investigative, administrative and judicial authorities, including Israel’s highest judicial instance, the Israeli Supreme Court.

Israel has a military justice system that operates within the IDF but is professionally independent. The military justice system is based primarily on the Military Justice Law of 1955, a comprehensive statute which governs the investigation of misconduct and indictment and prosecution of offenders and establishes the Court Martial system. The military justice system empowers the Military Advocate General to try soldiers not only for unique “military” offences (such as absence without leave, conduct unbecoming an officer, etc), but also for ordinary criminal offences under Israel’s Penal Law, 1973. Any and all allegations regarding offences committed by IDF personnel, and related to the military, are dealt with through this multi-tiered system, including allegations regarding improper conduct on the battlefield.

The IDF system of review includes three main components: the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (“MPCID”), the Military Advocate General’s Corps (“MAG”), and the Military Courts. The MAG Corps and Military Courts are both independent from the IDF command hierarchy, are subject only to the law, and are also entirely independent from one another.

It is worth noting that the MAG Corps was established as a completely independent entity some 55 years ago.

A number of years ago, anti-Israel activists tried to get Spanish courts to prosecute Israelis for actions that occurred in Gaza, under Spain’s Universal Jurisdiction statute, using the argument that the internal IDF judicial system cannot investigate the IDF indpendently. Last summer, the Criminal Chamber of the National Court of Spain threw the case out. As the Cast Lead report mentions:

The Criminal Chamber of the National Court of Spain emphasised Israel’s ability to fully and fairly investigate the charges itself. It held that Israeli procedures and decisions with regard to the legality of preventive strikes under international law, and the military, civilian and judicial review in Israel of the Shehadeh incident, comport with the principle of complementarity, as the State of Israel is a democratic country where the rule of law applies.

The group that created the rebuttal to the Goldstone Report due out this week is headed by a former IDF chief intelligence officer and the MAG was a part of the task force he led to help ensure independence in the project.

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Dershowitz rips apart Goldstone

45 pages of damning critique:

The Goldstone Report, when read in full and in context, is much worse than most of its detractors (and supporters) believe. It is far more accusatory of Israel, far less balanced in its criticism of Hamas, far less honest in its evaluation of the evidence, far less responsible in drawing its conclusion, far more biased against Israeli than Palestinian witnesses, and far more willing to draw adverse inferences of intentionality from Israeli conduct and statements than from comparable Palestinian conduct and statements. It is worse than any report previously prepared by any other United Nations agency or human rights group. As Major General Avichai Mandelblit, the advocate general of the Israeli Defense Forces, aptly put it:

“I have read every report, from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Arab League. We ourselves set up investigations into 140 complaints. It is when you read these other reports and complaints that you realize how truly vicious the Goldstone report is. He made it look like we set out to go after the economic infrastructure and civilians, that it was intentional: It’s a vicious lie.”[2]

The Goldstone report is, to any fair reader, a shoddy piece of work, unworthy of serious consideration by people of good will, committed to the truth.

... It is poorly written, obviously drafted by several different hands and without the benefit of a good overall editor. It is laden with internal inconsistencies, shoddy citations of authority, and overall poor craftsmanship. If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, this report lacks even the grace of a dromedary. Most of the commentary on the report, both pro and con, seems to be based on its somewhat sanitized summary and conclusion. Some of the worst mistakes are buried very deep in the report, many of the most serious ones toward the end.

I have read every word of the report and compared different sections. I have offered to debate Goldstone about its contents. He has refused, as he has generally refused to respond substantively to credible critics of the report. My offer to debate still stands. If he refuses, as I expect he will, let him at least respond to the serious legal, factual and moral criticisms contained in this study and others.[3] As the head of the mission and the report’s most visible public defender, Goldstone has a public obligation to respond to responsible criticism, which to date, he has not done.

In the coming week, the Secretary-General of the United Nations will present a compilation of responses to the Goldstone Report.[4] I am submitting this analysis for inclusion.

Most of Dershowitz's findings are things we have seen before, but he presents it well, focused on the report's flawed methodology and clear bias. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: I just noticed that Dershowitz quoted Hosem.org for a list of militants who were classified as civilian. The Hosem people wanted to use my team's research and video, but they wanted an exclusive, which I was not willing to do. So I told them my methodology and they essentially re-did my and my team's work, using only the Al Qassam Brigades website. They did a nice job, though.

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Brave Gaza protesters meekly followed Hamas orders

Omri at Mere Rhetoric noticed a interesting part of Amira Hass' article about the Gaza Freedom March a few weeks ago:

The march was not what the organizers had dreamed of during the nine months of preparation. ...Some people said that Hamas government representatives had found the NGOs did not have a clear, organized plan for the guests and therefore had taken the initiative.

