Egyptian editor: Israel definitely to blame for Dahab bombings

In most civilized societies, delusions get you medicated or committed.

In Egypt, they get you positions of power.

The editor of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Osbua, Mustafa Bekhari, blamed Israel for the series of bombing attacks in Dahab Monday night, which killed 24 people. “There is no doubt a link between yesterday’s blasts and the earlier bomb attacks in Egypt, and we should point an accusing finger at Israel,” Bekhari said during an interview with Israeli-Palestinian radio station Kol Hashalom.

“Israel has an interest in carrying out such attacks because it refuses to recognize Sinai as part of Egypt because its tourism industry is so profitable,” Bekhari said. (Roee Nahmias)

That reasoning is even more of a stretch than the usual insane mutterings that emanate from Egypt. But when you blame the Jews for everything, do you really need a logical sounding reason? Your readers will believe it anyway.

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Egyptian analyst: Can't rule out Mossad in Egyptian blasts

Retired General Salah al-Din Salim, an Egyptian researcher at the Strategic Studies Institute in Cairo, said that it could not be ruled out that the Israeli Mossad was involved in the terror attack in Dahab.

'The Mossad's ability to penetrate the Bedouins in Sinai is known,' Salim said in an interview with al-Jazeera.

I suppose he can't rule out Martians, Quakers and three separate two-year-olds who spontaneously combusted simultaneously.

I wonder if this general was involved in any of the many Egyptian "victories" over Israel in previous wars.

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The Holocaust in the New York Times of 1942-43

In 1943, a three-column article on Page 1 of the Palestine Post described how the the Inter-Allied Information Committee described the genocide of the Jews of Europe then in progress, along with Nazi atrocities against all of its occupied areas. Here is an excerpt:


This committee was set up by a number of Allied nations, and the report was distributed by the United Press, meaning that most newspapers on the planet had access to this information - it was not from an uncorroborated eyewitness or an isolated reporter, but it came right from an official Allied war committee. This committee, which later became the United Nations Information Office, also issued other reports throughout the war on Nazi war crimes.

A search on "Inter-Allied Information Committee" in the New York Times archives shows that occasionally, the august Times would report on the Holocaust too. Indeed, this very article was mentioned in the New York Times months earlier, in August.

But on page 7.

Deliberate Nazi Murder Policy Is Bared by Allied Official Body; More Than Million Lives Taken in Campaign to Wipe Out Entire Peoples -- Jews and Poles Undergo Severest Treatment

New York Times.: Aug 27, 1943. pg. 7, 1 pgs

LONDON, Aug. 26 (U.P.) -- The Inter-Allied Information Committee, in an official incomplete accounting of Axis war crimes in occupied Europe, tonight accused Germany, Italy and their satellites of carrying out with increasing tempo a deliberate program of wholesale theft, murder, torture and savagery unparalleled in world history.

Here are some of the other New York Times' article titles and abstracts that refer to this committee - and the page numbers that they were printed on.

OFFICIAL MASSACRE

New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Sep 28, 1942. pg. 16,

From London the Inter-Allied Information Committee set up by the exiled Governments reports that the number of known victims of Nazi executions has now reached the almost incredible figure of 207,373. Even this figure is good only for the day it was issued. Every morning German firing squads revise it upward.

2,000,000 Jews Murdered
New York Times New York, N.Y.: Apr 20, 1943. pg. 11, 1 pgs

Total Nazi Executions Are Put at 3,400,000; Poland, With 2,500,000 Victims, Tops List

New York Times New York, N.Y.: Feb 28, 1943. pg. 12, 1 pgs

LONDON, Feb. 27 (AP) -- Nearly 3,400,000 persons had been executed or had died in prison in nine Nazi-occupied countries by the end of 1942, the Inter-Allied Information Committee of the United Nations said in a statement today.

ALLIES DESCRIBE OUTRAGES ON JEWS; United Nations Office Here Releases Report on Fate of 5,000,000 in Europe EXTERMINATION IS FEARED Situation in Each Country Held by Germans Is Analyzed in Summarized Form

New York Times New York, N.Y.: Dec 20, 1942. pg. 23, 1 pgs

What is happening to the 5,000,000 Jews of German-held Europe, all of whom face extermination, is described in a statement released yesterday by the United Nations Information Office.

