Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 24, 2006

The Khaleej Times on freedom of expression

AS EXPECTED, David Irving’s release from an Austrian prison and subsequent return to England has sparked an intense debate regarding the freedom of speech in the modern era, especially with regard to subjects as sensitive as the Holocaust.

How free is it that in addition to Israel, several European countries also have strict laws against Holocaust denial. In Austria, for example — where the ageing historian/writer initially sentenced for three years — the ‘crime’ carries a prison term of up to 10 years. The relevant law states that ‘anyone who denies, plays down, approves or tries to excuse the Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity’ automatically qualifies for a stint in the slammer.

That much of the world’s Jewish community continues to nurse psychological wounds from the much-reported Holocaust is understandable considering that according to popular opinion, it threatened to practically finish them off, and that too in the most gruesome manner. But there is a fine line between advocating justified sympathy and muscling all and sundry into acceptance of what is their own version of the episode, true or concocted notwithstanding. It is no secret that the slightest question posed to the Jews’ analysis of Hitler’s atrocities — even if it is with the sincerest of intentions — draws the severest reaction from right across the West. So much as a word is taboo, and one is slapped with charges of anti-Semitism even before one’s point is made completely. The media hounds do the rest and the person-in-question’s credibility is reduced to scarce more than dust.

What is it that has pushed the Zionist lobby to the verge of paranoia, if not into it? Having suffered one of the worst known human rights abuses on record in the Holocaust, they should be eager to encourage rather than shun research and analyses into it. If their claim is right and true, what other could be unearthed by those looking into it?

It bears noting that this iron-fist no-questions-asked approach is widely reflected in the Israeli character. Truth be told, history will judge them as gross violators of human rights themselves, hardly becoming of a people that have suffered injustices. It does not take genius to figure out that only those with something to hide discourage debate and reason, especially in the modern age of much trumpeted freedom of speech. Unfortunately though, it looks as if for such topics it’s going to be ‘Mum’s the word’.

The stupidity of the editorial is apparent, as is the underlying hate, scare quotes and condescending words that show the author himself doesn't quite believe that the Holocaust actually occurred. Hiding behind the absurd premise that the Ahmadinejads and Irvings of the world are actually interested in the truth, the Khaleej Times is painting Jews as a paranoid and scheming people who wouldn't know truth if they saw it. And, overall, the newspaper's editor hides his aching to see the Holocaust debunked under the pretense of "freedom of expression."

But in a somewhat different context a couple of months ago, the editor does not seem to be quite as sanguine about freedom of expression:

More importantly, now it is not possible to dismiss the cartoon episode last year as something that was the handiwork of a loony and reckless cartoonist. Clearly, there is a method in the madness. In fact, these disturbing acts of vandalism are not limited to Denmark. They are part of what has become a disturbing trend across Europe as the right-wing media and politicians whip up paranoid frenzy against everything Islamic. There is sickness in the heart of Europe. And the all-pervasive war on terror unleashed by the US neocons appears to have boosted it.

If it was the Danish cartoons last year, it's Danish video this year. Then there was this opera in Germany that took the concept of artistic licence too far when it showed the beheading of Prophet of Islam besides that of Jesus and Buddha. Last week, prominent French newspapers published an incredibly painful article by a Jewish 'scholar' about the Prophet accusing him of all sorts of absurdities.

What is going on? Can you blame the anguished Muslims if they see a clever and concerted campaign being conducted across the continent to vilify their faith and its revered figures and teachings? And can you blame the Muslims if they come out on the streets, from Morocco to Malaysia, in anger and frustration?

Whatever the explanation for these growing attacks on Islam and Muslims, they could have dangerous and far-reaching consequences for the whole world. The leaders of Denmark and other European countries cannot hide behind the fig leaf of the freedom of expression as these acts of intellectual vandalism and intolerance are unleashed on Muslims, Europe's second largest religious community. The freedom of speech is fine and Muslims respect it too just as they respect all other rights. However, the freedom of speech mustn't be abused to insult other people's beliefs and sensibilities. As the OIC has argued, it is the responsibility of politicians, governments, media and civil society organisations in the West to oppose all such attacks. This is essential if we want to avoid a dangerous clash of civilizations — between West and Muslim world.

Notwithstanding the implied threat in the last sentence ("don't upset us or else we'll hurt you") see how hypocritical his desire for truth and justice and freedom is? Freedom of speech is great when the victims are Jews, but if the victims are Muslims then a world war is the only logical outcome.

And this world view holds that Muslim world war to defend Mohammed seems preferable to jailing Holocaust deniers.

Egypt claims Eilat for Palestinian Arabs

In a breathtaking example of how the Arab world is trying to dismantle Israel piece by piece, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry is claiming that Eilat belongs to the Palestinian Arabs, arguing against others in Egypt's parliament that it belongs to Egypt.

No one admits it belongs to Israel.

In the course of the debate, which has been going on in parliament for the last two days, Abed el-Aziz Sayef a-Nasser, an aide to the Egyptian foreign minister, was called as an expert witness. A-Nasser is the director of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry's legal department.

"Eilat, or by its former name Umm Rashrash, belongs to the Palestinians," he said, representing the opinion of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

His predecessor, Dr. Nabil el-Arabi, was the head of the Foreign Ministry's legal department and headed the delegation for negotiations at Taba. He also emphatically declared: "Eilat belongs to the Palestinians."

