Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 11, 2010

But Israel should teach the truth about the Nakba

Of course, we still need to grapple with what Israel teaches its students. It seems to me that only one thing needs to be taught: the truth. If Israeli schools completely ignore talking about some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs having left their homes, some of them (but far from the majority) forced out by the Haganah and IZL, they are failing. If they teach the skewed Palestinian Arab narrative of forced dispossession and unending massacres, they are failing worse.

Yes, teach the Nakba - but teach what really happened. Of course it was a catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of people, but the continuing catastrophe of what has happened to them since 1948 at the hands of their Arab brothers needs to be taught as well.

Yes, there were some massacres and Israel should be embarrassed - but there was also heroism, there were also miracles, there was also the overriding moral imperative to survive and beat back an onslaught that was literally meant to be genocidal.

Teach about how Palestinian Arab nationalism was weak to nonexistent in 1948. Teach how Jordan and Egypt's occupations of "Palestinian" land were not protested. Teach the history of the Mufti and his terror sprees against Jews (not Zionists - Jews.) Teach about how Arab refugees in Israel were integrated into society while those in Arab lands were treated like garbage, and still are. Teach about how UNRWA has ensured that the "refugee" problem will fester until Israel is destroyed.

All of these need to be taught. It doesn't mean that Israeli youngsters shouldn't feel the appropriate sorrow for the suffering of their enemy, but it also doesn't mean that they should forget that they are still the enemy, and the moral imperative is to ensure your own survival before worrying about that of those who tried, and still desire, to destroy you.

For an example of what must be taught, here is an article that I have quoted years ago, from Dorothy Bar-Adon in the Palestine Post, August 17, 1948. In it she discusses how she feels bad over the fact that her neighboring Arab village fled - but also says exactly why they cannot return. It strikes the perfect balance between humanity and self-preservation. Acknowledging the fact that 1948 was a disaster for Arabs in Palestine is not a violation of the Zionist narrative; it should be part and parcel of it - but it must be put in the proper context of the time and the place.

Because the alternative was unimaginably worse.

PA throws away huge PR victory. Because they hate Israel that much.

Ha'aretz had an exclusive story today that looked very embarrassing to Israel:

The Palestinian Authority's Education Ministry approved the use of a history textbook that offers the central narratives of both Palestinians and the Zionist movement, marking the first time that the accepted Israeli position is being presented to schoolchildren in the West Bank.

The textbook, which has been banned from use by the Israeli Education Ministry, is the result of a joint Israeli-Palestinian-Swedish collaboration to promote coexistence through education. It will be taught in two high schools near Jericho, the Palestinian Education Ministry said.

Next week, the Education Ministry is scheduled to summon the principal of a Sderot area high school for "clarification" after he had permitted the use of the textbook by students in a special supplementary educational course.

Aharon Rothstein, the head of the Sha'ar Hanegev high school, may be reprimanded for allowing students to reference a textbook entitled "Learning the Historical Narrative of the Other," a project initiated by Prof. Dan Bar-On of Ben-Gurion University and Prof. Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University.

"Unfortunately, the Palestinians are further along than the Israeli Education Ministry when it comes to acknowledging the other side of the conflict," said an official involved in administering the textbook in the Sha'ar Hanegev school. "While [the Palestinians] approved the project, here they are summoning the principal for clarifications. This is a highly embarrassing situation."

Any news story that would make Palestinian Arabs look more liberal than Israelis would be a huge PR victory; a devastating riposte to those who contrast the openness and liberalism in Israel and the hate and intolerance in the PA administered territories.

So, predictably, the PA threw it all away:

A Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education official denied on Monday approving a textbook which teaches schoolchildren the Zionist and Palestinian narrative.

A member of the PA ministry's curriculum committee Thwarwat Zaid rebuffed a report in Israeli daily Haaretz that the textbook had been approved and said the committee neither knew of the book nor read it.

The PA had a choice to win a huge propaganda victory - or let some of their high school kids learn the Zionist narrative along with their own. The thought of teaching anything remotely resembling Zionism was so repulsive that they'd rather throw it all away.

(to be continued - what Israel needs to teach)

UPDATE: See also my posts on the textbook itself.

A Jordanian who gets it

From The Qudosi Chronicles, an srticle by Mudar Zahran:

Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians has always been globally approached with standardized heavy criticism made to Israel. The main charges waved in Israel’s face have always been “the Disapropriate use of force” and “discrimination”.

Israel’s critics, either willingly or out of ignorance, choose to overlook the way many Arab countries mistreat Palestinians. Some Arab countries are almost never blamed for what they have been doing to the Palestinians for decades. Such selective recognition of facts by Israel’s critics is bizarre when weighed by truth instead of myths.

In December of 2008, Israel launched operation “Cast Lead” against Hamas which was launching rockets on Southern Israel on a daily basis. This operation has resulted in the death of more than 1,400 Palestinians, many said to be civilians; an absolute tragedy, nonetheless, those criticizing Israel fail to recognize that the number of causalities is small comparing to Gaza’s population of 1.5 million, considering the high density of Gaza’s population per square kilometre, the number suggests the Israeli forces were very cautious in carrying out their attacks, despite the fact that they were chasing a moving target, Hamas militants. If Israeli forces were targeting Palestinian civilians, the number of the dead would have reached tens of thousands.

On comparison; in 1976, Lebanese militiamen butchered 2,000 Palestinians; almost wiping out the entire population of Tell al-Zaatar refugee camp within days. This was revisited again in 1982 in Sabra and Shatelah massacre; where, in less than four days, Lebanese militiamen killed thousands of women and children who posed no threat as most Palestinian fighters had left then to Tunisia. Two years ago, al-Jazeera satellite network aired rare footage of Palestinians running to Israeli soldiers for refuge from the massacre.

Furthermore, most Arab atrocities against Palestinians have included documented rape cases, even of children, while not a single rape case has been reported against Israeli forces in more than sixty years of operations.

Arab governments’ oppression of the Palestinians does not stop at bloodshed and wholesale slaughters, in fact the more troubling aspects of the way they treat Palestinians is in the systematic long-range exclusion and discrimination. In Arab countries where Palestinians make up a good percentage of the population; they are deprived of all basic necessities, starting with education, down to basic healthcare. Even at countries that have granted the Palestinians citizenships, the Palestinians stand helpless and banned from every potential to improve their livelihoods.

Israel, on the other hand, has always allowed Palestinians to work there and to get paid in Western standards, and even had allowed them generous access to healthcare. In fact, Israel has also welcomed Palestinians as visitors, patients and even as investors, this generosity was only limited when Hamas started bombing Israeli civilians with no signs of an end in sight.

The complexity Israel has with Palestinians revolves around security rather than ideological issues; Israel does not have an aim to enslave the Palestinians for life or purposely degrade their humanity. While many Arab countries have designed their systems to discriminate and humiliate the Palestinians, squeezing them into illiteracy and poverty while milking them for tax money.

This has become most visible recently with calls in some Arab countries to revoke citizenships of all Palestinians there and actually to force them to seek local guarantors to obtain residency, thus enslaving them for life.

This comes as a deeper shock for Palestinians when they see Israeli Arabs, with many of them describing themselves as “Palestinians in Israel”; those are full citizens of Israel with access to all privileges. Israeli Arabs are fully represented inside the Knesset while Palestinians, in their Arab homeland, are allowed only symbolic presence in parliaments, even at countries where they are the majority. And while some Arab countries selectively withdraw citizenships from Palestinians, many Arab Knesset members do not hesitate to speak against Israel with no fear of losing their citizenships or entitlements.