This was covered very well in a book, "Beyond Belief'" by famed Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt (ironically reviewed favorably by the New York Times itself in 1985):

In December 1942, for example, when The Chicago Tribune covered a major report from the Inter-Allied Information Committee in which Nazi-occupied Poland was described as ''one vast center for murdering Jews,'' the paper put the story on page 18 next to a marriage announcement. The previous month The New York Times had run a story about a statement from a member of the Polish National Council that a million Polish Jews had already been killed. It appeared on page 16, next to a report on the hijacking of a truckload of coffee in New Jersey. Such eerie editorial decisions were the norm, not the exception, and there was relatively little improvement until the very end of the war.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us remember that the world did know what was going on as early as 1942, and chose to ignore it or bury it.

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The Hate Israel Intelligentsia (Bruce Thornton)

One of the best articles I've seen analyzing the new anti-semitism.

The Hate Israel Intelligentsia
Keeping Jews in their place…
[by Bruce S. Thornton] 4/24/06

As if there isn’t enough evidence of the ideological corruption of America’s universities, along come Chicago’s John Mearsheimer and Harvard’s Stephen Walt, arguing that the “Israel lobby” dominates American foreign policy to the hurt of our own national interests. Alan Dershowitz has exposed the errors of fact and the sophomoric logic that mar this thesis, and that should embarrass what are supposed to be two of the best universities in the country. Personally, I consider it intellectual malfeasance to harp on the Israel lobby while ignoring the Palestinian lobby––which includes most of the faculty of American universities, most of the Middle Eastern Studies Departments, most of the media’s editorial boards, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the U.N., and a significant chunk of the State Department.

Critical analysis like Dershowitz’s is important, but equally significant is the question of how ideas usually found on neo-Nazi websites can be seriously entertained by otherwise educated people. Anti-Semitism certainly isn’t the whole answer, if only because the term is too broad to catch the various subsets of anti-Jewish bigotry. This isn’t to say that anti-Semitism doesn’t still exist. Obviously, old-fashioned anti-Semites, particularly in Europe, have found that in a post-Holocaust world, one can still indulge the same bigoted stereotypes of all-powerful cabals secretly manipulating world events, as long as one dresses them up in “pro-Palestinian” or “anti-Zionist” camouflage. But I’m not sure that most of those, including Muslims, who rail against the evil Jews really want them all to disappear, as Hitler did. They just want the Jews to stop being so uppity and to keep in their place.

In other words, the hater of Israel doesn’t mind if Jews stick around, as long as they play the role they’re supposed to: the marginalized victim whose fate is to suffer and provide us with objects of pity. That’s why popular culture’s favorite Jew is the Holocaust victim. As such, the Jew can even keep his religious identity, as long as it is kept thin and reduced to a few charming folkways no more significant than clog-dancing or bagpipes. In other words, don’t be too observantly Jewish, and don’t take being Jewish too seriously. Actually taking religion seriously is the monopoly of Muslims, who especially in Europe are allowed all sorts of leeway in expressing their fanatical devotion to their faith, even when it conflicts with the foundational political ideals of their countries.

But to keep someone a pitiful victim is to reduce his humanity, to leave him a passive object that exists only to arouse in others particular sorts of feelings. In other words, the victim can never be fully equal to others, but must remain in a subordinate condition. Here is where the position of Jews in the European imagination is similar to their status in the Muslim world. Most Muslims don’t want Jews to disappear, just Israel. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for centuries, but they did so as a subordinated minority whose public behavior and demeanor were always supposed to testify that they were inferior to their Islamic overlords. As possessors of the ultimate divine revelation, Muslims were justified in reminding Jews and Christians, who both rejected that culminating revelation, that they were inferiors allowed to live only by their spiritual superiors’ dispensation, which could be arbitrarily lifted at any time.