A-Nasser's response was meant to calm tempers in the rowdy debate in the Egyptian parliament, after dozens of opposition representatives demanding holding negotiations to have Eilat returned to Egyptian sovereignty.

Opposition MPs recruited several legal experts, international law lecturers and experts on geography and topography who showed documents and opinions that Eilat is territory that belongs to Egypt and was captured in 1949 by Israel. They contend that the Egyptian negotiating team to Taba conceded Eilat to Israel 20 years ago "in the framework of the wish to build confidence and to display Egyptian good will in the spirit of the peace
agreement."

This was not the end of the matter. An Egyptian international law expert presented an intermediate position in parliament: "Eilat belongs formally to Egypt and administratively to the Palestinians."

In the debate in parliament two days ago, an opposition MP, Mohammed el-Aadali, whipped out a document from 1906 which states, in the name of the Ottoman sultan: Umm Rashrash belongs to Egypt. In this spot-said the Egyptian experts on topography and geography-Egyptian pilgrims would stop and rest on their way to the holy cities in Saudi Arabia.

OK, let's look at the UN partition map of 1947. The green part is dedicated for the Jewish state, even in 1947 (this is not designated as Palestinian Arab land):

And the southern tip in more detail:

Now, let's look where Eilat lies today:

Eilat is right on the tip of the Gulf of Aqaba while the partition shows that the Jewish state boundaries are some file miles to the south.

Evidently the heralded Egyptian Israeli peace treaty is not as great an example of cooperation and understanding as many would have you believe. Even Egypt looks upon it as a first step towards slicing Israel up into smaller and smaller slices until it is gone.

2006 Dhimmi of the Year

Here is Islam's ideal Christian: the Greek Orthodox archbishop in Jerusalem.

This is the same guy who claimed that an Israeli woman was spreading AIDS among Palestinian Arabs. Even during the Pope riots, when churches in the territories were being firebombed, he only condemned the Pope and not the rioters. But here we can see the true extent of his submissiveness to a religion that is not his own:

"The unity of the Palestinians is key to achieving our objectives. We have a common enemy to fight," Atallah Hanna, the Archbishop of Sevastia, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said.

Hanna fought shy of naming the common enemy but it was obvious that he was referring to Israel. In reply to a question about the ratio of Christians in the Palestinian population, he said roughly one per cent of the Palestinian population was Christian. [In 1950, it was 15%. - EoZ]

He continuously evaded a question about who he and other Christians in the Palestinian territories supported: 'Hamas or Fateh'. "We are supporting whoever the Palestinians want, but the infighting must end," he said.

Hanna is here to attend the two-day conference on Islamists versus Arab nationalists that began at the Ritz-Carlton here yesterday.

Hanna also did not clarify who he was siding with at the convention: the Islamists or Arab nationalists.

Asked if the Palestinian Christians had a political party of their own, he replied in the negative and said: "We don't believe in communal politics. We are in all the political parties of the Palestinians."

So this supposed church leader is so submissive, so dhimmified, so willing to forgo his own belief in his own faith that he is unwilling to even say anything against living under shari'a law, as Hamas calls for in its charter.

His only negative words are aimed at the one nation in the area who is not oppressing his coreligionists.

Previously, this man of God also has called on Arab Christians to start doing their own suicide terror attacks against Israel. His statements were so extreme that he was fired as official spokesman for the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem but that doesn't stop him from always being found among Islamist terrorist leaders, supporting the murders of Israelis and acting as a de facto spokesman for Arab Christians in his many interviews.

For slavishly adhering to the same political line as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Archbishop Hanna is the hands-down winner of the 2006 Dhimmi of the Year award.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad points to "the only Catholic priest in Gaza" as a strong contender for the title.

A couple of short items about hospitals

On Tuesday, some of the Fatah/Hamas gunfighting occured in the corridors of a hospital in Gaza.
At Shifa Hospital, the biggest in Gaza, tensions are so high that wounded from different factions cannot be placed in the same room. "Everyone has family, friends and bodyguards," said hospital spokesman Dr. Jumaa Saqqa. "We have to separate them. Otherwise there will be clashes."

Hamas' security forces took control of the hospital four months ago, at the orders of the health minister from Hamas, Bassem Naim.

On Tuesday, a two-hour gunbattle raged in the hospital's hallways, sparked by a confrontation between Hamas guards and escorts of an officer from the Abbas-allied intelligence service who sought treatment for a broken leg. A security officer was killed and 10 people were wounded in the fighting.

Israel is treating some of those wounded in the intra-Palestinian Arab fighting in its own hospitals, according to a news flash in the Palestine News Network website (only the Arabic site, not the English one, because it is not responsible to inform the world of anything decent that Israelis do.)

I somehow doubt that anyone from the press will point out the irony that Palestinian Arab fighters, who are sworn to destroy Israel, are safer in Israeli hospitals than in PalArab hospitals.

Menorah meme

I wasn't tagged by anyone for this meme that originated at The Ignoble Experiment, but what the heck...

Due to unforeseen circumstances, our normal family menorahs are inaccessible this year. Last Friday at noon I went out with Junior Elder on a quest to find a nice, cheap, last minute menorah.

