Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Islamic Jihad says it is too moral to use chemical weapons

Palestine Today writes that Said Abu Ahmed, spokesman of Al-Quds Brigades, military wing of Islamic Jihad, said that the Palestinian "resistance" groups would never use chemical weapons because of the ethics of the "resistance" and their Islamic religion which would prohibit their use.

In other ethical news, the same Islamic Jihad praised the murderers of Ben Yosef Livnat, returning from prayers at Joseph's Tomb, this morning, saying it was a natural response to the provocation that Jews do. By praying, I guess.

Study: "10,000 international forces cannot stop PalArab terror" (UPDATED)

One of the assumptions of a final peace agreement that is bandied about is the idea that an international force would be deployed within the PA-controlled areas in order to protect both sides from aggression by the other.

A new study determines that such an approach would fail to stop Palestinian Arab terrorists from their activities.

From IMRA:

Maariv correspondent Eli Brandstein reported in the 21 April 2011 edition that a war simulation organized by the Saban Center with the participation of former senior American officials found that a large international force of 10,000 deployed in a sovereign Palestinian state could not prevent Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli targets despite receiving advance warning from Israel.

The simulation also found that official Palestinian security forces would not act themselves to prevent the attacks, relying instead on the ineffective international forces.

To make matters worse, the simulation found that the presence of the international force in the Palestinian state served to increase friction and tension between Israel and the United States in a way that impaired security cooperation between Israel and the United States.

Under the simulation, a sovereign Palestinian state would be created after a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank with major settlement blocs annexed by Israel and over 82 settlements evacuated.

The 10,000 man international security force that failed in the simulation was composed of European soldiers along with some soldiers from Morocco and Palestinians under American command.

In the simulation the international force enjoyed complete security authority via a UN mandate with its principle mission being to prevent terror attacks against Israel.

Maariv did not indicate if any Palestinian state promoters have revised their position given the results of the simulation given that these result serve to undermine a key working assumption of those who claim that there are viable durable workable security arrangements that could be implemented in the event of the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

So much for what "everyone knows."

Yet, as with all other fatal assumptions that have no proof, real evidence will not sway those who are wedded to the idea of the "peace process."

(h/t Zach N)

UPDATE:

In response to a inquiry by IMRA regarding the simulation reported in
Maariv(see below) , Kenneth M. Pollack, Director of the Saban Center for
Middle East Policy responded late Saturday night as follows:

"The Maariv report is entirely INACCURATE. It is factually incorrect. The
simulation demonstrated nothing of the sort. We tried to explain this to the
reporter, but apparently he was not interested.

We will be putting out an accurate account of the simulation and its
findings in the days ahead. You will find it on the Brookings website when
it is out. "

Nice to know. We'll see. (h/t Challah Hu Akbar)

Anti-Israel activists at Ahava UK convicted

From TheJC:

Four activists who chained themselves to concrete block inside the London branch of Israel cosmetics shop Ahava were illegally trespassing, a judge has ruled.

All four defendants, who have been conditionally discharged, argued the store was committing "war crimes" by selling products from an Israeli settlement, Mitzpe Shalem, in the West Bank. They plan to appeal the verdict.

But District Judge Ian Baker said at Highbury Magistrates' Court that although he had "considerable hesitancy" in calling Ahava's business legal, it had never been proved to be illegal in the UK.

He said: "Until such time as Ahava UK Ltd is prosecuted and defence arguments herein properly tested, I can do no more that accept it is trading lawfully."

The four, who arrived in court dressed in casual T-shirts and supported by many pro-Palestinian activists, occupied Ahava in Covent Garden on two separate occasions last year. The protests by Matthew Richardson, 24, and Gwendolen Wilkinson, 20, were on October 2 2010 and by Christopher Osmond, 30, and Jessica Nero, 33, on November 22. All were convicted of aggravated trespass after a three day trial at Stratford Magistrates' Court last month.

The protesters lay on the floor and chained themselves to each other and a concrete bollard, until they were cut free by police, and the store was forced to close.

All four were ordered to pay £250 in costs. Both Mr Richardson and Ms Wilkinson argued they had no income, and Ms Wilkinson said she has no bank account in her name. After Judge Baker asked "how they keep body and soul together", Mr Richardson claimed he ate leftover food from supermarkets.

Judge Baker acknowledged the activists had trodden carefully in order to try to act legally but added: "Unfortunately, I don't agree with your analysis of the law."

He added: "The defendants cite financial reasons why they were unable to pursue judicial reviews or private prosecution that does not justify an unlawful course of trespass and disruption instead. The defendants are free to hold protests outside the shop. They are not free to act in the way they did on this occasion."

The four released a statement saying: "Today's judgement illustrates the complicity of the authorities in allowing companies to profit from the occupation. Throughout the trial neither the Judge nor the prosecution challenged the assertion that the settlements are illegal in international law."

Lawyers for the four were instructed by the law firm Irvine Thanvi Natas, whose partner Simon Natas is involved with Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. Mr Natas said all four would appeal the verdict.

Richard Millett's blog has much more, including this priceless piece after the defendants claimed to have no money:

The judge did say that the defendants seemed to have found plenty of money to travel to “Palestine” on quite a few occasions though. One of the unemployed people answered that he cycled to get there!!!

This verdict is in marked contrast to the absurd, unprofessional verdict by Judge Bathurst-Norman last year, which I posted about a few times.

(h/t Samson)

Disgusting, intimidating behavior against a Jew at a Scotland university

From The Courier (UK):

Two St Andrews University students have appeared in court following allegations they indulged in anti-semitic behaviour.

Samuel Colchester and Paul Donnachie are charged with fondling their genitals before rubbing their hands on a flag of Israel. It is claimed they were intending to cause "alarm or distress" to Jewish man Chanan Roziel Reitblat.

Colchester (20), of Andrew Melville Hall, and 18-year-old Donnachie, of McIntosh Hall, both deny the allegations.

Colchester and Donnachie face a charge alleging that, on March 12 at a building owned by the university in Links Crescent, they acted in a racially aggravated manner intended to cause alarm or distress to Mr Reitblat.

The charge states they placed their hands inside their trousers and on to their genitals before rubbing them on to a flag of Israel. It is also alleged they made comments of an offensive nature within Mr Reitblat's presence, contrary to the Criminal Law Act.

An alternative charge states the pair behaved in a threatening or abusive manner likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm by acting in the manner described, contrary to the Criminal Justice Act.

Donnachie's reactions on his Facebook page:

Chanan Reitblat, the victim, tells me that this did not happen in a public area, like at a campus Zionist organization. The events happened in Reitblat's dorm room where he had put up an Israeli flag on his own personal bulletin board!

Reitblat emailed me that they told him...

...that I support terrorists and should be held liable for putting up a "terrorist symbol" in my room- pretty much that I deserve what's coming to me.

After they left my room, they went on an hour long rant throughout the hall about how Jews have no claim to Israel and that Israel is a terrorist, Nazi state.

Reitblat is traumatized by what happened in his own room, as one can imagine, telling me that this was an "awful month" for him.

This is what happens when anti-Israel hate is allowed to fester - it emboldens the haters to take things further and further.

And things are pretty bad in universities in Scotland nowadays.

UPDATE: Commenter Elise notes that this is the school that the new royal couple attended. Wonderful.

PA policemen shoot Jewish civilian worshipers, killing one.

From JPost:

One Israeli worshiper was killed and four were wounded in Nablus early Sunday morning after their vehicle was shot at by a Palestinian Authority policeman as the group was exiting the city from prayer services held at Joseph's Tomb. Magen David Adom said one person was in serious condition, one in moderate condition and two others in light condition.