Another said, "From the outset, Hamas set conditions: No more than 5,000 marchers, no approaching the wall and the fence, how to make speeches, how long the speeches should be, who will make speeches. In short, Hamas hijacked the initiative from us and we gave in."

Hamas, or its Popular Committee, brought 200 or 300 marchers. The march turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators. Especially photogenic were four Americans from the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta, who joined the trip only at Al Arish. There were no Palestinian women among the marchers - a slap to the many feminist organizers and participants, both women and men.

After the march, the guests voiced protests to some of the official Palestinian organizers. "We came to demonstrate against the siege, and we found that we ourselves were under siege," they said....

Some, especially the Arabic-speakers, complained that "a shadow in the shape of a security man" continued to accompany them.

In meetings without the security men, several activists got the impression that non-Hamas residents live in fear, and are afraid to speak or identify themselves by name.

Elsewhere in the article the Hass describes the protesters in heroic terms: "direct democracy in action," "without secrets, without orders from on high, without hierarchies," "popular, non-hierarchical action and its ability to bring about change." Yet when they made it to the promised land of Gaza, all of these slogans and stated goals went out the window, and they allowed themselves to be used in a glorified Hamas photo-op, not uttering a peep of public protest even when some of them belatedly realized that Hamas is the enemy of freedom in Gaza.

Somehow, I don't think that any of them will be protesting Hamas.

It seems that the "freedom" that the GFMers are interested in is not exactly congruent with the usual meaning of the term.

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International NGO members detained by Hamas

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas arrested a number of the members of the Cooperative Housing Foundation International (CHF) NGO.

According to the report, five members were arrested and forced to sign pledges that they would not continue operations.

PalPress reported last month that Hamas had shut down the NGO.

The CHF website has nothing on the issue, although its last press release from Gaza pre-dates the report of its closing down.

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"Palestinian" unity - something you can always count on

Today, Hamas sentenced two Fatah members to lengthy prison sentences.

The crime?

"Contact with Ramallah."

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"Jews controlling the world through polio vaccines"

MEMRI uncovers a fevered rant in an Urdu-language jihadist women's magazine. Here's part of it:

"The Jews, who dream of ruling the world, have invented different types of vaccines, drugs, and injections in an organized way to weaken Muslims in their beliefs on spiritual, practical, and moral levels, and make their bodies contaminated. The oral polio vaccine campaign is being run under a worldwide conspiracy – except in the Zionist countries. Its total focus is now on South Asian countries – India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The U.S. has already marked this area as an extremely strategic region."

"Have we ever thought why these greedy Jews and Christians are spending millions of dollars on this campaign?

1) The Pentagon, a U.S. defense institution, provides about $100,000 million for this campaign every year.

2) The WHO spends $150,000 million dollars on this campaign every year.

3) Rotary International also provides a sizable amount for this campaign. Like thousands of NGOs, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the NGO of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, has alone given $750 million for the vaccination of children in poor countries – more than double the amount that the U.S. government gave to the people affected by the tsunami. This will help the WHO vaccinate 90% of children around the world by 2015. All these organizations are known to work openly for the interest of Zionism.

...

"An analysis of how the polio vaccination is prepared is sufficient in order to understand how the viruses of haram [forbidden in Islam] and unpious animals like monkeys, chimpanzees, dogs, mice, and pigs are being injected into our [Muslim] bodies.

"Experiments were carried out in different stages on 4,000 monkeys imported from India and the Philippines in 1955, at a deserted place near a river in the area of Bluffton, in southern California. After that, polio vaccines were prepared from their kidneys.

"None other than Jonas Edward Salk (1914-1995) was responsible for this achievement. Besides being a prominent bacteriologist, he was a great Jewish spiritual leader who is revered even now by Jewish religious scholars and rabbis. "

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Saudi Arabia finally steps up for Haiti

From the Arab News:

Saudi Arabia will donate $50 million in aid to earthquake-devastated Haiti. “On instructions from Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, the Kingdom will donate $50 million to assist the Haitian people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Osama Nugali said Monday.

Since the quake hit, the oil-rich nation had been strongly criticized for not donating anything.

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Who's to blame for Gaza's imminent power plant shutdown?

From Ma'an:

An EU contract paying for fuel shipments into the Gaza Strip for its sole power plant expired on 30 November 2009, according to Kan'an Obeid, deputy manager of the Energy Authority in the coastal enclave.

While the EU had been providing the service after the contract expired, EU officials notified the Energy Authority that they would no longer pay for the fuel shipments unless the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah drafted a new agreement and payment scheme.

Obeid said that the fuel in Gaza will last until Thursday morning. If a new shipment does not arrive, Gaza's power plant will be forced to shut down, in turn affecting 70 percent of the population.

Missing from this story is the fact that Israel is willing to provide the fuel Gaza needs - the problem is that someone needs to pay for it. Apparently, the world's Arabs, who claim their solidarity with the beleaguered Strip daily, cannot seem to find it in their hearts to pay for their Gaza brethren's fuel.