This is the contemptuous, conditional forbearance that many today extol as Muslim “tolerance.” It reminds me of the position of blacks in the Jim Crow South. After all, many Southerners who believed in segregation despised the Klu Klux Klan’s terrorism, and sincerely liked black people. These more respectable segregationists didn’t want to kill all the blacks, just to make sure that they lived in a way that publicly testified to their inferiority. Such Southerners believed that given the innate, ineradicable differences between the races, both peoples were better served by maintaining in social and political life the various mechanisms for asserting the superiority of the white race and its natural right to rule. So too with the dhimmi in Muslim societies: they can live and even practice their religion, so long as they demonstrate that they are inferior.

But the existence of Israel upsets all these long-established roles for Jews. Not just because Israel fights––Jews can fight, as they did at Masada and in the Warsaw ghetto. But they’re not supposed to win. To have their own nation, and thus be equal to the world’s other nations, and then to defeat in battle better armed, more numerous enemies, is to violate the image of the Jew established for centuries. It is to make him our equal, and to call forth paranoid fantasies about nefariously influential cabals to explain this disturbing change. For the Jew’s job is to be a victim, and thus perpetually inferior. He is to suffer and die, or else to leech away his Jewish identity and thus not really be a Jew, which is another sort of death.

These thoughts are speculative, no doubt, but the bizarre demonization of Israel cries out for explanation. So does the obscene double standard applied to Israel’s actions when defending herself, and the actions of the enemies sworn to her destruction. So does the obsession with Israel in the U.N. and in the E.U. So does the callous indifference to the murder of Israelis and the numerous attempts to destroy her. What else explains the astonishing phenomenon of a terrorist gang being taken for a legitimate government by the rest of the world? What else explains the long indulgence of the corrupt thug Arafat? What else explains an entire U.N. agency dedicated to one small group, even as in the rest of the world millions have starved and died? What else explains the way year after year propagandistic lies and disinformation such as the “Jenin massacre” are shrugged away even after they are exposed?

The reason isn’t just ignorance, though I have personally encountered fervent supporters of the Palestinians who could not recite two accurate facts from the history of the Middle East. Nor is anti-Semitism of the rabid Nazi variety the answer. Something else is at work here, an intellectual and moral corruption that cannot be cured with better P.R. or information campaigns. Its persistence means that Israel cannot become complacent even about the support of the United States. Israel ultimately can rely on nothing other than her own strong right arm.

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The terror convergence

As much as liberal wishful-thinkers and Jew-haters who pretend to only be anti-Zionist try to ignore them, the facts keep showing that the war against Palestinian terror is the same as the war against worldwide Islamic terror. Just yesterday:

• News First Class (Hebrew) reports that:

  Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal confirmed that the Palestinian Authority under Hamas rule has become a hothouse for the growth, development, and encouragement of terrorists.
  "Our government is a big tent that provides protection for the forces of Jihad," he said at a meeting near Damascus.

• Iran's president met with a senior Hizbollah terrorist to plan both terror attacks against the West as well as to send hundreds of rockets to Israel from Lebanon in case of an armed confrontation.
• Osama bin Laden railed against Western imperialistic powers not giving money to Hamas for free all the while castigating the West for its supposed war against Islam. I guess he doesn't like the West unless it is giving terrorists money.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood: they all have the same stated goals. It is amazing that Western apologists for Palestinian Arab terror keep pretending that somehow killing Jews is different...

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Zionism, Imperialism, and Extramarital Sex

The Axis of Evil, from the Iranian perspective:

TEHRAN: An international Zionist conspiracy, an American bid to enact regime change in Iran and extra-marital sex — these are the main dangers facing the Islamic republic today. Or so says a close aide to Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, a powerful cleric seen as the ideological and spiritual godfather of Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “The most important challenges for the regime are the policies of the United States and the Europeans. They are trying to make trouble for us. They are trying to topple our regime,” argued Hojatoleslam Mohsen Gharavian.

“Today the chant of ‘Death to America’ has become like the verse of a prayer. The US should take this into consideration,” Gharavian said, while also warning European statesmen that they could even “expect a revolution like the one which toppled the Soviet Union.”