The Palestinian police officer who opened fire told investigators in the Palestinian security forces that he identified "suspicious" individuals and fired at them, the IDF said. The shooting took place in an area of Palestinian Authority security jurisdiction. The PA policeman was being interrogated by Palestinian security officers. Several hours after the incident, dozens of Palestinians rioted near Joseph's Tomb and set tires on fire, Israel Radio reported. Settlers claimed that Palestinians vandalized the holy site in the wake of the attack.

...The death of a 25-year-old male was pronounced at the scene. The victim was identified as Ben Yosef Livnat, the nephew of Minister of Culture and Sports Limor Livnat (Likud). Livnat was married, a father of four and was a resident of Jerusalem.

JoeSettler at The Muqata fills in details:

Ever since Israel foolishly gave away Joseph's tomb to the Palestinians (which led to the abandonment of an Israeli soldier (Madhat Yusef) at the site who bled to death, and the destruction of this Holy site by the Palestinians), Breslev Hassidim and others have a made a point of regularly returning to the Jewish holy site to ensure that the Kever isn't abandoned completely.

Sometimes the IDF coordinates visits in the middle of the night and brings in busloads of people (unless they think it is too dangerous), but more often Breslev Hassidim sneak in and out in the middle of the night.

Early this morning (5:40AM), after finishing their prayers a carload of Breslev Hassidim were attacked by Palestinian policemen.

Originally 3 carloads of Jews arrived at the tomb to pray, but PA policemen waiting there shot in the air and 2 of the cars immediately left. The third carload of Breslevers stayed to pray.

After the prayers, when the Hassidim were driving out, the Palestinian policemen (trained and funded by the US) drove their PA police jeep up to the car with the Hassidim in it and opened fire.

One Israeli, Ben-Yosef Livnat (age 30) was killed and 3 more injured. Livnat is the nephew of Minister Limor Livnat.

Nablus/Shechem Governor Jibril al-Bakri admits his policemen did the attack, calling it a "security incident" not a "terrorist attack". He also confirms the witness report that they first shot in the air when they saw the Breslev Hassidim who arrive there every week.

9:42 AM Arabs are trying to burn down Kever Yosef right now. (5 Molotov cocktails thrown at Beit Yonatan in Jerusalem Old City this morning).

Ma'an throws in a baldfaced lie, with no qualification whatsoever:

Palestinian security officials told Ma’an that dozens of armed ultra-Orthodox settlers entered the Joseph’s Tomb site without coordinating with the Palestinian side and thus they were not escorted by Israeli forces.

The Palestinian officers told them they were not allowed to be there without coordination, but they did not obey the orders. Instead, they pulled out their own guns and pointed them toward Palestinian officers.

Breslov chassidim with guns? Oh, please.

YNet adds:

One of the Breslovers who was in the second car in the convoy and was lightly wounded told Ynet: "We arrived at the tomb like on many occasions in the past. Near the tomb we saw a spikes chain. One of the guys jumped out of the car and moved it aside.

"At this point a uniformed Palestinian police officer with a Kalashnikov in a jeep woke his colleagues up and they started firing into the air…I was in the front seat. We started driving fast in the direction of the tomb; we got out of the vehicles and kissed the tomb.

"When we got back to the vehicles the police shot at the vehicles, they were screaming 'Allahu Akbar'. It was crazy, they were shooting to kill. I screamed at the driver to drive out of there quickly. When we got to Har Bracha we attended to the wounded."

From the Oslo Accords 1995 Interim Agreement, Appendix III, Annex 1, Article 32:

2. Both sides shall respect and protect the listed below religious rights of Jews, Christians, Moslems and Samaritans:

a. protection of the Holy Sites;

b. free access to the Holy Sites; and

c. freedom of worship and practice.

If Israel withdraws from Hebron and Bethlehem, then Jews wishing to visit their holiest places would be placing their lives into their own hands every single time. And in order to soothe the sensibilities of Muslims who of course would be incensed at the idea of Jews in their midst, those visits would also have to take place in the middle of the night in armored buses - a far cry from "free access."

For some reason, the rights of Jews to worship at their holy places is not worth much to the world. Neither is Palestinian violations of signed agreements.

German MP blames Israel for Mer-Khamis, Arrigoni murders

From Germany's Rote-Fahne News (translated):

Inge Hoeger from the Left Party, who is an expert on the situation in Gaza, writes:

"The fact that in only two weeks Juliano Mer Khamis, one of the best-known activists in the West Bank, and now Vittorio, the most well-known activist in Gaza, were killed, while nothing like that before ever happened, is at least questionable. The question that we are have is: Who benefits from these terrible crimes?

On the one hand, two of Israel's most 'dangerous' -- most committed, most famous and prestigious activists - are no longer here. The murders of Vittorio and Juliano could also be a means to enable the International Solidarity Movement a serious blow - particularly in view of the forthcoming second flotilla, and the fact that international activists still can not dissuade them from going to Palestine. "

The JPost writes:

“Inge Höger’s wild conspiracy theory is pure speculation, without any concrete factual basis,” Volker Beck, a leading German Green Party MP and spokesman for the party on human rights, said last week.

“She employs the centuries-old image of the perfidiously murderous Jews. After the terrible murder of Vittorio Arrigoni in the Gaza Strip, only one thing is apparently clear to the Left Party: Israel is guilty. And should the opposite be proven, a lingering doubt will remain,” he said.

The German daily Die Welt on Friday called Höger a “flawless anti-Semite” because of her anti-Israel and anti-Jewish comments.

While the Hamas authorities arrested radical Salafists for the murder of Arrigoni in the Gaza Strip on April 15, the killers of Mer-Khamis, who was murdered in Jenin on April 4, have not been apprehended.

Höger reportedly used German taxpayer funds to travel on the Mavi Marmara last year and agreed to be lodged in the segregated women’s deck aboard the vessel. Critics have longed charged her with spending the bulk of her time as a member of parliament bashing Israel and stoking anti- Jewish state sentiments in the Federal Republic.

The term "flawless anti-semite" seems a bit wrong; probably "pure anti-semite" was what was meant. Otherwise it is an oxymoron.

Gabriel Latner/UNWatch takes down the UNHRC

Remember Gabriel Latner, the Cambridge student who stunned the world with his defense of Israel at a debate? My transcript of the speech went viral with over 9000 hits.

He is now working at UN Watch, and here you can see him take on the UN Human Rights Council's hypocrisy.

The topic is a debate on racism and discrimination. When Latner mentions human rights abuses in Cuba and China, he is interrupted by those countries' representatives and the Council president warns him not to continue to bring up cases of council members!

IHH says...

From Turkey's IHH:

As has been reflected in the media, it has been decided that the Israeli security forces and intelligence agencies are to begin a new wave of assassinations. The resolution was made under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu and taken in the meeting in which leaders of security forces participated. This is not surprising to anyone as one of the infringements of human rights by Israel is the assassination of others.

Vittorio Arrigoni was murdered in Gaza merely because he remained in Gaza with the slogan “Remain Human”.... It was announced by video that he had been kidnapped by a group called Sahabi ibn Salama on 14 April. A few hours after the broadcast of the video he was found strangled to death in an abandoned house. Vittorio Arrigoni’s mother, the mayor of a region near Milan, refused to have his body sent through Israel, demanding that it to be sent through Egypt. The name of Vittorio Arrigoni was included on the Israeli death list and was identified as a target for the Israeli Air and Defense Forces.