Still, while the world is most vocal about Israeli military operations, it fails to recognize that Israel has been dealing with non-stop unrest on its soil since the breakout of the Intifada in 1987. Had that Intifada taken place in any Arab country, it would have ended within the first couple of weeks with an Arab army killing more than ten thousand Palestinians, most being civilians. Examples of this are countless and in all Arab countries hosting Palestinians; yet the world seems to think this reality is too overrated to recognize.

Today, with peace negotiations up and running, some Arab governments seem to want to butcher the Palestinians again on the altar of dictatorship by worsening their living conditions and making their lives more miserable, just to secure a better negotiating position or merely a seat at the negotiations table. Not to mention that many of those actually would rather see the negotiations fail in order to keep more international aid money flowing to them for “hosting” the Palestinians.

Quoting a commentator on one of my articles; “the Palestinians, do obviously need a break from their sworn Arab friends”, and perhaps they can reconnect to them when they have learned a lesson or two from their Israeli “enemies”.

Meanwhile, the world will remain silent about the Palestinians’ suffering at the hands of some of their “brothers”, as it’s too occupied with Israel.

Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian of Palestinian heritage. Zahran attended Southern New Hampshire University, graduating with two masters. He has served as a strategist for the American Embassy in Amman, reporting to it and the American Embassy in Baghdad until recently. During his time there, Zahran covered major political issues for the embassy. His work has been reported to senior officials in DC, including the Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Treasury and DHS.

Zahran writes for several Arab media outlets and has been basically banned from many for his approach towards taboo issues in the Middle East, nonetheless, his articles are available on the Arab Times, the most read Arab newspaper online, and they are highly circulated on Arab internet media. Zahran writes op-eds for the Jerusalem Post. Zahran has also served as an economist and a researcher respectively at the Japanese and the Australian Embassies in Amman. He is considered an insider on Jordanian and Iraqi politic. Zahran is currently a researcher at the University of Bedfordshire, where he will secure a Ph.d in 2011.

(h/t EBoZ)

Al Jazeera thinks I'm an expert in Egyptian politics?

I just got this email:

Hello,

Greetings from London. I hope you are well. This is Gouri and I work at the Listening Post, Al Jazeera's weekly media review show. Our broadcast takes a critical look at global media.

For this week's broadcast we are preparing a report on press freedom in Egypt following the sacking of one of the country's most critical editors Ibrahim Eissa. I came across your blog post and your knowledge of the report would strengthen the analysis of our report. Would you like to take part in the show as a GVV?

If so, you could consider the questions below:

1) Why do editors like Ibrahim Eissa pose such a threat to authorities in Egypt? What is it about their work that bothers them so much?
(2) Is the crackdown on the media now a knee-jerk reaction with the upcoming elections in mind, or is this a trend?
(3) Who is pushing back at the limits of freedom of expression in Egypt? How are they getting away with it?

Alternatively, feel free to formulate your own statement, our only request is that you stay to the media angle of the story. All you would need to do is a record a 30-40 second video clip of your answers. You would need to own or have access to a webcam or camcorder. Record your response (please frame your head and shoulders in the shot and talk directly to the camera) and save it to a .mov or .wmv file. Then upload the file to www.yousendit.com making the recipient address listeningpost@aljazeera.net or you could try and email the file directly
to me.

We are editing this report early this week so our deadline is tomorrow. I appreciate it's short notice but do you think you'd be interested in taking part?

Kind regards,

Gouri

The post I made on the topic didn't even include any editorializing on my part.

Unfortunately, I had to decline my chance to be a video star on Al Jazeera.

Eissa's firing remains a very hot topic in Egypt; I've seen interesting op-eds on the issue but I certainly do not understand all the politics behind it. Even if I wanted to out myself on Al Jazeera!

Why isn't Egypt importing Gaza vegetables?

We have seen reports about how the tunnel trade in Gaza has been reversed from imports to exports. Many fruits and vegetables are more expensive in Egypt than in Gaza.

Over the weekend, an Egyptian man became enraged over how much his wife paid for tomatoes, and threw her off the second-floor balcony. She was badly injured.

So why doesn't Egypt import Gaza vegetables? As far as I can tell, there is no agreement with Israel prohibiting Egypt from doing that. The Rafah crossing is not optimized for trucks, but certainly some amount of goods could be sent through.

Just asking...

Gaza man sets son on fire. Moonbat blames Israel. (updated)

From Ma'an:

A father from Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza killed his son by setting fire to him because the boy refused to help the family pick olives, police said.

Security forces identified the father as AN, and said the 40-year-old threatened to torch his son Mohammed, 14, when he refused to help him harvest olives. The father then sent the boy's brother to get Benzene and gave him 2 shekels ($0.50) to buy a lighter.

Police said AN chased Mohammad into the bathroom, and poured fuel over him. The boy managed to escape and ran towards his grandmother's house next door, but his father caught him and set alight to him. Mohammad's grandmother told police that she opened the door to find her grandson's body burned.

This is a tragic story of a murder (Arabic coverage quotes the father as saying he just wanted to scare his son, not kill him.)

But check out the first comment in the English version of the story in Ma'an:

1) Maureen / Australia 10/10/2010 22:35
Jabala refugee camp. Without Zionist occupation of Palestine, families would not be struggling, physically and mentally, to exist under a Zionist strangle hold.

This is the new version of anti-semitism among the Left. If an Arab kills an Arab, it must be the "Zionists'" fault. The sheer lack of ability to think clearly, the amount of hate that it takes to blame a case of a father murdering his own son on Israel, shows that extreme leftist anti-Zionism has nothing to do with Zionism - it is just a new manifestation of anti-semitism, using Israel as a proxy for Jews. (But calling out this fact exposes one to accusations of watering down the term "anti-semitism.")

Nowhere did I see any Arabs blame this murder on Israeli "occupation." Their hatred is endemic, to be sure, and when they speak to Western media they will indeed blame everything on Israel, but at least they know deep down that they have to take at least some measure of responsibility for their actions.

Some on the extreme Left, however, just cannot help but to look at every single event that occurs in the Middle East through the glasses of their intense hatred for Israel. To them, bereft of the ability to think logically, Israel represents the ultimate evil, and the ultimate source for all evil. Israel is, to these moonbats, Satan. Therefore, if anything bad happens anywhere, it must be traceable back somehow to Zionists, or, often, Jews who are assumed to be Zionists.

It is a sickness, no less than traditional anti-semitism. I once named this "misoziony" to distinguish it from old-style anti-semitism and to deflect the criticism that the latter term brings up.

To the credit of most of Ma'an's commenters, Maureen was roundly criticized for her statement. Yet there are plenty of websites out there - some prominent - that espouse Maureen's way of thinking.

UPDATE: I've seen plenty of pictures of dead "martyrs" in the PalArab media, but I still cannot wrap my head around this: they are publishing pictures of the dead boy.

More cars stoned in Silwan (video)

Israel's Channel Two interviews a woman, Keren Levy, who (along with her daughter) passed by the exact spot that David Be'eri was ambushed by rock throwers on Friday. She was hysterical as she shows the large rocks that managed to break her window.

For some reason, the international media that was on the scene must have moved on at that point.

During the interview, the Israeli journalists get attacked themselves by stones.

David Be'eri is also interviewed in this segment, describing why he had no choice - either to keep driving or to use his own weapon, which would have been worse.

This is what the Palestinian Authority proudly describes as "peaceful resistance."

(h/t Joel)

UPDATE: Arab residents of Silwan were interviewed by Israel's Channel 2. Some said how much they hated the Jews in their neighborhood, including Be'eri, but off the record others said that they felt that Be'eri had no choice and they would have acted the same.

This indicates how fearful Arabs are of saying anything that can be construed as being the slightest bit sympathetic towards Israel - they are in fear for their own well-being. Yet Western reporters never factor this into their dramatic interviews with poor Palestinian Arab victims of Israeli aggression.

