Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 23, 2010

George Will on the "two state delusion"

'Twas a famous victory for diplomacy when, in 1991 in Madrid, Israelis and Palestinians, orchestrated by America, at last engaged in direct talks. Almost a generation later, US policy seems to have succeeded in prodding the Palestinians away from their recent insistence on "proximity talks" -- in which they've talked to the Israelis through American intermediaries -- to direct negotiations. But about what?

Idle talk about a "binational state" has long since died. Even disregarding the recent fates of multinational states, binationalism is impossible if Israel is to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people. No significant Israeli constituency disagrees with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: "The Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders."

Rhetoric about a "two-state solution" is de rigueur. It also is delusional, given two recent searing experiences.

The only place for a Palestinian state is the West Bank, which Israel has occupied -- legally under international law -- since repelling the 1967 aggression launched from there. The West Bank remains an unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate, the disposition of which is to be settled by negotiations. But with constructive bluntness, Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to America, puts aside diplomatic ambiguity:

"There is no Israeli leadership that appears either willing or capable of removing 100,000 Israelis from their West Bank homes -- the minimum required to make way for a viable Palestinian state even with Israel's annexation of its three main settlement blocs. [Those blocs function as Jerusalem's suburbs.] The evacuation of a mere 8,100 Israelis from Gaza in 2005 required 55,000 IDF [Israel Defense Forces] troops -- the largest Israeli military operation since the 1973 Yom Kippur War -- and was profoundly traumatic."

Twenty-one Israeli settlements were dismantled; even the bodies of Israelis buried in Gaza were removed. After a deeply flawed 2006 election encouraged by the United States, there was in 2007 essentially a coup in Gaza by the terrorist organization Hamas. So now Israel has on its western border, 44 miles from Tel Aviv, an entity dedicated to Israel's destruction, collaborative with Iran and possessing a huge arsenal of rockets.

Rocket attacks from Gaza rose dramatically after Israel withdrew. The number of UN resolutions deploring this? Zero. The closest precedent for that bombardment was the Nazi rocket attacks on London, which were answered by the destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities. When Israel struck back at Hamas, the "international community" was theatrically appalled.

Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon says, "Our withdrawals strengthened jihadist Islam," adding, "We have the second Islamic republic in the Middle East -- the first in Iran, the second in Gaza: Hamastan."

Israel's withdrawals include the one that strengthened the Iranian client on Israel's northern border, in southern Lebanon. Since the 2006 war provoked by Hezbollah's incessant rocketing of northern Israel, Hezbollah has rearmed and possesses up to 60,000 rockets. Today, Netanyahu says, Israel's problem is less the Israel-Lebanon border than it is the Lebanon-Syria border: Hezbollah has received from Syria -- which gets them from Iran -- Scud missiles capable of striking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A leader of Hezbollah says, "If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

Because upward of a million immigrants have come from the former Soviet Union, today a sixth of Israelis speak Russian. Russian Israelis are largely responsible for Avigdor Lieberman's being foreign minister. Yoram Peri, professor of Israeli studies at the University of Maryland, says these immigrants "don't understand how a state that can be crossed in half an hour by car would be willing to even talk about relinquishing territories to its seemingly perpetual enemies." These immigrants know that Russia's strategic depth defeated Napoleon and Hitler.

Netanyahu, who's not the most conservative member of the coalition government he heads, endorses a two-state solution but says any West Bank Palestinian state must be demilitarized and prevented from making agreements with the likes of Hezbollah and Iran. To prevent the importation of missiles and other arms, Israel would need, he says, a military presence on the West Bank's eastern border with Jordan. Otherwise, there will be a third Islamic republic, and a second one contiguous to Israel.

So, again: Negotiations about what? And with whom?

The yarmulka goal

Last week, Yerushalimey sent me a link to this video showing an Israeli from Hapoel Tel Aviv scoring a goal against Red Bull Salzburg in Austria and then putting on a kipah in celebration:

From JTA:

The stunt earned [Itai] Shechter a yellow card and apparently garnered attention in Israel, where the gesture was widely interpreted as a triumphant gesture against the Nazi history of Austria’s past. Ynet reported that the kipah was given to Shechter by a cancer patient and a longtime Hapoel T.A. fan.

In an interview with One sport, declaring that he “would have put the kipah on even if they had put me in prison,” Shechter said the following (my translation from the Hebrew):

"I wasn’t trying to anger anyone. A young tzaddik gave [the kipah] to me in the airport. I told my friend that I’d put it in my sock and if, G-d willing, I score, I’ll wear it; I didn’t think this was a provocation. I wanted to say Shema' Yisrael. What was going on in my mind was that, 'I know that there are may Jews that are watching me from their home and are happy.'

The player received a yellow card for unsportsmanlike behavior, and I cannot understand why this is more offensive than any of the elaborate goal celebrations I have seen.

Anne Frank tree falls

From Reuters:

A giant chestnut tree that comforted Dutch diarist Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic during World War Two collapsed in heavy wind and rain on Monday.

No one was hurt and the 150-year old tree fell across a fence, missing the Anne Frank House, which has been turned into a museum and was full of tourists.

"It broke off like a match. It broke off completely about one metre off the ground," a spokesman for the house said.

The tree was one of the few signs of nature visible to the Jewish teenager from the concealed attic she hid in for over two years during World War Two and it is mentioned in the diary which became a worldwide best-seller after her death in a concentration camp in 1945.

"Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year," she wrote in May 1944, not long before she was betrayed to the Nazis.

The tree had developed fungus and was set to be felled in 2007 due to concerns for the safety of the 1 million people who visit Anne Frank's house each year.

But officials and conservationists later agreed to secure it with a steel frame to prolong its life and saplings from the tree were planted last year in an Amsterdam park and other cities around the world.

A Dutch tree foundation, which fought to keep the tree alive with another support group, said horticulturalists had estimated the tree could still have lived for dozens of years.

Arnold Heertje, a member of the Support Anne Frank Tree group said there were no plans to plant a sapling on the site or preserve the tree's remains.

"You have to bow your head to the facts. The tree has fallen and will be cut into pieces and disappear. The intention was not to keep this tree alive forever. It has lived for 150 years and now it's over and we're not going to extend it," he said.

Hezbollah/Pasdaran

I just came across this graphic in a Lebanese newspaper:

The left is Hezbollah's logo. The right is the logo of the Pasdaran, known better in the West as Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Nothing surprising, although I do wonder who came up with their logo first.

The Arab "refugee" playbook hasn't changed since 1948

In the light of the recent news about how Lebanon slightly eased its onerous restrictions on Lebanese Palestinians, it is worthwhile to look back and see exactly how the Arab world's use of the Palestinian Arab issue has stayed exactly the same over six decades.

Here's an article from the Herald Tribune news service from August, 1958. Little has changed in the past 52 years.

Ralph Galloway's words are as true today as they were in 1954: "The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. they want to keep it an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."

There is one difference between 1958 and today: in 1958, people were still trying to find a way for Palestinian Arabs to be integrated in their host countries, or at least into the Arab world. Now, the world has given in to years of Arab intransigence and abuse of their "guests" and ignores the problem altogether.

No UN agency is tasked with solving the problem of stateless refugees. UNRWA long ago gave up on that idea. The world's collective head is in the sand, hoping that somehow these stateless millions will magically disappear if there is only peace between Israel and the Arab world. Yet even if there was a peace treaty, the problem would not go away, and the way that UNRWA has defined it, it will keep getting bigger and bigger.

No one is willing to stand up and say publicly that it is time for the Arab world to stop treating the Palestinian Arabs as cannon fodder against Israel. It is time for them to accept their responsibility for taking care of the people in their midst, the vast majority of whom have never lived in Palestine.

The Arab world is still keeping the Palestinian issue alive for one reason: to ultimately destroy Israel. That has not changed over the years. It has been obfuscated, it has been buried, but if you read this article and look at the debate in Lebanon over their Palestinians you can see that it has not changed.

