Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

There really was once a Palestinian Arab state - sort of

A little-known footnote in history that could be an accurate indicator of how any future Palestinian Arab state would be:

In 1948, the Arab League was upset at King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan for his territorial designs on the West Bank. Under their prodding, the notoriously anti-semitic ex-Mufti of Jerusalem set up his own "government" in Gaza in September 1948.

Abdullah was adamantly opposed to this "Gaza Government" and the issue caused a major rift between Transjordan and the rest of the Arab world.

The actual wishes of Palestinian Arabs do not seem to have entered the equation for either party! (click all pictures to enlarge)

The democratic nature of the nascent nation was soon apparent...

Also look at King Abdullah's objection - that creating a Palestinian state was like accepting Partition! (Note also the article in the middle!)

And what is a country without a flag?

Tensions mounted between Transjordan and Iraq over this issue:

Alas, as soon as Israel launched an counter-offensive against Egypt later in 1948, the Gaza government ministers (who no doubt had a great love of the land) fled bravely to Cairo. And then their ministers started quitting, one by one. By March, the "government" was in tatters:

The New York Post published an interesting analysis on the situation back in October 1948:

Rift in the Arab Front

Abdullah and the British Are Isolated
in the Middle East

By OBSERVER

Behind the Arab front there is a rift. The Arab League has set up a government in Gaza comprised of the followers of the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem. Abdullah of Transjordan has not recognized this government. Hilmi Pasha, who commanded the Arab forces on the Jerusalem front, was elected head of the Gaza government. Abdullah then stripped Hilmi Pasha of his authority as commander on the Jerusalem front and placed the Old City of Jerusalem under a new commander. The Gaza government is on the territory occupied by the Egyptian army.

Abdullah’s legion has done more fighting than the forces of any other Arab state on Palestinian soil. Abdullah hoped to have the entire country for himself, but since Israel successfully defended its territory, he now counts on the annexation of at least the Arab part of the country to Transjordan. His rival is the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem. They are carrying on an old feud.

* * *

The British planned that Abdullah’s legion—their own creation—should conquer all of Palestine for Abdullah, which means for them. So they supplied him with officers, money, ammunition and even spies.

The ex-Mufti planned that Abdullah should conquer the country for him. His own “Army of Liberation” under Kaukaji proved to be good only on the run.

Egypt is not at all interested in increasing the British sphere on its border; for many years the entire policy of Egypt has been directed toward getting rid of the British, in Egypt proper, in the Sudan, in the Suez Canal zone. The Egyptians think that if the British should dominate Egypt from the Negev, they would never leave the Suez Canal zone or the Sudan.

Egypt would therefore like to have southern Palestine for itself. Opposition to Zionism is artificially intensified; the Egyptians make war against Israel but they regard the British as their real enemy and Abdullah as a British stooge. Said one of the Egyptian delegates at the Paris Conference, quoted by the United Press correspondent in his dispatch of October 2: “Britain is now considered the Arabs’ number one enemy.”

The entire enterprise fell apart, without ever having governed anybody (but that didn't stop many Arab countries from recognizing it.) The cynical nature of the effort was emphasized in 1950, when the Arab League tried to resurrect the Gaza Government again for purely political gain, as is mentioned in this good overview from the Palestine Post then:

A few notes of interest:

The entire episode was so embarrassingly inept, no Palestinian Arab advocate today ever mentions this as an example of historical Palestinian sovereignty. They prefer the myth of a nation called Palestine to the reality of a short-lived aborted vanity enterprise.
Not once can I find that any of the parties showed the slightest interest in what is best for the Palestinian Arabs that they were pretending to help.
The "government" ran away and abandoned its supposed subjects at the earliest sign of fighting.
Should such a state have succeeded, it would have been just another Arab dictatorship - in this case a theocracy under the Mufti.

Arab pressure on Intel based on another lie

Intel is opening up a state-of-the-art chip manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat, and the Arabs are mad.

No, Kiryat Gat is not in "occupied" territory. But the Arabs are claiming that it was built on the ruins of a town called Iraq al-Manshieh. They demand:

* Intel abandon its investments in Israel. The company’s proposed expansion site is located on land confiscated from the Palestinian village of Iraq Al-Manshiya.
* Israel forced out the original inhabitants of Iraq Al-Manshiya and the nearby village of Al-Faluja after the 1948 war ended contrary to international law and an armistice agreement sponsored by the UN and which Israel signed.

What really happened is that in the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Egypt and Israel, the Arab residents of Iraq al-Manshiyah and Al-Falujja were given a choice - either stay or evacuate. The pro-Palestinian site Cactus48 has the text of the agreement, although they seem to be incorrect as to whether the agreement was actually part of the Armistice or an adjunct.

At any rate, the implication from the terrorist sympathizers is that Israel forced the residents of Iraq al-Manshiyah to leave. But as is clear from the articles at the time in the Palestine Post, the Arab residents of the area all wanted to leave, the world was quite aware of their situation, the Arab League didn't want to take them in, and in fact the evacuees complained that the evacuations were too slow!

Not only that, but the Jewish community of Gath which Kiryat Gat was named after was not built on top of anything, but was under siege itself during 1948, and was evacuated under Egyptian fire - three months before the state of Israel was declared.

So you may want to email to Intel, the way that Al Oufok wants you to, but to thank them on their smart business decision to continue to create world-class technology in Israel.

As Al Oufok says:

Call and write to :

Craig R Barret, Chairman of the Board
Email : Craig.R.barrett@intel.com
Phone : 480-554-5977

Paul Otelline, President and CEO
Email : Paul.Otellini@intel.com
Phone : 408-765-5551

Please cc your correspondence to alerts@al-awda.org . I'm sure they'll be happy to read your emails!

Iran now embraces negotiation

Amazing how cooperative Iran can be when it is only months away from making the "negotiations" pointless.

TEHRAN, Dec. 5 (MNA) -- Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani said here on Monday that Iran has called for unconditional talks with the European Union.

“Setting conditions for talks will disrupt the process, and I don’t think either of the two sides would want to do that,” he told reporters.

He noted that the preliminary talks would be about the agenda and method of negotiations, in other words, formulating a model for talks.

The nuclear issue is not a complicated matter, he said, adding, “If we all try to reach a logical solution, an appropriate conclusion can be reached over the next few months.[Any guesses as to what that "appropriate conclusion might be? Anyone? - EoZ]

He said, “We are pleased that European states, Russia, China, and member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement have announced their readiness for talks,” adding that Iran regards Europe’s step to resume talks as positive.

“We will try to hold constructive as well as serious talks with the three EU countries (Britain, Germany, and France), and negotiations will continue in order to reach a logical and accessible solution.”

Larijani stressed that the talks would focus on the main points of contention, i.e., assurances that Iran’s nuclear fuel program would not be diverted toward weapons development and Iran’s right to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle on its soil.

“Iran views the future talks as a win-win game,” he said.

“We certainly have a positive view of the talks, otherwise we would never have wasted so much time on them."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Riza Asefi responded to recent Israeli comments that Iran's nuclear program was an unacceptable threat to its security, saying that 'Zionist authorities are well aware that if they make a foolish mistake against Iran, Iran's harsh response will be destructive and determined.'

But, hey, I'm sure that diplomacy will work wonders in defusing the crisis.

Jonathan D. Halevi (News First Class-Hebrew)
On the very day of a suicide bombing in Netanya, it has been reported that the chairman of the Palestinian Authority gave budgetary approval to assistance for the families of suicide bombers.

Each martyr's family will receive a monthly stipend of at least $250 from the PA.

The budget for families of martyrs, prisoners, and the wounded could reach $100 million a year out of an annual budget of over $1 billion.

Your tax dollars at work.

"I believe that this harms Palestinian interests and is another act to sabotage efforts to revive the peace process and to sabotage the Palestinian elections," Erekat said.

Once again, Palestinians say they "condemn" a murderous terror attack - but only in context of how it is counterproductive for their cause, not because it kills innocent people. (As if the most efficient way for Islamic Jihad to sabotage an Arab election is by killing Jews!)

In other words, if killing many innocent Jews would help the Palestinian Arab cause in any way, Erekat would be all for it.

Yesterday I posted how the director of the film "Paradise Now" strenuously tries to distinguish between suicide bombings in Israel and those in Bali, London, Madrid, Iraq, New York, Afghanistan and anywhere else in the world. He said, "Palestine is a different conflict. The Palestinians are being physically oppressed. We face 60 years of occupation. Maybe they use the same methods elsewhere, but to understand anything, you must understand the conflict, not just look to the action."