Interview with Mavi Marmara witness contradicts UN report

The Turkish author of a book about the Mavi Marmara, Şefik Dinç, who was on board the ship, gave an interview with Israel's Channel 1 and further confirmed Israel's version of events - and contradicted the extraordinarily biased and false UNHRC report about the ship.

The UNHRC claimed, for example, that the IDF used live ammunition from the helicopters before the soldiers landed. This means that the IHH supporters were just standing on deck, being picked off one by one, without running away. Of course, not a single video of the incident shows a Turkish passenger down while the IDF troops descend to be mercilessly beaten.

Şefik Dinç confirms the IDF version of event, that troops only opened fire when they saw their comrades' lives were in danger.

Interviewer: According to your eyewitness account, IDF soldiers only opened fire when they felt that their own lives or the lives of their fellow soldiers were in danger.

Dinç: As you know, I was on board the ship. I saw with my own eyes that when the soldiers came on helicopters and started landing on the ship, they did not fire. It wasn’t until the soldiers were met with resistance and realized that some of their friends’ lives were in danger that they began using live ammunition.

Interviewer: Did you notice anyone using knives or iron bars?

Dinç: Actually, I saw no knives being used. I did see iron bars being used.

The UNHRC report allows that the IDF did not treat elderly or women passengers harshly, but claims extreme abuse of the men, as well as insults to the women.

134. In the process of being detained, or while kneeling on the outer decks for several hours, there was physical abuse of passengers by the Israeli forces, including kicking and punching and being hit with the butts of rifles. One foreign correspondent, on board in his professional capacity, was thrown on the ground and kicked and beaten before being handcuffed. The passengers were not allowed to speak or to move and there were frequent instances of verbal abuse, ncluding derogatory sexual remarks about the female passengers.

The account of Dinç, who is a man, is quite different:

Interviewer: In your book, you describe cases of humane treatment from IDF soldiers [of the detained ship passengers], such as removing their handcuffs, and even an interesting encounter in Israel with a Jew of Turkish descent who gave you his mobile phone.

Dinç: The soldiers uncuffed some people who were having difficulties, particularly older people, women, and people who did not act aggressively. As for the Israeli policeman, his Turkish was excellent, we spoke, and he said that he had immigrated to Israel from Istanbul. He asked me if I contacted my family and whether I had a telephone to make a call. I told him I didn’t, and then he gave me his own mobile phone so that I could call my family. I thank him again.

The "witnesses" interviewed by the UN had motive to lie - after all, they were motivated to go on a mission to demonize Israel to begin with. Even so, the UN believed their testimony over video evidence that contradicted their stories, saying that the already biased witnesses were more reliable than the video that was released (para. 20.)!

Yet here is a real witness who had no incentive to lie, and whose account corroborates the IDF's version of events in almost every detail.

Don't expect the UNHRC to acknowledge that their very methodology of gathering evidence was flawed from the start.

(h/t Joel)

Fermale Al Azhar students protest full-body searches

Interesting story in Egypt's Al Masry al-Youm:

Female students at Al-Azhar University in the Nile Delta city of Zagazig on Sunday staged a sit-in on campus, claiming they had been assaulted by campus security after refusing to submit to body searches.

Police eventually dispersed the protesters, arresting ten male students that had been supporting their female colleagues.

According to one protester, female students were beaten by campus police after they asked to be searched by female security personnel.

Another student said protesters had been dispersed with fire hoses, claiming that ambulances had been prevented from aiding students injured in the melee. Only one student, reportedly suffering from internal bleeding, was allowed to be taken to hospital, the student said.

Nevertheless, female students have continued to demonstrate off campus, calling for the dismissal of University Dean Abdel Aziz Gibril for allowing the violations. They have also called on Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb to protect them from alleged security excesses.

According to one anonymous security source, students pelted security personnel with stones, injuring two men.

Sounds like a human rights issue. Yet there is no mention about these protests outside the Egyptian media.

Will Zionist expansionism never end?

From Iran's PressTV:

Iran's Ambassador to Armenia Ali Saqa'ian says Israel is creeping into the South Caucasus region and putting the safety of the entire region in jeopardy.

"The Zionist regime [of Israel] is covertly infiltrating into the South Caucasus region, posing a serious threat to regional security," Saqa'ian said on Sunday.

"This is an extremely important region, and this is why Western powers, the US, and even the Israeli regime have an eye on it," he was quoted by Mehr News Agency as saying.

I wonder if these Zionists are stealing land, or buying it?

Fears increase over Hezbollah designs for a Lebanon coup

Khaled Abu Toameh wrote last week:

Hizbullah and Iran now have a common interest in escalating tensions in the Middle East: Hizbullah, with the help of Iran, may be planning to stage a coup in Lebanon to cover up and divert attention from its role in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

.Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plan to visit Lebanon in the coming weeks should be seen in the context of Hizbullah's plot to take over the country. Some Lebanese have gone as far as condemning the visit as a "provocation," noting that it would also raise tensions between Lebanon and Israel because of Ahmadinejad's plan to tour the border between the two countries.

The UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon is about to publish the results of its investigation into the killing of the former prime minister. According to reliable sources, the report is expected to hold Hizbullah responsible for the assassination.

Now that its true face is about to be unmasked, Hizbullah is of course panicking and searching for ways to get out of the sinkhole.

Hizbullah's rhetoric and actions in recent weeks suggest that the Shiite organization is up to no good....

"Hizbullah does not acknowledge the Lebanese state as sovereign," said Michael Young, an opinion editor at Beirut's The Daily Star and author of "The Ghosts of Martryrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle."

Young pointed out that Hizbullah had already staged something similar to a coup two years ago. "The armed takeover of Beirut in May 2008 confirmed that Hizbullah would fire on its fellow citizens and regarded state authority and the rule of law as thin veneers to be swept away when necessary," he said.

Ahmadenijad would of course welcome the opportunity to export the "Islamic Revolution" to Lebanon. Instability in the region would divert attention from his nuclear ambitions and allow him to fulfill his dream of wiping Israel off the map.

A victory for Iran and Hizbullah in Lebanon would also be a victory for Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad -- and Al-Qaeda.

We've mentioned a number of troubling stories in recent weeks in Lebanon, many of which Toameh details as well.

Ya Libnan quotes a Kuwaiti newspaper that echoes these concerns, and even puts on a date:

As soon as the Iranian president Mahmouad Ahmadinejad leaves the country Hezbollah is reportedly planning to oust the state and the government institutions.

“October 16 would be the start of the scheme of ousting the State and the government through creating discord and security tensions in areas that are apt to stir (sectarian) sensitivities, such as the Beirut area of Tariq al-Jdideh or the city of Tripoli, ” Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai reportedly quoted its diplomatic sources as saying.

Ahmadinejad will be arriving on October 13 on a 2-day official visit to Lebanon.

Arab diplomatic sources have reportedly warned against a deterioration of the security situation in Lebanon, saying “armed de facto forces may try to impose their political agenda by force.”

The sources added that “the Arab, regional and western countries following up on the Lebanese situation” have been directly and indirectly informed that Hezbollah and its allies “will not agree to any political settlement that contradicts with their goal of overthrowing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) .”

“They would implement their agenda of changing the regime in case they failed in overthrowing the tribunal,” the sources warned.

On Saturday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a denial of any plans for a coup - but that denial was also implicitly a threat. In his words:

[W]e must not run away and say that Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria want to implement a coup - this is vacuous talk, since we are not thinking about that. If we wanted to take over, we would have done it in 2005, but we do not want that and did not do it. Likewise, we would have taken over the country in 15 August 2006 if we had wanted that. So this talk has no basis- stop it, and do not go into side matters. Return to the foundational issue.”