Every Palestinian Arab who was born in an Arab country should automatically become a citizen of that country. Without this simple rule, no amount of treaties will defuse this looming crisis. It is a simple implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 7:

1. The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.

2. States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless.

Why has this been so roundly ignored by NGOs? Why has the world accepted Arab abuse of their Palestinian "brethren" as normal? Mostly, why does the world still blame Israel for the plight of people who are born in misery, raised in misery and die in misery in Arab countries under Arab rule suffering from Arab laws meant to keep them stateless and dependent?

The Arabs created today's "refugee" problem, and the Arabs are the ones than can solve it. Until the world opens its eyes to this simple truth and starts to exert pressure to that end, everyone is in danger.

A kibbutz in Rwanda

From the Rwanda News Agency:

It had been the longest journey.

Through desert sands, visa lines, bus rides and the pressing patience of waiting, Natty Mitali arrived at the gates of Zion. The young guitarist had taken the bus from Cairo, dusty and hard-skinned, a journey that had begun further south, near the heart of Africa.

“Like the old Israelites,” says Mitali, who goes popularly by Natty Dread in Rwanda, where he is one of the country’s most famous Rastafari musicians. “Right up to the border.”

It was 1983, and the world was looking dangerous. Israel had just gone to war in Lebanon. The Americans were pushing the Soviets. Mitali was fleeing problems of his own. Tensions between Tutsi and the majority Hutu were surging in his tiny sundrenched home of Rwanda.

His family had grown up as refugees in Uganda, and as tremors of ethnic violence pulsed Rwanda, Mitali moved to nearby Kenya and soon applied for an Israeli visa.

“It was my destiny,” he says.

THINGS IN RWANDA took a turn for the worse.

When the president’s plane was shot down in 1994 it sparked a genocide that in three months wiped out nearly one million Tutsi – including 18 members of Mitali’s family.

From afar in Israel, Mitali grew up, toiling as a farmhand and playing guitar at the Soweto Club on Rehov Frischmann. When there wasn’t enough money, he did like many, and took to the land. Mitali says his time working on the kibbutzim throughout the country – from Na’an to Amirim, Ein Gedi to Achziv, and Shefayim, where he met his first wife – gave him a sense of self, a sense of worth.

Now he has come back, part of a surging Tutsi diaspora flooding home with money and purpose to rebuild a new Rwanda on top of the ruins. They are the followers of President Paul Kagame, who grew up, like Natty Mitali, in Uganda before leading a rebel group to end the genocide.

Deep in Rwanda’s south, between banana plantations and tea fields, Mitali is making his own contribution, the thing that helped him through the darkest times – his own self-styled kibbutz, the Amahoro Youth and Cultural Village.

DESPITE ALL OF Rwanda’s economic progress – its economy grew by 11% in 2008, and it is considered one of the least corrupt countries in Africa – much of its countryside remains poor, and very young.

On over 15 hectares along the southern tip of Lake Kivu in between Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo including two islands, Mitali is setting up a school for some of Rwanda’s most vulnerable – orphaned children, kids taking care of younger siblings with no one else to help, AIDS victims, and child survivors of the Rwandan genocide.

From carpentry to tourism, courses in ecology and music, Mitali is seeking to at once resuscitate life and help develop the country.

Over 70 students, in an admittedly Zionist – and Rastafari – fashion, will work, learn and live together, trying their best to live off the land.

“My time in Israel enlightened me,” Mitali says. “Kibbutzim, collective farms, that’s how the State of Israel was born. Seeing people homeless, with no relations, no orientation, helpless in our present world, I felt the kibbutz kind of solution was the answer to the suffering.” Amahoro means “peace” in local Kinyarwanda, and Mitali envisions a sanctuary – top-notch facilities from a medical clinic to agricultural farms, basketball courts to an eco-lodge. Students won’t just be taught in classrooms, they will receive vocational training.

The plans are coming along nicely – land has been donated by the government, a senior minister is helping advise the project, and architectural designs are being reviewed.

“We are looking forward to it,” says Fabien Sindayiheba, the mayor of Cyangugu district where the school will be. “It will create employability for its graduates, especially for the youth.”

True to the Rwandan spirit not to depend on handouts, Mitali argues, the school will be offering something to the outside. Students will spend time mastering nature conservation and eco-tourism, hallmarks of the national development strategy. A guest house and lodge will be run by the school on one of its islands in Lake Kivu.

“We are socialist on the inside and capitalist on the outside,” says Mitali. “The kibbutz will be a great weapon for fighting poverty.”

Who is burning land in the West Bank again?

Palestinian Arabs and Israel bashers routinely claim that Israeli "settlers" are burning and uprooting Palestinian Arab crops and trees. Some of the stories are probably true, but the chsrges are often made with no evidence.

Yisrael Medad, however, came across some real burned crops and fields, and took pictures of the damage. Yet you won't read about this in any newspaper nor will you see any condemnation of this from any NGO.

Guess why.

Just another day in Gaza

Firas Press reports that Bashir Hammad, a Fatah leader in Gaza, was returning from an outing to the beach with his family when his car was stopped by Hamas troops.

The took him out of the car and shot him in both legs, in front of his wife and kids.

These sort of events seem to be on the increase again.

Hungry or not? Mainstream media's hypocrisy on Gaza

The mainstream media and NGOs were the the main purveyors of the myth of Gaza was suffering from a humanitarian crisis - a myth that goes back to the early 90s at the very least.

Since the Gaza Mall opened, we have seen on a few occasions the people who have made a living talking about how miserable life is in Gaza take a step back and re-frame their arguments. They cannot deny the truth, but they don't want to retroactively look like liars - which is what they effectively have been for nearly two decades.

So, one by one, they are reframing the Gaza meme to try to save face and make sure that people still blame Israel for Gaza's problems.

Gaza is still miserable, these newly-sophisticated and nuanced journalists are saying, but it is not because the Gazans are hungry, or poverty-stricken, or cannot get basic items. Forget all those thousands of articles over the years that we wrote, forget us uncritically quoting Jimmy Carter about how Gazans are "literally starving" or being "starved to death." No, the problems with Gaza are not so much physical but a state of mind, you see.

Previously, we mentioned Slate's backtracking, admitting that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza and no hunger. Instead, Slate quotes an official, it is a "crisis of dignity."

Oh, I see. So how does Gazans' dignity stack up against, say, that of poor Egyptians or Yemenis or even Saudi Arabia's lower class? We don't know, and we won't know, because reporters much prefer to hang out in Gaza where they can visit the Roots restaurant than to go to poor Arab villages in other parts of the world.

Time magazine's reframing of Gaza sounded like this:

Gaza's residents will concede that there is no hunger crisis in the Strip. Residents do love the beach, and the store shelves are stocked. But if you're focused on starvation, they say, you're probably missing the point. To them, the word prison speaks more to the effect that years of conflict and political and economic isolation have had on the Gaza psyche. "We are talking about continuous stress and ongoing trauma," says Hasan Zeyada, a psychologist at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP), the territory's main psychological treatment and research NGO. "It's not one incident, but all of the time. We are at a continuous level of high stress and human-rights violations and traumas through Israeli invasions and war."

Oh, so we are missing the point if we focused on starvation? Then why did Time magazine's Gaza correspondent write, in 2008, "As you sit down to a Thanksgiving feast, please spare a thought for the starving Palestinians of Gaza. There are 1.5 million of them, most of them living hand to mouth, or on UN handouts, because Israel has them under siege."

Now, the latest to join the hypocrites is Ethan Bronner of the New York Times. Two years ago he didn't hesitate to state as a fact:

Militants have tried to infiltrate the border crossing into Israel five times in recent weeks. That has led Israel to keep the border closed more often, further reducing supplies and worsening the already severe humanitarian crisis there.

No nuance there, Gazans were in a "crisis," the exact same way one would describe sub-Saharan Africa or parts of Bangladesh.

Now, however, Bronner has caught onto the new Gaza meme, talking about the Gaza mall:

To the commentators who have never been here, certain points need to be cleared up. To those who contend the mall is proof that Gaza has construction materials: the building is 20 years old. To those who have described the mall as “gigantic” and “futuristic”: it is small and a bit old-fashioned. To Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, who wrote that the mall “would not look out of place in any capital in Europe”: it would.