This is not a unique perspective. The fact that the film has gotten so many awards shows that much of the left, and much of Europe, also subscribes to the notion that Palestinian terror attacks are somehow more justified - and the inescapable conclusion is that they feel that when the victims are Jews, it is somehow more moral. The Palestinian Arab leaders themselves are often quick to condemn attacks such as 9/11 on moral grounds.

Which begs the question - according to the smug genteel Jew-hating intelligentsia of Europe, what could the Palestinians do that would be considered immoral? In other words, once blowing up shoppers in a mall can be justified because of "occupation," what cannot be?

Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say that a Palestinian terrorist decides to murder a baby girl, gut out her insides and replace it with explosives, sew her back up and throw the baby bomb in the middle of a Jewish kindergarten.

Or let's say that the Palestinian terror leadership decides that while bombing Jews is an effective method of terrorizing Jews, mass raping teenage Jewish girls and boys would also cause Jews to be scared and consider ceding land.

Once the "occupation" justifies terrorism, what does it not justify? There are no red lines anymore, as long as the "greater good" of Jews giving up land to Arabs is the potential result.

Or to put it another way, anyone who considers Palestinian suicide bombings at all justified in any way, shape or form is a completely and thoroughly immoral person, and any moral justifications that they find for their cause is the worst sort of hypocrisy.

And Saeb Erekat is one such person.

Calm down - Iran still months away from nuclear bomb!

Let's see how much further in the sand El-Baradei can stick his head.

IAEA chairman Muhammad ElBaradei on Monday confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb.

If Teheran indeed resumed its uranium enrichment in other plants, as threatened, it will take it only 'a few months' to produce a nuclear bomb, El-Baradei told The Independent.

On the other hand, he warned, any attempt to resolve the crisis by non-diplomatic means would 'open a Pandora's box. There would be efforts to isolate Iran; Iran would retaliate; and at the end of the day you have to go back to the negotiating table to find the solution.'

And we all know that a diplomatic Pandora's box would be much worse than hundreds of thousands of dead Jews.

Much better to continue with the effective negotiations that the West has pursued with Iran over the years. There will be a breakthrough, any decade now.

What passes for scholarship in the Arab world

I came across an amusing piece in Asharq Alawsat just now. The author is described this way:

Ghida Fakhry is New York Bureau Chief of Asharq Al Awsat and a weekly columnist for the newspaper. From 2002 to 2004, she was Anchor of Al-Hayat/LBC’s main evening news broadcast live from London. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, she reported on location from Kabul and Baghdad, and interviewed numerous senior US officials, including Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. During her journalistic career, she covered extensively the United Nations as New York Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera and for Abu Dhabi Television. She traveled on special assignments with Kofi Annan to the Middle East and conducted several in-depth interviews with the Secretary-General of the UN. She appears as a guest analyst on CNN, ABC News, NBC and MSNBC. Ghida Fakhry holds an M.A in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and an M.A. in International Relations from Boston University.

One would think that with such credentials she would have at least a passing familiarity with Middle Eastern history.

One would be wrong.

The United Nations marked last Tuesday the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" held every year on 29 November. Paradoxically, this is the day the General Assembly adopted in 1947 Resolution 181 on the "Future Government of Palestine" –a landmark if forgotten resolution that set forth the "Plan of Partition with Economic Union" that was to establish an "Arab State" in 43.5 percent of then British-occupied Palestine, a "Jewish State" in 56.5 percent of that territory, and an international enclave to include Jerusalem and its surroundings. In adopting the Partition Plan, the United Nations committed two sins. The first one, by paving the way towards the establishment of two States, the United Nations legislated a fundamentally artificial political segregation between "Arabs" and "Jews", as if an Arab could not belong to the Jewish faith and a Jew to the Arab world. It laid a barrier between communities that more often than not intersected, had more to unite than divide them. It was a conceptual distinction that pitted communities against each other that had coexisted peacefully for centuries and, aided by the migratory influx of European Jews into Palestine, fuelled hatred and deepened the sense of injustice. The second sin of the United Nations was to adopt a Plan and not ensure its implementation. To say the least, this is undoubtedly the international organization’s biggest blunder.

As the author well knows, there is no paradox to the date that the UN chose to annually condemn Israel and pretend to care about Palestinian Arabs. It was chosen on purpose.

As I have documented many times in the Palestine Postings blog, the life of Jews in Palestine was hardly peaceful (the 1929 massacres would seem to prove that), and to blame the UN for the Arabs' terroristic intransigence against allowing Jews to control any land in the entire Middle East is pretty funny. The separation between Jews and Arabs were wholly the fault of the Arabs who just couldn't stomach Jews in power.

But the funniest part of this poorly-written paragraph is that she is blaming the UN for not making sure that Resolution 181 was not implemented! The Jews accepted 181 wholeheartedly, it was the Arabs who rejected it unanimously - and tried to destroy the Jewish state that resulted.

There is no doubt in my mind that Ms. Fakhry knows these facts as well as anyone.

So the only conclusion that can be drawn is that this esteemed Arab journalist and scholar is simply a liar.

Which begs the question - why do CNN, ABC and NBC use easily provable liars as analysts?

Classic Jewish joke

Q: What did the 'Yekke' say to his wife before going to shul to daven on the night of December 4th?
A: "I'm going to be home a little late tonight, honey. "

(Indirect hat tip to JudeoPundit.)

Reuters' crocodile tears

AbbaGav points out some Reuters' photography bias.

An Israeli soldier (L) inspects a Palestinian man at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron on December 4, 2005. REUTERS/Nayef Hashlamoun

He notes:

You might think I'm just an oppressing Zionist with no empathy or sympathy. But believe me, I think I -- and indeed most Israelis -- can understand a little bit of the Palestinian's position, and then some. We go through the same checks countless times in our daily lives as well, just to get into the supermarket, the library, the swimming pool or our kids' schools. Nor do our spouses and kids just stand by watching the checks, they get checked too. And once we pass the security check we don't breathe a sigh of relief and hope the next guy gets off easier. No, we pray the security guard is as inconveniently intrusive with everyone else who follows, if not more so.

Haveil Havalim #47 released - another twofer!

I am really thankful that SoccerDad likes my blog, because whenever he hosts Haveil Havalim he always mentions me!

This time, as with #45, I am mentioned twice - for this news roundup from last Friday (which I considered pretty much a throwaway post myself) and for this post where the BBC blames Israel for the internal problems that the Palestinian "security forces" are having. (My "Palestinian Police Phunnies" series is a small sample of documentation that the Palestinian police problems are a little deeper than how the august BBC describes them.)

As I always say whenever I'm mentioned, it is an excellent roundup of the best of this week's JBlogosphere. (Although in the section entitled "Palestinian Democracy" I am at a loss as to why he didn't use scare quotes around the word "democracy.")

"Paradise Now" director shows his true colors

As the world heaps praise on the film "Paradise Now" as an even-handed and honest look at Palestinian terrorists as being just ordinary human beings who are pushed into blowing up Jews because they are forced to by Israel, it is interesting to read the articles where the reviewers are bending over backwards to say that the director, Abu Assad, is not making any judgments on the subject.

But as this article in the Toronto Globe and Mail shows, the director is hardly unbiased (and, frankly, his grasp of the politics is puerile.) A reporter destroyed everything the director claimed about the conflict, leaving only the idea that he just hates Israel's very existence:

By MICHAEL POSNER

I had intended to question director Hany Abu-Assad about his film Paradise Now, the story of two Palestinians, auto mechanics from the West Bank, who decide to become suicide bombers. It didn't work out that way.

When we met during the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, I began by telling Abu-Assad -- a tall, elegant, 43-year-old Palestinian who spends much of his time these days in Amsterdam -- that I considered the film provocative.

"Why provocative?" he asked.

Because it attempts to explain, and thus implicitly justify, the taking of innocent lives, I replied. And because suicide bombing is no longer a tactic that occurs only in Israel or even Iraq. In the current geopolitical climate, it could happen anywhere.

Abu-Assad disagreed. "Palestine is a different conflict," he insisted. "The Palestinians are being physically oppressed. We face 60 years of occupation. Maybe they use the same methods elsewhere, but to understand anything, you must understand the conflict, not just look to the action."

According to Abu-Assad, the despair that turns ordinary car mechanics and teenage girls into suicide bombers is the result of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank (and until recently, the Gaza Strip).

But there was Palestinian militancy, even terrorism, long before the Six-Day War in 1967. Moreover, I countered, suicide bombing is not something generally organized by moderate Palestinians committed to finding a peaceful modus vivendi with Israel. It's the work of Hamas, which regards not just the West Bank, but all of Israel as occupied territory. In the film, the two bombers are trained and monitored by just such a shadowy, unnamed group. So where do you stand, I asked him.