The subtext is that Hezbollah can take over the country whenever it wants, so the rest of the country must toe Hezbollah's line - or else.

(h/t Samson for Toameh link.)

Gaza humor

Al Arabiya in Arabic has an article about the jokes that Gazans tell each other, to get an idea of how they think and what the political atmosphere is.

Thanks to Ali, I got them translated. (Auto-translslation rarely works for humor!)

The humor from the first set of jokes come from the fact that they are, in many ways, true.

1) Netanyahu has surgery in his foot in August. Various Palestinian factions declare responsibility. (This one reminds me of a very old Dry Bones, where a terrorist reads a newspaper about a gas explosion in Israel killing some kids, and asks his secretary to call the newspapers and claim responsibility, saying that terrorists must keep up on the news.)

2) Hamas forced students to repeat final exams in the Strip. The reason? 8 of the top 10 scores were from Fatah members and only 2 were from Hamas.

3) "Capture an Israeli soldier and receive a free Hummer! Offer valid until Israeli jails are emptied" (presumably from prisoner swaps.)

4) An Israeli soldier tried to search a woman. She told him, "Get out of my face or I'll make sure you are in the headlines."

The bulk of the recent jokes, however, are about the electricity shortages in Gaza:

5) Benefits of electric outages include:
* Helps students get to bed early.
* Allows for romantic time with your wife under candlelight.
* The frequent deaths because of fires and generators exploding increase the chance of men getting invited to funerals and houses of consolation, where they could receive free meals.

6) The Gaza electric company has been renamed. The new name is the "Sabotage of Electricity Company."

7) Advertisement from electric company: "We give you a good excuse for not accepting guests into your house: just say that 'We are saving our candles for birthday parties only.' "

8) Another ad from electric company: "Are you worried about your husband staying out too late? We insure he comes home early by cutting off the electricity on places where he could be hanging out with his friends!"

9) Another ad: "We cut off the electricity, so you can enjoy the great outdoors!"

10) Another ad: "We protect women's rights by ensuring that she receives her dowry, her ring, and her generator."

Washington Post pulls cartoon WITHOUT Mohammed

Last Sunday, the Washington Post refused to publish the following cartoon:

The catch is - Mohammed is not depicted in the picture at all.

Yet, the Washington Post and other newspapers refused to run the cartoon, out of the potential that some Muslims somewhere might be offended.

The WaPo's ombudsman writes:

[Cartoonist Wiley] Miller is fuming. The award-winning cartoonist, who lives in Maine, told me the cartoon was meant to satirize "the insanity of an entire group of people rioting and putting out a hit list over cartoons," as well as "media cowering in fear of printing any cartoon that contains the word 'Muhammad.' "

"The wonderful irony [is that] great newspapers like The Washington Post, that took on Nixon . . . run in fear of this very tame cartoon, thus validating the accuracy of the satire," he said by e-mail.

...Yes, Miller was trying to be provocative. But "Non Sequitur" followers expect that. And there's a difference between provoking anger and provoking readers to think.

Surely some may be displeased by "Where's Muhammad?" But unlike with the Danish cartoons, it's hard to imagine it would incite protests. Miller intentionally did not depict Muhammad, and the cartoon is not a blasphemous attack on the prophet. If anything, it's a powerful and witty endorsement of freedom of expression.

Post editors believe their decision was prudent, given the past cartoon controversies and heightened sensitivities surrounding Islam. But it also can be seen as timid. And it sets an awfully low threshold for decisions on whether to withhold words or images that might offend.

"Timid" is way understated. "Utterly dhimmified" comes a bit closer. At least the WaPo ombudsman gets it.

(h/t Jawa Report)

Palestinian Authority TV quiz show: Israeli cities are "Palestinian"

From Palestinian Media Watch:

The following are transcripts from this PA TV program,The Cedar and the Olive Tree,whose purpose was to reinforce the message that the Palestinian Authority does not recognize the legitimacy and jurisdiction of Israel anywhere. PMW is citing a number of examples from the program, including messages that recur, to demonstrate the use of repetition as one method of political indoctrination used by the Palestinian Authority and PA TV.

PA TV is under the direct control of the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The following are transcripts from different days:

Host: "Name five cities in Palestine and we'll give you a prize."
Teenage Girl: "Haifa, Acre, Ramallah, Jaffa, and Jerusalem."
[Note: Haifa, Acre, Jaffa and Jerusalem are cities in Israel. The girl was rewarded $100 for correct answer.]

Host: "Can you name five cities in Palestine?"
Woman: "I'm here for a visit; I don't know."
Host: "You don't know five cities in Palestine?"
Woman: "No."
Host: "You mean you haven't heard of Jerusalem?"
Woman: "I've heard of Jerusalem."
Host: "But not Gaza? Ramallah?"
Woman: "And also occupied Palestine."
Host: "Palestine is completely occupied, and we want it liberated. Say the names after me: Jerusalem, Gaza, Ramallah, Haifa, Jaffa, Bethlehem."
[Note: Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa are cities in Israel. The woman was handed $100 for correct answers.]

Host: "Haifa is a Palestinian city; can you name other Palestinian cities?"
Man: "Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Nazareth, Gaza, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem."
[Note: Haifa, Jaffa, Acre are cities in Israel. Other residents gave similar answers and received $100 for correct answers.]

[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 12, 2010]

Host: "I want you to name five Palestinian cities."
Woman: "Ramallah, Jerusalem, Haifa, Acre, Gaza."
Host: "I want you to name five Palestinian cities that you've visited."
Woman: "Nahariya, Acre, Jenin, Gaza."
[Note: Jerusalem, Nahariya, Haifa and Acre are cities in Israel. Other residents gave similar answers and received $100 for correct answers.]

[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 13, 2010]

Host: "Can you tell me which countries share a border with Palestine?"
Man: "In the north - Lebanon and Syria; in the east - Jordan; in the west - the Mediterranean; in the south - Egypt and the Sinai."
[Israel was not cited as a bordering country, yet it was the "correct" answer and he was awarded $100.]

Host: "Can you name four Palestinian cities?"
Woman: "Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Ramallah."
[Note: Acre, Haifa and Jaffa are cities in Israel. The woman received $100 for correct answer.]
[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 16, 2010]

Host: "Which countries share borders with Palestine?"
Man: "Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt."
[Note: Israel was not cited as a bordering country yet the host rewarded him with the $100.]
[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 18, 2010]

Host: "Name three Palestinian cities."
Woman 1: "Haifa, Jaffa, Acre." [Note: all are cities in Israel.]
Host: "Which countries surround Palestine?"
Woman 2: "Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt."
[Note: Israel was not cited as a bordering country. Both received $100 for "correct answers.]
[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 18, 2010]

Host: "Which countries share borders with Palestine?"
Man: "Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria."
[Note: Israel was not cited as a bordering country yet the host rewarded him with the $100.]
[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 22, 2010

On Aug. 20, six different people were asked to define five cities in Palestine.
Their answers were:
1. Acre, Jaffa, Hafia, Gaza, Ramallah
2. Gaza, Jericho, Haifa, Jaffa, Acre
3. Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Jenin
4. Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, El-Bireh, Nablus
5. Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
6. Acre, Haifa, Lod, Nazareth, Ramallah
[Note: The respondents received $100 each for portraying Israeli cities Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Nazareth, Jerusalem and Acre as Palestinian cities.]

[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 20, 2010]

Host: "Can you name five Palestinian cities?"
Woman: "Haifa, Jaffa, Acre."
[Note: Haifa, Jaffa and Acre are cities in Israel. The respondent received the $100 cash prize.]

[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 23, 2010]

Host: "Do you know which countries share borders with Palestine?"
Woman: "Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Mediterranean."
[Note: Israel was not cited as a bordering country yet the host rewarded her with the $100.]