But the broader point many of these advocates are making — that the poverty of Gaza is often misconstrued, willfully or inadvertently — is correct. The despair here is not that of Haiti or Somalia. It is a misery of dependence, immobility and hopelessness, not of grinding want. The flotilla movement is not about material aid; it is about Palestinian freedom and defiance of Israeli power.

On at least 14 occasions the New York Times described the ships that try to sail to Gaza as "aid ships."

Bronner is not only trying to willfully change the Gaza meme, but in the paragraph above he is showing his own support for the illegal breaking of a legal blockade. He is not quoting a Free Gaza official as to the purpose of the ships, he is stating their purpose from his own perspective - "Palestinian freedom and defiance of Israeli power." He is all but publicly admiring their aims and goals.

However, the fact is that both the media and the anti-Israel activists have used the "starvation" meme as a convenient fiction to focus the world on demonizing Israel. Their current re-framing to change it instead to "dependence, immobility and hopelessness" is nothing more than an attempt to not look like fools and not admit that they have been lying to the world for years.

If they cared about Palestinian Arab "hopelessness" they would be spending much more time in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. They would be interviewing Mahmoud Abbas about why he has yet to dismantle a single "refugee" camp in the West Bank - all of which are under Palestinian Arab control.

No, these hypocritical reporters are not interested in revealing truths about how Gazans live. They have been dining in fine restaurants in Gaza and staying in fancy hotels - they knew the truth for years. They are equally not interested in Palestinian Arab suffering and deprivation - because by any measure, the Arabs in camps in Lebanon envy the Gazans. These hypocrites hammer away at Gaza for years because they want to blame Israel for Gaza's problems, nothing more. They'll occasionally leaven their prodigious Gaza output with an article about Hamas abuses of Gazans, but their focus has been unrelentingly on Israel.

The unraveling of the "humanitarian crisis" meme just shows how deeply the mainstream media has been in bed with NGOs and anti-Israel activists and how easily they parrot false statistics and claims.

Any way you look at it, the media has been lying to you about Gaza for years. Why should you believe them now?

When Ted Kennedy visited the West Bank

From AP, January 8, 1967:

Sen. Edwards Kennedy, D-Mass., toured three refugee camps in Jordan in November as part of a fact-finding tour, without arousing any apparent resentment among the Palestinians.

One patriarch, however, confronted and harangued the senator. "The Jews have killed your brother as they killed Jesus Christ," the refugee told the solemn-faced Kennedy.

Of course, the real irony of that statement was not realized until Kennedy's other brother was assassinated.

Airport delay open thread

I am stuck waiting for a flight that has been delayed 2 1/2 hours (so far.)

All I can say is thank G-d for 3G coverage with my carrier who usually has spotty coverage, for my now-obsolete Android phone having a hotspot feature so I can easily use my laptop, and for finding an electric outlet before the mad rush.

Also, for last minute $59 upgrades to first class instead of the center seat I was going to be stuck in.

Here's an open thread to celebrate my misfortune.

If AFP had decent editors....

It is too bad this AFP article is so poorly edited.

Here's the version that would have been decent:

KIBBUTZ KARMIYYA, Israel — Dana Chetrit, her husband Alain and their two young children in August 2005 reluctantly left their home in the northern Gaza settlement of Elei Sinai, never to return.

They were among 8,000 Israeli settlers evicted by their own government from 21 settlements in Gaza, in a move heralded as ending 38 years of Israeli occupation and as bringing closer an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

To Chetrit, a 36-year-old art teacher, the pullout brought broken dreams, broken promises and a broken marriage.

Five years since soldiers ordered settler Dana Chetrit out of her home, she is still living in temporary accommodation at the Karmiya kibbutz just across the border in Israel.

Her marriage collapsed under the strain of the move.

As a 22-year-old newly-wed in 1996, she had found her ideal home in the small settlement of Elei Sinai, just inside the Gaza Strip and about five kilometers (three miles) from where she now lives.

"It was our first home, it was the home we had been looking for," she said. "We wanted to live in a communal community, it was cheap, there were other young couples there, everyone was like us."

The idyll was shattered in October 2001 when Hamas gunmen cut through the settlement's perimeter fence and shot dead a 19-year-old girl and her 20-year-old boyfriend. Another 15 Israelis were wounded before the attackers were shot dead in a gun battle with soldiers.

Chetrit said the incident only strengthened her attachment to the settlement and her commitment to her neighbours.

But in 2004, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza. On August 18, 2005, the Chetrits were turfed out of their home.

The violence, however, followed them across the border to the small kibbutz collective farm, where she and the boys now live in a five-roomed prefabricated house.

Gaza militants regularly fire rockets across the border. In February 2006, a Qassam rocket, produced in the workshops of the Palestinian territory, thudded into a neighbour's house, destroying it and blowing a toddler out of the playpen in which he had been sitting.

The injured child recovered but the traumatised parents moved out the same day.

"Rockets had fallen before but this was a direct hit," Chetrit said. "If you had seen the house, you would have been amazed that anybody could come out of it alive."

In a separate attack, a rocket fell on the kibbutz football pitch, injuring two people, she said, adding that there were plenty of near misses as well.

Of around 50 families from Elei Sinai who were initially housed at Karmiya, only about 20 remain today, some driven out by fear of more rockets.

Chetrit, who has been promised land on which to build a home in the nearby village of Talme Yafe, said the bureaucratic wheels are turning very slowly.

"We haven't yet received a plot," she said. "By the time we get building permits ... it could be another four or five years."

She is not going to move again until she has a permanent home. "Qassams or no Qassams, I'm not leaving again ... I can't see myself packing up again and moving house," she said.

Instead, AFP threw in a "balanced" set of paragraphs about Arabs in Gaza with no consistent viewpoint and some questionable quotes, breaking up the narrative and changing the article from something pretty good into a nonsensical mishmash.

Why is it so against wire service editorial standards to have a story exclusively from an Israeli perspective? They sure do it for Palestinian Arabs enough.

Hamas fumes at Ramadan skit

Last week, PA TV broadcast a skit on a satirical program that made fun of Hamas leaders - and Hamas reacted angrily.

In the skit, Hamas leaders Haniyeh and al Zahar are waiting anxiously at the Gaza border for curvaceous Lebanese diva Haifa Wehbe to arrive. They are holding signs that say that "the siege is made of Iron, but only Haifa can melt it." When she arrives, she goes into Haniyeh's car and puts on a veil.

The skit continues with Haniyeh being so distraught at her eventual departure from Gaza that he cancels a reconciliation meeting with Egypt and Fatah.

The satire not only makes fun of Hamas hypocrisy but also of Arab celebrities who latch onto Gaza as a cause in order to further their careers (Wehbe was planning to join the women's ship from Lebanon before Hezbollah nixed the idea, according to reports.)

The same program has also made fun of PA leaders and corruption, but Hamas did not take kindly to its airing, accusing the PA Ministry of Information of broadcasting "black propaganda in support of the Israeli propaganda." It was to the "detriment of all Islamic morals and values of the Palestinian National movement, to the point of libel and slander." They said it was "making fun of the leaders of the resistance and the martyrs who gave their children."

I think it is time for a Hamas comedy channel!

(h/t Ali for translation help)

Arabs suffering power outages, water shortages. No flotillas coming.

Some Egyptian areas are suffering from power outages, and as a result there are also water shortages. These are mostly affecting the governorates of Fayoum and Damietta.

The minister of iand energy is pleading with citizens to cut back their electricity usage during the current heat wave.

Affected citizens are starting to hold protests.

Not only that, but basic food staples are in short supply as well.

Of course, this is not news. There are no pictures in the wire services of little Egyptian kids eating their Iftar dinners in candlelight or of people queueing up to get clean drinking water. Because this is not Gaza and no one can possibly blame the Jews for the problems - so they might as well be invisible.

Col. Richard Kemp on the dangers of withdrawal from the territories

From JCPA:

To stand any real chance of success, every insurgent or terrorist movement needs a safe haven to operate from - one that is outside the control of the state being targeted and preferably in a land that is free from interference by the target state or its allies, whether due to geography, the protection of a friendly regime, or operating within a failed state. The Vietnam conflict was a classic example of the use of a safe haven. More recently, in the Iraq campaign, Sunni extremists had a safe haven in Syria which was their main logistic support base and a pipeline for suicide bombers flowing into Iraq. They also used extensive support networks in Iran, which also provided a safe haven for Shi'ite insurgents attacking coalition forces, as well as through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizbullah, which provided training, organization, munitions, and direction.