The local Judaica stores had many but they were generally in the $100-$250 range and since I was only planning on using it this year, that didn't make sense.

Finally, we went to a dollar store.

8 medium sized blue glass candlesticks, one larger clear candlestick, and three packages of colored tea-lights later, and I had my $12 Elder Menorah 2006:

The household was quite pleased!

Hate site upset that I emailed Google News

The People's Voice, which had a virulently anti-semitic article that I mentioned here, is a website where any idiot can publish anything and Google indexes it as "news" in the news.google.com site.

Apparently the site took note of my mentioning them as they wrote a long article criticizing me as a racist, a bigot, a Jewish supremacist and who knows what else. As proof, they used comments made by others on this blog, as well as at least one obvious joke that was making fun of what people like them think - and that they hilariously took seriously.

Their inability to understand simple English is shown by their criticism of something I wrote:

As I scrolled down the page containing the exchange between rj and the people on this site I noticed that the site is filled with statements denoting race, the 'Arabs' this, the 'Arabs' that. Here is a small example:
"This letter implies how difficult it is for Arabs to even have a clue about real world history, as the Arabic literature on secular topics is very sparse. This is a tragedy that is usually overlooked - a billion people who only can read one language are imprisoned by the non-existence of any ideas that are not politically-correct for the Arab world."

What if they had said:

"This letter implies how difficult it is for some Jewish people to even have a clue about real world history, as the Jewish literature on secular topics is very sparse. This is a tragedy that is usually overlooked - a billion people who only can read one language are imprisoned by the non-existence of any ideas that are not politically-correct for the Jewish world."

Well, first of all the correct analogy to "Arabic" would be "Hebrew." So even though word substitution is almost always a ridiculous argument, let's go for it:

"This letter implies how difficult it is for some Jews to even have a clue about real world history, as the Hebrew literature on secular topics is very sparse. This is a tragedy that is usually overlooked - fifteen million people who only can read one language are imprisoned by the non-existence of any ideas that are not politically-correct for the Jewish world."

As can be seen, if a proper word substitution is placed in this paragraph, it becomes nonsensical - firstly because most Jews read and write languages other than Hebrew, and secondly because there are plenty of secular Hebrew books. So my original paragraph makes a lot of sense and is not bigoted in the slightest.

At any rate, buried within this rant was the cry that I was trying to censor them, even though I explained twice that asking Google News not to index them as a legitimate "news" site is not the same thing as trying to stop their website from publishing. They are so clueless that they mention that my "hate site" blog is indexed by Google, not having a clue that there is a difference between Google, a web site spider tool, and Google News, where human beings choose what is considered a news source.

So The People's Voice is, as usual, playing a victim card.

Google News actually emailed them and told them that they were removing the hate article from their index, and warned them that if they continue to publish similar articles then they would be delisted from Google News.

A tiny step against pure hatred.

British airline bans Bibles to Saudi Arabia

Britain's BMI airlines have banned its employees from bringing non-Muslim religious articles on its lucrative Saudi Arabia route.

Keep in mind - this was not in response to a request from Saudi Arabia. Like good little dhimmis, they want to proactively deny their own rights to make sure they don't upset the 'ummah.

London, Dec 21 (ZEENEWS.COM) A British airline has banned its crew from taking the Bible into Saudi Arabia for fear of upsetting Muslims.

BMI bosses have told staff to take the Koran instead, and this without any intimation to this effect from Riyadh.

As expected, things have not gone down too well with the staff. One middle-aged stewardess is planning to sue BMI for religious discrimination at an industrial tribunal due to take place in the New Year.

In the meantime, BMI has decided to exclude her from flights to Saudi Arabia.

A BMI source said: “Foreign Office advice is that non-Islamic religious material is not permitted in Saudi”.

But another BMI worker said: “We understand our embassy has confirmed that the Saudis never enforce this rule”.

“The stewardess is deeply religious and takes her Bible everywhere she travels. The bottom line is BMI don’t want to jeopardise the Saudi route, which is worth millions to them,” The Sun quoted the worker as saying.

South Africa MP believes in the Protocols, not sure about Holocaust

Oh, and she is a representative of the ruling African National Congress.
Do I even have to mention that she happens to be a Muslim?

An ANC MP cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion -- the infamous anti-Semitic forgery used by the Nazis -- as a credible document at a recent Iranian-sponsored academic seminar in Pretoria.

Farida Mahomed agreed recently she had asked a Jewish seminar delegate, Claudia Braude: “Are the protocols still relevant to you in today’s time? How do we apply this balanced approach to reconciliation when we read them and they are totally the opposite?”

Mahomed was responding to a presentation by Braude reflecting on democratic South Africa’s possible role as a global reconciler. It included a call for South Africans to reject Iranian Holocaust denialism.

Interviewed this week, Mahomed said she was unaware the protocols had been exposed as a hoax. Published in the early 20th century by the Tsarist secret police Okhrana, the document purported to show a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.

Another delegate at the Pretoria meeting also questioned the authenticity of the Holocaust, citing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dismissal of it as “a myth”.

The gathering took place a week before the Iranian government’s widely condemned international Holocaust conference in Tehran.