Host: "Can you name three cities on the Palestinian coast?"
Woman: "Acre, Haifa, Jaffa."
[Note: All are cities on Israel's coast. In all cases, the respondents received $100 for "correctly" defining Israeli cities as Palestinian cities.]

[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 30, 2010]

Those evil settlers and their Zionist chemicals!

From the Hamas-oriented Palestine-Info (UK) site:

Zionist settlers destroyed tens of fruitful olive trees in Al-Mughir town, northeast of Ramallah, on Friday after spraying them with a chemical material.

Local sources said that the settlers spoiled 55 olive trees using a white chemical material unknown to locals, adding that the material dries the trees and slowly kills them.

They noted that farmers could not reach the area, which is adjacent to a Zionist settlement, fearing attacks by those settlers.

In another location, Zionist settlers attacked tents pitched by shepherds in the Jordan Valley and damaged drinking water ponds for cattle, witnesses reported.

They noted that the settlers infiltrated into the area under the cover of darkness on Friday night, adding that shepherds were not present at time of the attack.

So these religious settlers attacked on Friday night? And somehow damaged a water pond? (How does one do that, exactly?)

And, better yet, they sprayed an unknown chemical that slowly destroys olive trees - and the trees are already destroyed?

This steaming pile of garbage was, unsurprisingly, immediately picked up by Iran's ABNA news agency. And no doubt believed as absolute truth by the many who reflexively believe the most ridiculous anti-Israel stories without the slightest capacity for critical thought.

WSJ on Mabhouh investigation

It is worth reading the WSJ on how the trail to Mabhouh's killers has grown cold, as well as Haaretz' coverage.

Crazy Water Park re-opens

The Crazy Water Park in Gaza, which was torched last month, has re-opened.

But the lessons of the torching have not been lost on Gaza's upscale cafes and resorts.

An article in Elaph talks about Hamas' ban of women smoking hookahs in Gaza. Restaurants are enforcing that law against single women (apparently, women in restaurants with their families are allowed to smoke.) The restaurant owners are explicitly saying that they saw what happened to the Crazy Water Park, which irritated the Hamas theocrats and did allow women to smoke, and they do not want to have the same thing happen to them.

The good news, of course, is that the poor, suffering, starving, imprisoned Gazans - who are smuggling food out of Gaza to Egypt - now can relax and enjoy themselves again at a nice looking water resort.

Some notes on the staged rock throwing of Silwan

A few follow-ups on the video and photographs of the events at Silwan on Friday.

The photographs of the incident that do not show the entire context have been reproduced all over the place. I have yet to see any of the media mention that the stone-throwers smashed the rear windshield of the car with their peacful protest pebbles. In fact, from the video one can see that out of all the photographers that were there, only the videographer took footage of the car afterwards showing the damage; the rest rushed to the kid. (Most of the media showing the video do not bother to show that part of the footage either; Al Jazeera is the best example but even Fox only showed it momentarily after showing the kid being hit three different times.)

The driver was swerving to avoid a different stone-thrower. In other words, he had a car behind him and two kids in front of him; if he would have stopped he would have been in mortal danger.

The kid who was hit, Amran Mansur, recalls the incident in a way that is completely at odds with what we could see:

"I had just left the Friday prayers at the neighborhood's protest tent when I saw a car speeding towards me," remembers Amran Mansur, 11, who was ran over by David Be'eri, chairman of the Elad Association promoting Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem.

Amran was released from the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem early on Saturday. "I couldn’t run away in time, I didn't even have time to signal him with my hands," he says. "It was clear he did it on purpose. I was on the sidewalk, so there's no chance it wasn't deliberate."

Palestinian Arab kids learn how to lie to the media early. Of course, there was the earlier footage showing Mansur about to throw a stone at a different car, so he was at the scene for at least some time; he was running full-speed towards the car, not away, and he was in the middle of the street, not the sidewalk.

There were about six or seven journalists at the scene, possibly more than the number of stone throwers. It is hard to imagine that this event was not at least partially staged by them.

And while the journalists keep a "professional" distance from kids endangering the lives of Israeli motorists, they rush to help out the injured kid. Well, sort of. If he had been badly injured - say, neck or back injuries - their manhandling of him and forcing him into the car could have paralyzed him.

Someone should interview the photographers on the scene and ask them straight out: why were you so conveniently at that intersection at that time? Were the kids throwing stones because you were there? Did anyone tell them where to go or how to act? What news agencies were represented? Where is the rest of the footage between the first part and the second? How long were the boys there? How many other cars were stoned?

Even though this is a perfect example of a photograph not telling the truth, you just know that they are thinking Pulitzer and not the consequences of their actions.

UPDATE: See Media Backspin on why this looks like a set-up, from the perspective of a news photographer.

The dismantled Al Aqsa Brigades didn't get the memo

Yet again, the supposedly dismantled, Fatah-associated Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have shown up:

Fatah's armed wing the Al-Aqsa Brigades said Friday that their response to the killings of two Palestinians in Hebron was "only a matter of time."

In a statement, the Al-Aqsa Brigades cited the men as "friends" of the armed wing of Fatah, and said the two groups had participated in joint missions in the West Bank during the Second Intifada.

Where does the Al Aqsa Brigades get its funding from, if not from the "moderate" Fatah that supposedly dismantled it years ago?

Islamic Jihad leader in hospital for hunger strike against PA

An Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank was arrested on September 29th. He then started a hunger strike to protest his arrest. He claims that the PA tortured him.

He just entered a hospital because his condition was deteriorating.

This story is nearly nonexistent in the non-Arab media.

Sir Alexander Galloway's opinion on the refugees, 1952

A couple of months ago I found a 1958 article about the Arab refugee problem that quoted "Ralph Galloway", a UNRWA official, as saying "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."

It turns out that the the speaker was not named Ralph Galloway, but Sir Alexander Galloway.

Alexander H. Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky have a fascinating, scholarly article in Middle Eastern Studies about this man, as well as how his name ended up getting changed to "Ralph" in the quotes.

Alexander Galloway was the head of UNRWA in Jordan in July, 1951. At the time, Jordan's economy was a mess, especially after the assassination of King Abdullah, and UNRWA represented a lucrative source of income:

At the time of Galloway's appointment UNRWA was one of the major sources of income for the Hashemite Kingdom as a whole, along with the annual remittance from the British Government. In 1951 UNRWA imports and local expenses accounted for 25% of Jordan's total balance of payments, a figure that rose to 33% in 1952 and 35% in 1953. In September 1951 the Jordan Development Bank was founded with 80% of the capital coming from UNRWA and with Galloway as a Managing Director.

UNRWA also contributed 8.7% of public sector wages in Jordan. This figure rose to 9.8% in 1953 and 12.4% in 1954 when the organization employed some 2500 persons....The sense that international staffers were being paid disproportionately high salaries was present before Galloway's arrival. Hugh Dow of the British Consulate in Jerusalem wrote to T.W. Evans in the Middle East Secretariat of the Foreign Office on 13 March 1951 and noted that the high administration costs of UNRWA were based on 'Lake Success allowances' saying 'shorthand typists employed by UNRWA are receiving salaries almost equal to my own basic pay'.[44] Similar concerns regarding the larger salaries paid to UNRWA's international staffers were reportedly expressed by Lebanese officials and were of sufficient gravity to be mentioned in confidential briefings by UNRWA officials to Canadian Foreign Ministry representatives.[45]

Proposed budgets for 1952 saw UNRWA's overall costs increasing to almost $80 million, representing a potentially lucrative source of income for the Jordanian government.[46]

Jordan's resentment over international UNRWA employees continued to grow, and Galloway was replaced because of this dispute in April 1952.