Abu-Assad deflected the question. "It's not about where is Palestine and where is Israel. It's about denying the rights of Palestinians in their land. It's about the principle that both have to have equal rights, as individuals and as a nation. Hamas is no different than most of Israel. Most of Israel thinks it's all Jewish land. Hamas wants an Islamic state and Israel wants a Jewish state. So the same, yes?"

Well, no, actually. First of all, the vast majority of Israelis have renounced any claim to so-called Greater Israel. Indeed, the man who was once the chief proponent of that idea, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has become the grand architect of disengagement, handing back the Gaza Strip and a handful of West Bank settlements this summer.

"They have just made Gaza a bigger jail," Abu-Assad maintained.

But the logic of that argument leads to the Hamas position. Whatever land Israel returns, it will always be simply "a bigger jail" until the Zionist cause is finally abandoned.

Look, he said, "the issue is equal rights. Unless they are equals, you will have conflict. There is no other solution." But true peace, Abu-Assad added, can only be achieved if Israel severs its ties with the United States. "How can you survive in a place where you are protecting the interests of someone else?" he asked.

But why would Israel do that, "surrounded by 22 Arab nations, many of which are committed to its dissolution?"

Very simply, Abu-Assad said, "To survive. To be part of the Middle East." Besides, he added, "Washington's interests will diminish when the oil is gone, and what will Israel do then?"

Moronic nonsense, in black and white. He doesn't even try to maintain a consistent position, except that he hates the Jewish state - everything else is a smokescreen to make him sound more reasonable that gets shredded at the slightest questioning.

Which, come to think of it, is pretty much the Arab and leftist position regarding Israel to begin with.

Good news/bad news

Good news

Bad news

Israel Successfully Tests Arrow Anti-Missile System

Bolton proving his worth as UN ambassador

Muslims Defend Israel at Asian Conference

Economist: Israel Growing Faster Than Expected

Iran laughing at EU on nukes

Gaza: Newly Formed al-Qaeda Cell

Rice Envoy to "Monitor" Terrorists crossing into Gaza (and pressure Israel more)

Kill a Jew - Go to Heaven

BBC blames Israel for Palestinian Police problems

Once again, the oh-so-impartial BBC ignores the endemic corruption and terror that is part and parcel of the Palestinian Arab "security forces" and blames Israel for all their problems.

Any problems that are internal are described in the passive voice that we are all familiar with; but Israel's supposed role is highlighted - as if the Palestinian police would otherwise be Scotland Yard.

Also implicit is the BBC's acceptance that the role of the Pal Police Phonies is only to stop internal crime; not a word about stopping terror against Israel. That way, when Israel defends itself it is just another attack against the upstanding police - trained by the EU.

Note as well the unsubstantiated "fact" that an Israeli missile dug out a massive crater in the picture. Perhaps it did, perhaps it was a Hamas rocket gone awry, perhaps it was an attack against a known terrorist - but the BBC will never say where their "facts" come from.

With the departure of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip this summer, attention is focusing on the ability of the Palestinians to assert control in an area of increasing lawlessness.

It is a challenge beset by problems: the infrastructure of the Palestinian security forces has been decimated by Israeli attacks and the territory is awash with illicit weapons and armed groups.
The multitude of security forces themselves are in poor shape - badly-equipped with ill-defined roles, competing branches and an unreformed hierarchical structure set up under the autocratic rule of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
But after a period of stagnation and disarray, the international community has begun a drive to transform the largest of the security services, the civilian police, into a modern force capable of enforcing the rule of law and stamping out growing chaos.
At the centre of this move is the European Union, which recently announced a new three-year mission to reform and rebuild the police force in the West Bank and Gaza.
"The civil police is the cornerstone of all the Palestinian security forces," Jonathan McIvor, the head of the EU Co-ordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support, known as EU-Copps, told the BBC News website.
"It is a cornerstone of democracy, it's the most important of all the Palestinian security forces in terms of building a Palestinian state, not to mention the most 'together'."

A fleet of new police cars sit near a crater carved by an Israeli missile

Kaj Stendorf, chief superintendent of the Danish national police, is among the advisers training the Palestinian police.
In a parade ground outside his office in the Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza City stands a fleet of gleaming blue patrol cars, part of a 1,000-strong consignment delivered by the European mission.
Beside them lies a deep crater gouged out by an Israeli missile - a reminder of the damage from which the police have yet to recover after years of conflict.
Within its first few months, the mission - with the help of Denmark, the UK and Norway - restored the radio communication system to 60% of the Palestinian police force, after it had been decimated by Israeli attacks.
Bomb squad

One of the EU-Copps' most important functions has been to modernise and train the Palestinian police's bomb squad, or Explosive and Ordnance Disposal Unit (EODU).
The Gaza Strip is littered with deadly devices, from mines left behind by the Israeli army to explosives planted by militants and even shells dating back to WW1.
Palestinian children are often among the casualties caused by discarded explosives, prompting the UN children's charity Unicef to launch an awareness campaign....
By the end of its three-year term, Kaj says, the EU-Copps mission should benefit both sides.
"We aim to turn the Palestinian police into a modern, well-organised, well-structured, well-policed security service.
"It will provide safety not only for Palestinians, but by default Israel too."

How exactly arming known terrorists and giving them new cars and materials will help Israel is something that the BBC will have to explain a little better one day.

Terrorists for Democracy

Isn't it wonderful that the leaders of world terror movements have embraced democracy so enthusiastically?

Hamas Leader Says He Won't Renew Truce: "'The resistance must go hand in hand with political work,' he said. 'It is not accepted to pressure the resistance to choose between resistance and politics.'

Asked if Hamas would accept a peace accord creating an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, Mashaal said the group 'will never abandon any Palestinian right and will not recognize the legitimacy of occupation whatsoever.'"

The Muslim Brotherhood, spiritual forebearers of Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, also embraces democracy - much to the approval of Madeline Albright.

The president must be thrilled - democracy is spreading quickly throughout the Islamic world!

There's only the minor detail of what these new enthusiasts of democracy plan to do with their political clout.

Towards a worldwide strategy for Islamic policy
(Points of Departure, Elements, Procedures and Missions)

This report presents a global vision of a worldwide strategy for Islamic policy [or "political Islam"]. Local Islamic policies will be drawn up in the different regions in accordance with its guidelines. It acts, first of all, to define the points of departure of that policy, then to set up the components and the most important procedures linked to each point of departure; finally we suggest several missions, by way of example only, may Allah protect us.

The following are the principal points of departure of this policy:

Point of Departure 1: To know the terrain and adopt a scientific methodology for its planning and execution.

Point of Departure 2: To demonstrate proof of the serious nature of the work.

Point of Departure 3: To reconcile international engagement with flexibility at a local level.

Point of Departure 4: To reconcile political engagement and the necessity of avoiding isolation on one hand, with permanent education and institutional action on the other.

Point of Departure 5: To be used to establish an Islamic State; parallel, progressive efforts targeted at controlling the local centres of power through institutional action.

Point of Departure 6: To work with loyalty alongside Islamic groups and institutions in multiple areas to agree on common ground, in order to "cooperate on the points of agreement and set aside the points of disagreement".

Point of Departure 7: To accept the principle of temporary cooperation between Islamic movements and nationalist movements in the broad sphere and on common ground such as the struggle against colonialism, preaching and the Jewish state, without however having to form alliances. This will require, on the other hand, limited contacts between certain leaders, on a case by case basis, as long as these contacts do not violate the [shariah?] law. Nevertheless, one must not give them allegiance or take them into confidence, bearing in mind that the Islamic movement must be the origin of the initiatives and orientations taken.

Point of Departure 8: To master the art of the possible on a temporary basis without abusing the basic principles, bearing in mind that Allah's teachings always apply. One must order the suitable and forbid that which is not, always providing a documented opinion [? "Il faut ordonner le convenable et interdire le blâmable, tout en donnant un avis documenté"]. But we should not look for confrontation with our adversaries, at the local or the global scale, which would be disproportionate and could lead to attacks against the dawa or its disciples.

Point of Departure 9: To construct a permanent force of the Islamic dawa and support movements engaged in jihad across the Muslim world, to varying degrees and insofar as possible.

Point of Departure 10: To use diverse and varied surveillance systems, in several places, to gather information and adopt a single effective warning system serving the worldwide Islamic movement. In fact, surveillance, policy decisions and effective communications complement each other.