Asked for her views on the Holocaust, Mahomed said: “I don’t want to comment on something that I haven’t done research on. I wouldn’t want to be influenced by any scholar.”

ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said the party’s position was that the Nazi genocide should be “condemned with the contempt that it deserves”.

Mahomed made her input during a panel discussion on “religious thoughts in socio-cultural development”, held on December 1 and 2 at Unisa, with support from the Iranian Embassy.

...Mahomed said that she had read the protocols on the internet but had not researched them.

Asked whether she thought they had ever been “relevant”, she replied: “I can’t make a comment. They must have been relevant or they would never have been written.” They did not contribute towards peace, which is why she posed the question.

She added that Braude should have made it clear at the conference that they had been exposed as a forgery.

That daughter of apes and pigs wasn't even nice enough to tell her that the Protocols were a forgery? No wonder the Jews are so hated! I bet that they are also "influenced by scholars" when they do their research!

And by the way - although the SA parliament webpage is down as I write this, it appears that the ignorant and bigoted Ms. Mahomed is a member of the Foreign Affairs committee.

Support Shari'a. Boycott Iran!

The Iranian leader Mahmoud Amalek Ahmadinejad's spiritual leader is Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, as we mentioned last April. Yazdi didn't do too well in the recent Iranian elections, but his wisdom is eternal.

His website has an Arabic fatwa section that includes this nice one:

Q: I read in the polls for the province of some products they serve the ends of the usurping entity such as the purchase of American products collapse if they serve the state, usurping Zion Harmholkn realized what staffing serve Israel and know how any American companies that help Israel, which is not reasonable to all American companies helped Israel clearly question whether each product mean the duty of American boycott?

A: Since the American economy harnessed to serve Israel, the boycott of American goods of all kinds is justified, and as such the province for the networked economy in the contemporary world is not possible, the difficult and critical duty to avoid circulation of American commodities to the greatest extent possible.

The unfortunate Ayatollah would love to give a blanket prohibition on American goods and services, but unfortunately there are just too many American products out there to make such a boycott practical.

I say it is time that we help the Ayatollah and his acolyte the President commit more fully to the word of Allah, and help them with their fervent desire to boycott all American goods and services. Since European goods have so many American components, Europe will have to jump on the bandwagon to ensure that not the slightest sin is committed in the quest for human perfection in Iran. It is only fitting and proper that we do our utmost to stop Iran from getting any Western technology or products.

This is clearly what Allah wants.

Time for the PalArabs to step up. But they won't.

Columnists and editorialists and pundits are hand-wringing about what can be done to stop the violence in Gaza.

Should the West prop up Abbas? Should Israel? Should an international force be sent there? Should we forget the sanctions?

The problem is that there is a solution, but the world has created an environment where that solution will never occur.

Let's look a bit north. Despite Lebanon's problems, it has a strong amount of power from its citizens themselves. Notwithstanding the more recent setbacks, the Cedar Revolution proves that. Hezbollah might be flexing its muscles but the majority of Lebanese will not ever accept their rule.

What needs to happen in Gaza is something similar, and it will never happen. The reason is because the international community has never treated Palestinian Arabs like adults who can act responsibly, and as a result they are a group of whiners and babies.

Rather than blame PalArabs for their support for terror, the West tends to blame Israel (the only "adult" in the region.) Over decades, this lesson takes hold, and now we have a welfare state of millions of people who cannot and will not act like they have any responsibility whatsoever.

The pundits and politicians today keep this self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling myth alive by looking everywhere for a solution rather than the people themselves. And after so many years of learning that all of their problems are Israel's (and America's) fault, the Palestinian Arabs are ready to play their part as perpetual victims to the hilt - and let any chance for a real nation, and real peace, go down the drain. Again.

So while the PalArabs have the lion's share of the responsibility for the situation they're in, the world's coddling of their support of terror and their acting like helpless children with RPGs is in no small part responsible for the situation as well.

Any teacher or parent can tell you that a child will act how they are treated, and the same is true with adults. If you treat the kid as an adult, they will mature much faster. If you spoil them, they will remain that way as well. People will usually take on the roles that others assign them, which is why so many revert to acting like children when visiting their parents.

Like it or not, the world has acted as if Palestinian Arabs are nothing more than spoiled children who cannot be expected to do anything about their situation. And that's a major reason that they are.

Another day, another Qassam ("cease fire" update)

I just put the following calendar on the sidebar so as not to keep it on as the top article every day.

The dates that are linked are the ones where Kassam rockets were fired to Israel since the "cease-fire," with links to the news stories that have the details.

According to AP, the IDF denied any rockets landed on Friday and Saturday the 1st and 2nd. I don't know which are correct - the IDF or the newspapers, or if AP just got the story wrong.

UPDATE 9: Five rockets so far Wednesday 12/20.
UPDATE 8: Two more rockets Tuesday, 12/19. And then another.
UPDATE 7: Two rockets shot Monday morning 12/18, one hit a kibbutz orchard.
UPDATE 6: 4 rockets Friday and Saturday. We have yet to have more than two consecutive days without rocket fire since the "cease fire" went into effect.
UPDATE 5: Thursday morning and Thursday evening.
UPDATE 4: YNet reports that the Tuesday rockets came after "five days of calm." I do not understand how the rockets reported on Friday, Saturday and Monday were not counted by YNet.
UPDATE 3: 2 Monday rockets and 3 Tuesday rockets. (updated to 5 rockets.)
UPDATE 2: Friday and Saturday rockets. They might not have all landed in Israel but they certainly were intended to.
UPDATE: Wednesday rocket.