The Ayatollah himself has a very poor and mostly broken website, where you will find this gem of a fatwa commanding Palestinian Arabs to bow themselves up with whatever Jews they may find:

It is regrettable that the propaganda of the enemies of Islam has influenced the Muslim `Ummah so much that Muslims instead of planning for the uprooting of the Zionist regime and its arrogant supporters have occupied themselves with questioning and discussing the legitimacy of the Palestinian's self-defence which is carried out under the most oppressive conditions imaginable. For sure, when protecting Islam and the Muslim `Ummah depends on martyrdom operations, it not only is allowed, but even is an obligation (wajib) as many of the Shi'ah great scholars and Maraje', including Ayatullah Safi Golpayegani and Ayatullah Fazel Lankarani, have clearly announced in their fatwas. Consider the rewayah from the prophet of Allah (SA) who said: "Whoever is killed in defence of his belongings, he/she is Shahid." (Wasa'il al-Shi'ah, v.15, p.121)

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Fatah hockey fan

I'm not sure what to make of this guy...

Armed Fatah militants of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group linked to the Fatah Movement, are seen at the municipal building of the West Bank city of Nablus, Sunday, April 23, 2006. Dozens of Palestinian gunmen loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas stormed the Nablus municipal building Sunday and gave the mayor, who is from the rival Hamas group, half an hour to shut down his offices in a reaction against comments made by Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas' political wing, accusing Abbas of treachery. (AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh)

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Google News indexes Arab joke site as "news"

I've mentioned before that Google News indexes some questionable "news" sources, but it appears that they have outdone themselves - they now index an Arab joke site, sort of like The Onion without the humor, called Kabobfest. Here is a typical article with some hilarious Arab Holocaust jokes.

Kabobfest is nothing more than a Blogger site with a bunch of contributors. Many of its stories are just made up, yet Google has no problem treating it the same as it treats the New York Times. (Then again....)

Interestingly, one main contributor is someone named Nadeem, who is apparently Nadeem Muaddi, a leader of the ISM who sometimes poses online as a Jew named Chaim Sugarman, and even has pretend conversations with him on the Kabob blog.

Jihad Unspun was eventually dropped by Google, but the Kabobfest site is still indexed a few days after I emailed Google.

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The "highest birthrate" myth

The Dallas Morning News has a not-so-terrible article about a couple from Fort Worth who are now "settlers". But the article repeats the myth that the Palestinian Arabs have some of the world's highest birthrates.

Forgetting the fact that a very convincing study was done showing that the Palestinian Arab population growth rates are a myth, let's use even the discredited assumptions and compare the Palestinian Arab birthrate numbers to others throughout the world.

According to the CIA Factbook, the estimated birthrates for the West Bank this year is 31.67 per thousand, and in Gaza it is 39.45. Combined, this would come out to about 34 (since the West Bank has more people than Gaza).

When put onto this chart, the Palestinian Arab territories would rank 44th in birthrate among 208 nations. High, but far from the highest (Niger, at 48.91.)

Just like the "Gaza most densely populated" myth, these lies are used to bolster Palestinian Arab claims, and lazy journalists repeat them without doing even basic fact checking.

(From reading the study at pademographics.com, it is interesting that the PA statistics for absurd population growth rates were based not only on false birthrate assumptions, but also on the faulty pre-intifada assumption that there would be over 50,000 Palestinian Arabs immigrating to the territories annually from 2001 on, when in fact there is a net emigration of over 8000 a year.)

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Pro-Hamas bias at The Guardian

This article is a week old but I hadn't noticed it until it was copied at a Palestinian Arab site.

Most of the article talks about the terrible conditions that people in Gaza are living under (funny, before the financial crisis the articles also talked about their terrible conditions.) But here and there is revealed the author's biases:

Karni is officially closed because the Israeli army has declared a security alert for the Jewish Passover holiday. Yet it has barely been open this year.

Apparently, the army was correct, although you will never see the Guardian admit that.

To add further misery, in retaliation for militants firing home-made Qassam rockets at Israel, the Israel Defence Force has bombarded the north of Gaza with thousands of artillery shells.