Point of Departure 11: To adopt the Palestinian cause as part of a worldwide Islamic plan, with the policy plan and by means of jihad, since it acts as the keystone of the renaissance of the Arab world today.

Point of Departure 12: To know how to turn to self-criticism and permanent evaluation of worldwide Islamic policy and its objectives, of its content and its procedures, in order to improve it. This is a duty and a necessity according to the precepts of sharia.

Clearly, the goal is an Islamic state that is not going to be democratic. Using political means and temporary alliances to move closer to the goal of a worldwide 'ummah is acceptable, but ultimately such a state would be governed by Sharia law, and non-Muslims will either be banned (infidels) or have to pay their toll tax and accept second-class status (dhimmis.)

Unfortunately, the self-righteous hypocritical Islamist whining about "democracy" is very effective for wishful-thinking bleeding heart idiots like Albright.

Democracy without freedom is worthless.

Swedish imam calls for destruction of "Jews, Americans and Brits"

The Religion of Peace strikes again.

Perhaps more newsworthy than the headline, which can be looked at as the ravings of a single lunatic, are the explicitly anti-semitic literature that is being sold at the Great Mosque in Stockholm. The Muslims who claim that they are not anti-semitic don't expend too much effort to eradicate such hate from their midst, which waters down their arguments substantially. (A good example is the EJP interview with another Swedish imam who denounces the words of the other Imam but softpedals its importance.)

An investigation by a Swedish radio station has revealed a deep-set hatred for Jews amongst some of the country’s Muslim leaders who have were caught on tape calling for the destruction of Jewry and other “infidels”.

Last Friday, the Swedish Radio program Ekot, The Echo, broadcast an investigation they had made into what is said in mosques and Muslim prayer services in Sweden.

Using a hidden microphone, they taped prayer sessions and conversations with 15 imams in Sweden.

They found that all imams but one, stated that war, violence and terrorism are incompatible with Islam.

However, one imam led a prayer service in which he called for the destruction of the “Jews, Americans and Brits” and “enemies of Islam. " The service included the following call:

“God, keep Islam and Muslims high and protect Islam
God, humiliate the infidels
God, humiliate the enemies of Islam
Jews, Americans and Brits
And all those who support them
Who cooperate with them
And who are in alliance with them
God, destroy them all,
God, leave none of them alive,
God, give victory to mujahedin everywhere”

Antisemitic tapes sold at Mosque

On Sunday, the Echo program also reported that they had uncovered tapes featuring anti-Semitic content which are being sold in the bookstore of the Great Mosque in Stockholm.

On one tape, which featured a picture of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader that Israel assassinated in March 2004, said: “Oh God, eradicate the Jews, Oh God, eradicate the Jews, Oh God, eradicate the Jews! Oh God, curse them and banish them and let them be whipped by suffering. Oh God, over heaven and earth!”

According to Swedish Radio, the tape also spoke of “Jews as vermin, as brothers of monkeys and pigs, and that there is no solution to the Jews but a jihad – a holy war”.

On Monday, the Chancellor of Justice, a legal authority dealing with freedom of speech, stated that it will now consider the case whether, in selling this and similar tapes, the Great Mosque can be charged with incitement against Jews.

British Muslims: Using 7/7 to Promote Islam

In the wake of the 7/7 tube bombings, the British Home Office asked the British Muslim community to come up with a report containing ideas to contain extremism among British Muslims.

The report was issued a couple of weeks ago, and many of the recommendations seem more oriented towards proselytizing and promoting Islam in the UK rather than containing extremism. Not surprisingly, the Muslims who wrote the report seem to spend more time blaming the British for creating an environment that somehow forces Muslims to become terrorists than the terrorists themselves.

The (British) Asian News site has details. Notice how the "moderate" writers of this report take for granted that Palestinian suicide bombings against Jews are not terrorism and are justified, as well as the myth of al-Dura being factual:

The introduction to the report, for example, states: "Emphasis has also been placed repeatedly on the need to look not only at the events that occurred on those two days in July, but to the causes behind them."

In the section on security the working group is openly critical of legislation presented by the Blair government as a means of 'saving' the public from future suicide bombers. They warn in this section: "One cannot ignore the effect of successive UK Governments’ foreign policies........neither can Islamophobic attitudes, still largely prevalent in British educational institutions, much of them based on mythical paradigms of Islam and Muslims cultivated by orientalists over many centuries, be considered irrelevant to the issue."

This same group sound a grave warning on proposals to make "inciting, justifying or glorifying terrorism" a criminal offence. Does this mean, they ask, that UK Muslims who publicly support Palestinians who attack the state of Israel for occupying their land, will be arrested for justifying terrorism, indeed, under such new laws, would Cherie Blair have run the risk of charges when she was shown on television stating she could understand what motivated suicide bombers after witnessing a young Palestinian boy shot dead by Israeli soldiers as his desperate father attempted to shield him?

Other working parties suggested a series of reforms aimed at tackling violent extremist attitudes and boosting the image and knowledge of Islam in Britain.
A raft or reforms are proposed to improve the profile of UK imams and mosques. They amount to a regularisation of the Islamic clergy rather along the lines of the structure and training of the Church of England priesthood.
They want to see national advisory council of mosques made up of influential imams and Islamic thinkers representing the many traditions in the faith.
This would give guidance on training and practices in and around mosque.
A National Islamic Resources Centre is another suggestion. This is seen as a powerhouse for developing more affective training within the Muslim community and could also spearhead a campaign to improve the knowledge of Islam in mainstream schools.
There is also a proposal for forming similar centres in areas with a significant Muslim community including Manchester. They would be come a cultural hub for mosques and Muslims as well as representatives of other faiths.
For existing imams there would be professional development programs to keep them 'up to scratch'. Home grown imams would be encouraged as opposed to the present practice of bringing them in from the Indian sub-continent.
In order to win especially young Muslims from extremist, and to educate the non-Muslim population on the values of Islam, a travelling 'roadshow' of international Islamic scholars is suggested. They could tour the country staging conferences and seminars on the faith.
The report also suggests that a British Muslim toolkit could be established to help Islamic societies, mosques, parents and youth on how to develop in the faith.
The working party on education highlights what it calls the "gaping hole" in the national schools curriculum on the contribution of Islam to European civilization. One of the ways to remedy this, says their report, would be to create an Islamic way of life exhibition to tour schools.
On a national level the report wants to see an Islamic media unit, similar to the one that exists in the Foreign Office, created in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. This could disseminate positive information about Islam and counter, what it sees as the general negative reporting, especially in tabloid newspapers.
The proposals have been welcomed by Home Office minister Hazel Blears, but even if they are implemented, will they alone be able to overcome the rising anger in the Muslim world over perceived violent injustice against Islamic nations which began with the first Zionist land grab in Palestine and continues with the occupation of Iraq? Time will tell.

So not only does the British Muslim community completely abdicate any soul-searching for the existence of terrorists in their midst, not only do they continue to justify terror against Jews as being perfectly acceptable when writing a report to their own government, but they blame the British for how their terrorists act and cynically use a terror attack as a springboard to increase the influence of Islam in the UK!

Palestinian Arab democracy in action!

Let's give these guys a state!!

On Monday, Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip called off primary elections after rival Fatah gangs fought street battles and stormed polling stations, firing into the air and stealing ballot boxes.

Primary elections that were held in five West Bank areas late last week have resulted in a stunning defeat for representatives of Fatah's old guard.

'What happened in the Gaza Strip is a real disaster for Fatah,' said Haitham Salah, a Fatah operative. 'It shows that we are living in a jungle full of gangs and militias.' (Bright guy, this Salah. - EoZ)

Many of the candidates who lost the vote have since complained of irregularities and cheating, urging Abbas to cancel the results and hold new elections. PA officials here said the turmoil in Fatah could force Abbas to postpone parliamentary elections scheduled for January 25.

PA Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan, who is running in the primary elections, called on Abbas to form a commission of inquiry to look into the events that took place in the Gaza Strip on Monday. He accused veteran Fatah leaders of seeking to disrupt the vote to prevent young activists from winning.

Dahlan and many other Fatah activists fear that Abbas is planning to appoint his own candidates to run in the parliamentary vote because of the party's failure to hold free and democratic elections. "The era of appointments is over," Dahlan stressed, referring to times when Yasser Arafat used to appoint Fatah officials. "We insist on elections."

Sources in the Gaza Strip said Dahlan's followers were among the gunmen who raided several polling stations to protest against the fact that the names of thousands of Fatah members had been omitted from voting lists.

I love how the most violent people are the first ones to lecture others on democracy!