Black is white, up is down, truce means "shoot!"

At 11:00 PM Tuesday Palestine time the latest "truce" between Fatah and Hamas went into effect. Although by reading the media, the previous one was in effect all day Tuesday and just "endangered" by the killing of six people.

Anyway, at dawn, the latest cease-fire was ended with the killing of another in Gaza City. This makes my PalArab self-death count since late June add up to 199, meaning that sometime on Wednesday we can expect another "grim milestone."

At least there is consistency - the words "cease fire" are equally meaningless when PalArabs promise to stop firing at Israel.

UPDATE: Grim milestone reached. There were two killings at dawn, Hamas attacking a Fatah police car. 200 PalArabs now violently killed by each other that I know of since Operation Summer Rains began in late June.

Thursday update: 201.
Friday update: 202.

Photos of Palestinian Arabs being beaten

Thanks to "Falasteen", we can see exclusive photos of Palestinian Arabs being beaten by those evil imperialistic colonizing racist Zionist....oops, they are only being beaten by Fatah policemen.

So Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already lost interest.

There are lots more at the Falasteen website. Falasteen, which is actually made in the US, tends to be pro-Hamas. The commentary goes along the lines of "why are Abbas' people beating us up instead of shooting Israelis?"

Deborah Lipstadt translating her Holocaust web resource into Arabic and Farsi

From AP:

ATLANTA - Emory University is planning to translate a professor's Web site on Holocaust denial into Arabic, Farsi and other languages common to countries where anti-Semitic views are widespread.

Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who runs the site Holocaust Denial on Trial, said she hopes the translations will provide resources to people who have no historical accounts of the Holocaust in their native tongue.

"I'm convinced that there are people in predominantly Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East, who are being inundated with Holocaust deniers' claims and don't know that the deniers are fabricating and distorting," she said in a news release.

She pointed to last week's gathering of Holocaust deniers in Iran - an event supported by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - as evidence that such viewpoints are gaining strength throughout the Muslim world.

Robert Paul, dean of Emory's undergraduate college, said the university is creating a $2 million endowment to help enhance the Web site. ...

The university will use scholars in its various foreign language departments to do the translation.

The Web site provides the legal and historical documents from the trial where right-wing British historian David Irving sued Lipstadt for libeling him in her book 1994 book "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." In a highly publicized 2000 decision, a British court ruled in Lipstadt's favor and declared Irving a Holocaust denier and racist.

If there is ever going to be reform in the Arab and Muslim worlds, the Internet is going to be an important component.

This is a great idea.

Arabs understand Hamas better than the Left

An interesting editorial in Asharq Al-Awsat, in English, shows that even fanatical anti-Israel Arabs understand Hamas better than pseudo-intellectual European liberals:

We have witnessed Hamas's concept of democracy since it came to power, with its first order of business being the improvement of Palestinian television because its artistic value was not up to its standards! This is Hamas's concept of democracy!

Unfortunately, the kind of relationship Hamas and other groups such as Hezbollah and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood have with democracy is on the same par as someone sitting behind the wheel of the newest, top of the line automobile, whilst being unable to drive.

For these groups, democracy is slogans without accountability, and without its duties towards the nation and its citizens. Rather, it is the thwarting of all gains, while also deepening its steadfast backwardness and disrupting intellectual, political and economic life. Meanwhile, failure always has its ready excuse: America and the Zionist plot!

What Hamas is not aware of is that it has returned the Palestinian situation to its pre-Oslo days and in the process, it has lost all the gains, as few as they were, of the Palestinian people.
...

Hamas has become a source of suffering for the Palestinian people and a frustration of the democratic experience in the region, especially for the Islamist current. The problem with Hamas is that it has only adopted the slogans of democracy and in the process; it burns the candle from both ends, making it difficult to position, and burning he who attempts to hold it for too long. And here, Hamas burns itself.

Here we have two pieces from the UK today, and the Arab editorial makes much more sense than the one from the Independent. It goes to show how far off the deep end the Left has become in redefining the conflict and facts to conform to their pre-existing opinions.

It is a strange world indeed when one sees the "enlightened" Left praising Hamas as a bastion of democracy and peace while the Arabs themselves are criticizing it as the exact opposite.

These human shields didn't quite work

Two articles from Wafa (autotranslated):

Workers in the building of the General Intelligence Service, north of the city of Gaza and the population around the place today, appealed to citizens go to the place and the work of a human wall to protect (those) trapped in the building.

One of the officers present at the scene said the executive elements of the force and members of the "Hamas" armed with weapons and mortars surround the building in preparation for the bombing, pointing out that more than 150 persons working trapped in the building. (13:40 GMT)
ـــــــــــــــــ

The sources said that Hamas elements opened fire randomly on women's peaceful march composed of children and women during orientation for the protection of the headquarters of intelligence and the protection of their sons and brothers living in the headquarters. (14.45 GMT)

In other words, some Fatah loyalists were working in the General Intelligence Service headquarters and their wives and children peacefully went there in order to act as human shields from Hamas attack.