Afterwards, he wrote an article for the Daily Express describing the problems of the Arab refugees and the political issues. Here are some excerpts:

The Jordanian population fear the settlement of large numbers of refugees in their country. But they are aware that it means the spending of large sums of money in Jordan. They want the cash. They want to spend it on schemes for the development of Jordan. If the refugees benefit from this arrangement, so much the better.

In Syria the Government is a dictatorship by which a number of much-needed and healthy measures are being inaugurated.

There is plenty of room for development. Half a million refugee families could settle on agricultural schemes with benefit to themselves and to the country.

Like other Arab countries, Syria may not be anxious to take the first step in a programme which indicates acceptance of the fact that the refugees will not return to Palestine. In Syria the activities of the Agency are controlled to a high degree by Government. Local Agency employees are dismissed at will. Internationals are scrutinized and followed about by Security Police. The prestige of United Nations does not stand high.

Occasionally the United Nations country representatives are summoned to Beirut or discussions. During the past year I attended several discussions. They achieved little. Decisions were seldom taken, except to postpone decision, although much was often said about unity of effort, sense of high purpose, avoidance of the "Colonial approach."

In Beirut and elsewhere to a lesser degree, some useless work goes on. Staff begets more staff. Plan follows plan. Typewriters click. Brochures and statistics pour out. The refugees remain and eat, and complain and breed; while a game of political "last touch" goes on between the local Governments and the Director, UNRWA.

What is the solution? Of course the problem is difficult. Refugee settlement, except under dictatorship, is a long, expensive business. Somehow or other the Arab Governments, the United Nations, UNRWA and some of the refugees have got to face facts.

There is a need of a change of heart and a better atmosphere. There is need to distinguish between a tempting political maneuvre and the hard, unpalatable fact that the refugees cannot in the foreseeable future return to their homes in Palestine. To get this acceptance is a matter of politics: it is beyond the function of UNRWA.

Second, a determined effort should be made to get the "host" countries to take over relief from the Agency, thus freeing it to get on with the much more important task of resettlement.

It must be kept quite clear in all discussion that the refugee retains his absolute political right to return to his former home whenever he can. Without this condition being implicit in any arrangement there can be no progress.

The authors note that the last paragraph seems to have been written almost by habit, probably based on the fact that Arab governments were so hell-bent against naturalizing the refugees - as they remain today.

Later, Galloway was quoted by Reverend Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, in front of a Senate committee:

In April of 1952, Sir Alexander Galloway, then head of the UNRWA for Jordan, said to our study group, and this is really a direct quote from what he said, "It is perfectly clear than the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel."

Then, by way of emphasis he said, "Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."

When asked what he felt the solution to the problem was, Sir Alexander Galloway in essence said: Give each of the Arab nations where the refugees are to be found an agreed-upon sum of money for their care and resettlement and then let them handle it. If, he continued, the United Nations had done this immediately after the conflict – explaining to the Arab states "We are sorry it happened, but here is a sum of money for you to take care of the refugees" – the problem might have been solved long ago. The Arab states would have had to do something constructive about the problem, or lose status in the eyes of the world. This way, said, Sir Alexander, the burden is on the United Nations and the governments that support the United Nations, and we are powerless to solve it.

There's much more to the paper. One tiny detail that I thought was important was this one:

Galloway's own archives do not include any documents pertaining to UNRWA. Copies of his monthly reports from Amman are found in British records but only through October 1951. In the absence of other contemporary documents, including UNRWA archives which remain closed to researchers, clues to the situation Galloway faced in Amman are found in the confidential reports of Sir Henry F. Knight to the Foreign Office, and telegrams from Geoffrey Furlonge, British ambassador to Jordan.

Why is UNRWA, a publicly funded organization, allowed to keep its archives from some 60 years ago closed?

(h/t Andrea)

2491 people managed to escape "the world's largest prison" last week

From Ma'an:

Almost 3,500 Palestinians passed through the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza last week, officials reported.

Border administrators said 1651 Palestinians returned to Gaza, most of whom were patients who had received treatment in Egyptian hospitals, whilst 1821 left Gaza through the terminal. Officials said 276 Palestinians were refused permission to cross.

Crossings officials said the Erez pedestrian crossing between northern Gaza and Israel was partially open during the week, recording the exit of 941 individuals from Gaza, including 652 residents, 245 foreign nationals, and 44 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.

That's a pretty porous prison!

How a photograph lies

From The Daily Mail:

Dramatic images have emerged of the moment an Israeli motorist drove straight into a young Palestinian boy in East Jerusalem today.

The child had been part of a group throwing stones at Israeli cars following news the country's military had killed two Hamas militants in the West Bank city of Hebron earlier on Friday.

Amazingly the boy only sustained 'light injuries' after being thrown into the air by the vehicle and twisting over its roof.

Looks pretty bad, right? An Israeli heartlessly running his vehicle into a young boy?

Now watch the video:

The boy was running towards the car even during the impact. The car honked the horn to get him out of the way. Clearly the driver was worried about his safety and didn't want to stop, and for good reason - we see his back windshield smashed by the innocent, youthful rocks being thrown.

And there are a whole bunch of photographers there, whose presence makes the kids want to act with bravado and who might have actually been goading them into throwing rocks.

Notice that while the Daily Mail published a series of photos from the incident, it didn't bother to show the smashed rear windshield of the car.

The driver was David Be'eri, who has been trying to calm down the tension in Silwan, seen in this video.

(h/t Brian of London and Orna)

More here.

The myth of the 10,000 Palestinian Arab prisoners

How many Palestinian Arab prisoners are being held in Israel?

People who follow the news would automatically say, 10,000. They would have good reason to believe that;

the magic number of "10,000 prisoners" is used as received wisdom by Arabs, left-wingers and the news media as fact.

For example:

Daoud Kuttab, quoted in the NYT, November 2009: "Israel is holding more than 10,000 Palestinians, some without charge or trial. "

MJ Rosenberg in HuffPo, November 2009, headline: "Gilad Shalit's Counterparts: 10,000 Palestinian Prisoners In Israeli Jails"

BBC, November 2009: "Israel holds about 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in jail on security grounds - a major bone of contention with the Palestinians."

ABC News Australia, April 2010: "Hamas spokesman Adnan Abu Amar says it is hoped the video will renew pressure on Israel to reach a deal with Hamas to free many of the 10,000 or more Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in return for the soldier's freedom."

Palestine News Network, September 2010: "There are at least 10,000 Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israeli army jails."

Only one problem: the number is wrong. Not only that, but it was never right!

B'Tselem has been keeping statistics of how many Palestinian Arab prisoners are being held in Israel, back to 2001. According to their statistics, the number of prisoners never surpassed 10,000. They reached a high of about 9600 in October, 2006, and have been steadily declining ever since.

Between June 2007 and August 2010, the number of prisoners has dropped from 9344 to 6011, a decrease of 36%.

Here it is graphically:

I'm sure that most of them were released because their sentences were finished; this was not meant as a good-will gesture.

Here we have another case where Arab activists and left wingers, by repeating bogus statistics over and over, manage to convince even the news media that the numbers are accurate. While the New York Times and the BBC might lean left, they do put on a pretense of objective reporting and fact checking - yet they let these numbers get reported as truth.

Last year I showed that Addameer's absurd statistics of between 650,000 and 800,000 Palestinian Arabs being arrested since 1967 were complete fiction, as anyone with the slightest grasp of numbers could easily confirm. Yet those numbers had been quoted uncritically by Goldstone, Time Magazine and Jimmy Carter, among others.

When will the media wake up to the fact that many Arabs and leftists are willing to lie to them without any compunction? By not doing basic fact checking, they are complicit in purveying falsehoods that influence millions of people.