Juliano Mer-Khamis was the child of a Palestinian father and a Jewish mother; he was an actor and a peace activist. He lost his life as the victim of a murder in the entrance of the Freedom Theater, which he managed, in the Janin Camp. Mer-Khamis’ name is known as an opponent of the Israeli policies in Palestine.

It is another sad fact that there a great number of threats are being sent by a large number of people, said to be Jews in Israel and Turkey, via Facebook, other social network websites and e-mail. They are attempting to prevent the Freedom Flotilla from setting out with a number of different scenarios, asking constant questions about the Flotilla, many times stating that “punishment is down to us”, “you will pay”, “this is not just a matter of convoys and flotillas, you will pay the price for messing with Israel”, “there will be more deaths” and other similar threats.

Doesn't that last part sound like the IHH is trying to incite anti-semitism in Turkey? The Turkish version is a bit clearer: "Israel and especially Turkish Jews are sending threatening messages..."

But there is good news. The IHH didn't refer to the IDF as the "Israeli Occupation Forces." Which proves, of course, that they are moderate.

(h/t Kramerica)

Sidney Lumet's legacy in Zionism, civil rights - and hasbara

Here is a chapter of American Jewish history I was not aware of:

Academy Award winning film director Sidney Lumet, who passed away on April 9 at age 86, is remembered for classics such as “Twelve Angry Men,” the courtroom drama that challenged racial prejudice and which Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has cited as a major influence on her career.

What is not widely known is that before he became a director, Lumet, as a young actor, was at the center of a 1940s controversy in Baltimore involving Zionist activists and the fight over racial segregation.

In the summer of 1946, hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors languished in Displaced Persons camps in postwar Europe. The British refused to let them enter Mandatory Palestine, for fear of alienating the Arabs. In New York City, the Jewish activists known as the Bergson Group came up with a new way to publicize the survivors’ plight: a Broadway play. They called it “A Flag is Born.”

Ben Hecht, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter, was active in the Bergson Group. So were the Adlers, the “first family” of the Yiddish theater. Hecht wrote the script for “A Flag is Born.” Luther Adler directed it. Adler’s half-sister Celia and another ex-Yiddish theater star,Paul Muni, costarred as elderly Holocaust survivors straggling through postwar Europe. Their sister Stella, the statuesque actress and acting coach, cast her most promising student, 22 year-old Marlon Brando, in the role of David, a passionate young Zionist who encounters the elderly couple in a cemetery. Celia Adler’s son, Prof. Selwyn Freed, told me: “When my mother came home from the first rehearsal, she said of Brando, ‘I can’t remember his name, but boy, is he talented’.The actors all performed for the Screen Actors Guild minimum wage, as a gesture of solidarity with the Zionist cause.

“Flag” played for ten sold-out weeks at Manhattan’s Alvin Theater (today known as the Neil Simon Theater). British critics hated it. The London Evening Standard called it “the most virulent anti-British play ever staged in the United States.” American reviewers were kinder. Walter Winchell said “Flag” was “worth seeing, worth hearing, and worth remembering…it will wring your heart and eyes dry…bring at least eleven handkerchiefs.”

Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of the political weekly The Nation, was a teenage usher who collected contributions for the Bergson Group after each performance. “The buckets were always full,” he told me. “The audiences were extremely enthusiastic about the play’s message. For me, too, it was a political awakening about the right of the Jews to have their own state.”

After New York City, “Flag” was performed in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore (and, reportedly, in a DP camp in Europe). Brando’s contractual obligations prevented him from taking part in the out of town shows. He was replaced by Sidney Lumet.

Lumet was just 22 at the time, but as the son of Yiddish actors Baruch Lumet and Eugenia Wermus, he had been on stage since childhood and made his Broadway debut at age 11. Lumet told me that having grown up in the world of the Yiddish theater, it was “a special thrill” to perform alongside Paul Muni in “Flag.” (He did not know Brando well at that point, but Lumet would later direct him in the 1960 film “The Fugitive Kind.”)

When Lumet and the other cast members of the Broadway hit arrived in Baltimore, local reporters were clamoring for interviews. Lumet spoke to the Baltimore Sun about the inspiring struggle to rebuild the Jewish homeland. “This is the only romantic thing left in the world,” he said. “The homecoming to Palestine, the conquest of a new frontier, against all obstacles.”

On the eve of their performance at Baltimore’s Maryland Theater, controversy erupted when it turned out that the theater restricted African-Americans to the balcony. Neither Hecht nor the cast would tolerate such discrimination. The Bergson Group and the NAACP teamed up to protest: the NAACP threatened to picket, and a Bergson official announced he would bring two black friends to sit with him at the play. The management gave in, allowing African-American patrons to sit wherever they chose. NAACP leaders hailed the “tradition-shattering victory” and used it to facilitate the desegregation of other Baltimore theaters. Lumet, reflecting on the episode six decades later, told me was “very proud” of his part in the protest and “pleasantly surprised that it was so successful.”

For the Bergson Group and its supporters, the fight for civil rights in Baltimore was just as important as their fight for Jewish rights in Palestine. As Ben Hecht put it: “To fight injustice to one group of human beings affords protection to every other group.”

Sidney Lumet’s admirers will remember his extraordinary talents as a filmmaker when they enjoy watching “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” or “Twelve Angry Men.” But it’s also worth remembering the role he played in the real-life fight for justice six decades ago.

Now all the plays being written for political purposes are anti-Israel.

We can learn a lot from the Bergson Group in the 1940s.

The "Merchants of Peace" racket (Toameh) (UPDATED x2)

From Khaled Abu Toameh in Hudson-NY:

A "peace activist" based in Jerusalem this week sent out the following email to friends: "For my birthday on May 2, I'm asking my friends and family for a special gift: help me raise $5,000... It's a great cause that advances peace –two states for two peoples – Israel and Palestine. Please consider giving to my Birthday Wish, and together we can help to make peace."

The Palestinians call such people who go out asking for money in the name of coexistence and a two-state solution "Merchants of Peace." And there is no shortage of such "peace activists" in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

There are, in fact, dozens of non-governmental organizations that raise millions of dollars every year under the pretext that they want to help the cause of peace in the Middle East.

Most of the money goes to paying high salaries to the directors and employees of these organizations.

Some of these organizations also invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in "seminars" and joint Israeli-Palestinian meetings in five-star hotels in Europe in the name of peace.

Those who are invited to these gatherings are usually people with close ties to the heads of the organizations and government officials on both sides. Only a few represent the grassroots in both societies.

Many Palestinians and Israelis who attend these meetings say that they rarely contribute to the cause of peace.

In many instances, Palestinians and Israelis who go to these meetings as friends return home as enemies after being forced to confront each other in front of foreign audiences.

It is time that the donors who fund such organizations start revising their policies and think of better ways to invest their money.

They should, for example, consider supporting Palestinian university students who come from poor families. The money could also go to build sports facilities and create job opportunities for Palestinian youths. In short, there are one million projects that the donors, some of whom appear to be extremely gullible, could make use of their money to help the cause of peace.

Giving a US-born "peace activist" a $5,000 gift on his birthday is certainly not one of the ways to help advance the cause of peace. It is also hard to understand how such a gift would help bring about a two-state solution.

There are, however, so many deprived Palestinian families who, with $5,000, could feed their children for weeks and months.

Indeed, as we have seen, the average West Bank worker earns $22 a day. $5000 would feed his family for over seven months.