Today the Afghan Taliban's safe haven and support base is in Pakistan, although the second largest extremist group engaged in Afghanistan, Hizb-i-Islami, has its main base in Iran itself. In March, General Petraeus, the Head of U.S. Central Command, in testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, revealed that Tehran is letting al-Qaeda leaders travel freely between Pakistan and Afghanistan, effectively using Iranian territory as a safe haven, while permitting them also to hold meetings in Iran to plan terrorist attacks against U.S. and other Western targets.

Israel has had more than a flavor of what it can mean to leave hostile groups in control of lands adjacent to its own borders in southern Lebanon and in Gaza. Any similar move to totally cede control to the Palestinians of the West Bank or a part of Jerusalem may have considerable attraction for any peace process, and that is certainly the view of many in the international community. But both prospects would carry immense risk from the perspective of asymmetrical activities against Israel.

Some might argue that a modern high-tech state can monitor hostile activities outside its borders. Yet we've seen many failures of intelligence in relation to offensive activities by conventional forces and war plans by nation-states which are generally relatively easy to identify and monitor. But surveillance and intelligence collection against a deeply embedded, secretive, extremist network operating within a dense civilian population is the most difficult target, and no national intelligence organization can be confident that it will have a high success rate against such a target.

Despite many spectacular successes, including the killing in Pakistan of al-Qaeda's number three, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the unrivalled technological supremacy of the U.S. military has failed to effectively dent the Taliban's ability to smuggle munitions and infiltrate large groups of fighters across the Afghan border. I do not for a moment underestimate the difficulties this entails. Jordan's support or effectiveness in countering extremist activity directed at Israel from the West Bank could not be counted upon, and extremists would also seek to destabilize Jordan, an important stepping stone to the destruction of Israel.

...

It has been suggested that an international force, perhaps a NATO force should replace the IDF presence in the West Bank. While I would not exclude that idea in principle, it raises a number of very serious questions. First of all, where are the NATO troops going to come from and how long are they going to stay? Let us not forget the difficulties that NATO has had for years and still has in mustering forces for the war in Afghanistan - and this is for a campaign that is NATO's declared main effort and its only real, current, live operation. Many of the troops that are there are restricted by significant national caveats, including restricting deployments to the safest areas. Some nations are simply not prepared to put their troops into undue danger. Unfortunately, undue danger goes hand in glove with war and with the toughest peacekeeping operations, and the West Bank would fall clearly into that category. Some NATO nations can't operate after dark and they leave the insurgents to control the night, with all the implications that this has.

There is a significant risk that in trying to develop and maintain good relations with all parties, the peacekeepers would instead become the enemy of both sides. Potential contributors to the international forces would know that. What would happen to those who were prepared to take part when the going got tough, as it inevitably would? ...

Just how sure could we be that the electorates in contributing countries would allow their militaries to remain deployed in the West Bank under these kinds of pressures, and how effective would NATO be as a peacekeeping force in the demanding circumstances that we are considering? The only previous success that NATO is able to claim in this field, and it is by no means uncontroversial, was in Kosovo, which also in practice was a far less complex situation.

... Would a NATO mission be ready and able to take on insurgents, and if not, to what extent would they then get in the way of a vital Israeli effort to do so to protect their own people?

In many ways peacekeeping is far tougher and more challenging than fighting as combatants. It is one thing to act robustly against people that are attacking you and your comrades. It is quite another to put your troops' lives on the line when it is not them but others who are in danger. Dutch forces have fought gallantly and effectively in Afghanistan. They've been brave and they've taken many casualties, but Srebrenica cannot be forgotten. More than 8,000 civilians were massacred there in 1995 under the eyes of Dutch UN peacekeepers.

To conclude, I would neither exclude the possibility of an IDF withdrawal from the West Bank nor their replacement with a NATO force, but before either can be seriously contemplated there are some fundamental questions to be resolved. These issues are critical to NATO, the West as a whole, and the entire Middle East because a failed NATO mission and a West Bank under extremist control, flourishing under a security vacuum there, would encourage and strengthen violent jihadists everywhere in the world.

Read the whole thing.

Fatah website accuses Hamas of killing people for their kidneys

Firas Press reports that a Hamas doctor has killed a mentally-handicapped man in order to harvest his kidneys.

Firas normally rips off their stories from other sources, but I could not find the original story, just a copy in a Fatah forum quoting "Kofia Press" which I am unfamiliar with but looks to be a Fatah website.

While it sounds like a wild rumor, what makes this story so interesting is the amount of specificity: it names the doctor, the victim, the dates, and the place of the alleged crime:

The perpetrator is a doctor named Mohammed Rashid Abdul Hamid Deeb, belonging to Al Qassam Brigades, who lives in the Nasr district, near the Turquoise towers in Gaza City, with identity number 900336215, who was born on September 12, 1974 and works in the Ministry of Health. The victim is mentally handicapped citizen named Anwar Hassouna - known as Anwar Abbas - from Beach Camp he was thirty-eight years old.

Anwar was kidnapped on 15.06.2010 and then [Deeb] killed him with an air injection into a vein leading directly to death, for the removal of his kidney, and the victim's body was disposed of in the area of Wadi Gaza.

The article goes on to say that this case indicates that other "natural" deaths in Gaza could have been murders by Hamas.

Abbas angry at Clinton's invitation "without preconditions"

Last Friday, Hilary Clinton invited Israel and the PA to Washington for direct talks. “These negotiations should take place without preconditions and be characterized by good faith and a commitment to their success,” she said.

According to Asharq al-Awsat, Mahmoud Abbas was furious at the announcement.

The newspaper says that Abbas went "mad" when he heard Clinton's words, because he wanted there to be a statement from the Quartet before the negotiations to confirm that they support a solution based on the 1949 armistice lines.

His angry reaction caused much consternation in Washington, and the White House made three separate phone calls to Abbas in an hour in order to calm him down, according to the report, in order to convince him not to abandon the talks.

US support of the LAF is counterproductive

A "news analysis" in the New York Times by Robert F. Worth comes, unsurprisingly, to a conclusion that the US must continue and perhaps increase aid to the corrupt and ineffective Lebanese army. Its flaws are obvious, starting with the beginning:

Earlier this month, Israeli soldiers were pruning a tree on their country’s northern border when a firefight broke out with Lebanese soldiers across the fence, leaving one Israeli and four Lebanese dead.

The skirmish seems to have been accidental.

And Worth's ability to ignore basic facts just keeps going. He mentions

The Lebanese Army, meanwhile, has been so intent on preserving its status as the country’s one neutral institution that it is now largely impotent. During the fighting in May 2008, for instance, soldiers sat in their American Humvees and watched, unwilling to take sides.

Yet he concludes that if the US wouldn't fund the LAF, then Hezbollah would take over Lebanon.

This "analyst" clearly hasn't spent five minutes reading the statements of mainstream Lebanese, including LAF leaders, concerning the border incident with Israel. Their reaction was identical to Hezbollah's - no one is the least bit critical that they sent a pre-planned ambush to murder Israelis, complete with tipping off a large number of reporters that a routine and legal tree-cutting was going to turn into major headlines. Their hatred of Israel far exceeds their hatred of Hezbollah. The liberal idea that funding states somehow magically turns them into friends has been proven time and time again to be laughably false, but it has become a major foundation of US foreign policy.

Everyone who reads Worth's worthless piece should also read the following, written by EoZ contributor Zvi.

Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid provides a fairly sensible commentary on the Lebanese Armed Forces' attempt to seek donations to fund procurement in the wake of the loss of $100M from the United States. Although one provably fallacious phrase has been added (the claim that the tree was in southern Lebanon is "malarky"), the rest of the column is quite sensible.

The crisis with the Lebanese army is not due to it being ill-equipped, nor does this concern the army's need to develop, but rather the problem is the army's position in the structure of the state, and the lack of it being acknowledged as the only state instate with the right to bear arms.