Hamas, which gets hundreds of millions of dollars from Iran, is not interested in paying a dime for the citizens under its control to get any electricity either.

The PA expects the EU to provide the cash, while the PA gives an across-the-board raise to all of its workers.

But when the power plant shuts down, and the Gaza stringer photographers take their poignant pictures of Gazans in candlelight, guess who will be blamed?

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Abbas just declared himself President for Life

Remember last October when Mahmoud Abbas made a big deal over saying he will not run in the next set of Palestinian Authority elections?

Even though people worldwide panicked over his threat, others noticed that it was nothing more than a sympathy ploy and that he was going to be president for a long, long time.

Now, he's quietly made it official.

Abbas just rescinded his October call for "early elections" (according to the PA Basic Law, the elections should have been held by this week) and instead he plans to sign a new decree this week that postpones new elections until there is a consensus about when and how they should be held.

And that in the meantime, Abbas remains president. Given how the negotiations of unity between Hamas and Fatah have dragged on, chances are that he will be president for a long, long time.

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I found the "dam!"

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights also blames Israel for supposedly opening up a dam in order to flood poor Gazans during torrential rains last week:

For the second time in the past ten years, at approximately 6pm on Monday 18 January 2010, Israel opened the floodgates of one of the dams in the Gaza Valley, which flows into Gaza from the east. As a result, dozens of Palestinian houses and properties were damaged. Israel built this floodgate to prevent the rainwater's natural flow into Gaza, depriving the Gaza aquifer from its main natural source of underground water.

Here we see how trustworthy this prestigious "human rights" organization is. Since it is the second time it happened, it must tell us about the first:

A similar situation had occurred when the so-called Nahal Oz dam suddenly collapsed nine years ago, on 26 March 2001. Hundreds of donams of agricultural lands; chicken and cow farms; and rural houses were damaged.

It seems we found a dam, in Nahal Oz! Yet the news stories from that date don't quite call it a dam - it is a reservoir:

A special committee has been established to investigate the bursting of a reservoir near Kibbutz Nahal Oz yesterday which caused extensive flooding and the loss of over 3 million cubic meters of irrigation water. The purified sewage water piped in from the Dan region treatment plant flooded vast tracts of arable land and swamped low-lying fields of Palestinian farmers in the nearby Gaza strip.

So we see that Al Mezan is lying in the first paragraph when they claim that Israel opened the floodgates in 2001; it is lying when they said that Israel opened a dam in 2010, it is lying when it says that the purpose of the "dam" is to deprive Gazans of rainwater (the water in the reservoir is piped in as purified sewage water for Israeli agriculture.) But it means that we can now find that picture of the "dam" we were looking for, even if it was never opened - and, indeed, if it is unlikely to even have a mechanism for opening.

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More of your tax dollars....

From Ma'an:

The Palestinian Authority will increase employees' salaries by 4% this month, Amjad Abu Raed, head of the Union of Government Officials said on Monday.

Abu Raed said that a 2.75% increase will be tacked on to salaries for the cost of living, and 1.25% will be given as an annual bonus.

All governmental employees will receive the raise, he said, adding that the union received a formal decision from the Ramallah government announcing the decision.

A good number of those that will be receiving this across-the-board increase live in the Gaza Strip - and don't work at all.

Thus helping ensure that Hamas can use all the money it gets from Iran for weapons, and not to actually take care of Gazans.

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Abbas' big accomplishment for the week

Who says that Mahmoud Abbas doesn't do anything? He is sponsoring weight-reduction surgery for this 39-year old man, who in his healthier days was able to pull cars with his teeth.

As Ma'an says,

The man fearful that his obesity will cause his death is to receive two surgeries to alleviate his condition and assist his weight loss, which will be sponsored by President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abdul Fattah Abu Addas, 39, and from the Balata Refugee Camp east of Nablus, weighs 250 kilograms ( 551 lbs) and has lost two siblings to obesity related deaths. Abu Addas' had appealed for assistance as the procedures were deemed cosmetic surgery by the Ramallah-based Ministry of Health.

The surgeries include a gastric bypass and liposuction, worth an estimated 7,000 Jordanian dinars.

Abu Addas has not been able to move unassisted for several years and is unable to have children as a result of his obesity.

Previously Abu Addas was an athlete, participating in competitive tug of war matches and winning a number of accolades, in addition to pulling cars with his teeth.

Abbas has ordered that the surgery be carried out immediately.

Maybe Abbas didn't want the world to see a Palestinian Arab who somehow manages to stave off Zionist-induced starvation.

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Stupid science by The Lancet

The Lancet is one of the world's most prestigious medical journals. In recent years, however, it has moved a bit from medical to political, and the results are that it has become a purveyor of idiotic social science studies as well.