I confess I am not so familiar with the many dozens of groups that say they foster peace. Some do seem to be doing important things, others seem more like what Toameh is talking about.

But it does bring up the question: who funded Vittorio Arrigoni's life in Gaza for the past couple of years? The ISM? The ISM says that donations are

...used to cover operational expenses in Palestine such as communications, transportation, legal expenses, apartment maintenance expenses and small stipends for key coordination positions.

Sounds like a scam right there - probably the bulk of ISM's contributions (many of them laundered through the A. J. Muste Institute in order to be tax deductible) go to maintaining the lifestyle of Greta Berlin, Adam Shapiro and other rabid Israel-haters.

I wish Toameh would have named names. It would be fun to track back the money trails of useless "peace" organizations.

UPDATE: Stan says he got the same email: from IPCRI's Gershon Baskin.

Sure enough, a quick look at its website shows that ICPRI does essentially nothing. It styles itself as a "think tank" and holds lots of meetings and conferences that accomplish little. (I only found one exception: helping sewage treatment in an Arab community. Even that project's link doesn't work to find out more information.)

Even more outrageous, many of their "policy papers" are not available at their website (they claim that many of them are "classified!") The only articles I could find are the ones that Baskin writes for the Jerusalem Post and elsewhere, with very few exceptions. Their downloadable e-books are all over ten years old.

If the only output that IPCRI generates is stuff that Baskin writes, then maybe I should turn this blog into a think-tank! I probably generate more content than he does.

Hey, donate some money to EoZ! I need to work on my begging techniques!

UPDATE 2: Here is the email (h/t Stan):

Here you can see his progress towards the $5000.

38 reported killed in Syria protests today (UPDATE: 68)

Ha'aretz writes:

Security forces shot dead at least 25 pro-democracy protesters in Syria on Friday, human rights campaigners said, as protesters flooded into the streets after prayers in at least five major areas across the country.

The protesters were killed in suburbs and towns surrounding Damascus, in the central city of Homs and in the southern town of Izra'a, two established Syrian human rights organisations keeping a tally of civilian deaths told Reuters.

Syrian security forces fired live bullets and tear gas at the tens of thousands of people shouting for freedom and democracy.

"The people want the downfall of the regime!" shouted protesters in Douma, a Damascus suburb where some 40,000 people took to the streets, witnesses said.

It is the same rallying cry that was heard during the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

Al-Arabiya in Arabic says that the number of deaths is at 38. AFP echoes that number.

Before today, some 228 people had been killed in the anti-regime protests in Syria.

UPDATE: Al Arabiya says 68.

Egypt closes Rafah. No one cares.

This week, Israel severely restricted Palestinian Arabs from crossing the Green Line for Passover, as it does every year. The chance for terror attacks increases greatly during Jewish holidays, as we had seen in the Park Hotel Passover massacre of 2002 that killed 30, 21 of whom were over 70 years old.

Anti-Israel sites are keen on pointing out how horrible Israel is for doing this, and how especially delicious the irony that Israel seems to celebrate its holiday celebrating freedom by restricting the freedom of Palestinian Arabs.

It just so happens that the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza has been closed since last night and will continue to be closed from now through Tuesday. It is also closing it for a national holiday.

Not one English-language news source is mentioning this story.

And what holiday is Egypt celebrating?

"Sinai Liberation Day", April 25th, is the anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from Sinai in 1982.

I guess that irony that Gazans are imprisoned during Sinai Liberation Day (and the days before and afterwards) is not the right kind of irony.

Don't forget - send a message to Gilad!

I am trying to get 250 of my readers to write a message to Gilad Shalit, and then you can also write to various leaders and NGOs demanding that our messages get delivered.

Do it now!

Finally, an Israeli official responds to unilateralism

From JPost:

Dr. Uzi Landau, Israel's Minister of National Infrastructure, warns that in the event of a unilateral United Nations declaration of a Palestinian state, he will call upon Israel to annex the Jordan Valley and large, Jewish populated blocs in the West Bank:

“We'll have to take care of our interests,” Landau told Inside Israel's Mordechai I. Twersky in a wide-ranging interview April 21. “We'll have to take protect ourselves. If such a thing happens, I'm going to suggest to my government to extend out sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and over the highly-populated blocs we have in Judea and Samaria, just to start with.”

The former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee invoked the Bush Road Map and a letter of commitment issued by the former president committing to Israel's retention of major Jewish population centers in the West Bank in any negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. If that signed agreement can't be honored, he said, all bets are off.

“If we don't see negotiations, and if we do a policy which basically makes the entire Road Map agreement a hoax, Israel should take care of its own interests,” said Minister Landau.

This is exactly what Netanyahu should be saying. If the PA wants to act unilaterally and abrogate Oslo and the Road Map, they need to understand that Israel is under no obligation to adhere to the same agreements either. And the result will be far, far worse for Palestinian Arabs than if they would have stayed with negotiations.

The world needs to understand this as well. Nations are sympathetic to the idea of a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state but they are basing it on the assumption that Israel will continue to adhere to its commitments that the PA is ignoring. If they know that Israel will not play a game where it is the only one that has to follow the rules, they would be much less likely to support something that will inevitably destabilize the region and make things worse for everybody.

Right now, under so-called "occupation," there is peace. It is not ideal for anyone but it is stable and getting better every year. If the PA abrogates the peace treaty, that peace will end and the Palestinian Arabs who are supposedly going to be helped by living in "Palestine" will be the real losers. This fact is self-evident but Western nations do not seem to have grasped it.

Landau's other observations are worth reading as well:

Landau said the Arab Spring has brought chaos to the Middle east, and could well spread to the important western allies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. He questioned the logic of Israel signing a peace deal with a Palestinian leader, whose own future and that of his government, remains tenuous at best.

“Who knows what's going to happen in the future to any agreement we sign with, let's say, another chief of tribe in Judea and Samaria?” asked Minister Landau. “Today it's Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas). Who is it going to be in the future?”

Landau said the US Administration's continued insistence that a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is key to wider stability in the region – even in the face of spreading Arab unrest – is incomprehensible.

“This is clearly, totally detached from the present reality of the Middle East,” said Landau. “Anyone who lives here clearly understands that this is totally detached from the Middle East reality.”

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Ira Chernus' agenda

In Salon and the Huffington Post, Ira Chernus pooh-poohs Israel's security concerns.

Chernus lists three "myths" about Israel's security. I will only discuss the first one. It should be enough to show that Chernus is not being intellectually honest, to say the least.

Myth Number 1: Israel’s existence is threatened by the ever-present possibility of military attack.

This is a straw man argument. I'm not aware of anyone who says that Israel's existence is threatened by any conventional military attack.

Israel's security posture is not aimed primarily at defending the existence of Israel. Rather, Israel's army is an almost unique position where it must defend its citizens from the threat of being wantonly attacked.

The US Army has no such worries. NATO members have no such worries. For them, all wars are far away and only soldiers are at risk. Israel is perhaps the only Western country in the world where every single citizen is under the credible threat of an attack in any given week.

This simple fact, which Chernus ignores altogether, is the security issue that Israel faces. Chernus, for all his supposed analytical ability, does not even mention Hezbollah once in his article. It is as if the 2006 Lebanon war - where the hundreds of thousands of citizens in the northern part of the country were forced to become temporary refugees - never happened. Chernus downplays Hamas rockets and ignores the 40,000 more deadly and accurate rockets that are aimed, today, at Israel's population centers. And, as in 2006, it takes only one border incident to escalate into a full scale war.