Things didn't quite work out as they planned.

Fisking an Independent(UK) column

It always amazes me how know-nothing liberals can look at facts and come to such amazingly wrong conclusions.

Here is a column in the Independent (UK) by Johann Hari that describes the Islamic Jew-hating terror in the Palestinian Arab territories - and blames Israel for it all.

I am sitting in a poky bedroom somewhere in Gaza City - I'm not allowed to know where - and opposite me is a huge beaming picture of Osama bin Laden, with the smoke from a burning World Trade Centre forming a black halo around his head. He is surrounded by a gaggle of jihadi angels: some Chechen fighters, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and our own Tube bomber, the Yorkshireman Mohammed Sidique Khan. "Would you like to see our weapons?" a masked jihadi says cheerfully, before thrusting a grenade into my hand.

I have come to see what Israel will confront in a generation if - as now looks certain after this weekend - they never, ever deal with the democratically elected Hamas government, but instead resolve to break it.

Coining one of the dullest clichÃ©s about the Middle East, Abba Eban, one of Israel's longest-serving foreign ministers, famously claimed that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Precisely the opposite is the case. As the Fatah President, Abu Mazen, tried desperately this Saturday to dislodge Hamas by calling for early elections, we need to remember a stark truth. Every time the Israeli government rejects a Palestinian leader because he is too hard-line, they do not get a cuddly Gandhian moderate in his place. They get somebody more hard-line still.

This should be an easy one to fact check. Let's look at Palestinian Arab elected leaders: Arafat, Abbas, Haniyeh. I'm glad we have intellectuals like Hari who can draw a straight line though those and find that Abbas was worse than Arafat.

Yasser Arafat endorsed a two-state solution, but couldn't accept a forever-and-always string of Bantustans bisected by Israeli settler-only roads as his half of the deal - so they rocketed and shelled the old man's compound until he died.

Don't remind Hari about what Israel really offered nor about that pesky intifada that has been raging for six years now. Nope....Israel just killed Arafat because he was such a peaceful person.

Many Israelis now look back on Arafat with near-nostalgia. Today the Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, says he can never accept Israel's existence. But he is offering a 40-year-long hudna (ceasefire) - provided Israel withdraws to the internationally recognised 1967 borders, as they should anyway under international law.

Hari fails to mention that UN 242 says no such thing. He fails to mention that the pre-1967 green line was never a "border" that was internationally recognized; it was an armistice line. He also fails to mention another small condition of this "hudna" - Israel's allowing millions ofPalestiniann Arabs to settle in Israel proper, thus destroying Israel.

No, all Hari sees is how great Hamas is for offering Israel peace in return for Israel's destruction. Is he being obtuse or is he being a purposeful liar?

Haniyeh is offering to kick all the tough issues down the road until 2046, and build two peacefully co-existing states, with no mutual violence. His track record of keeping his word on ceasefires is strong: in the current short hudna, Hamas has held its fire even as Fatah fires a few Qassam missiles.

Yes, let's look at Hamas' wonderful track record of keeping truces, shall we?

Notice also how Hari has gone from saying that Fatah is more moderate than Hamas in the third paragraph to now saying that Hamas is more interested in peace.

But the governments of America, Europe and Israel are snubbing this deal too. They say Haniyeh has to recognise Israel totally, and today. Until he does, his people will be "put on a diet", in the words of one Israeli government adviser. I have seen what this means: hospitals shut and shuttered across the West Bank, with women left to give birth at home like pre-modern peasants. The yellowish hue of malnutrition on children's faces. The empty and echoing schools.

Here he is just lying. The "shuttered schools" were because of a strike in September and October. No one is dying of malnutrition and hundreds of millions of dollars in aid gets through to Gaza from NGOs.

Also notice how he dismisses as absurd the idea that Hamas recognize Israel. Somehow, the fact that the PA did officially recognize Israel and Hamas is now in charge of the PA doesn't register with Hari - why, asking Hamas to recognize Israel is just crazy talk! Look how many concessions Hamas has done already for peace!

Tony Blair has been at the forefront of this programme to force Hamas to concede, and is in the Middle East to promote it further. For him, the onus is on the Palestinians living under military occupation to justify why they should be freed - rather than on the people who have been oppressing them on their own land for 39 years to explain why it should continue.

Yes, those nasty Israelis, insisting that their neighbors promise not to try to destroy it at every opportunity. How oppressive! Can't they just tear down the wall, invite them into their towns, and blow up with dignity and grace?

The result of breaking the democratic will of the Palestinian people will not be greater softness on their part. No. It will create more men like Abu Ahmad (a nom de guerre), who I sat with last week in the shadow of Bin Laden in a corner of Gaza.

Here yet again we see the fundamental pro-terror bigotry of leftist thinking - that the terrorists have no free will and no responsibility for their actions, and that they are forced into their opinions because of the criminal Western countries. Israel has no right to feel threatened by Arab terrorists but Arab terrorists have every right to terrorize because of Israel's policies.