The latest version is a study that looks at Palestinian Arab men who beat their wives ("intimate partner violence") and who is to blame for it.

Take a wild guess.

Here is the abstract:

Background

Intimate-partner violence might increase during and after exposure to collective violence. We assessed whether political violence was associated with male-to-female intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Methods

A nationally representative, cross-sectional survey was done between Dec 18, 2005, and Jan 18, 2006, by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. 4156 households were randomly selected with a multistage random cluster design, from which 3815 ever-married women aged 15—64 years were identified. We restricted our analysis to presently married women (n=3510, 92% participation rate), who completed a short version of the revised conflict tactics scales and exposure to political violence inventory. Exposure to political violence was characterised as the husband's direct exposure, his indirect exposure via his family's experiences, and economic effects of exposure on the household. We used adjusted multinomial logistic regression models to estimate odds ratios (ORs) for association between political violence and intimate-partner violence.

Findings

Political violence was significantly related to higher odds of intimate-partner violence. ORs were 1·89 (95% CI 1·29—2·76) for physical and 2·23 (1·49—3·35) for sexual intimate-partner violence in respondents whose husbands were directly exposed to political violence compared with those whose husbands were not directly exposed. For women whose husbands were indirectly exposed, ORs were 1·61 (1·25—2·07) for physical and 1·97 (1·49—2—60) for sexual violence, compared with those whose husbands were not indirectly exposed. Economic effects of exposure were associated with increased odds of intimate-partner violence in the Gaza Strip only.

Interpretation

Because exposure to political violence is associated with increased odds of intimate-partner violence, and exposure to many traumas is associated with poor health, a range of violent exposures should be assessed when establishing the need for psychosocial interventions in conflict settings.

Funding

Palestinian National Authority, Core Funding Group, Program in Health Disparities Research at the University of Minnesota.

So the study, meant to demonize Israel, was partially funded by the Palestinian National Authority - and the samples were chosen by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, which is paid by the same Palestinian National Authority.

Anyone see a problem here?

This is not theoretical. It appears that the PCBS chose people for the study that were not close to a random sample of Palestinian Arabs in the territories. Look at this table, entitled "Exposure to violence perpetrated by occupation forces or settlers in 2005:"
3% of the surveyed people claim to have had their homes demolished by Israel in 2005, and 6% to have had land confiscated. 8% claim to have had their home broken into by either IDF soldiers or "settlers." 1% of the husbands were "made fugitives." Almost 1% had family members killed by Israel in 2005!

These numbers are so out of whack with reality as to be laughable - but for the "social scientists" who only hear about house demolitions and land being stolen, they seem eminently reasonable. For all of the talk in the study about "adjusted multinomial logistic regression models" used, none of them looked at these numbers and concluded that it seems a bit strange to think that 15,000 adult men became "fugitives" in the territories in 2005.

So either the PCBS skewed the "random samples" in a huge way, or we have a large number of survey respondents who are simply liars in claiming to be direct victims of Israeli violence in 2005.

And people who are likely to lie in that way are also people who would blame all of their problems on others - and, very likely, the same kind of people to take their frustrations out on their wives.

But the Lancet study cannot imagine such a scenario. Instead, it relies on equally flawed previous studies and a healthy dose of political correctness to say things like

The feminist perspective is relevant to understanding the occurrence of intimate-partner violence because patriarchal ideologies and institutional practices underpin violence against women.28 Pre-existing gender inequalities are exacerbated and traditional gender roles are challenged in environments in which forms of collective violence persist.3 Occupation policies and interactions with occupation forces entail continuous humiliation for men and renders them unable to protect and provide for their families, potentially leading to frustration and violence against people with less power—namely, women and children.26, 29 From a resource-theory perspective, violence might be used to reassert men's socially established position of power in the family.30

And this:

From a psychological perspective, the frustration encountered in living under the control of the Israeli occupation could lead to aggression via negative affect.31 Various negative mental health sequelae have been associated with exposure to political violence in the occupied Palestinian territory32 that are also associated with an increased risk of perpetrating intimate-partner violence, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.33 Humiliation, which takes place frequently in the occupied territories,32, 34 is associated with depression;35 hence, it might also be a mediator of the relation between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence.

The two footnotes that supposedly talk about how frequently Arabs are humiliated are a bit suspect. Footnote 32 refers to this book that has no chapters on humilation. Footnote 34 refers to a study of 10th and 11th grade students in Ramallah by Bir Zeit University that may mention the frequency of "humilation" among that sample but whose purpose was not to measure that number.

There is a more fundamental problem with the very way that the study was framed. It looks at "exposure to political violence" as a purely passive phenomenon. The Palestinian Arab men are judged, a priori, as being innocent victims of Israeli violence, who had done nothing on their own. The 1% of the sample who were "made a fugitive" or the 2% who were "detained" are assumed to be exactly the same psychological makeup as those who are more indirectly affected by Israeli policies. In fact, those who are directly exposed to such "political violence" are the ones who are much more likely to be the ones who cause political violence, i.e., members of terror groups. It is not surprising that people who are more violent towards Israelis would also be more likely to be violent towards their wives. Yet the study didn't even consider this very obvious observation!