Notice that the author,Conal Urquhart,describes Qassams as "home-made"; as if they aren't deadly. And what about all those metal workshops that Israel always bombs - are they in homes? Notice also his implication that Israel's response is disproportionate to the threat - if only Israel would let its citizens be blown up more often, there would be more peace. And, finally, notice that Israel's actions only "add misery" and have no constructive purpose.

Confronted with the crisis facing Palestinian society, Russia broke ranks with fellow mediators the EU and Washington yesterday by promising emergency aid to save the authority from complete bankruptcy.

Russia, according to the author, has nothing but humanitarian concerns at its heart, as opposed to the nasty EU and Americans. The author cannot for a minute think that Russia perhaps has an ulterior motive to be a player in future peace negotiations. Nope, those Russians are just in the forefront of worldwide aid. I wonder how much they gave Darfur.

At the root of Gaza's problems is Israel's determination to force Hamas to recognise the state of Israel and renounce violence. Israel has been joined in its efforts by Britain, the EU and the US. Hamas militants have been on a ceasefire for 16 months but they are determined to withhold recognition of Israel at least until it withdraws from occupied Palestinian territory.

Here we have the root of the twisted mind of the author. The root of Gaza's problems is Israel's wanting not to be blown up? What kind of an idiot is this?

The root of Gaza's problems is the unbridled embracing of terror that its residents advocate. The root of Gaza's problems is the utter inability to build a decent society after decades. The root of Gaza's problems is that they are completely and totally dependent on third parties to exist.

Also, the Hamas "cease fire" is non-existent - there have been both successful and many unsuccessful Hamas attacks in the past year, including rocket attacks. (Not to mention that the "cease-fire" is 15 months old, not 16.)

Finally, we have the admiration that the author has for Hamas' "determination" to not recognize Israel, "at least" until Israel surrenders all territories. To this pro-terror Hamas sycophant, this is all very reasonable sounding. Israel is the root of Palestinian Arab problems, and no amount of facts will budge this moral midget from his preconceived "truths."

None of this is too surprising coming from the Guardian, but it still needs to be pointed out when it happens.

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"Every Muslim has the potential to turn into a bomb against the west."

If any Westerner would say such a statement, he would be decried as a bigot.

But what if an Iranian group dedicated to suicide bombings says it?

...A Tehran-based group claimed yesterday it was trying to recruit Iranians and other Muslims in Britain to carry out suicide bombings against Israel.

The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, which claims to be independent but has the backing of the regime, said it is targeting potential recruits in Britain because of the relative ease with which UK passport-holders can enter Israel.

Mohammad Samadi, a spokesman for the group, told the Guardian that striking at Israel was the priority of his recruitment drive. "The first target is Israel. For us, that is the battlefield," he said. "All the Jews are targets, whether military or civilian. It's our land and they are in the wrong place. It's their duty to pay attention to safety of their own families and move them away from the battlefield," he said.

Mr Samadi's group was participating in a recruitment fair for "martyrdom seekers" being held in the grounds of the former US embassy in Tehran. Several hundred volunteers have signed up for missions in the past few days.

Volunteers attracted to his group were asked to complete forms specifying whether they prefer to carry out operations against "the Quds occupiers" [Israel], the British author Salman Rushdie - subject of a death sentence passed by Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, over The Satanic Verses - or "the occupiers of Islamic lands", the US and Britain.

...Western diplomats played down the significance of the group's threat, saying it was primarily a campaign to gather signatures of protest against Israel rather than recruiting bombers.

While the committee claims to be independent it has previously been linked with the Revolutionary Guards. It claims it has gathered 52,000 recruits - of whom 30% are women - since forming two years ago. According to the group, recruits are instructed in target planning and military discipline before progressing to intensive urban guerrilla warfare training, involving the use of bomb belts.

When asked how Iranian volunteers would get into Israel, Mr Samadi cited the precedent of Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Sharif, two British Muslims who attacked a bar in Tel Aviv, killing three Israelis, in 2003 after entering Israel as tourists and then posing as peace activists. Hanif blew himself up at the scene while Sharif fled, but was found drowned in the Mediterranean.