The Phantom Arab Moderate (Shmuel Katz)

A theme we've covered before, but well written and thought-out.

It must be emphasized again and again - so-called "moderate" Arabs do not accept the existence of Israel any more than "militants." All the wishful thinking in the world will not change this fact.

And when you look at modern Israeli history through this lens, every action by the Arab world vis-a-vis Israel is entirely consistent with the ultimate destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. This includes Camp David and Oslo.

Hat tip to IRIS blog.

Even those Israelis who claim that peace between sovereign Israel and the Arabs is a practical possibility rest their claim on the bald assumption that there exists a solid body of Arabs who are "moderate."

They do not face the reality, taught by many decades of experience, that the most "moderate" of the Arabs (who might have a hand in setting the policies of their people) do not differ, in their view of what Israel's future should be, from the manifestly immoderate mainstream Arabs. They differ only on the method, or process, by which the elimination of the Jewish state is to be accomplished.

This is true of all the Arab states - members of the Arab League - but most importantly of the states that have launched wars against Israel since 1948.

The outlook of such phantom moderates has not been kept secret. It comes to the surface from time to time from quite authoritative quarters.

In December 1980, shortly after Israel's peace treaty with Egypt was signed, a former prime minister of Egypt, Mustafa Khalil, delivered a guest lecture at Tel Aviv University. There, speaking - as he said - "frankly and scientifically," he pointed out that the Arabs do not "regard the Jews as a nation at all, but as a religion only. "When it come to nationality," he declared, "a Jew can be an Egyptian Jew, a French Jew or a German Jew." Egyptians, he said, wanted to be good neighbors with Israel, but they expected the Jews "to change."

Five years earlier, another leading Egyptian intellectual, Boutros Boutros Ghali, cabinet minister and subsequently secretary-seneral of the United Nations, gave equally cultured utterance to the same idea, but then gave voice also to its underlying threat. He told a Cairo journal that if Israel maintained "its Jewish character" and did not assimilate in the Arab homeland, "then we will have no integration of Israel with this region." Indeed, if Israel defended its right to sovereignty, he added, "I think you can have no peace in this region."

SHORTLY AFTER the Yom Kippur War, the editor of Egypt's leading weekly journal, Al-Mussawar, explained that the English word "peace" can be translated into Arabic by either salaam or sulh, but these words had different meanings. Thus, he wrote, if the Jews returned to the 1949 Armistice Lines (where the Arab states' aggression against newborn Israel had been halted) the Jews could expect no more than "salaam." It was "only by returning to their senses, and dwelling under one roof and under one flag with the Arabs of Palestine," that they could expect "sulh" (real peace, reconciliation).

At that very time reports were circulating in the West that in Egypt (which had launched four wars against Israel since the Jewish state's birth in 1948) a new, moderate, more friendly wind was blowing toward Israel. And so an American writer, Joan Peters, having been sent on a journalistic mission to Egypt, decided to test these reports on the spot.

Her findings were published in an article in Commentary magazine (May 1975) under the title "In search of moderate Egyptians." She started on her project in America by studying the literature attesting to a positive change in Egyptian attitudes toward Israel.

"To my amazement," she wrote, "once in Egypt I found virtually no evidence of such a change." She interviewed as representative a cross-section of Egyptians as she could find. She lists them: government officials, writers, academics, scientists, demographers, doctors, architects, engineers, housewives, shopkeepers, students, soldiers, salesmen, cab drivers, waiters, women's rights activists, secretaries, carpenters, travel agents, communists, leftists, nationalists and right-wing conservatives.

She recorded in detailed quotation a number of her interviews and learned that far from Egyptians being friendly to Israel, there existed a consensus not only of fierce hatred of Israel, but of virulent anti-Semitism - which in sum would deny the Jewish state's right even to exist.
TWENTY-FIVE, 30 years have passed, and one fine day in September we read the report of another search for moderate Arabs. This time it is in Israel itself, and the search is reported by an Israeli writer, Yossi Klein Halevi, who sought common ground - cultural, spiritual and hence, as a Jewish moderate, political - with Muslim Arab counterparts. He too, like Joan Peters three decades years earlier, had "numerous candid conversations with - in his case Palestinian Arabs - "at all levels of society." And he cites "one telling example," with Gen. Nasser Youssef, the Palestinian Authority's interior minister.
Halevi, as he related in The Jerusalem Post of September 28, asked Youssef hypothetically what would happen if Israel withdrew to the 1967 "borders," uprooted the settlements and redivided Jerusalem. Youssef replied that "the refugees would be returning to the area… and then there would be no need for an artificial border between Israel and Palestine."
"But," said Halevi to Youssef, "aren't we negotiating today over a two-state solution?"
"Yes," Youssef replied, "as an interim step. You aren't separate from us, you are part of us. Just as there are Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, you are Jewish Arabs." He went on to speak of this unified Palestinian state joining with other Arab states.
General Youssef, adds Halevi, "is widely known as a moderate, deeply opposed to terror - because it is counter-productive to the Palestinian cause…."
Youssef is thus fully representative of the supreme hutzpa, precisely of the moderate Arabs. Emboldened by the great success worldwide in disseminating the grotesque claim to a "Palestinian" history that never existed, mainstream Arabs teach their children and make it plain to the world that their intention is to destroy the Jewish state, directly if possible, or by phases, as so often described by their late leader, Yasser Arafat.
Here the moderate Arab steps in and proposes a moderate alternative - the same one suggested in 1980 by former Egyptian Prime Minister Mustafa Khalil: vaporization of the Jewish national identity.
THE ARAB propaganda success has not been achieved without passive Jewish help - the help of unbelievable inaction. The most egregious blunder of successive Israeli governments and Jewish Diaspora leaders has been the complete failure to build a National Information Center (what we call hasbara), having the scope and authority of an Israeli government ministry, to tell the world - but first of all the Jewish people - the truth of their own nation's unique relationship with the Land of Israel, reaching back 3,000 years to its biblical history and resting on the momentous modern international acknowledgement of that relationship in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for the "reconstitution of the Jewish National Home" in Palestine.
That center would, moreover, enlist all possible resources, Christian as well as Jewish, to counter the monstrous fictions of the so-called Palestinian cause - and now the vicious waves of anti-Semitism swirling through the nations of the West.
The writer, who co-founded the Herut Party with Menachem Begin and was a member of the first Knesset, is a biographer and essayist.

Reasonable sounding liar - Dr. Sam Hamod

According to this site,
"Sam Hamod is a former advisor to the U.S. State Dept; founder of 3rd World News (Wash, DC);Director of The Islamic Center (Wash, DC); Professor at Princeton, Michigan, Howard and Iowa (ret.)." He is a Lebanese-American born in Indiana, according to another biography. He is also president of the American-Islamic Institute.

Dr. Hamod is retiring as main editor of his "Today's Alternative News" site, and he signs off with a somewhat reasonable-sounding defense of what he calls "true" conservatism and a statement of what he believes is best for America:

Since 2000, my site has been dedicated to truth, honesty and the pursuit of justice and democracy. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, I am interested only in America being a moral leader in the world, a nation that aids those in need, a nation that takes care of its own and is interested only in the interests of mankind and follows the moral order of the major religions of the world, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism and Bahai.

During this time, I have been critical of many things that have not measured up to what I thought was good for America or for the world; I have condemned those who called for violence, regardless of their alleged religion (whether they called themselves Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.) when they did evil things. In our time we have seen plenty of hatred being spread by people from all these faiths—there is no need for me to repeat their names—they are known to all of you, and we all know the evil of their deeds, and I have called them on it.

Some thought that because I have been so critical of GW Bush’s war on Iraq that I must have liked Bill Clinton—not so. I thought Clinton betrayed the Palestinians and offered them only a Bantustan existence.
To this day, I have no respect for Clinton or his wife; but I do respect George Bush Sr. for having the courage and insight to know that it was best not to enter and destroy the infrastructure of Iraq (even though he and I, and many others knew that Saddam Hussein was a devil).
America cannot police or control the entire world; just as the Spartans could finally not control the world of their time; nor could Rome when it became too big and wanted to conquer the known world of the time.

...
I liked Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams the first, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Carter and even Nixon ( I still feel that he did more good things than bad in office; but he, like many others made mistakes); I also liked the pre-presidency of Lyndon Johnson and his moves to help integration, and I liked the later John F. Kennedy after Kruschev taught him a lesson in power politics. I have always distrusted Henry Kissinger, I think the truth about him has come out in the long run; he did little for real peace in the Middle East, instead, he was a shill for Israel and still is. Henry, whom I’ve known for years, has always had a hatred for the Arabs and Muslims, even though he tried to cover it with slippery semantics. On the other hand, Zbignew Brezinski. has been a fair man in world affairs and did work for peace wherever he went. This shows you that we can have good men, like Z B, but also men who drag us into immorality, like H K.