In other words, this study is worse than worthless. It obscures more than it reveals and it unintentionally shows how a pre-existing bias can, and does, skew science and statistics. It is a case study in poor research techniques. It proves that social scientists can easily find the answer that they are predisposed to find, rather than seek the truth.

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Upcoming book review open thread

I just received two books I had ordered (alas, not that I was sent for free.)

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle should be a fun read, and Hillel Cohen's Good Arabs is a follow-up on his very illuminating book "Army of Shadows" that I reviewed two years ago. I hope to get to find the time to read and review them in the next month or so.

What interesting books have you been reading?

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Iran: "Zionists fearful of Iranian tourism growth"

From Iranian FARS News Agency: (you might not want to click on the link; it does weird things to your browser)

A senior Iranian tourism official said that the Israeli regime is striving to block growth and expansion of Iran's tourism industry by hindering tourist travels to the country.

"Zionists fear the arrival of even one tourist in Iran and have employed all their propaganda and media capabilities to fill the world people with pessimism about conditions in Iran to impede tourist travels to the country," Deputy Director of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization Reza Mousavi added.

Yeah, we Zionists are kept up at night worrying about how to hurt the Iranian tourism industry.

This was of course a reaction to the news that Iranian officials shook hands with the Israeli tourism minister in Madrid last week. Mousavi again denied that story.

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Today's PalArab news (1/24/10)

A Hamas jeep in Gaza City was blown up by unknown assailants. No one was injured.

One was killed and dozens injured in an Arab clan clash that made it to east Jerusalem. Shops were torched and a bus was shot at. Israeli police are trying to calm things down.

Hamas leader Dr. Khalil Al Hayya said that Iran supports Hamas "financially, politically and morally." He pointedly did not say "militarily," not that he has to.

Hamas welcomed the new UNRWA Commissioner-General, Filippo Grandi. Interestingly, Hamas asked him to move the stranded Iraqis of Palestinian Arab origin from under the aegis of UNHCR (where they have a chance of becoming citizens of other nations and of not remaining "refugees" for generations) to UNRWA (where they will be added to the pawns being used as cannon fodder against Israel.)

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Hamas' response to Goldstone?

Dia Al Madhoun, a Hamas judge and head of the Central Committee to Document and Prosecute Zionist War Criminals, has claimed that everything Hamas did during Operation Cast Lead was legal in international law.

In an article in the Al Qassam Brigades website, al-Madhoun lays out his "legal" arguments.

Firstly, he says, the rights of Hamas to use rockets and other weapons is protected by international law, and he brings as proof a UN General Assembly resolution from 1970 (25/2621) which "Reaffirms the inherent right of colonial peoples to struggle by all necessary means at their disposal against Colonial powers which suppress their aspiration for freedom and independence."

He doesn't mention that GA resolutions have no force under international law, before even getting to whether Gaza is "occupied" or whether Jews returning to their homeland are "colonialists."

Al-Madhoun adds another reason: he claims that Hamas rockets are only aimed at Israeli military targets. He says that the reason Israeli civilians die is because, firstly, because the rockets supposedly aimed at the army sometimes miss [apparently many thousands of times], and secondly because Israel had no right to "transfer" Jews to live in Sderot to begin with because it is a conflict zone and as such Israel is violating the human rights of its citizens.

Since the vast majority of Israelis now live within range of rocket fire from Palestinian Arab and Hezbollah territory, I guess the only legal solution is for all Israelis to leave the country. I imagine the UN will propose this solution soon enough.

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Rumors swirl around Egyptian film as being pro-Israel

The latest Arab rumor is centered around a film being made in Egypt, called "Naji Atallah."

The rumor, as reported byArabic Al Arabiya, is that the film calls for the normalization of ties with Israel and the building of the wall between Egypt and Gaza. As a result, Arab leaders are not allowing filming to take place on location in their countries.

The plot of the film seems to be that it is a comedy about an Arab with severe debts who hatches a plot to steal a fortune from an Israeli bank. The plot succeeds, but in every Arab country in which they try to start anew, they keep losing their money.

Egyptian cinema often has a political subtext, but the theme here does not seem to be normalization with Israel (which the writer denies explicitly in Al Arabiya) but the idea that Arab unity is a myth. The movie's plot allows the writer and director to explore intra-Arab differences and disputes, implying that they are much worse than problems with Israel.

The screenwriter was interviewed last October as saying, "I rejected the term 'Arab brotherhood'... How, then, we are brothers when we are unable to establish an Arab common market, when we eat each other, and we must admit that most governments and Arab media hate Egypt."