"That shows that it has not been difficult getting into Israel," he said. "Do you think getting hold of a British passport for an Iranian citizen is hard? Tens of passports are issued for Iranian asylum seekers in Britain every day. There are hundreds of other ways available to us, such as illegal entry [into Britain], fake passports, etc.

"Britain and other European countries have a lot of disaffected Muslims who are ready. We understand the suspicion with which Britain, America and other western countries regard their Muslim populations. We don't condemn them for this because we believe every Muslim has the potential to turn into a bomb against the west."

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Humanitarian crisis, part 4

They may have no money for salaries, they may claim that they will have to live on olives and salt, but somehow they always find the cash to make hundreds of posters celebrating murderers:

Once again, the priorities of the Palestinian Arabs are crystal clear.

(Part 3 here)

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The victims and the heroes

From the Jerusalem Post:

Victor Erez, 60, a resident of Givatayim, died while expecting his sixth grandchild. As a soldier in the Six Day War, Erez lost his leg while serving within the Golani Brigade.

He was laid to rest at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday in the Yarkon Funeral Home.

Holon resident David Shaulov, 29, was expecting his third son when he was killed. His wife Varda, who was in her ninth month of pregnancy, arrived on Monday at Lis Hospital in Tel Aviv after the couple felt that she was due.

Just as she entered the obstetric department she received a message that her husband had been killed while going out for lunch.

He was laid to rest at 11:00 a.m. in a funeral home in Holon.

He had 2 daughters in addition to a large family. His friend Zach said he saw him make aliyah to Israel and that he never complained about the hardship.

Lod resident Binyamin Hafuta, 47, was the security guard on duty at the time of the attack. He requested to check the terrorist's bag and as his metal detector sounded off, the explosives in the bag detonated.

He prevented an even larger tragedy from occurring by absorbing the explosion with his body.

Hafuta began working as a security guard at the Falafel Rosh Ha'ir three months ago, just after the previous terror attack at the falafel stand. Those close to him said he thought the chances of a terror attack occurring at the same place twice were impossible.

His sister-in-law, Suzi, said that after hearing that Hafuta protected others from the blast with his body, she understood that "even in his death he cared for everyone."

She added that he was eagerly anticipating the post-Passover ritual of Mimuna.

A friend of his described Biyamin as trustworthy, happy and full of life, and added that he will be sorely missed.

He was laid to rest in the new funeral home in Lod at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Army Radio reported.

Ashdod resident Phillip Belachson, 45, had taken a day off from work and was on an excursion with his two children to purchase gifts for Passover when the blast occurred. As he felt the explosion, Phillip took his children into his arms and protected his children with his body.

His daughter Lital said, "He was the best person in the world."

"As he fell on the floor he told my brothers not to worry, I am in pain but don't worry," she continued.

"I had the best father in the world - he was pure, and had never done anything bad to anyone," she said. "Even in his death he protected his children by absorbing the shrapnel."

Phillip Belachson was laid to rest at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday in a funeral home in Ashdod.

A resident of the Oranit community, 43 year-old Lily Yunis arrived in Tel Aviv from her home in order to purchase goods for the store that she and two of her daughters were opening.

As she drove into Tel Aviv with her husband and children, her son Tzach said he was hungry and the family decided to stop and find a place to eat. Lily stepped out of the family car with her son just as the bomb exploded.

Her husband Menachem looked for her for hours, but only found out she was dead much later in Abu Kabir.

A friend of Lily's said, "Words cannot describe the kind of mother she was - she was a jewel."

"She never asked for anything and put everybody before her," she continued.

Lily Yunis was laid to rest at the Yarkon funeral home on Tuesday.

Bat Yam resident Ariel Darchi, 31, was laid to rest on Tuesday.

Buda Pirushka, 50, and Rosalia Basnia, 48, were foreign workers from Romania. The details of their funerals were not released.

The name of the ninth victim was not available for publish.

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Those peace-loving Palestinian Arabs

There was a recent poll of Palestinian Arabs by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Results include the small item that a majority of Palestinian Arabs support terror attacks like yesterday's massacre in Tel Aviv, and a majority do not want Hamas to recognize Israel.

Of course, 80% of those polled also believe that people sometimes or always lie to the pollsters!