Again, my main concern is peace and justice in the world.

You might quibble with his politics, but it sounds patriotic and well-thought out. He is, after all, a professor, and he must have spent many years defining his positions.

But in his conclusion, on the subject of Israel, any pretense of objectivity and reason (and truth) flies out the window before he retreats back into his pseudo-patriotism:

I also think it is high time that Amrericans realize that Sharon’s and Israel’s agendas are not America’s agendas. We must quit supporting Israel in a carte blanche fashion. We must not fund them if they continue this oppressive and inhumane behavior, this illegal behavior, toward the Palestinians. By our support, we are complicitous in this evil that Sharon and Israel perpetrate upon the Palestinian people. If America quit following the Tom Lantos’ , the Grahams, the other Zionist agents in our Congress, we’d be better off. Most Americans don’t realize that every Israeli is subsidized by America to the tune of at least $40,000.00 per person, per year—you show me an American, aside from a Congressperson, who gets that kind of financial assistance. Bah!

So then what am I—I am a true Conservative. I wish to conserve our Constitution, our moral leadership, our water, our air, our people’s rights, our honor in the world, our honor in our courts, our opportunity to lead the world and make it a better place. I fear our last two presidents have done just the opposite; neither have served our nation well. Let us hope and pray our future presidents will do better.

Now, if you look at his other writings and the contents of his on-line magazine you will see opinions that are far more way-out and bizarre than this piece quoted here. As we've seen in many other times, the anti-Israel crowd will filter their messages based on their audience, so they can sound reasonable on TV and we have to dig a little bit to see their true agenda.

The essay quoted above is a classic example. In the middle of looking back at his worldview, he makes a claim that he feels all Americans should know - that the US subsidizes Israel to the tune of $40,000 per Israeli, per year.

Really? A quick calculation shows that he is saying that Israel gets $251 billion dollars annually from the US! Such a breathtakingly idiotic statement (a quarter of a trillion dollars annually to Israel!) is hardly what one would expect from an impartial academic.

Not only that, but this article by Matt Welch from 2001 does a nice job at finding out that Dr. Hamod seems to subscribe to the Jewish-owned media worldview, as well, claiming that 90% of reporters are Jewish. Welch also finds a different quote from the professor, praising Palestinian "children" and saying that American children should emulate them - throwing stones at the US Capitol. How patriotic!

Like the other pro-terror propogandists, Sam Hamod is a charlatan, a bigot and a liar who uses his apparent academic credentials to espouse hate and falsehood. He is no patriot; his agenda is indistinguishable from those of Islamist supremacists. It is important to expose the real views of the terror-apologists and anti-semites when they get published in mainstream media opinion columns.

The truth is never far from the surface.

Send pizza to Gush Katif victims

I hadn't sent any pizza to IDF soldiers for a few months and I didn't notice that PizzaIDF.org now also has an option to send pizza to the victims of the Gaza explusion as well.

Great idea before Chanukah!

Quick moderation quiz

For those who consider some Palestinian leaders "moderates" and "peace-loving":

Can you name a single time that the Palestinian political leadership or the PA-controlled press ever criticized Syria, Iran, Saddam's Iraq or indeed any radical Muslim state?

Now, how many times have they criticized the US?

According to the CIA Factbook, there are about 1 million Palestinian Arab men between the ages of 15 and 65. According to yesterday's Phunnies, there are about 52,000 Palestinian "policemen" - more than one in twenty adult men work in "security" and the ratio of police to the general population is about 1 security officer per 67 people.

In contrast, in Canada the ratio of police to the general population is about 1:533.

Which would make the PA-controlled areas by far the safest in the world!

A group of gunmen on Sunday went on a rampage inside the offices of the online newspaper Donia al-Watan in Gaza City, destroying furniture and equipment and threatening to kill the editor-in-chief, Abdallah Issa.
Donia al-Watan is an independent newspaper that has been reporting extensively on corruption and lawlessness in the Palestinian Authority - issues that the PA-controlled media often tend to ignore.
Sources in the newspaper said the attackers were members of one of the Palestinian factions, but refused to elaborate. According to the sources, the gunmen were sent by the secretary-general of the faction to attack the offices and threaten the editor-in-chief following a critical report about him that appeared in the newspaper recently.
The attack came as PA security forces launched a massive campaign in various parts of the Gaza Strip in a bid to restore law and order. The campaign, ordered by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, comes amid growing criticism of the PA's failure to fight crime.
During the campaign, gunmen stole a PA police vehicle in the Nussairat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. PA security officials said the crackdown was directed only against criminal elements and that there would be no attempt to confiscate weapons belonging to various Palestinian militias, including Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In more scenes of lawlessness, three Palestinians were murdered in Ramallah over the past week. One of them was a 75-year-old woman.

Meanwhile...

Gaza - The outgoing PA justice minister, Nahed Al-Rayes, affirmed that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible for the "mushrooming corruption" rampant in its institutions.

Speaking at a political seminar held in Gaza city, Rayes charged that the PA "fostered the corrupt elements notorious for squandering public funds and violating the Palestinian citizens' rights".

Some PA security officers exploited their powers to "embezzle public money" as the relevant authorities remained silent towards such illegal practices, he further charged.

"The PA security elements were setting up gangs inside their apparatuses in order to loot public and private funds let alone terrorizing the citizens", the former minister charged.

Daughter of Ziyon updates her blog!

Sorry, but I forgot to mention this important news last week, when the beautiful and talented DoZ made one of her rare blog appearances.

The news is a little dated now but she is still fun to read. (I'm not biased at all!)

Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies XV

More on Mahmoud Abbas' bizarre way of fighting terror. (Also note al-Haaretz referring to the "Israeli regime".)

Several days ago the Palestinian finance minister, Salam Fayad, resigned. ...

[Some] reports (such as in the Al-Hayat Al-Jadida PA daily, from the end of last week) say Fayad resigned because Interior Minister Nasser Yousef, who is responsible for the security services, added to the Gaza services another 2,500 youths - almost all of them militants from Fatah and other movements. Yousef did this with the approval of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and plans to add another few thousand young Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists to the security services in the near future. Adding thousands of people to the security services would be a budgetary burden on the Palestinian treasury, and Fayad, according to these reports, would not have been able to stand for it.

Senior Palestinian officials explain that putting thousands of youths into the security services, especially in the Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank, is the only way Abu Mazen can obtain calm, security-wise. Tens of thousands of youths complete Palestinian high schools and universities every year and don't have anything to do. In the past, they came to Israel to work and returned home every evening with full pockets. Now the only way to calm them down is to have them join the PA organization. It doesn't matter where; the important thing is that they be placed in some sort of framework and receive a small salary.

For comparison's sake, at one point, some 20,000 Palestinian workers (mostly teachers) worked for the Israeli regime in the West Bank and Gaza, in addition to an unknown number of security officials. Some 160,000 people are serving in the Palestinian government, about a third of them in the security services.

So this means that the Palestinians have over 50,000 "policemen" of which many are just terrorists and most don't even bother working.

Yeah, this idea of giving Palestinian Arabs control over their own people is working out real well.

I also love the line "the only way to calm them down is to have them join the PA organization." This is stated as a matter of fact - and its implications are large:

It means that, according to the PA:

Criminals must be paid off to stop crime;
Palestinian Arabs have no ability (nor desire) to build their own private industry and to make money by actually selling things that the world might need;
Palestinian Arabs are inherently violent (otherwise, why can't they remain calm on their own?)
Palestinians cannot possibly get out of the mess they are in by themselves and they will demand more and more money from the world to pay off their own terrorists who have no intention of keeping any sort of peace with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority worldview is colored by these assumptions (which are, incidentally, incredibly bigoted against Palestinian Arabs.) And no one on the world scene has the guts to call them on it.

Muslim charity money diverted to terrorists

Gee, ya think?

The real question is whether the donors knew exactly who they were sending money to the entire time.

Charity cash for Palestinian poor was siphoned to suicide bombers
By Eric Silver in Jerusalem
Published: 28 November 2005

Millions of pounds donated by British and other European charities to help the Palestinian poor were unwittingly diverted to fund terror and support the families of suicide bombers, Israeli prosecutors claimed yesterday.