So since his message of intra-Arab hatred is so combustible, it appears that the rumors of a pro-Israeli movie are the most effective means to try to shut it down altogether.

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IDF violence against Arab women?

Palestine Today has a photo essay purporting to show how violently IDF soldiers handle Arab women protesters. The article itself says:

Clashes erupted on Monday between Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers in Nabi Saleh village near Ramallah in the West Bank, where there was a violent demonstration and youths pelted Israeli soldiers with stones, Israeli soldiers responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The young Palestinians scuffled with Israeli soldiers, and were was violently assaulted by Israeli soldiers and who arrested some of them.

The following images show the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian women:

Even the article admits that the violence was started by the protesters, not by the IDF. Even so, it claims that the soldiers were cruelly assaulting PalArab women.

Here are three of the supposedly damning pictures showing what appears to be an assault of an innocent, unarmed woman:
Look at the poor Arab woman , cowering as she is apparently about to be hit by the callous IDF soldier with his machine gun! Looks pretty bad, right?

And here she is seemingly being assaulted by the same soldier:



And again:
But if you look closely, things are not as they seem.

The pictures are being shown out of sequence: the Arab woman, knowing that IDF soldiers aren't going to fire at her, tries to grab the machine gun out of the soldier's hands (picture 3, machine gun mostly obscured but you can see the strap), manages to turn the soldier around while holding on to the strap of the machine gun as he tries to pull it away (picture 2) and then the first picture shows him after he managed to wrest it away, while other soldiers come to help him out!

It turns out that these photos were snapped by Reuters, and the caption of photo #3 is "A Palestinian woman tries to grab the weapon of an Israeli soldier in the West Bank village of Nabi Salih, near Ramallah, January 22, 2010. " For some reason, they didn't caption photo #2 the same way, and they botch the caption of photo #1 as if the IDF soldier is about to assault her, even as they add "The woman ran away unhurt."

A woman violently tried to grab a soldier's machine gun and was not even arrested.

Rather than showing IDF cruelty, these pictures show almost superhuman restraint on the part of IDF forces as they are being physically assaulted by women who know very well that they are not going to be badly hurt. Like these:
This next picture, almost unbelievably, shows a woman grabbing at the face of an IDF soldier. There is nothing defensive about this at all, and it shows how little the protesters have to fear from the soldiers, knowing full well they will not be shot an unlikely to be hurt:
Similarly, this woman appears to be grabbing at the soldier, not holding him off defensively:
At the same time, the boys are hurling rocks at the soldiers:

The photos that are meant to show cruelty unintentionally show the opposite - that Palestinian Arab protesters intentionally try to provoke soldiers into losing their cool, especially when there are photographer around.

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Hamas minister accuses "extremist Jews" of pushing drugs in Jerusalem

Palestine Today quotes Dr. Taleb Abu Sha'ar, Minister of Religious Affairs in the Hamas government of Gaza, of accusing "extremist Jewish groups" of promoting drugs to Arabs in Jerusalem.

He urged Jerusalem Arabs to defend themselves from "Zionist conspiracies and plots to destroy the will of the people and to break the steadfastness of our people."

Heavy, man.

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Israelis to check if Pashtun come from 10 lost tribes

From The Telegraph two weeks ago:

Experts at Mumbai's National Institute of Immunohaematology believe Pashtuns could be one of the ten "Lost Tribes of Israel".

The Israeli government is funding a genetic study to establish if there is any proof of the link.

An Indian geneticist has taken blood samples from the Pashtun Afridi tribe in Lucknow, Northern India, to Israel where she will spend the next 12 months comparing DNA with samples with those of Israeli Jews.

The samples were taken in Lucknow's Malihabad area because it was regarded as the only place safe enough to conduct such a controversial project for Muslims.

Shanaz Ali a senior research fellow, will lead the study at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Tel Aviv.

There are an estimated 40 million Pashtuns around the world including more than 14 million in Afghanistan and 28 million in Pakistan, mainly in the North West Frontier Province and Tribal areas but also with a strong presence in Karachi.

Many have grown up with stories of their people being "Children of Israel". According to legend, they are descended from the Ephraim tribe which was driven out of Israel by the Assyrian invasion in around 700BC.

Evidence of ancient Jewish settlement has been found in Herat, close to Afghanistan's border with Iran, where a graveyard contains tombs inscribed in Hebrew. The Afghan capital Kabul also has a centuries-old synagogue which has long been abandoned.

A couple of years ago, the University of Chicago had a small genetic study to test these claims, and they found no links at all.

The news is being reported in the Arabic press as trumpeting that the Taliban might be Jews (actually, Ha'aretz said that first) and that it makes sense, since both groups have "genetic aggressive behavior."