Imagine if the New York Times would report that Israel has released over 3000 prisoners in recent years. It completely upends the Arab narrative of a vicious IDF randomly and capriciously arresting and holding thousands of people annually, indefinitely. It would make people think twice before accepting hateful, inciting claims against Israel by the Left. However, even well-meaning people do not have the means or ability to check what should have already been checked, so they understandably will accept what the media tells them, especially when it is stated as an aside, as a fact so well known that it is not even worth checking.

Israel is at fault as well. It is properly the job of the Israeli government to correct these lies, not bloggers. This posting may or not make it to the BBC, a year after their story, but Israel should have responded immediately.

Not only does the Government of Israel not correct the lies, but it doesn't capitalize on the PR value of the truth! 3000 prisoners released could be a huge story - but it is unknown.

The flip side of the coin is - should Israel have held on to all 9600 prisoners for an extra year or two, and then offer to swap 3000 of them for Shalit - prisoners that would have been released anyway, but in quantities that could have made a huge psychological impact and more pressure on Hamas as well as a propaganda victory?

(A separate question is whether B'Tselem makes any effort to correct the lies when they help further its own agenda.)

This is a big problem, all around.

A leftist professor's advice for Palestinian Arabs

Francis Boyle is is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, and a former board member of Amnesty International who ended up criticizing the organization for being too pro-American. He says that the US is illegally occupying Hawaii. He is also a harsh critic of American foreign policy and (of course) of Israel, having once offered to "represent Iran in an international tribunal for trying the Zionist regime on charges of genocide of Palestinians."

He writes in the far left MWC News his advice for Palestinian Arabs:

After twenty-two years of getting nowhere but further screwed to Israel’s apartheid wall on the West Bank and strangulated in Gaza, it is now time for the Palestinians to adopt a new strategy, which I most respectfully recommend here for them to consider: Sign nothing and let Israel collapse! Recently it was reported that the United States’ own Central Intelligence Agency predicted the collapse of Israel within twenty years. My most respectful advice to the Palestinians is to let Israel so collapse!

For the Palestinians to sign any type of comprehensive peace treaty with Israel would only shore up, consolidate, and guarantee the existence of Zionism and Zionists in Palestine forever. Why would the Palestinians want to do that? Without approval by the Palestinians in writing, Zionism and Israel in Palestine will collapse. So the Palestinians must not sign any Middle East Peace Treaty with Israel, but rather must keep the pressure on Israel for the collapse of Zionism over the next two decades as predicted by the Central Intelligence Agency.

...In fact, Israel has never been a State but just an Army masquerading as a State -- a Potemkin Village of a State.

It is obvious that soon Zionism will enter into Trotsky’s “ashcan” of history along with every other nationalistic “ism” that has plagued humankind during the twentieth century: Nazism, Fascism, Francoism, Phalangism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc. The only thing that could save Zionism in Palestine is for the Palestinians to conclude any type of so-called comprehensive Middle East Peace treaty with Israel. It is for precisely that reason then that the Palestinians must sign nothing and let Israel collapse of its own weight over the next two decades.

Millions of Palestinians have waited in refugee camps since 1948 in order to return to their homes, that is for 62 years. They can wait a little longer until Israel collapses within 20 years. Otherwise, for the Palestinians to sign a comprehensive peace treaty with Israel means that they will never be able to return to their homes as required by Resolution 194 of 1948. History and demography are on the side of Palestine and the Palestinians against Israel and the Zionists. But the Palestinians must allow history and demography a little bit more time in order to produce the collapse of Israel and Zionism in Palestine. Twenty years is but the blink of an eye in the millennia-long history of the Palestinian People, who are the original indigenous inhabitants of Palestine. God had no right to steal Palestine from the Palestinians and give Palestine to the Jews to begin with. A fortiori the United Nations had no right to steal Palestine from the Palestinians and give Palestine to the Zionists in 1947.

When Israel collapses, most Zionists will have already left or will soon leave for other states around the world. The Palestinians will then be able to claim all of the historic Mandate for Palestine as their State, including the entire City of Jerusalem as their Capital. Palestine will then be able to invite all of its refugees to return to their homes pursuant to Resolution 194.

Some Jews will remain in Palestine either voluntarily or involuntarily. Palestine and the Palestinians will treat the remaining Jews fairly. Palestine and the Palestinians will not do to the Jews what Israel, Zionism, and the Zionists have done to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians must sign nothing and let Israel collapse!

So a leftist professor is advocating that they stop all negotiations and wait for the next twenty years.

Based on a CIA report that doesn't exist.

The CIA report was first mentioned in that bastion of truth and accuracy, Iran's Press TV, quoting an American anti-Israel wacko (and seeming Hezbollah groupie) named Franklin Lamb. It has been quoted in many places since then, but all of them point back to this PressTV report.

Israel bashers have been confidently predicting Israel's imminent demise for 62 years now. During all that time, Israel has continued to grow and strengthen in every respect. It has challenges - what country doesn't? - but it is far more viable and resilient than any conceivable Palestinian Arab state would ever be. At this point, even modern Israel is no longer so young - it is older than more than half the nations on Earth. It is an economic, military, educational, scientific and cultural powerhouse.

It isn't going anywhere.

Yet this supposed scholar, a professor at a respected university, takes this unsourced and unsubstantiated claim as fact.

Not only that, but Boyle,who claims to be a great supporter and admirer of Palestinian Arabs and their "millennia-long history," is telling them to stay in misery for a mere two decades longer - and then promises that they can then return to the homes of their dead ancestors.

He is telling a people who are stateless, who are discriminated against in every Arab country in which they are "guests," to tell their children that they need to cultivate their culture of hate for another generation, because inevitably the Zionist project will fail and they will get their chance to "return" to their idealized yet destroyed villages.

Just like their parents told them!

Is this how someone who loves a people treats them? He is telling Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon and Syria to prepare for their kids to be stateless for another generation, and then another, until his prediction comes true. Compromise is evil; nothing less than the destruction of Israel will do.

This is exactly what Palestinian Arabs have heard form their so-called "leaders" since the 1930s - and look how well that worked out for them!

(h/t Orna)

The theme of Israel's imminent demise can be seen in two other articles from this week alone: from Yvonne Ridley and in Al Ahram.

But, as I wrote above, this is hardly new.

I just found this article from 1951:

What would Boyle's advice have been in 1951?

(That article goes on to say that Israel is in no danger of collapsing.)

Latest Latma

Featuring Barack Obama giving his advice on where Israelis should live.

Koran codes say that Israel has the biggest oil field on earth!

Al Arabiya in Arabic has a story about an Egyptian man who spent half his life puzzling out secret codes in the Koran to determine where on the planet one can find natural resources, like uranium, gold, natural gas and oil.

He's trying to convince Egyptian authorities to use his research to uncover untold riches of uranium, and he claims that they found some of them but didn't give him credit.

He also said:

There is also the largest gold mine in the world in Kuwait at a depth of 3312 meters, as well as the largest uranium mine in the world in Yemen, and the largest oil well is in occupied Palestine, and there in Medina two mines of gold, and in Mecca four gold mines, in addition to 3 archaeological treasures in Mecca, and 3 other archaeological treasures in the city of Medina, and there are 6 wells for oil and gas north of Yanbu.

Christians have done the same thing with the Bible to claim vast oil reserves in Israel.

Applying game theory to negotiations

Zvi points to a recent interview with Nobel prize winner Robert Aumann where he discusses applying game theory to the Middle East conflict. Highlights:

Aumann’s analysis of repeated games explains how cultures build systems that allow them to function reasonably smoothly. The problem is when one player does not understand the sort of game being played. For instance, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli peace process, Aumann believes that the problem isn’t that the Israelis and Arabs don’t want peace, but rather that the Israelis and their U.S. patron believe they are playing a one-time game whereas the Arabs see themselves as playing a repeated game. Jerusalem and Washington are in a hurry to conclude negotiations immediately, whereas the Arabs are willing to wait it out and keep playing the same game. The result is that Israel’s concessions, or the desire to have peace now, have brought no peace.