Ahmed Salatna, 43, a Hamas activist from the West Bank town of Jenin, was remanded in custody by a military court charged with distributing €9m (£6.2m) for such purposes over the past nine years. The recipients are alleged to have included the family of a young man who blew himself up at the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem in August 2001, killing 15 people and wounding 107. Hamas and Islamic Jihad acknowledged responsibility.

The charge sheet names two British charities, Human Appeal International and Interpal. Human Appeal is a broadly based fundraising organisation, currently helping victims of the Pakistani earthquake. Interpal describes itself as 'a non-political, non-profit-making charity that focuses solely on the provision of relief and development aid to the poor and needy of Palestine'. No one was available for comment at its London office yesterday. Other charities mentioned were the French CBST, the Italian ABSPT and the Al-Aqsa Foundation, which operates in Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden.

Mr Salatna, who has directed an Islamic charity in Jenin since Israel released him in 1996 after serving three years for Hamas activity, was arrested in September. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said Mr Salatna directly transferred the European funds to Hamas cells, suicide bombers and their families.

Haveil Havalim #46 released - a twofer for the Elder!

Double, double, double the fun at Israel Perspectives as two of my articles were accepted for inclusion in the latest Haveil Havalim!

My only regret is that I can no longer make fun of different blogs spelling it differently.

It's still the freedom, stupid

The recent Egyptian election fiasco (where the Egyptians tried to forcibly limit the Muslim Brotherhood's chances) and the recent Fatah elections show once again the fundamental problem with promoting "democracy" in the Arab world in the wrong way. As this article I wrote in January describes, we should be promoting freedom first, not democracy:

Elder of Ziyon: It's the freedom, stupid: "The Western world has been falling all over itself, breathlessly praising the Palestinian elections as an example of 'democracy' and saying that it shows that Palestinians are now mature members of the exclusive club of democratic nations. The Palestinian spokespeople like the exerable Ashrawi are also jumping on the bandwagon of 'See? We proved we are democratic!'

Even the more skeptical pundits, those who point out that the election was a foregone conclusion, and that the PA threatened those who wouldn't vote for Abbas, and the fact that many ballots were cast multiple times, seem to think that if the election was truly fair, it would herald the start of a new era in the Arab world.

But almost everyone is missing the point. Elections aren't a magic panacea that turns terrorists into upstanding public citizens. There were sham elections in the old Soviet Union and Iraq as well, and Hitler was 'democratically' elected.

People are mixing up elections and freedom. Freedom is the prerequisite for true democracy.

Only in a society that has true freedoms, of press and religion and freedom to demonstrate, where the marketplace of ideas is available to all, where there is no fear of publicly stating unpopular opinions - only there can one hope to see truly fair elections, true democracy where each person can freely make up his or her mind.

It is a reasonable assumption that people want to be free. It is reasonable to assume that people who enjoy freedom will not be as interested in starting wars with other nations without good reason. But it is by no means guaranteed - it is entirely possible that Egyptians would vote for a state based on Islamic law (and then they would voluntarily take away their own freedoms.)

But if we want to promote democracy, we need to first promote freedom, we need to promote equal rights for women, we need to set the groundwork where true democratic leaders can emerge.

A society where there is no functioning justice system, where the rulers can act with impunity, where the media is controlled tightly and reporters threatened, where the schools are told to teach hate - this is not a free society, and this is not a democratic society.

It is disheartening to see so many people get so excited over something that doesn't exist.

Egypt is the flip side of the same coin. The US, by promoting democracy over freedom and wanting to fight terror, is then put in the hypocritical position of supporting free elections and simultaneously supporting Egypt's attempts at stopping the pro-terror Islamist groups from winning.

Push freedom of the press first. Allow the marketplace of ideas to flourish in the Arab world. That should be the number one priority in reform, not rushing to some sort of magic elections.

"Hitler" does well in Fatah elections

A neat fact buried in the bottom of an AP report of Fatah elections (where convicted and wanted terrorists did extremely well):

Two fugitives from Fatah's violent offshoot, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, also secured high positions. The Jenin winner, Jamal Abu Rob, who gave himself the nickname ``Hitler,'' is wanted for killing several suspected informers with Israel. The Nablus candidate, Jamal Jumaa, is a leader of Al Aqsa in the West Bank's largest city.

In May, Arutz Sheva reported that Fox News interviewed "Hitler":

Another terrorist candidate is wanted Al-Aqsa Brigade chief Jamal Abu Roub, who goes by the nickname “Hitler.”

“Hitler” told Fox News reporter Jeniffer Griffin [sic] that he expects to win a seat because he gives his people “dignity and safety.” Fox News screened footage of Abu Roub publicly executing an Arab accused of helping Israel. He has been running from Israeli security forces, but appeared in public to campaign - with the reporter - assuming Israeli forces would not apprehend him while he spoke with a Western reporter.

Asked whether he thought the nickname “Hitler” would affect his election chances, Roub said, “I got this name because of my personality. I am a guy that has a strong personality and uses violence, if needed, to respond.”
I guess that for Palestinians, publicly identifying with a genocidal mass murderer who killed millions of Jews is a good career move. Just don't call them anti-semitic - they hate that.

al-Guardian promotes Muslim Brotherhood agenda

Apparently, the AP's dhimmitude towards the source of all of today's terror organizations is also alive and well at al-Guardian, which published an op-ed from the Muslim Brotherhood's "vice president", complete with his claims to be pro-democratic, pro free-speech and a follower of all liberal Western tenets:

No need to be afraid of us

The Muslim Brotherhood believes that democratic reforms could trigger a renaissance in Egypt

Khairat el-Shatir
Wednesday November 23, 2005
The Guardian

The violence that has erupted across Egypt in recent days is the result of government panic at the success of the Muslim Brotherhood - even in the rigged polls that pass for elections in the Arab world's most populous country. As the second round of voting opened on Sunday in Egypt's tightly restricted parliamentary contest, around 500 of our members were arrested at dawn and machete-wielding thugs attacked our supporters at polling stations. But the provocations of a corrupt, oppressive government - backed by the most powerful countries in the world - will not intimidate either our organisation, which has survived for 77 years, or the Egyptian people, who have increasingly come to trust us.
...We are committed to democracy and to respect fair election results, whatever the outcome.
...What we want to do instead is trigger a renaissance in Egypt, rooted in the religious values upon which Egyptian culture and society is built; for we believe these values can effectively deal with the obstacles that have hindered reform and development. At present, political life in Egypt is plagued by apathy; only a few parties with puny followings are officially allowed to join the political process. The priority is therefore to revitalise political life so that citizens can join a real debate about the solutions to Egypt's chronic problems and the sort of future we want for our country. We believe that the domination of political life by a single political party or group, whether the ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood or any other, is not desirable: the only result of such a monopoly is the alienation of the majority of the people.

Our aim in seeking to win a limited number of seats in parliament is to create an effective parliamentary bloc that, in conjunction with others, can energise an inclusive debate about the priorities of reform and development. Not a single political, religious, social or cultural group should be excluded from Egypt's political life. The objective must be to end the monopoly of government by a single party and boost popular engagement in political activity.

Second, we would hope to contribute to achieving significant political and constitutional reforms: in particular, to remove restrictions imposed by the regime on political activity and give the parliament a much bigger say than it has now. Without real powers to question the executive, parliament will remain a mere facade. Third, we would hope to contribute to greatly needed social, cultural and economic reforms. Such reforms can take place only once the grip of the state executive is regulated by an independent legislature and independent judiciary.

The success of the Muslim Brotherhood should not frighten anybody: we respect the rights of all religious and political groups. So much damage has been inflicted on the country over the past century because of despotism and corruption that it would be impossible to embark on wider political reform and economic development without first repairing the damage to our basic institutions. Free and fair democratic elections are the first step along the path of reform toward a better future for Egypt and the entire region. We simply have no choice today but to reform.

Has there ever been such a transparent attempt to fool liberals into believing that the terror-supporting Muslim Brotherhood is just a bunch of liberal activists?

Transparent or not, it obviously works at least in the UK's liberal newspapers. As Scott Burgess points out, the president of the Brotherhood has said that suicide bombs against civilians is legitimate, America is Satan and Islam will invade America and Europe. A slightly different message than they present to al-Guardian, but then again - isn't this part of the invasion of Islam to Europe?

The Muslim government that they are working tirelessly toward will have no tolerance for minorities, free speech or dissent. But hypocritically using these issues to get support from the West is a whole different ballgame.

Security at Rafah officially a joke

The border between Egypt and Gaza is now completely irrelevant, thanks to Palestinian Authority terror-supporters, apathetic Egyptians and Europeans, and Condi Rice.