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Saturday night open thread

I just turned on a comment feature that this post is meant to test - the ability for you to flag people's comments, and if they get below a certain score, they get deleted. It should be used for especially offensive posts, not merely if you don't agree with someone's opinions.

We'll try it out and see if it works. If you see something offensive in the comments, click on the "Flag" option.

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Islamic Jihad celebrates Beit Lid massacre anniversary

On January 22, 1995, Islamic Jihad staged one of its bloodiest terror attacks, the double suicide bombing at the Beit Lid junction. 21 were killed.

One of the more heinous tactics used in this bombing was the targeting of medical personnel. As ambulances and medics converged on the scene to help the victims, the second bomber ran into the crowd and blew himself up as well.

Predictably, the Islamic Jihad mouthpiece newspaper Palestine Today is celebrating this attack today on the 15th anniversary.

It is worthwhile to note that the Beit Lid massacre was the seventh major terror attack after the Oslo "peace" agreement, just sixteen months after the signing. What was supposed to herald a new era of peace was instead bringing the worst wave of terror within Israel in its history. Even dovish then-president Ezer Weizman called for a halt in the "peace" accords in the wake of Beit Lid. Yitzchak Rabin didn't listen, and the bombings continued, years before the second intifada.

This is what the world called "peace," and it is what terrorists are celebrating today.

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Fatah calls Hamas kettle black

Fatah seized on yesterday's non-story of Hamas leader Aziz Dwaik supposedly saying that Hamas accepts Israel right to exist and then denying it.

Palestine Press Agency reports that Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf says that this shows that Hamas speaks out of both sides of its mouth. He said that Hamas tries to fool Arab and Islamic countries when it says it is a resistance movement, and then tells the international community about its willingness to recognize Israel, and live with them long-term truce, even in a Palestinian state with provisional borders.

He then accuses Dwaik's denial as being insincere, saying that even after his attempts at "spin" he proved that Hamas really does recognize Israel.

What is funny, of course, is that Fatah does the exact same thing, as it pretends to support the "peace process" on the one hand and turns around and says it supports "resistance" on the other. Weekly violent demonstrations in Bil'in and Nilin are wholeheartedly supported by Fatah, PLO and PA leader Abbas. Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades continues to exist, and presumably still gets support and funding from Fatah leadership. Even Fatah's platform from last year mentioned "resistance" as well as support for the "peace process" (given large preconditions.)

It is especially funny to hear Fatah accuse Hamas of speaking differently to Arab audiences than to Western audiences, as it was Fatah's leader Yasir Arafat that turned that skill into an art form.

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More Gaza "civilians" and more PCHR lies

Even though I haven't been spending too much time lately on looking for more dead Gaza "civilians" who were actually terrorists, other people (notably PTWatch) has been diligently digging through Arabic websites and we keep adding to the list.

As of right now, we have identified 358 terrorists who were categorized as "civilians" by the PCHR. Add together the rest of the police and the "militants" that PCHR counted, and we have 667 dead Gazans who were legitimate targets, quickly closing in on half of the dead not being civilians.

Many of the civilians were clearly being used as cover or were unavoidably killed in a legitimate operation. The latest "martyr" PTWatch found is a case in point.

#901, Usama Sa’id Mohammed Lubbad, was a recruiter for Islamic Jihad (who also evidently taught Islamic Jihad tenets to the terrorist equivalent of Cub Scouts in a mosque) and he was killed on January 9th. His obituary mentions that he was killed with a few of his Islamic Jihad friends - mentioned in PCHR as #897, 899, 900 and 909. That's five Islamic Jihad members in one shot, a legitimate target by any measure.

However, during the attack two other people were killed. One was a seven year old boy, the other a 55-year old man. Their deaths were unavoidable by the IDF, and very justified under international law.

Looking back at how PCHR described the attacks at the time, we can see how they purposefully lie to make Israel look like it deliberately attacked civilians. In one section of the report they say

At approximately 09:40 on Thursday, an IOF aircraft fired a missile at three members of the resistance who were near al-Qassam mosque in Beit Lahia, killing all three:

1. Mohammed Nafiz al-Hindi, 25;

2. Anwar Jaber Abu Salim, 24; and

3. 'Abdul Nassar 'Abdul Gaffar 'Ouda, 23.

A couple of paragraphs later they say

At approximately 13:00, medical sources announced the death of Ussama Said Lubbad, 19, of wounds sustained earlier on the same day when IOF warplanes bombed a group of young people in Beit Lahia. Another 3 civilians were immediately killed in the same attack.

These were not two separate attacks, but the same one, as Lubbad's obituary makes clear. PCHR pretends that there were two attacks so that they can claim that the IDF deliberately targeted "a group of young people" - implying that the IDF targeted civilians, one of their memes that has been copied and repeated by HRW, Amnesty and Goldstone.

Out of the group of 7 killed, five were terrorists. PCHR must have known at the time they wrote the report that it was a single attack.