In other words, the problem is that the government of Lebanon is not a sovereign government, according to the definition of sovereignty. It does not have supreme, independent authority over Lebanon, because it cannot control territory held by Hezbollah or by the Palestinians. It does not enjoy a monopoly on the use of force, and cannot enforce its authority throughout the state.

Al-Rashid concludes,

One of the reasons that may have prompted the Americans to spend so generously to equip the Lebanese army – having invested more than $600 million to date – is because they think that the army will one day be strong enough to eliminate militias such as Hezbollah. However this is unrealistic when looking at the current situation in Lebanon; for the army will remain weak without a political agreement on granting the military powers, not just weapons.

Any western support for the LAF is pointless and misguided. Recent events demonstrate that while the LAF cannot and will not solve any of Lebanon's problems, it can easily make them worse. With this in mind, and despite my respect and affection for the people of Lebanon, the United States and other western powers must not support or contribute to the LAF.

Who do you trust more to understand Lebanese politics: a New York Times columnist whose conclusions were set in stone before he did any research, or an Arab who has studied Lebanon for years?

Jamaican Orthodox Jew, former hip-hopper, murdered in Brooklyn

From CBS:

A robbery in Brooklyn Thursday night led to the death Yoseph Robinson, a man whose life led him on a journey from street criminal, to music executive, to a conversion to Orthodox Judaism.

The former hip-hop record executive who converted to Orthodox Judaism, was shot and killed while trying to stop a gunman from taking a woman's jewelry at a Brooklyn kosher liquor store where he worked.

Police say Robinson was shot in the chest and arm Thursday night at the MB Vineyards liquor store in the Flatbush section of the borough.

Residents say the 34-year-old Jamaican-born man had recently converted to Judaism and enjoyed telling customers about his spiritual journey.

"He was a good guy. Rock solid," Rabbi Ezra Max told the New York Post of Robinson.

More than 100 people from the Orthodox and Hasidic neighborhood gathered outside the liquor store to pay their respects.

You can read more about Yoseph's life on his website.

Lebanese call on gov't to kick Palestinian Arabs out of Leb.-owned homes

Hot on the heels of the slight easing of restrictions on professions that Arabs of Palestinian descent in Lebanon can practice, the Lebanese Forces (which are mostly Christian) are trying to ensure that PalArabs cannot live in Lebanese-owned homes:

The Lebanese Forces urged the government on Saturday to find a solution to Palestinian occupants of homes owned by Lebanese in villages east of the southern port city of Sidon.
While hailing parliament's decision to grant Palestinians working rights, an LF statement said "the Lebanese government is urged to find a quick solution to the issue which has become an unacceptable burden."

It said homes in Miyeh Miyeh, Darb al-Sim and other areas are occupied by Palestinians.

The government should adopt an effective solution to find alternative housing to them, the LF said.

The bigotry in Lebanon against Palestinian Arabs is so entrenched that it is not newsworthy. This isn't about the PalArabs owning land - this is saying that they cannot even live outside camps, even if they are (apparently) paying for it!

Mariam ship delayed yet again

From Ya Libnan:

Samar al-Hajj, coordinator of the Gaza bound Mariam aid ship said on Saturday that the ship is now scheduled to depart Tripoli port on August 29, instead of Aug 22

She told LBC: “It seems as if there is universal war against us … We will not allow anyone to cancel the ship’s trip.”

Hajj added that the ship will not head to Gaza directly from Tripoli, stressing: “The ship cannot be the reason for the start of a war.”

Meanwhile, a source from the Cypriot foreign ministry told Ad Diyar Saturday: “Since Cyprus is a member of the European Union and maintains its policies, it will not allow the Mariam to sail to its ports and later head to Gaza in order to avert any problems.”

Cyprus’ foreign minister had recently toured a number of Arab states explaining his country’s position from the ships docking at its ports.

Earlier reports indicated that the ship may sail first to Greece instead of Cyprus and contacts are ongoing to get Greece’s approval for docking the ship at one of its ports .

Originally, the ship's organizers said they would sail some 9 weeks ago. Sounds more like a publicity stunt than an aid ship.

But who knows - maybe they will sail to Venezuela and then towards Gaza.

Latest Latma is The Bomb

Includes The Bomb song:

Thanks to the many who sent this in!

JNews fails its stated purpose

Last March, a group of left-wing British Jews started a new website called JNews. In the words of the founder of the site, Miri Weingarten, writing in Comment is Free,

There is therefore an urgent need for reliable, real-time information, authoritative and expert commentary, and deeper and more courageous analysis – all of which must be informed by a primary concern for human rights and social justice. JNews – Alternative Jewish Perspectives on Israel and Palestine is being launched today to answer this need.

An initiative of a group of British Jews, JNews will make its output available to the British and international media through its website. It will feature news and stories focusing on the lives of Israelis and Palestinians and on the work of organisations and individuals struggling to protect and promote human rights and create conditions in Israel and Palestine in which social justice can prevail.

JNews will bring to public attention the authentic voices of those directly affected by the conflict and highlight the problems facing migrants and asylum seekers in Israel, the poor and the dispossessed, Arab-Palestinian citizens and the Bedouin. More generally in Israel-Palestine it will focus on the conditions of prisoners and detainees, the status and treatment of women, and the political and civil rights of Palestinians living under occupation and under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

While the description here is heavily weighted towards perceived Israeli abuses rather than any Palestinian Arab abuses of human rights, this description at least pretends that it would look at both.

On the site itself, it partially describes itself this way:

JNews believes that disseminating a range of viewpoints broader than that offered by most Jewish and Israeli organizations will benefit Palestinians and Israelis.

JNews supports the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and believes the two are intertwined.

JNews believes in the application of the universal principles of social justice and human rights as the path to a just and comprehensive solution to the conflict.

Given these high standards, of being able to have a "broader" range of viewpoints and of caring about the human rights of all Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, how well has it done?

The answer is simple. It looks exactly like a Palestinian Arab publication. There is nothing Jewish nor the least bit Zionist about it.(There are two articles over five months that quote Jewish sources to advocate a secular, liberal Judaism.)

Based on keyword searches, I found exactly one article over the past five months that could be construed as critical of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas - and that was a verbatim copy of a PCHR press release about PalArab elections.

There is barely a word on the entire site criticizing Hamas' human rights record. There is nothing criticizing the PA's human rights record. Nothing about the lack of press freedoms in the territories, nothing about rockets, nothing about terrorism, nothing about Hamas and Fatah infighting.

JNews does not care about the human rights of Palestinian Arabs. They only care about the human rights of those that they can consider oppressed by Jews. In this sense, they are exactly in the mainstream of world anti-Zionism.

As far as the supposedly broad "range of viewpoints" that it was meant to have, every single article is either left, far left or ultra left (including one by the founder that quotes without any criticism an EU opinion that every part of Israel outside the 1947 partition lines is "occupied.")

JNews is yet another case of using a veneer of Jewishness in order to do one thing: criticize the Jewish state. That is the entire purpose of the site, and everything it says about caring about human rights and liberalism and a range of viewpoints is simply a lie. (So are many of the articles it chooses to publish, but that is an argument for another day.)

(h/t Bella)

Great moments in autotranslation

Ozil at the top of orgasm after joining Real Madrid

"Aid ship" updates (updated)

The media continues to claim that there is an Algerian ship headed to Gaza. Ha'aretz, the Jerusalem Post, UPI, and many others are making that claim.

They are all wrong.

It is beyond me why reporters parrot stories when they can look at the Algerian press and see that, from the outset, the ship was going to El Arish in Egypt. Algerian national radio also said that the ship was headed to El Arish.

This is why I try not to rely on secondary sources when I can avoid them. Reporters are lazy. Yesterday it took me about five minutes to track down the truth - and this is without knowing Arabic. Sheesh.

Meanwhile, the much-delayed Mariam is now supposedly going to sail this Sunday. However, it cannot go straight to Israel from Lebanon because the countries are in a state of war, and Cyprus has stated that they will not allow the ships to dock there.

I think that the IDF might be using female soldiers to handle that Mariam if it comes close.