What Aumann is getting at is what he called in his Nobel lecture “one of those paradoxical upside-down insights of game theory.” Of course, poker players are familiar with the principle: Don’t show your hand with chips still on the table. “For repetition to engender co-operation, the players must not be too eager for immediate results,” Aumann said in his lecture. “The present, the now, must not be important. If you want peace now, you may well never get peace. But if you have time—if you can wait—that changes the whole picture; then you may get peace now.”

In Aumann’s view, the post-Oslo period shows that Israel’s behavior leaves it at a serious disadvantage in a repeated game. “In games that repeat over time,” Aumann wrote in an article called “The Blackmailers’ Paradox,” “a strategic balance that is neutral paradoxically causes a cooperation between the opposing sides.” Aumann offered the example of two men forced to split $100,000. Person A assumes that they will split it evenly and is astonished when Person B explains that he will not accept anything less than $90,000. Afraid that he will leave empty-handed, A relents and takes one-tenth of the money. In this situation, A acted as if this were a one-time game, but had he understood it as a repeated game and refused the split so that both he and B walked away empty-handed, he would have shown for future reference that he was every bit as determined as B. This in turn would make B more willing to compromise. “Likewise,” Aumann wrote, “Israel must act with patience and with long-term vision, even at the cost of not coming to any present agreement and continuing the state of belligerence, in order to improve its position in future negotiations.”

Game theory, Aumman explained to me, “has to be borne out by history and historical evidence.” One might add that it is also borne out by other human experiences, like commerce. In the Middle Eastern souk, as the Arab novelist Abdul Rahman Munif once observed, showing your interest in an item immediately triples the merchant’s price. And yet, as Aumann explained to me, “Middle Easterners are no different than anyone else in the world. Game theory is based on the idea that people react to their incentives, and you should be aware that the other party reacts to its own incentives. The other side does not always agree with you or share the same goals.”

“The way to make peace is to make your intentions clear,” Aumann told me. But Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza brought not only the second Lebanon war but also the bombardment of southern Israel and most recently the Mavi Marmara incident.

.... “It’s one thing to do something unconscionably bad,” Aumann said. For him, an expulsion that uprooted thousands of people who have yet to get their lives back in order was “unquestionably immoral.” “If it brings the peace,” Aumann said, “if the ends justify the means, that’s one thing, but this doesn’t even achieve the means. It was morally wrong and strategically stupid. The expulsion from Gaza is unprecedented. Jews have been expelled throughout history, but we own the dubious distinction of being the first people to have expelled ourselves. Never before had this happened, and it led to disaster. Our standing in the world was not improved. We didn’t get sympathy. We get sympathy when we act decisively—after Entebbe, Osirak, a lot of sympathy came after the Six Day war.”

When policymakers and analysts use the same sort of examples to draw the same historical conclusions, they’re dismissed as right-wing ideologues, and Aumann has endured the same treatment. The Nobel committee nonetheless realized he’d hit on a truth that explains a fundamental aspect of who we are as political beings—or who we are when we are most human, sitting across the table from our neighbors trying to figure out how to live together. The paradox is that there can be no co-existence if one person isn’t willing to negotiate as hard as the other. The appeaser will always be swallowed up and simply cease to exist. It is stubbornness rather than the willingness to make immediate concessions that brings about successful negotiations. In other words, if you want peace, prepare for war.

Jordanian dad changes daughter's name from "Golda Meir" to "Aisha"

From Jordan's Ammon News:

The Jordanian Civil Status Department approved the request submitted by a local father to change the name of his 4-year old daughter from "Golda Meir" to "Aisha."

The approval comes following the pleas made by the father, Eyad Mustafa Ahmad Oudeh, over a radio station to change his daughter's name.

The father explained that he named his daughter "Golda Meir" to be able to get a visiting permit from Israel to see his three children, who live with their mother (the father's ex-wife) in occupied Jerusalem, as he said.

Israeli authorities did not allow the children to travel to Jordan to visit their father either, so he decided to change his daughter's name after losing faith in getting a visiting permit from Israel, Nablus T.V. reported.

This all makes no sense, of course. Did he really think that giving his daughter the name "Golda Meir" would cause Israel to bend rules on visiting permits? And when she was born he was not divorced, so was he clairvoyant?

While the story above is what is being reported in most Arabic media outlets, it turns out that there is more to the story.

I don't quite understand all the details of when he separated from his wife but a different version of the story mentions his other kids' names.

He has a 6-year old son named "peace" and a 2-year old named "bin Laden."

In other words, the father already had a screw loose, and tried to use his kids names to help bring peace to the world. Apparently his frustration with Israel for not allowing him to see his kids (his wife apparently said she was visiting Palestinian relatives for a short time and never came back) caused him to want to change his daughter's name away from something Israeli.

But he has no problem raising a son named "Bin Laden."

Victim of belly dancing embellishes her story

A woman who claims to be the person in the video showing an IDF soldier dancing around her has added a great deal to her story between the first interview and the last one.

She first surfaced in an interview with AFP:

"I saw the video on Al-Jazeera. I didn't sleep all night because I felt humiliated and frustrated," Ihsan al-Dababsi, 35, from the southern West Bank village of Nuba, told AFP.

"When they arrested me, they took me to the Etzion detention centre near Bethlehem. After they questioned me, they put me in a corridor and put on a blindfold and handcuffs," she said.

"I could hear the laughter of the soldiers, their voices and the music. I could see what was happening because the blindfold was not tight, and I begged them not to film me.

"But they continued to videotape me, and they were drinking alcohol and dancing," she said.

But in her latest interview she adds a few minor details that she didn't feel important enough to tell AFP:

Dababisa said she was detained at Etzion checkpoint at 8 a.m. on 11 December 2007, and thrown into a military jeep, handcuffed and blindfolded. She was taken to the yard of Etzion detention center in front of a group of soldiers.

Moments later, she said, she heard loud music and one of the soldiers tried to touch her. She tried to stay close to the wall, and another soldier arrived with a bottle of wine, and offered her a drink. When she refused, but he continued to harass her, she said.

The soldiers then attacked her "like vicious dogs."

"They began beating me with rifle butts and legs. One of the soldiers hit my head against the metal of the military jeep until I fainted. Then I found myself in front of a female doctor wearing military uniform. After examining me they moved me to the interrogation center where my journey of torture and humiliation started.

"The officer’s name who began to interrogate me was Beran. He threatened to demolish my family home and arrest my siblings, the interrogation lasted for two hours. After that I was transferred with my eyes blindfolded to another interrogation center, I think it was the Russian compound, where there were three interrogators.

"Soon after I came in they began insulting and cursing using words I do not want to say. One of the interrogators was pulling me from my hair. I was handcuffed the whole time. The interrogation lasted until 11 at night, then they transferred me to Hasharon prison where they accused me of trying to stab someone, and of affiliation with the Islamic Jihad. Lawyers from the prisoners' society defended me and I was sentenced to 22 months in prison. I was released on 6 September 2009."

So now she was mercilessly beaten, had her head bashed to the point of unconsciousness, and was pulled be her hair - and she only told AFP about the dancing?

I'm not convinced that the woman is even the same one as seen on the tape. (I don't know enough about Palestinian Arab culture to know if women consistently wear hijab of one color or not; the woman on the tape is wearing black and Dababsi wears white.) Even if it is, she appears to be acting the way we have documented other PalArabs act - their "eyewitness" testimonies almost invariably end up being made up or hugely exaggerated when they have a chance to pile blame on Israel.

UPDATE: Israellycool notices the same thing, and adds a third source of discrepancies.