Would such a war threaten Israel's existence? No. But such a war is still not acceptable. Concern about such a war is still a primary security issue. And those who cannot even acknowledge that this type of war is a possibility less than five years after the last one is either willfully blind or adhering to an agenda.

Chernus also downplays the possibility of a nuclear threat against Israel, with this almost unbelievable sentence:

While the Israeli government constantly sounds alarms about imagined Iranian nuclear weapons -- though its intelligence services now suggest Iran won’t have even one before 2015 at the earliest -- Israel remains the region’s only nuclear power for the foreseeable future.

Is Chernus really suggesting that a nuclear threat that is perhaps four years away is not a significant security concern? How can one take anyone who writes such a sentence seriously?

Moreover, only in 2007 did the world discover that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program as well. Is Chernus so naive as to think that this is not a threat to Israel either? (Or does he believe that Syria just gave up, and is now a peaceful neighbor that can be trusted?)

In short, Chernus uses multiple false arguments to imply that Israel has no real security concerns.

So why is he purposefully mis-characterizing Israel's security posture?

The answer can be seen in how he sums up his article:

But what if the American public knew the facts...? What if every solemn reference to Israel’s “security needs” were greeted not with nodding heads, but with the eye-rolling skepticism it deserves? What if Israel’s endless excesses and excuses -- its claims that the occupation of the West Bank and the economic strangulation of Gaza are necessary “for the sake of security” -- were regularly scoffed at by most Americans?

It’s hard to imagine the Obama administration, or any American administration, keeping up a pro-Israel tilt in the face of such public scorn.

Chernus has an agenda - to turn the US against Israel.

That agenda is what drives his knowingly deceptive analysis. That agenda is what makes him downplay Iran's nuclear program and political program to surround Israel with Iranian satellites. That agenda is what makes him ignore Hezbollah's rockets and Syria's nuclear ambitions altogether.

And any analysis of Israel's security needs that is based on such an agenda is not worth the disk space it takes up.

Israel Matzav and Yisrael Medad have also written some criticisms of the piece, as did HuffPoMonitor in three parts:
http://hpmonitor.blogspot.com/2011/04/ira-chernus-and-more-myths-part-3.html
http://hpmonitor.blogspot.com/2011/04/ira-chernus-and-more-myths-part-2.html
http://hpmonitor.blogspot.com/2011/04/ira-chernus-and-more-myths-part-1.html

The last gasp effort to make the UNHRC relevant

A very interesting dispatch from AP:

Several members of the U.N.'s top human rights body are pressing for an emergency meeting to examine the government crackdowns against popular protests that have swept the Middle East and North Africa, Western diplomats said Wednesday.

The countries, from Latin America, Europe, North America and Asia, are trying to collect 16 signatures necessary to force a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council next week, the diplomats said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, which was underlined by the innocuous title proposed for the meeting — "Promotion and protection of human rights in the context of recent peaceful protests."

The title was chosen to avoid singling out particular countries, the diplomats said. But they confirmed that Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria would be among the nations whose violent suppression of protests would be on the agenda.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, whose members carry significant weight in the 47-nation Human Rights Council, said it wouldn't consent to holding such a meeting.

"We think that the events that are taking place do not merit some kind of a special session," said Zamir Akram, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva.

He accused those advocating a special session of double standards, and said the OIC would use any such meeting to focus on human rights abuses by Israel instead.

We already know that the UNHRC is a joke. (Leading UNHRC advisor Jean Ziegler edited a book that likened Libya's dictator Moammar Gaddafi to philosopher Jean Rousseau.) Yet there are those who cling to the idea that it has some relevance; pointing to the very few non-Israeli statements it has made or to the fact that it finally, belatedly kicked Libya out.

The UNHRC's actions over the next few days should be the final nail in the coffin of this thoroughly corrupt institution as well as proof positive that the Organization of Islamic States has an agenda that is fundamentally opposed to human rights.

And how much more proof do you need that Israel is used as a scapegoat for Muslim human rights abuses than the statement by the Pakistani ambassador to the UN?

Hezbollah calls UN chief "Zionist"

Black comedy from Hezbollah:

[U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon]on Wednesday called on Syria to help Lebanon in transforming Hizbullah from an "armed militia" into a political party.

"The existence and activities of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias continue to pose a threat to the stability of the country and the region," read Ban's report on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which was adopted in 2004 and calls for "the disbanding and disarmament" of all factions in Lebanon.

Hizbullah on Thursday hit back at Ban.

"It is not something new for the U.N. secretary general to take unjust and unfair stances in his analysis of the situation in Lebanon, especially in terms of holding Hizbullah responsible for all the problems in Lebanon," the party said in a communiqué.

"This is the nature of the mission assigned to him by the U.S. administration and some Western governments, which he is carrying out very precisely instead of performing his role … in achieving security and peace in the world."

"The U.N. secretary general's latest stance clearly shows that he is blatantly on the side of the Zionists who are violating Lebanon's security and stability," said Hizbullah in its communiqué.

The party accused Ban of justifying Israel's "crimes and terrorist practices while condemning Lebanon's preservation of its strength and immunity in the face of this blatant aggression."

It also said Ban "relied on reports written by Terje Roed-Larsen," U.N. Secretary-General's envoy on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559.

Hizbullah described Larsen as "the U.N. official in service of the Zionist media structure."

It accused Ban of animosity against "the Resistance, Lebanon, Arabs and all the just causes in the world," vowing to continue to "protect Lebanon and preserve its dignity according to the golden army-people-Resistance formula."

Earlier Thursday, Hizbullah MP Hussein al-Moussawi also lashed out at Ban over his report.

Moussawi said he was not "surprised by Ban Ki-moon's statements, because the latter is part of the American-Zionist alliance which has always targeted mujahid peoples.

"Enough of your submission to the American tyrant and the Zionist criminal."

The UN, of course, loves this sort of thing, because then it can claim this as proof it is even-handed. "See? we are accused of being Zionist and anti-Zionist! This shows we are right!"

The first real casualty of the Arab uprisings: Pan-Arabism

Pan-Arabism, the idea that all Arab countries would eventually combine or at least confederate, seems to be on its last legs.

Pan-Arabism had its heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Egypt and Syria created the United Arab Republic.

It has been in decline ever since.

But wishful thinking about the power of a united Arab front continued, mostly in the form of the Arab League, which would meet regularly and where every such meeting would result in de rigueur condemnations of Israel and little else.

Now that Egypt's leadership role in the Arab world has faded as it struggles to discover its own identity, and in the wake of the other Arab uprisings, even the Arab League is falling apart.

A major Arab League summit that was to take place next month in Baghdad has been postponed, and no new date has been set although they are talking about September.

The reason for the postponement is that the Arab League members are squabbling with each other. Iraq is against Saudi Arabian and UAE supporting Bahrain's government in the current Shi'ite uprising there, and Iraq is siding with Iran.

The upheavals in the Arab world are taking the focus off of "Palestine" as each government must actually think about survival. The always-ready excuse of blaming everything on Israel has outlived its usefulness for Arab despots.

While pan-Arabism has been mostly a joke for decades, its most likely successor is not funny at all: pan-Islamism, a construct that Iran hopes to control. Iran also intends to ultimately make Arab identity meaningless, subsumed under the banner of Islam.

While it is too early to know how successful Iran will be - centuries of enmity between Arab and Persian cannot be erased so quickly, and neither can the Shiite/Sunni rift be patched up anytime soon - it is clear that the Islamic Republic is the early winner as the world witnesses the death of pan-Arabism.