"I want to kill and kill and kill again. I want to be a killing machine until, inshallah [God willing], I become a martyr," he said, staring at me intensely. He is 27 - my age - and murderous. He has just described how he slashed the throats of four female Israeli soldiers in an illegal settlement in 2002, and he chuckled as he described how they cried for their mothers. "All the Jews have to be killed," he says. The children? The women? "I prefer to kill soldiers, but they must all be killed in time. Soldiers first." The Holocaust did not happen, he says, "but it should have".

So whose fault is this naked Jew-hatred from a terrorist? Do you have to ask?

These crazed young men - the "troops" of Islamic Jihad - are the children of the first Intifada. They saw their parents peacefully protest, and the Israeli troops be ordered to "break their bones" as punishment. Abu Hamza, a sober, severe 26-year-old, explained he first joined Islamic Jihad when he was 10 - a year after he took his first Israeli bullet in the skull. He had been throwing stones and setting fire to old tyres in the street when it happened, and he became a local celebrity as the first child victim of the violence. "I was so proud," he said. He invited me to feel the scar on the back of his head. "Yes," he said with a smile, "we have been growing in popularity over the past few years. Very much."

All over Gaza and the West Bank, the assault on Hamas is creating groups like this to their right, deranged little pockets that will swell if Hamas is totally humiliated. At the moment, they are small, speaking - as Hamas did a generation ago - for only a small fraction of Palestinians. But for how long?

If only the Palestinian Islamic Jihad wasn't created in the 1970s, one could almost think that Hari knew what he was talking about. (Not to mention that it was an offshoot of the older Egyptian Islamic Jihad.)

Now that we have the theme that Israel is responsible for all Islamic terrorism, we can go to the next step:

Last week I tried to trace the footsteps of a new streak of Islamist fanaticism that has jutted suddenly into Gaza over the past month. A group calling itself Swords of Islam has started blowing up internet cafÃ©s - a symbol of extra-Koranic knowledge and cosmopolitan connection to the world. They have issued Talibanist threats warning that women who do not wear the hijab will be "burned", and that the internet is a "Zionist plot" to keep people away from "their religious duties".

In a bombed-out cafÃ© named Montada Donajoun in the Jaballiya refugee camp, I spoke to the terrified owner. Basa Abu-Jased, 29, said, "Of course women are frightened now. [Even as a man] I am really frightened! I used to sit on the street and talk to women. Now I won't do it. You don't know what's going to happen." Almost everybody on the street was too frightened to speculate about who these people were; one woman suggested they were "maniacs who had returned from fighting in Iraq", but then hurried away.

It took a very long time to rouse the Palestinians to violence and produce these pathologies. Between 1967 and 1982 - as 200,000 Palestinians were expelled and more than one-third of their remaining land was stolen by fanatical settlers - just 282 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.

Didn't Hari ever hear of the airplane hijackings in the 1970s? The Olympic massacre? The other terror attacks? Black September? Oh, sorry, they don't count, because they don't fit the narrative of the peacefully demonstrating Palestinian Arabs that Hari is peddling. Out of scope.

Also, Hari wasn't born then.

But Israeli policies have virtually guaranteed a tip towards great violence and forms of madness. Every time the Palestinians have peacefully protested or negotiated, they have been choked further.

All those Israeli attacks on the territories during Oslo, without a single terror attack back. Right?

There is still - still - a majority in Palestine for peaceful coexistence with Israel, with 67 per cent supporting the Hamas proposal for a 40-year hudna.

Because they know what the offer was, unlike Hari. Notice also how he picks and chooses his polls to ignore any that might, just might, contradict his story of a peaceful Palestinian Arabs people.

But if their democratic will is treated with contempt by humiliating Hamas, this historical window will close.

Yes, Israel and the West must start rewarding Hamas for consistently proclaiming its desire for the destruction of Israel and killing as many Jews as it can, because the alternative is "worse."

And anyone elected democratically is automatically deserving of respect and honor. Unless he is named Bush.

Liberal logic at its finest.

Every year the occupation goes on, more deranged people like Abu Ahmad are smelted. "I love Osama bin Laden," he said to me as we parted, slapping me on the back. "I love killing."

As usual, it is all Israel's fault, so in the end Israel gets what it deserves.

Even the love that Abu Ahmad has for OBL and the Terror All-Stars (way back in the first paragraph) is all because of Israel.

And, by extension, all terror against the West is because of Western policies, and London and Madrid and New York all get what they deserve - it is the same logic, after all, that extremists are created by us. They couldn't possibly be responsible for their own actions, and Islamic extremism and the desire for a shari'a based caliphate and the inability for Islam to confront its own extremists has nothing to do with it.

Right, Johann?

PalArabs killing each other. Continued. (Count at 198)

A 13-year old named Fawzi Issa was killed in Jenin during "regrettable events." It appears to have been during a protest at the killing of another, Saqr Turkmen.

Another kid in Jenin was kidnapped.

In Al-Birah, a PalArab security officer was killed in a drive-by shooting.

Our count of PalArabs violently killed by each other since late June is now at 186.

UPDATES: An Abbas guard killed in Gaza City. 187.
A 19-year old girl named Mustafa Misbah was shot in the neck and killed in Gaza: 188.
Hamdi Rahma, brother of a senior officer in the Palestinian Preventative Security Service, was killed in Jabalya. 189.

News sources are reporting at least 4 killed on Sunday, I only had three - so that's 190.