UPDATE: Was the ship named after Mary in order to make intercepting Jews look bad? From the Tehran Times:

“After the Mavi Marmara incident, one of the women hailed Mary during our weekly meeting. Her exclamation came like a revelation, so we decided to call our ship Maryam (Mary in Arabic). The name was perfect for a vessel that comprised only women. Who could disparage the Virgin Mary, a recognized saint in most religions?” says Hajj.

Gazans kill 62-year old "witch"

From Ma'an:

An investigation by [Al Mezan] confirmed earlier reports that unidentified men fired at Jabriyeh Abu Kanas as she sat in front of her house with her 75-year-old husband. She was pronounced dead on arrival at Ash-Shifa hospital.

In a sworn statement to Al Mezan, one of Abu Kanas’ relatives said he witnessed the shooting. He told the rights group he was returning from buying Jabriyeh groceries, and saw a silver Hyundai car, with blacked-out windows and no number plates, stop outside Jabriyeh’s house. He heard what he believed to be muted gunfire, and then the car sped away, leaving his aunt bleeding from her chest.

Abu Kanas’ relatives added that a fortnight ago two cars, a Mercedes and a Skoda, tried to approach Jabriyeh but fled when her family appeared.

Locals had accused the woman of practicing witchcraft and voodoo, officials said Tuesday. Her relatives told Al Mezan that she cured people using traditional methods.

If you don't like someone in Gaza, just start spreading rumors about them. The problem then takes care of itself.

Speaking of, I hear that Ismail Haniyeh is gay...

Planes, trains and automobiles

I am traveling today, using all three titular methods.

This gives me the chance to do two things: create an open thread, and use the word "titular" in a sentence.

Blogging will be light through Sunday.

Two stories about theft

A truly awful story emerged today from Israel, as there appears to be evidence that some IDF members stole and sold equipment from the flotilla ships a couple of months ago, including laptops.

"This matter is very problematic in terms of values, as the incident allegedly took place after it was clear that the flotilla was a serious international affair," the source added. "An officer who under such circumstances steals equipment which does not belong to him, and then tries to sell it – it's almost incomprehensible."

The affair embarrassed the political arena as well, with Knesset members demanding that the army prevent such incidents from repeating themselves at almost all costs.

"This is an embarrassing, humiliating and infuriating act," said MK Eitan Cabel (Labor). "The IDF must handle this affair according to the strict letter of the law.

Meretz Chairman Chaim Oron called on the army to utilize the investigation to the fullest, noting that "the multiple number of incidents, in which basic values are compromised, requires the army to hold a thorough investigation into the causes."

There is no doubt that the citizens of Israel will not stand for this and will do whatever needs to be done to ensure that the guilty parties are punished and that the root causes are fixed. There is a deep, nationwide sense of embarrassment, anger and shame over the incident.

Contrast this with this story that received next to no coverage:

French aid group Help Doctors accused the Palestinian Hamas organisation on Wednesday of seizing equipment and files from one of its Gaza clinics which it closed in June.

"Four men from the (Hamas) interior ministry entered the clinic on Tuesday morning and seized computer equipment, telephones, chairs, office equipment and medical files," the organisation said in a statement.

The men left the premises without saying why the equipment was being confiscated, it said.

Will Hamas open an investigation? Will people be prosecuted? Will the doctors have an opportunity to sue?

And - why are these questions laughable to a world that has no problem saying with a straight face that the IDF is less moral than Hamas?

There are, sadly, bad people everywhere. The best way to measure the morality of a society is by seeing how everyone else acts when their own people do bad things.

Another town square named after a terrorist

A terrorist who heroically murdered a teenage girl.

From PMW:

On June 11, 2002, a Palestinian suicide terrorist walked into a restaurant in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya, and detonated a bomb that killed a girl, 15-year-old Hadar Hershkovitz, and injured 16 others.

Picture of suicide terrorist and Arafat on monument in town square in West Bank town Madama. [PA TV, May 15, 2010]

The town square in the West Bank town of Madama where the terrorist lived features a monument honoring "the heroic Martyrdom-Seeker" and his "heroic Herzliya operation." The monument has pictures of the suicide terrorist and of Yasser Arafat.

The text above the terrorist's picture is a verse from the Quran, urging Muslims to fight the non-believers and promising that Allah will "lay them low":

"Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands,
lay them low and give you victory over them,
and heal the hearts of a believing people." [Quran, 9,14]

Below his picture are the words:

"The heroic Shahada - Seeker (Martyrdom- Seeker, PA term of honor for suicide terrorists) Omar Muhammad Ziyada (Abu Samed) who carried out the heroic Herzliya operation on June 11, 2002

From the Jerusalem Post, June 13, 2002:

This coming Tuesday, Hadar Hershkowitz, 15, was to have sung and danced at her middle school graduation in a special performance of fairy tales created by the students.

Instead, friends and family members yesterday heaped her fresh grave with flowers and crowded into the Herzliya Cemetery only a few short blocks from her home to say goodbye.

Hershkowitz was killed by a suicide bomber while walking with a friend outside Jamil's shwarma grill on Rehov Sokolow. A friend, also a student at Ze'ev Jabotinsky Middle School in Herzliya, was seriously wounded in the attack.

One young speaker at the funeral said, 'We are all asking why, why was it you? ... We don't believe what happened, but still we are here to talk about our beloved friend.'

'We can still see you, hear you, and feel you,' another friend said. 'You loved life. You were nervous about starting high school, but you were still very optimistic. You were always so happy. You loved to have fun and to go out with your friends. You never liked being alone. We loved you so much and we won't forget you.'

Despite the hot sun, friends stayed in a tight circle around her grave and lit yahrzeit candles.

School principal Aviva Moran said, 'She was at the center of her social circle. She was very attached to her friends. She loved to help them. She got so much love from her family. She didn't keep it to herself - she passed it to her friends and they passed it back to her.'

I'm sure that there are outraged protests at that square every day by residents of Madama who are incensed that such a person is being honored in their town.

I'm sure that there have been many op-eds in the Palestinian Arabic media denouncing this honor.

I'm sure that President Abbas is working to ensure that this never happens again and that he will personally apologize to the family of Hadar Hershkovitz.

Because that is how decent human beings would act. And we all know that everyday, average Palestinian Arabs are just like everyone else, and would naturally find the existence of this square to be an affront to everything they hold dear.

They are the peace partners, after all. They wouldn't call a person whose entire existence is defined by his murdering a 15-year old girl at a shwarma shop a hero. That would be unspeakably horrific.

The square, which has been up since at least May, is surely an anomaly, a mere mistake and will be dismantled any day now. In fact it is difficult to even imagine that people designed and built it, that a town approved it, and that people pass it by every day without any hint of outrage.

Or, at the very least, I'm sure I can find a single person protesting it. A single Arabic op-ed. Something.

Right?

George Will on "taking risks for peace"

George Will's latest is a keeper:

In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."

...

The intifada was launched by the late Yasser Arafat -- terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner -- after the July 2000 Camp David meeting, during which then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line.

Israelis are famously fractious, but the intifada produced among them a consensus that the most any government of theirs could offer without forfeiting domestic support is less than any Palestinian interlocutor would demand. Furthermore, the intifada was part of a pattern. As in 1936 and 1947, talk about partition prompted Arab violence.

...

Israelis younger than 50 have no memory of their nation within the 1967 borders set by the 1949 armistice that ended the War of Independence. The rest of the world seems to have no memory at all concerning the intersecting histories of Palestine and the Jewish people.

The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived. And if the Jewish percentage of the world's population were today what it was when the Romans ruled Palestine, there would be 200 million Jews. After a uniquely hazardous passage through two millennia without a homeland, there are 13 million Jews.

In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Soccer Dad)

Reuters lies on Lebanese Palestinians

Reuters-Middle East Watch picks up on a story by Mariam Karouny on Lebanon's slight easing of restrictions on what professions Palestinian Arabs can now enter, after 62 years.

One sentence is an out-and-out lie:

Palestinians themselves have repeatedly said they oppose plans to settle them in Lebanon, saying they want to go back to the villages their families fled or were forced to flee during fighting which created the state of Israel in 1948.