That age old respect Islam had for Christians and Jews

I just read another ignorant article in OnIslam.com, this one describing the Muslim view of anti-semitism. (Hint: it is very similar to Helen Thomas'.)

The article ends off with

This is indeed our call to Christians and Jews. As people who believe in God and follow His revelations, let us rally to a common formula - faith. History proves that when we all return to the true altruistic teaching of our religions, harmony and a successful civilization will follow.

Whenever I see any Muslim group telling us that Islam was historically tolerant towards Christians and Jews, I feel compelled to dig up a new counterexample.

Today's comes from The encyclopædia of missions: descriptive, historical, biographical, statistical, Volume 1, published in 1891, meant as a reference for Christian missionaries in far-flung places.

It says, in the entry on Alexandria, Egypt:

The Mohammedans have acquired a very bitter feeling toward the Christians and the Jews, and are ever ready to join in any demonstration or insurrection against them, if they have any reason to suppose such a movement agreeable to the rulers of the city. Given a chief of police like the one in office in 1882, and another scene like that of June llth of that year, with all its barbaric horrors and cruelty, would be enacted, for the elements suitable for such an act are ever ready.

Here's what happened then:

On 11 June 1882 a row over a fare between an Egyptian donkey boy and a Maltese man triggered a riot in the city in which several hundred people were killed, including about 50 foreigners.

Must have been those Zionists.

Wikileaks and Goldstone (Dershowitz)

Nice Alan Dershowitz piece in Hudson-NY:

The Goldstone commission adamantly refused to accept testimony that would have shown that the Israeli army took greater care to reduce civilian deaths than any other armed forces fighting comparable wars. For example, they refused to hear the proffered testimony Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a recognized expert on asymmetric warfare, who would have testified that:

"[F]rom my knowledge of the IDF and from the extent to which I have been following the current operation, I don't think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.

The recently published book about Wiki Leaks strongly confirms Colonel Kemp's assessment.
The Guardian summarized one Wiki Leaks disclosure about Afghanistan as follows:

"We today learn of nearly 150 incidents in which coalition forces, including British troops, have killed or injured civilians, most of which have never been reported…."
And another:

"The logs disclosed a detailed incident-by-incident record of at least 66,081 violent deaths of civilians in Iraq since the invasion. This figure, dismaying in itself, was nevertheless only a statistical starting point. It is far too low. The database begins a year late in 2004, omitting the high casualties of the direct 2003 invasion period itself, and ends on 31 December 2009. Furthermore, the US figures are plainly unreliable in respect of the most sensitive issue—civilian deaths directly caused by their own military activities.
For example, the town of Falluja was the site of two major urban battles in 2004, which reduced the place to near-rubble. Yet no civilian deaths whatever are recorded by the army loggers, apparently on the grounds that they had previously ordered all the inhabitants to leave. Monitors from the unofficial Iraq Body Count group, on the other hand, managed to identify more than 1,200 civilians who died during the Falluja fighting."

...No "Goldstone Commissions" have ever been appointed to investigate the far greater number and proportion of civilian deaths caused by British, German and U.S. military actions—and the frequent lack of credible investigators.

Whenever efforts are made to put Israel's actions in a comparative context with other democracies, demonizers of Israel, who always impose a double standard on the Jewish state, respond by arguing "we're talking about Israel now; don't change the subject by talking about other democracies." That reminds me of a famous story about Harvard's notoriously anti-Semitic president, A. Lawrence Lowell, near the beginning of the 20th Century. In an effort to defend his decision to impose an anti-Jewish quota, he said, "Jews cheat." A distinguished Harvard alumnus, Judge Learned Hand, wrote President Lowell a letter saying that "Protestants also cheat," to which Lowell responded, "you're changing the subject; we're talking about Jews now."

You can't just talk about Jews, or about the Jewish state when making accusations of war crimes or violation of international law. Comparison is everything, especially since international humanitarian law is expressly based on how democratic nations customarily behave in comparable situations.

According to the materials disclosed by Wikileaks, Israel shines in comparison to other democracies. It has a significantly better ratio of combatant to civilian deaths; it takes greater steps to avoid such casualties, and it does a better job investigating negligent and criminal behavior on the part of its soldiers. Moreover, it is seeking to protect its own civilians directly from ongoing cross-border rocket attacks and other terrorist acts, whereas the other democracies are fighting wars of choice many miles from its civilian areas.

This is not to suggest the need for "Goldstone Reports" against Great Britain and Germany and the United States. It is to demand that a single standard be applied to all democracies.

(h/t Zach N. via FB)

Amr Moussa: Camp David has expired

From MEMRI, quoting Al Masry al-Youm:

The Camp David Accords signed between Egypt and Israel have expired and no longer govern the situation, Arab League secretary-general and potential Egyptian presidential candidate Amr Moussa has said.

Moussa, who participated in the negotiations with Israel in 1978, made the statements during a discussion with Egyptian youth.

He added, "What governs the relationship between the two countries is the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and the Egyptian-Israeli treaty."

Can Israel take back the Sinai - and its oil fields - then?

Hamas is so generous with crowded Gaza land

From Reuters:

Palestinian militants of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) take part in a joint drill with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) for the media in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip April 21, 2011.

It is nice to know that the DFLP and PFLP can do joint terror exercises under the magnanimous purview of Hamas. Isn't it sweet that Hamas is so nicely willing to grant so much of that valuable, scarce Gaza land for such an important purpose?

Red Cross: "There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza"

From the IDF:

Mathilde Redmatn is the deputy director of the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip. Redmatn has had the opportunity to see with her eyes what most of us only see on television screens.

On previous assignments, Redmatn has lived in Congo and Colombia. Her activities in Gaza are completely different, she says.

"Of course the work is different everywhere, but here the fabric of life is problematic," she says. "There are two peoples, one living under closure and one living under daily rocket fire, which violates international law.

Redmatn has a lot to say about problems related to the closure Israel has placed on Gaza but she also talks about the surprising normalcy in one of the most explosive regions of the world that receives extensive media attention.

"There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza," she explains. "If you go to the supermarket, there are products. There are restaurants and a nice beach. The problem is mainly in maintenance of infrastructure and in access to goods, concrete for example. Israel has the legitimate right to protect the civilan population, this right should be balanced with the rights of 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip. Despite the easing of the closure and the partial lifting of export bans in the wake of the flotilla incident, continued restrictions on the movement of people and difficulties in importing building materials hampered sustainable economic recovery and dashed any hope of leading a normal and dignified life".

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar via HuffPoMonitor)

If it looks like st and smells like st, it must be - Lauren Booth!

Lauren Booth, unhinged moonbat and unabashed terrorist supporter, has described what she considers clear proof that Israel killed both Juliano Mer Khamis and Vittorio Arrigoni:

The headline ‘Italian peace activist killed by Palestinian extremists’ is an Israeli propagandists wet dream....Which brings us to timing of both Juliano and Vittorio’s murders. ...

It is no coincidence then that both Juliano and Vittorio should die within two weeks. Both, at the hands of unknown Palestinian ‘cells.’ As they say on children’s TV - tell us boys and girls what’s wrong with this picture?

Israel’s supporters will doubtless feel affronted at the assertion that Vittorio was murdered by those almost certainly in the pay of the Jewish State. But they can’t have their dark ops cake and eat it too. Not this time. Too many of us have our eyes open to the filthy tactics employed by Israel every time they come under intellectual attack. And there is no doubt that Israeli Apartheid is losing traction by the day.