Notice also where the terrorists were - near a mosque.

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Erdogan accuses Israel of using WMD in Gaza

Turkey's prime minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of using "weapons of mass destruction" in Gaza in an interview with a TV station from the UAE, according to Palestine Today.

Apparently, only one side in the recent diplomatic spat between Israel and Turkey is trying to smooth things over.

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US State Dept. encourages trade with Gaza

The State Department has something called an "E-Consulate" to act as a virtual US consulate to the Gaza Strip.

It includes this page:

Yes, U.S. companies can do business in Gaza! Dozens of U.S. firms have established agencies and disrtibutorships [sic], and Palestinian consumers have a strong preferance [sic] for a wide variety of U.S. goods and services.

In particular, many U.S. companies have re-oriented their marketing efforts to acknowledge the Palestinian market as culturally, economically, and commercially distinct from the Israeli market. The U.S. Commercial Service in Jerusalem strongly encourages U.S. exporters wishing to market their goods in the West Bank & Gaza to use local Palestinian agents and distributors. Using Israeli agents for Palestinian markets does not utilize local, Palestinian market expertise, and does not allow U.S. firms to maximize their sales exposure to the local market. We can help you find well qualified Palestinian agents and distributors for your products.

Please visit us online at: http://www.buyusa.gov/westbank/en/

I found a cached variant of this page from 2006. It is interesting that the page was never updated since then and gives the appearance of reflecting current US policy, as does the linked page at BuyUSA.gov.

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Arab writer convinced Israel's Haiti aid pure propaganda

The often anti-semitic, far left People's Voice finds an Arab willing to talk about how Israelis saving lives is clearly a propaganda ploy:

Why Israel send a team to help Haiti? What is the relationship between Israel and humanitarian aid?

If we were to canvass the question among 10 million Palestinians the Zionist state of Israel possessed of human compassion? I very much doubt that the consensus would be positive. More than likely those canvassed would be bewildered by such a question in light of the suffering they endured all these years.

With such a litany of crimes against humanity to its credit it is difficult to reconcile with the show of compassion Israel is extending to the Haitian people, who live half a world away, while at the same time they cause such misery and suffering to Palestinians who live only a few hundred meters from their comfortable homes and towns.

In the absence of any evidence that Zionists have any compassion towards humanity one might conclude that the aid the Zionist are giving to the devastated people of Haiti nothing more than ‘crocodile tears’. A cleverly crafted piece of propaganda, designed to clean up the reputation the Zionist state has for the brutal disregard for human suffering.

Then the article goes into fantasyland:

On the other hand it would have been very logic [sic], very natural, and in harmony with the Palestinian culture that the future post Zionism Palestine will help brothers and sisters in humanity anywhere in the world. Palestine history is the best testimony: Palestine has helped and welcomed refugees and religious and ordinary immigrants from many parts in the world.

Fatah and Hamas were throwing each other off of buildings a couple of years ago. But, given the chance, Palestinian Arabs would naturally help Haitians!

But when Palestine was struck by the Zionist earthquake it cannot unfortunately help others because it needs first to be free from the occupation, in other word the Palestinian humanism will be appear when the inhuman Zionism disappear.

Ah, now we are back to the usual PalArab self-pitying mindset we are so used to. They really want to act like normal, compassionate human beings, but the "Zionists" are stopping them! It's the occupation! The average person in Ramallah can't possibly think about those who are crushed underneath buildings because he sometimes has to go through a checkpoint!

In other words, once the Palestinian Arabs succeed in throwing the Jews into the sea, then the world can see what wonderful people they really are.

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Dwaik denies Hamas "moderation"

From Ma'an:

Palestinian Legislative Council speaker Aziz Dweik on Thursday denied reports by Israeli news outlets that he said on Wednesday Israel has a right to exist.

"The media reports in question were inaccurate," he said in a statement, adding that since his release from an Israeli prison last year, Israeli news outlets have repeatedly misrepresented his views.

The Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli newspaper, quoted Dweik as saying on Wednesday that the Islamic movement has accepted Israel's right to exist and would be prepared to nullify its charter, which calls for dismantling the state.

The person he supposedly made these statements to helpfully explains why he is so dense as to believe the opposite of what Hamas has been clearly and adamantly saying for decades:

The remarks were said to have been made during a meeting in Hebron with British millionaire David Martin Abrahams, who reportedly maintains close ties with senior Israeli and British government officials.

Abrahams, who the The Jerusalem Post identified as a major donor to Britain's Labor Party, told the newspaper he would urge Foreign Secretary David Milliband to "consider the implications of Hamas's positive overtures."

"The fact that there is a possibility for recognition of Israel is a symbolic gesture," he reportedly said. "We can all look for good in people and we can all look for bad in people. I always look for the good."

He was also quoted as saying: "People might say that I'm naïve, so let them."

I think we just proved it!

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