Here are some of the latest that the peace-loving Palestinian Arab people believe:

11) The Western donor community provides the PA economic and financial assistance reaching about one billion dollars every year. Do you think the PA can or can not do without this assistance?
1) it certainly can do without it	7.5	6.2	9.7
2) it can do without it	23.0	23.7	21.7
3) it can not do without it	40.1	42.1	36.6
4) it certainly can not do without it	27.8	26.3	30.4
5) DK/NA	1.7	1.7	1.6
	Total	West Bank	Gaza Strip
12) For the assistance to continue, the donor community demand that Hamas must recognize the state of Israel. Do you think Hamas should accept this demand and recognize Israel?
1) Certainly yes	11.6	11.4	12.1
2) yes	25.5	24.8	26.6
3) no	42.0	44.0	38.5
4) certainly no	17.2	16.0	19.5
5) DK/NA	3.7	3.8	3.4

	Total	West Bank	Gaza Strip
38) Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I….
1) Strongly support	14.2	10.0	21.4
2) Support	38.2	35.7	42.5
3) Oppose	40.2	45.1	31.6
4) Strongly oppose	5.0	6.1	3.1
5) DK/NA	2.5	3.1	1.4

39) Do you believe that armed confrontations so far has helped achieved Palestinian national and political rights in ways that negotiations could not achieve?
1) Definitely yes	24.0	14.8	40.0
2) Yes	42.9	44.6	40.1
3) No	25.4	30.7	16.1
4) Definitely no	5.7	7.2	3.2
5) DK/NA	2.0	2.8	0.7

47) Generally, do you see yourself as:
1) Religious	47.9	43.2	56.1
2) somewhat religious	47.7	51.8	40.7
3) not religious	3.8	4.3	3.0
4) DK/NA	0.5	0.7	0.2

49) Which of the following political parties do you support?
1) PPP	0.5	0.5	0.5
2) PFLP	3.3	3.2	3.4
3) Fateh	34.4	34.0	35.0
4) Hamas	36.7	34.2	41.0
5) DFLP	0.6	0.7	0.4
6) Islamic Jihad	2.0	2.5	1.1
7) National initiative (almubadara)	0.9	0.9	0.7
8) Independent Islamists	4.6	4.6	4.6
9) Independent Nationalists	2.4	2.9	1.6
10) None of the above	14.4	16.2	11.4
11) Other, specify	0.3	0.4	0.2

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Hamas aid watch

OK, Iran finally publicly announced that it would give $50 million to Hamas, apparently wanting to wait for their terror conference to make the announcement. But keep in mind that this cover roughly ten days to two weeks of the PA budget, so for such a bigmouthed powerhouse it is a surprisingly small number. Compare to the half a billion or so that the PA got for years from both the EU and the US.

The Arab Summit pledged $55 million monthly to Hamas, although I will bet that this will last only a month or two.

Russia pledged an unspecified amount. Clearly, their motivation is to be a power-broker in the Middle East, because the idea that Russia's economy has millions to spare is laughable. Chances are it was a relatiively small amount and meant more as a political move to show relevance to the one-time superpower.

I still think that the cash will get through to the terrorists, mostly through the UNRWA, which employs many Hamas terrorists itself, as well as the "charities" and NGOs that are sure to sprout up as the money flow moves in that direction. But ultimately the PA budget is so bloated that there is no way that the world will make up the shortfall without Hamas firing half of the PA employees and risking a civil war.

UPDATE: Qatar added $50 million, but the article says that the other Arab pledges never materialized.

UPDATE 2: Qatar's $50 million is just part of the earlier pledge by the Arab summit, but Iran doubled its pledge to $100 million (the same number I predicted, by the way.)

Again, to keep it in context, the PA budget is somewhere between $1.5B and $2 billion a year. These pledges are Band-Aids. If the Arab world would truly commit to the entire shortfall from the loss of EU and American money, it appears that it will affect the Arab world's entire economy.

It is also notable that the two most important Arab countries, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, did not attend the Arab summit where the money was pledged, meaning they have not yet pledged anything.

UPDATE 3: Japan cut off its aid to Hamas, some $40 million a year.

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