This is not true. What is true is that so-called Palestinian Arab leaders have said this publicly, and that the Lebanese leaders and non-Sunni citizens are also against their naturalization - but no one has done any survey or poll asking Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon, Jordan or Syria whether they would like to become citizens in the countries that they have been in for decades.

All available evidence is to the contrary.

From Forced Migration:

The Lebanese Government and the majority of the Lebanese people oppose any permanent integration of the Palestinian refugees (USCR Report, 1999: 1), under the pretext that granting citizenship to the Palestinians, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, would upset the delicate sectarian balance in Lebanon. They also blame them for the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. It is interesting to note that in the 1950s and 1960s around 50,000 Palestinians were granted Lebanese citizenship, mainly Christian Palestinians as well as some middle-class Muslim families. However, the latter achieved this by employing the services of lawyers and proving Lebanese ancestry. During the 1990s, about 20,000 more Palestinians were granted nationality (Khalidi, 2001: 16). In 1994, Shiites from the seven border villages and a year later some Sunnis, as well as the remaining Christian Palestinians who hadn’t been granted Lebanese nationality in the 1950s or 1960s became Lebanese (Peteet, 1997).

On May 27, 2003, the Lebanese Shura Council ordered the Ministry of Interior to re-examine the files of around 150,000 people who have been granted Lebanese citizenship according to Decree No. 5247 of June, 1994. The timing of this ruling is significant, as according to Lebanese law a period of 10 years has to elapse before new Lebanese citizens are granted full civil rights. The Minister of Interior has declared that he will revoke the Lebanese citizenship of Palestinians and others who have obtained the citizenship by false means.

So on at least two occasions, tens of thousands of Palestinian Lebanese were given the chance to become citizens - and they took advantage of it. As far as I can tell, none that had that opportunity spurned the offer, saying that they would prefer to go back to the villages they lived in before 1948 and would rather stay in miserable Lebanese camps.

Yet Reuters airily says, without any attribution or proof, that the entire population of "Palestinians" have repeatedly opposed such plans.

Tell that to the Youssef Ahmad, interviewed in the New York Times this week, who said "If I am going to live and die here, then I want all my rights." It sure doesn't sound like he opposes settlement in Lebanon.

Too bad Reuters felt it necessary to push this lie that keeps hundreds of thousands of human beings in misery.

Hamas deducting wages to pay for electricity

Hamas says that it will deduct 170 shekels ($45) from everyone's wages this month in order to pay for the fuel for Gaza's electric plant.

There are about 30,000 government employees in Gaza, meaning that in theory some $1.3 million will be available to pay the bills every month.

A plan was floated last month to garnish the wages of PA employees in Gaza for the same purpose.

However, the head of Gaza's electric company complained that he had no infrastructure to track the customers and the payments, and it sounds like this will turn into a new debacle.

Gaza's electric company is $1.3 billion in debt.

Another Lebanese army officer accused of spying for Israel

From Ya Libnan:

Judge Saqr Saqr of Lebanon’s military court on Wednesday charged Colonel Antoine Abu Jaoudeh with spying for the enemy (Israel), meeting with Israeli Mossad agents abroad and providing them with information on the resistance and army in exchange for money from 2006 until his arrest earlier this month.

This brings to four the number of active duty army personnel arrested on charges of espionage.

More than 100 people have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel since April 2009, including members of the security forces and telecom employees.

Five Lebanese have been sentenced to death for spying for the Mossad so far, including two who were sentenced Tuesday.

Some of the comments are fascinating.

As bad as this sounds, I really dont see any difference with this colonel spying for isreal or SSNP spying for syria, to be quite honest, wahab, beik, aoun and the rest of the spies should meet the same fate as abu jaoudeh. It shouldnt make any difference who the country you are spying for is, its treason! and its harming your own country and its people.

More Lebanese were killed by the Lebanese warlords like Gaega, Bashir Gemayel, Jumblat, Berri , and others like them, than even Those killed by Syria and Israel Combined. I wish all of us will start doing some self examinations. Look each other in the eye, and have the guts to admit the mistakes we’ve made. Look at the leadership we have, and tell them that they are killers. Stop following, blindly, the same leaders who are producing more of themselves. Stop the sectarian instigation, and start looking at ways to improve our political structure so we can have a better Lebanon. Our Problems didn’t start with Iran or Syria. They started when we adopted a sectarian system that forced every sect to seek support and protection in a different country. Iran wasn’t around when Israel started attacking Lebanon back in the 40’s and 50’s. Syria wasn’t in Lebanon either. ...Where will all the hatred take us? Another civil war? We’ve been there, and we know ( I hope) the pain of that.

Indeed, h/a [Hezbollah] are worst than the israelis. They are supposed to be lebanese citizens, not agents for syria and iran. Let’s be realistic, do you think in this life tha israel will cease to exist as iranians, syrians and h/a are touting.What part of NO you do not understand youssef. Israel is not the doing of Lebanon, however the Lebanese are paying the highest price. If iran and syria are so adamant about liberating palestine why don’t they do that. Cowards, they bark from the other side of the fence and lick their tails once the action starts.

Those racist settlers exploiting Arab football players

How else can the Western media spin this story?

Amotz from Psagot passes the ball to Ramzi from Beit Hanina, who in turn passes it to Oria from Neve Daniel. Oria scores a touchdown and runs to hug Ayoub and Moussa. A hopeful vision if a new Middle East? Not really. This is the day-to-day reality in the Judean Rebels football team, one of nine teams in the Israeli league.

Most of its players reside outside the Green Line in Jewish communities such as Psagot and Efrat, as well as in Arab neighborhoods like Beit Hanina and Shuafat.

Four Arabs played for the team this season: Cameron, Ramzi, Ayoub and Moussa who grew up in Colorado and Miami. When their grandfather fell ill three years ago, the four arrived in Israel with their families. While looking for a football team to join, they never imagined they would end up with the Judean Rebels.

"I was walking in Jerusalem one evening. Suddenly I saw a group of thugs. I asked whether they were into football, and they said: 'Sure, but you should know that we're Arabs,'" says Shlomo Barya Schachter, the team's captain and coach. "The Arabs said they attempted to join another team, but were told it would create tension with the fans and other teammates."

"I told them we didn't care, so long as they agree to keep politics off the playing field," Schachter said.

The four showed up at practice and immediately fit in. "This team represents the real Judea and Samaria. No one cares where you're from," Moussa says enthusiastically.

Last season, the team finished fourth in the league. Their fans mostly comprise Gush Etzion residents as well as a group of Breslov Hassidic followers who follow the team wherever it goes, armed with a sign which reads "Revolution."

"We talk about politics sometimes, issues such as settlements and terrorist attacks, but never in an argumentative way and always as part of a respectful debate. I don't mind them living in settlements so long as they don't mind me being from Beit Hanina. After all, a good person is a good person," Moussa says.

Some of the players, including Moussa, are applying for football scholarships overseas. The team has sent videos of their games to various universities on his behalf.

A month ago, a problem emerged after coach Schachter invited the players to a special practice at the Kraft Stadium in Jerusalem. The four Arab players had moved to the eastern side of the ssecurity fence over the summer and have applied for a Palestinian ID card. This means they need the security establishment's approval to attend practice sessions or games. Thus far, their requests have been rejected.

Consequently, the four failed to attend the opening practice and the following sessions.

"I have a major problem on my hands," Schachter says. "Where in all of Judea and Samaria will I find a player like Ayoub? They were excellent defense players, especially brothers Moussa and Ayoub Elayyan."

Yes, those "racist Jewish settlers" are lobbying the IDF to allow Arabs to go into Israel to play American football.

(h/t Joel)

Send a message to Gilad Shalit

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has set up a website where you can send Gilad Shalit birthday wishes (August 28) and Rosh Hashanah greetings. They plan to take these messages to the ICRC and demand that Hamas allow the ICRC to visit Gilad and deliver the messages, in accordance with international law.

Go sign up.

(h/t Israeligirl)

Irish student abused for supporting Israel

From Irish Central, August 10:

A Cork student is complaining she is the victim of a 'hate campaign' after volunteering for the Israeli Defense Force.