Rafik al-Hasanat, a senior member of Hamas who has been wanted by Israel for more than a decade, on Wednesday night returned to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing.

The terminal was opened for a few hours on Wednesday to allow hundreds of Palestinians stranded on the Egyptian side to return home to the Gaza Strip. Hasanat is one of several Hamas fugitives who have returned to Gaza after Israel relinquished control over the Rafah border crossing.

A senior member of the armed wing of Hamas, Izzaddin Kassam, Hasanat fled to Egypt in 1993 after he learned that the IDF was searching for him because of his involvement in terror attacks. Since then he has been hiding in Sudan, Yemen, Libya and Jordan.

Hundreds of Hamas activists chanting slogans in support of the Islamic movement welcomed Hasanat home.

Sources close to Hamas said many of its activists, including top leaders, have managed to return to the Gaza Strip since the Israeli pullout. Last month one of the founders of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed al-Milh, returned to the Gaza Strip after spending 20 years in different Arab countries.

Shortly after the Israeli withdrawal, three top Hamas fugitives infiltrated into the Gaza Strip. One of them, Nihro Masoud of the Jabalya refugee camp, was one of the founders of Izzaddin Kassam. He fled to Egypt 14 years ago and spent most of the intervening time in Sudan.

The Rafah border crossing is expected to reopen on Friday following an agreement that was reached between the Palestinian Authority and Egypt.

The deal, brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this month, calls for the stationing European Union monitors at the terminal.

Under the terms of the agreement, Palestinians below the age of 18 and over 40 will be able to travel through the border crossing without a visa. The terminal will also remain open 24 hours a day.

A ceremony scheduled for Friday will formally re-open the border crossing. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is expected to attend the ceremony together with Egyptian and United Nations officials.

PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh said on Thursday that the 70 European monitors would be present at the border crossing only in the first week or ten days after its reopening.

Stressing that there would be no Israeli presence at the terminal, Abu Rudaineh said, "The European presence at the terminal is not an alternative to the Palestinian presence there. Nor do they represent Israel. The Palestinians will have the upper hand."

AP backgrounder on the Muslim Brotherhood misses a few facts

The AP helpfully published a background piece on the Muslim Brotherhood after the group made gains in Egyptian elections. Here is what it wrote:

Some facts about the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but popular Egyptian group that has inspired Islamic movements across the Arab world:

_Founded in 1928 by Hassan el-Banna, who advocated Islamic law and faith in God to rectify a society adrift and dependent on the West.

_Banned in 1954, but tolerated at various levels. It fields its candidates as independents under the slogan 'Islam is the solution,' but their affiliation is known to voters.

_Renounced violence in the 1970s, but the government continues to treat it with suspicion.

_Its welfare and charity work, done with efficiency and dedication, endears it to many, especially the poor.

_Holds 15 seats in the outgoing 454-member parliament. In voting so far it has won 47 seats and is expected to gain more in runoffs and a third round of voting.

Somehow AP improbably missed the fact that the "Islamic movements" it helped inspire include Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. For some odd reason, the AP forgot to mention terror altogether in its list of "useful information."

To learn a little more about the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood, check out a Palestine Post article from October 19. 1948 that I had found a couple of months ago:

Seminary girls in Israel cause international incident

A few days ago, Southern Lebanon was rocked by a bird-flu scare - from a carrier pigeon from Israel. As Ya Libnan reports (the graphics are theirs):

Kfar Tibnit, Lebanon - A courier pigeon with a love letter from a girl thanking her boyfriend for a "terrific night they spent together" has flown across the border from Israel, triggering bird flue scare throughout southern Lebanon.

The love letter which was from a girl thanking her boyfriend for a "terrific night they spent together" has flown across the border from Israel and landed on the roof of Ahmed Kamel Zaytoun in south Lebanon's Kfar Tibnit township on Friday. He found the letter concealed in an iron ring with figures identifying the trained carrier.

According to local media, the letter was written in English and Hebrew. The girl from Israel's upper Galilee panhandle speaks fondly of the night she spent with her lover, thanking him and asking him to acknowledge receiving her message to her e-mail address.

She also wrote in the message a postal address in the Kafar Qassem district in the Galilee, the Beirut daily newspaper As Safir reported. But the name of the lover and his address were not mentioned.

Scared that the pigeon may be carrying a bird flu virus, Zaytoun, who had no difficulty catching the love messenger, rushed it to the police station of Nabatiyeh town, which in turn rushed it to the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture laboratory in Al Fanar to determine whether it is clean or contaminated.

The Beirut ANB TV network, which aired a full coverage of the pigeon being seized and inserted in a big cage by Zaytoun, said the incident sent a bird flu scare sweeping across the region. The population is awaiting an assurance from the ministry of agriculture, ANB said.

But what really happened was quite different!

Why did the carrier pigeon cross the border? It depends on who you ask.

According to the Lebanese Ya Libnan News Web site, the bird was carrying a love letter from an Israeli Arab girl intended for her Lebanese lover.

But if you ask Detroit teen Rachel Greenbaum, you'll get a completely different answer: The Israeli Arab girl is really an American seminary girl, and her Lebanese lover is, in fact, the pigeon.

Greenbaum and her friend Stacey Gertz, 17, of Chicago, were part of a group of 95 mostly American teenage girls on a trip to the North led by their seminary, Michlelet Mevaseret Yerushalayim (MMY).

On November 16, they reached Mitzpe Hoshaya, where they participated in an activity called "Kfar Kedem‚" which simulates life in Israel during the time of the Mishna.

With MMY director Rabbi David Katz leading their troop, they dressed in the clothes of the time, made pita, rode donkeys and slept in tents.

"As we left, Menahem Goldberg, who runs Kfar Kedem, asked us to let us know how we enjoyed our stay there. But since Kfar Kedem is old-fashioned, Goldberg wanted us to send a message the old-fashioned way, by a trained carrier pigeon," Katz said.

Goldberg supplied a form on which to write the message, complete with spaces for writing phone numbers and e-mail addresses. The name "Kfar Kedem" was also on the form.

Greenbaum and Gertz immediately volunteered to take care of the pigeon overnight. "All the other girls thought the pigeon was disgusting and didn't want to take care of it, but we wanted to," said 18-year-old Greenbaum.

As the girls boarded the bus to leave, the bus driver asked what was in the box. Worried they would not be allowed on with the pigeon, the students told him the large, white box had cake in it.

"That's how the pigeon got his nickname - Uga ['cake' in Hebrew]," Greenbaum said.

"Rachel and I became emotionally attached to Uga after taking care of it overnight," Gertz added.

The next day, Greenbaum filled out the note to send back to Kfar Kedem with the bird. "It said something like: 'We love you Uga. Thanks for last night. We had a wonderful experience,'" Gertz said. "Everything was in English except for Uga's name. We added some inside jokes to the note and wrote Rabbi Katz's phone number and e-mail, and then the bird flew away."

Uga was supposed to reach Kfar Kedem within two hours. As time rolled on, the girls grew worried. After not hearing anything about Uga for a few days, they received a phone call Tuesday "telling us to open up the newspaper," Gertz said.

Ma'ariv had published a story from the Lebanese press about a carrier pigeon sent to Lebanon by an Israeli girl thanking her Lebanese boyfriend for the wonderful night they shared.

At first, Lebanese police thought the note was an intelligence code and tried to decipher it. They then concluded that it was a love letter from an Arab Israeli girl from Kfar Kasim to her Lebanese lover.

"They mistook Kfar Kedem‚ for the Arab town of Kfar Kasim," Katz said, laughing.

Though it is not clear why, the misunderstanding was exacerbated by the belief, on the part of the Lebanese man who found Uga on his roof, that the pigeon was carrying bird flu, leading to further reports in the Lebanese press of a bird flu scare across southern Lebanon.

A Westerner in Beirut who wished to remain anonymous confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that Lebanon was aflutter with the story of the bird. "It came out in the newspaper on Sunday," he said, "and everybody was talking about it."

The girls of MMY still cannot quite believe they are at the center of the story.

"I started laughing when I first found out," Gertz said. "There was no way this could be true. It sounded like it had come from the pages of The National Enquirer."

Goldberg is dumbfounded about her identity as described by the media. "They think I'm an Arab girl sending this letter to my Lebanese boyfriend thanking him for a great night we spent together," Goldberg laughed. "The whole episode is so funny. It's like a domino effect - a whole line of mess-ups.

"Of course we were really upset that we started a bird flu scare," she added, "we wouldn't wish that on anyone."

As it stands, the girls miss their long lost friend. "We just want Uga back," Gertz said. "We want him free."