As Hamas rounds up the perpetrators of this most recent, deadly crime, the Gaza grapevine is buzzing with the news that they will indeed be found to be, (as suspected from the get-go), Israeli collaborators.

Statements of denial from the ‘Salafis’ accused of the murder have already been issued.

So, who benefits from the killing of Vittorio Arrigoni? And what is the significance of the timing of his murder?

Well, if it smells like s***t and looks like s**t it almost certainly is - Israel.

Sure, the kidnappers’ video looked genuine at first. It had all the customary layout of the kind of ‘Jihadi’ videos that the tabloid press loves: the black flag of Islam, the Quranic verse in the introduction, footage of the kidnapped victim. But a small detail on the black flag, underneath the precious, Islamically untouchable phrase ‘There is No God, but God’ raises questions about the authenticity of the groups grasp on Islam. The extra words read something like “the Brigades of Muhammad Ibn Maslama.” This has been hard for experts to verify because the video is being systematically pulled off YouTube. But one thing is certain;

‘Jihadis’ never write ANYTHING on the flag besides La Ilaha Ila Allah.

After reading her whole diatribe, this is her only real shred of "proof" that Israel must be behind the murders: because of text that is under the Shahada, something Jihadi's "never do."

Here's the supposedly problematic flag from the video:

Five minutes of searching found this:

I don't read Arabic, but it looks like the bottom flag also contains the Muslim declaration of faith, if stylized differently. And there is text underneath, something that even newly-Muslim Lauren Booth knows is not done by real Muslims!

Well, she can always still rely on the "Gaza grapevine" for unassailable proof of her fevered fantasies.

The rest of her posting is equally stupid. Read it all to see how detached from reality the anti-Israel crowd is.

Evil, Talmudic Jews desecrating Al Aqsa again

Palestine Times reports that Jews "desecrated" the Al Aqsa Mosque yet again, by...standing there.

They are "roaming in the courtyards" of Al Aqsa, attempting to establish "Talmudic rituals" in the area. These "Zionist extremists" are also doing "provocative tours."

As you can see, the photo shows how horrible they are acting.

Best place to go for breaking news from Syria

Now Lebanon is following Syrian tweets, Facebook entries and YouTube channels to bring you the very latest on the protests in Syria.

Here are two videos said to have been taken last night of two separate crowds, in two separate towns, chanting "The people want to bring the regime down.”

To read more: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=253828#ixzz1K9hkaYLF
Only 25% of a given NOW Lebanon article can be republished. For information on republishing rights from NOW Lebanon: http://www.nowlebanon.com/Sub.aspx?ID=125478

Morning briefs

Syria's nuclear secrets at TNR:

Syria is getting a free ride. It has suffered no consequence for snubbing the IAEA. Already shaken by North Korea’s defection and Iran’s manipulation, the nonproliferation treaty now finds itself at a crossroads. If it cannot be enforced in Syria, a relatively weak country currently buffeted by its own Arab spring, the wounded agreement risks falling into irrelevance—and the region into a tense nuclear future. The treaty’s survival requires that the international community draw a line. It should start at the gates of Damascus.

GIYUS interviews Benny Begin:

Now we sum it up – look at the map, it's a new Muslim crescent. Five countries - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, comprise an Islamic radical block, with terrorism and instability emanating from two of them to the whole Middle East. That's even before Iran has acquired nuclear weapons ability.

The irony is that out of these 5 countries the majority are democracies. 3 out of 5 are democracies. Of course, the numbers are small so it's not a great sample, but to me these observations, that are factual, there is no assessment there, afford constraints on the possible positive outcome of the revolutions in the Middle East.

Fiamma Nirenstein on Arrigoni:

The crucial issue is this: When you go to Gaza or Afghanistan, it is important to realize that our concept of life is completely different from politically Islamic people's concept of life. To them, you can die because you are Jewish, because you are Italian, or Christian, because you are an apostate, or a corrupt Westerner... the extremist mentality, make no bones about it, cancels out friends and allies. No matter how much you have worked against the "Zionist power" or that you have called Zionists "rats," as Arrigoni did, nothing is of any worth if you break their rule -- a rule which will remain changing and unclear until the knife blade comes.

NGO Monitor on Sarah Leah Whitson:

An op-ed by Human Right Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Director Sarah Leah Whitson, “A Matter of Civil Rights” (Huffington Post, April 15, 2011), blatantly exploits the US Civil Rights Movement to vilify and demonize Israel.

Abusing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King: “In a week when the U.S. paused to recall the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, President Peres might have considered King's message -- an end to segregation -- and why such a system of racial inequality remains in place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

This op-ed contains 23 references that abuse civil rights rhetoric in this way, including accusations of “laws and policies [that] strictly segregate Jews from Palestinians,” “blatant racial inequality,” and “racial discrimination and segregation.” This is Whitson’s dominant theme.

Turkey's president lays a turkey of an op-ed

A laughable op-ed from Turkey's president Abdullah Gul in yesterday's NYT:

THE wave of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is of historic significance equal to that of the revolutions of 1848 and 1989 in Europe. The peoples of the region, without exception, revolted not only in the name of universal values but also to regain their long-suppressed national pride and dignity. But whether these uprisings lead to democracy and peace or to tyranny and conflict will depend on forging a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and a broader Israeli-Arab peace.

Really? Even though the Tunisians and Egyptians and Yemenis and Bahrainis and Syrians and Moroccans and Iranians who are protesting are barely saying a word about Israel, the key to their countries turning democratic is based on Israeli policy? How so?

The plight of the Palestinians has been a root cause of unrest and conflict in the region and is being used as a pretext for extremism in other corners of the world.

Now, this is funny. Arab and Islamic regimes - the ones being protested against - are the ones who have claimed that they cannot reform because of Israel's existence. They are the ones who have used Israel as an excuse to repress their own people. Yet the president of one of those repressive regimes is now pretending that the protesters are the ones pushing the Palestinian Arab agenda - even though one would be hard pressed to find a single sign in the protests that mention Israel or "Palestine."

Israel, more than any other country, will need to adapt to the new political climate in the region.

More than the Arab and Muslim countries who will have to become democracies?

In these times of turmoil, two forces will shape the future: the people’s yearning for democracy and the region’s changing demographics. Sooner or later, the Middle East will become democratic, and by definition a democratic government should reflect the true wishes of its people. Such a government cannot afford to pursue foreign policies that are perceived as unjust, undignified and humiliating by the public. For years, most governments in the region did not consider the wishes of their people when conducting foreign policy. History has repeatedly shown that a true, fair and lasting peace can only be made between peoples, not ruling elites.

In these times of turmoil, and the previous six decades of turmoil, Israel has been trying to make peace with its Arab neighbors. This reflected the wishes of Israel's Jewish majority. I don't quite get how this is considered humiliating or unjust to anyone except the Arab masses who are quick to respond to government-initiated incitement against Israel. They are the ones who scream about "dignity."

Just like Gul.

Here's where he tries some sleight-of-hand:

I call upon the leaders of Israel to approach the peace process with a strategic mindset, rather than resorting to short-sighted tactical maneuvers. This will require seriously considering the Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative, which proposed a return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders and fully normalized diplomatic relations with Arab states.

Sticking to the unsustainable status quo will only place Israel in greater danger. History has taught us that demographics is the most decisive factor in determining the fate of nations. In the coming 50 years, Arabs will constitute the overwhelming majority of people between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea. The new generation of Arabs is much more conscious of democracy, freedom and national dignity.