Cliona Campbell, a 19-year-old Cork student, took the unusual step of volunteering for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and says she has now become the victim of a hate campaign.

Campbell returned to Cork after two months working with the IDF to what she called public abuse, including emails and text messages telling her to 'keep her head down' after writing a piece for the local paper based on her experiences.

'I came back after two months and wrote a piece on my experiences. Now I am getting hate mail and being targeted. I went into a clothes shop where I live and the security guard came up to me abusing me. My Facebook page link was posted online in a forum and I started getting emails telling me to keep my head down from now on. My friends started getting abusive emails soon after that too.'

Campbell says she is surprised and upset at the personal insults that have also been sent to her.

'There were guys online as well saying that I was 'rough' in terms of my looks and bringing it all to a new, personal level as well. If I was a man coming back from being in the IDF, there would be none of that. That is the upsetting part.'

Campbell says most of the reaction has been because she spoke highly of her time with the army and maintains her own strong beliefs about their work.

'I got on really well with the soldiers. They were all there for their own reasons and had their own stories as to why they were there. I have a huge interest in the Jewish people and always have had so I had no hesitation about going out there.'

Campbell took the unusual step of joining the IDF after applying through Sar-El, a volunteering project that agreed to send her over to work for eight weeks.

'I took a crash course in Hebrew first and spent ages preparing. It was a massive culture shock, but very worthwhile. A lot of the days would be spent re-mantling guns and working with the soldiers out in the 42-degree heat.'

Campbell also added that she joined a protest against the flotilla to Gaza in May during which the IDF shot dead nine passengers on board one of the boats.

'I was a bit sad to be coming home, and now I've come back to all this discussion,' Campbell says. 'Some of the people writing to me and about me say they now see me as a terrorist and that they don't even see me as Irish anymore. I stand up for what I believe and I get hate mail and abuse, and I wouldn't mind if half of those people could back up what they are saying with a logical argument.'

Her original article is here. It is no surprise that anyone who shows real love for Israel will be so insulted by Israel-bashers - because they cannot argue with love.

You might want to "friend" her on Facebook.
(h/t Silke)

Is there a new blockade-breaking ship from Algeria to Gaza?

JPost reports:

Another aid ship meant to break the IDF naval blockade on Gaza sailed out of Algeria, Channel 10 reported on Thursday.

The ship reportedly left Algeria in the early afternoon, and is sponsored by the government. Religious and political figures are on the vessel, along with food, and educational and medical supplies.

The ship was organized by the Muslim wise men organization in Algeria, and funded by business men, according to Channel 10. The organizers said the ship's purpose is to "show identification with the Palestinian nation."

However, according to this Algerian paper, the ship is headed to El Arish, Egypt where the aid will be transferred into Gaza via Rafah.

I cannot find the ship's name, to be able to track its progress.

Fascinating newsreel of Dimona, 1962

From Point of No Return blog:

Rivka has just arrived with her family from Karachi, Pakistan. They brought only the 30 kg they could take with them. One of 4,000 children now being schooled in Dimona, she sings a song in a mixture of Hebrew and her native tongue. In 2010 Rivka is probably an 'old-timer' with grandchildren in the IDF.

It may look like a Soviet propaganda video, but this clip (Hebrew only, regrettably) by the late film-maker Yaacov Gross, and just released by his son Nathan, is exhilarating to watch. It brings home the enormous hurdles overcome by refugees arriving in Israel in 1962, and the determination they showed to rebuild their lives.

An elderly man in a North African galabiya watches another man unloading sacks of cement. They are building, building, building in Dimona, without let up. Dimona is today a leafy, settled town of 33,000: in 1955 when it was founded, there was literally nothing but Negev sand.

Yet, the video gives a sense that everything is possible with energy and determination. Don't understand the language? You'll learn. Don't have any work skills? You'll learn, and soon you too will be beavering away in Dimona's spanking new workshops and factories, and still find time to twist and jive the night away.

Under the direction of the all-powerful Histadrut, buildings start sprouting 'like mushrooms after the rain', and the wooden huts of the ma'abarot that first housed the new arrivals are soon replaced by apartment blocks. Never mind if yours is unfinished - at least you've got a mattress to sleep on! All you need is patience, brother, patience.

Other videos by Yaacov Gross

The contrast between how the poor immigrant Jews - most of them refugees - acted in building their country to how Palestinian Arabs have acted between 1948 and now could hardly be starker.

The town of Dimona didn't exist in 1954. It was, quite literally, sand. The energy, effort and enthusiasm of the arriving Jews are what built the town. It was not built by any UN agency; the residents didn't sit back and complain that the world wasn't doing everything for them; they all understood that if something was going to be done then they are the ones to do it. Of course there were problems - but nothing that couldn't be solved with thought, planning and execution. (And, if the video is to be believed, dancing.)

Watch what Dimona turned into in a mere seven years. Contrast that with how the PA has acted within Area A, under PA control for more than twice that time. Has the PA worked to dismantle any of the "refugee" camps in their areas of control over the past decade and a half? Has it built a single new town with the hundreds of millions of dollars that it begs for annually? Has it started any initiatives to recruit Jordanian Palestinians, for example, to move into the West Bank to help build "Palestine"?

When a people want to build a country, they act accordingly. If the "state" they want to build is really, fundamentally meant only to destroy another, they also act accordingly.

(h/t Solomonia)

PA Goldstone commission says Qassams do not violate int'l law

I just started going through the Palestinian Authority's second response to Goldstone as required by the UN. It is attached to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's second report to the General Assembly on the followup to the Goldstone recommendations.

It will take a while to go through, but this part shows pretty much where the PA is coming from. Practically the entire report is about alleged Israeli abuses of international law, of course, but it is forced to address Qassam rockets:

65...The PIC [Palestinian Independent Investigation Commission] affirms that, should it be acknowledged that the armed resistance groups in Gaza did intentionally target Israeli civilians, then such a practice would undoubtedly represent a violation of international
humanitarian law. The PNA has on many occasions condemned rocket firing and called on armed resistance groups in Gaza to respect international law and to exercise their right to self-defence in a manner that ensures that the Palestinian people maintain their moral high ground and does not harm their national cause and interests....

68. It is, however, important to understand that one of the salient features characterizing the dynamics between the Palestinian armed resistance groups in Gaza and the Government of Israel is their extremely asymmetric nature. The enormous disparity in military capabilities between the two sides is self - evident and need not be repeated. The Palestinian resistance’s capability to
respond to Israel’s full arsenal of weaponry, including fighter airplanes, helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery, as well as substantial ground forces, is limited to sporadic “crude rocket” firing and mortar shelling. Yet it is also imperative to recall that this is a situation of an occupying Power versus an occupied people, who constitute a defenceless civilian population entitled to protection under international law.

69. If and when civilian targets or populations have been affected by such “crude rocket” firing, it was essentially because of the crude nature of the weapon and the inability to control where the fired projectile lands. While this is in no way intended to justify any harm caused to innocent civilians, it cannot be considered a violation of international humanitarian law, per se. Furthermore, each alleged incident of harm to civilian persons or civilian property would have to be investigated on an individual basis, and the Palestinian Independent Commission is not in a position to do so without the cooperation of both the Government of Israel and the armed resistance groups in Gaza.

The PA's position is that the shooting of rockets at populated areas, aimed at towns in which there is no military objective, is not a violation of international law because you cannot prove that Hamas was deliberately aiming at civilians! This is even though Hamas brags about aiming at civilians!

But it gets better. In its conclusions, the PA commission says:

83. Admittedly, three Israeli civilians were killed during the period from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009 by misguided “crude rockets” fired by the armed resistance groups in Gaza, and that cannot be justified even though it was not intended.

The PIC, which initially claimed that the rockets would violate international humanitarian law if they could be proven to have been deliberate and then they go on to say that they cannot possibly determine whether they were deliberately aimed at civilians, now is saying that Hamas is right - and they flatly state that these hundreds of rockets were not intended to hurt civilians!

This is an astonishing display of mendacity, a blatant contradiction within a single document that proves that the PA has no interest in the truth, nor in acknowledging Hamas' violation of international law.

Too bad no one will notice it.