However, every peace plan that Israel has proposed - and that Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League has rejected - included making a Palestinian Arab state in the vast majority of the territories, thus solving that demographic problem (and also solving the supposedly overriding concern of Palestinian Arabs to have a state!) Why must Israel choose the Arab League plan which does not specifically solve the "refugee" problem and which would involve the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes? Why is the supposed "dignity" of the Arab and Muslim people more important than the lives of so many who legally and voluntarily chose to live in the heartland of their ancestors?

More to the point, if Gul is so concerned about democracy and a solution to the "Palestine" problem, why is he not telling Abbas to accept Israel's peace proposals and move on? Wouldn't a Palestinian Arab state on 96% of the territories fulfill every one of the criteria he lists in this op-ed?

No, this op-ed is not about peace. It is about forcing Israel to accede to Arab blackmail and to harden the Palestinian Arab rejectionist position towards compromise.

(h/t Samson)

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Turkey's leadership probably needs to learn other lessons from the upheavals. (h/t Serious Black)

"(Arab) settlement workers paid double average wage"

From Ma'an:

Just one percent more Palestinians worked in settlements in 2010 than the year before, making almost double the wage of their peers in the public and service sectors, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in a new report released Wednesday.

Average daily wages for settlement workers were 150 shekels ($44) per day, compared to 76.9 ($22) in the West Bank and 46.2 ($13.50) in Gaza, the latest research showed.

The figures for settlement workers are likely to concern leaders of the Palestinian Authority, who have said they will outlaw all work in Israeli factories across the Green Line by 2012.

But settlement leader Yaakov David Ha'ivri called on the Palestinian leadership to admit that the settlements benefit workers, saying workers likely made even more than double the average wage.

"Palestinian workers in our factories are making closer to three times the wages they would be making in the PA. I guess that is the reason that Salam Fayyad's threats to impose a workers boycott never materialized.

"It would be very interesting to see the results of a true open and democratic referendum of the local Arab population" to learn if they would prefer the ban on settlements or continue working in them, he added.

Kudos to Ma'an for actually seeking out a Jewish leader in Judea and Samaria to comment.

Amnesty International says I acted "deplorably"

On Monday, I noticed that the murdered terrorist supporter Vittori Arrigoni's girlfriend worked for amnesty International but she seems to have had close relationships not only with Arrigoni but also with other rabid haters of Israel. I asked:

Isn't it interesting that Amnesty (and HRW's) activists are so much more friendly with people who want to destroy Israel than they are with people who love Israel?

A reader sent that link to Amnesty for a response. Their answer:

We reject absolutely any suggestion that our organisation has a bias against Israel. As you will see from reading our report (attached) on the Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, for example, we condemned the human rights violations and possible war crimes committed by Palestinian armed groups as well as by Israel. It is also worth noting that this is the only report prepared by human rights researchers who were on the ground in southern Israel and in Gaza during the fighting.

Indeed the first report from Amnesty International’s researchers was to expose extrajudicial killings carried out by Hamas under cover of the Israeli offensive. We have condemned on numerous occasions rocket attacks by Hamas and others against Israeli civilians targets in southern Israel and just last month profiled the case of Gilad Shalit as our prisoner of the month in a national newspaper (attached).

Our concern is solely the protection of human rights. We have condemned, and will continue to condemn, the Israeli state and its armed forces for repeated, gross violations of the human rights of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories and in Israel. Likewise, we have condemned, and will continue to condemn Hamas, Fatah and other armed Palestinian groups for deliberate attacks on civilians and for failures to protect human rights in those areas of the Occupied Territories they are responsible. Protagonists on both sides would do well to examine what they are doing rather than assume any criticism of them is motivated by bias or prejudice.

Finally, if I could say this. It is absolutely legitimate to raise questions about Amnesty International's policies and priorities, indeed we welcome it as a valuable contribution to our own thinking. However, I think the site you link to is acting in a deplorable manner by using the tragic death of Mr Arrigoni to personally target his girlfriend, a woman who is right now coping with the loss of a loved one in unbelievably tragic circumstances. I realise it is not your site and you merely wished to raise a legitimate point, to which I am happy to respond, but I wished to place that on the record.

Yours,

Justin Moran
Communications Co-ordinator
Amnesty International Ireland
E-Mail: jmoran@amnesty.ie
Tel: 01 863 8300 Ext. 8334
Mob: 085 814 8986
www.amnesty.ie

Of course, Mr. Moran did not address the main thrust of my question: why do so-called "human rights" organizations' members seem to have closer relationships with activists whose focus is to destroy Israel than with anyone who could be remotely described as Zionist?

Arrigoni was not, as I have written, a human rights activist nor a peace activist by any definition of the term. Obviously Amnesty's employees can have relationships with whomever they want. But Arrigoni was a supporter of Hamas and an avowed anti-Zionist. Are any Amnesty employees friends with members of Likud, or with Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria?

Somehow, I doubt it.

In fact, Amnesty itself has no problem partnering with organizations that are explicitly dedicated to Israel's destruction. If Amnesty accepts ab initio that the destruction of the Jewish state is a legitimate position, it is difficult to accept their argument that they are not biased against Israel. There s no real difference between organizations that advocate replacing Israel with another de-facto Arab state and those who want to ethnically clean the Middle East of all Jews, no matter what word games they play with liberal-sounding concepts like "one state for all people."

If Amnesty supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, let them say so explicitly. If they do that, they'd lose a lot of their "friends" very, very quickly.

(As far as my acting "deplorably," I had never heard of Claudia Milani until Monday, and I simply looked at her history once I saw her name. I would have done the same had I known about her while Arrigoni was alive. I see no reason why her previous activities should be off-limits once she becomes a public personality, just because she is grieving over the death of her Hamas-loving boyfriend. Amnesty being more concerned over my blog post than over the relationships their employees have with people who want to see Israel wiped off the map seems a bit misplaced.)

UPDATE: Harry's Place notices Arrigoni's relationship with Milani as well, and acts equally "deplorably." (h/t habibi)

The Muslim basketball star and the chief rabbi

From YNet:

American basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will visit Israel in July and meet with Rabbi Israel Meir Lau to discuss a film that he is making about World War II, the rabbi said recently.

The film is based on the book "Brothers in Arms", which Abdul-Jabbar co-authored and deals with the American troops who liberated Nazi concentration camps in the end of World War II. Abdul-Jabbar's own father served on the 761st Tank Battalion, which liberated the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany.

Among the Jews rescued from the camp were two children: Rabbi Lau and his brother, Naftali Lavie. Abdul-Jabbar and Lau met for the first time 14 years ago, during the former's first visit to Israel.

"The fact that such a famous basketball player, and a Muslim, is about to attach himself to the Holocaust issue is very exciting," he said. "I will certainly give my blessing to this initiative."

The retired athlete will arrive early in July as a guest of the Foreign Ministry and the Israeli Consulate in New York, and will participate in the Jerusalem Film Festival, where he will present the basketball documentary that he produced, "On the Shoulders of Giants."

Lau said that Abdul-Jabbar's father, Ferdinand L. Alcindor, had a dying wish: "That his son visit Israel, and meet the little boy that he rescued from Buchenwald and turned into a prominent rabbi."

Lau said he clearly remembers how an African American solider came up to him during the liberation, picked him up, and told the residents of the German city of Weimer: "Look at this sweet kid, he isn't even eight yet. This was your enemy, he threatened the Third Reich. He is the one against whom you waged war, and murdered millions like him."

Decades later, Lau said, his rescuer's son found him.