An Egyptian Palestinian Arab was found dead with a bullet hole in his head in Khan Younis - 191.

Ahmed Zeyada, a 21-year-old Fatah supporter was killed by Hamas Monday night. 192.

Two Fatah members assassinated in their car by Hamas Tuesday morning. And a Hamas member was killed on the Shifa hospital compund in Gaza City. 195.
The Jerusalem Post reports five killed today so far, so that makes 197.

Haaretz says a sixth was killed in its NewsFlash section. 198.

The results are in.

The final votes for the Weblog Awards have been confirmed and this blog ended up a distant fourth (in the Best Middle Eastern or African Blog category) behind the three heavyweights Sandmonkey, Treppenwitz and Iraq the Model.

Since early on it was obvious that I would be lucky to get 10% of the votes of each of the top three, I had set a joking personal goal to beat The Sudanese Thinker. Inevitably, he saw my challenge and marshalled his forces to pull ahead of me for most of the week.

I gave up "blegging" on Thursday and as of Friday at sundown, I was behind TST by one vote 171-170.

So I was very surprised to see that between then and midnight I somehow gathered another 11 votes and pulled ahead. I guess the East Coast Orthodox crowd isn't my main readership!

So thanks to all of you who voted. Even with 3.22% of the total vote in a relatively minor category it was really an honor to be nominated and chosen as a finalist.

And read The Sudanese Thinker as well!

Minor reminder

Hamas may be battling Fatah in Gaza;
Sunnis and Christians may be at loggerheads with Hezbollah in Lebanon;
Sunnis and Shiites may be blowing themselves up in Iraq;
The Janjaweed may be slaughtering and raping thousands in the Sudan;

...but if Israel would just award even more land to the PalArabs then everything in the Middle East will be filled with sweetness and light.

PA newspaper admits Arabs responsible for "naqba"

Palestinian Media Watch caught a column by Mahmoud Al-Habbash for the PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeedah where he blames the Arab leadership squarely for the Palestinian Arabs leaving their homes in 1948.

“…The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the “Catastrophe” [[the establishment of Israel and the creation of refugee problem] in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those “Arkuvian” promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events…" [Term "Arkuvian,” is after Arkuv – a figure from Arab tradition - who was known for breaking his promises and for his lies."] ”

I found the column in Arabic (autotranslated) and the writer uses the 1948 experience as a springboard to describe how Arab leaders continue to lie to the Palestinian Arabs even today.

He brings examples:

Arab leaders promised to lift the embargo against the Palestinian Arabs and didn't follow through.
The Arab governments and Iran promised to give hundreds of millions of dollars that didn't materialize.
The PalArab leaders themselves promise to find the murderers of many within the territories, including the murderers of the three kids last week, and nothing ever materializes.

It is a very bitter column that is noteworthy not only in how it portrays 1948 but in the matter-of-fact way it is mentioned, as if every Palestinian Arab knows the real facts behind what happened then - it is only one paragraph in this article and if this was a novel concept for most Palestinian Arabs he would have adduced some proof.

Will Iran have nukes by March?

From Maariv (Hebrew), translated by Daily Alert:

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh received a promise from Iran of extensive economic aid, cash, military cooperation, and also good news, from his perspective.
Lower your profile, calm the situation, the Iranians told Haniyeh. In four months we're going to issue a statement that will dramatically change the strategic balance in the Middle East.
According to Israeli intelligence, the Iranians have promised to make an important announcement at the next Persian new year, which begins the third week in March 2007.

A few details are added by the Russian news agency Novosti:

Tehran has announced that it intends to complete its nuclear research program by the Iranian New Year on March 21. This involves the assembly of a cascade of 3,000 centrifuges, which it needs for the commercial stage of uranium enrichment. Russian and foreign experts believe that these centrifuges will enable Iran to create five to seven nuclear charges within 12 months.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced plans to receive the first batch of enriched uranium after commissioning 60,000 centrifuges.

The Natanz nuclear facility, where Iran is enriching uranium, is designed to accommodate only 54,000 centrifuges, but experts say that would be enough to create a nuclear bomb within two weeks. They also say the Natanz facility could reach its designed capacity in five to seven years.

Many Russian experts, however, think that Iran is bluffing when it speaks about turning on 3,000 centrifuges in March 2007. It could do this if it has bought the required number of centrifuges, but that is unlikely. Tehran is likely overstating its technical possibilities.

"Iran has made a crucial decision and is moving honorably along its chosen path," Ahmadinejad has said. According to the Iranian president, the people of his country will not only "rebuild Iran and propel it to the pinnacles of success, but will also open the door to freedom for other nations."

Iran's successful completion of a peaceful nuclear program hardly seems to be something that would change the balance of power in the Middle East, nor something that would help Hamas.

It is entirely possible that Iran is bluffing. But the free world seems to be willing to wager millions of Israeli lives on that possibility.

PS22 Chorus sings "אשא עיני"

An unusual video on YouTube.

Don't forget Islamic Jihad

In the fighting simmering between Fatah and Hamas, don't forget that other major faction of the peaceful Palestinian Arab people - Islamic Jihad, that "other" group that is responsible for a large percentage of terror attacks and that is the current "bad cop" in a situation where the Hamas terrorists can't figure out how to present itself to the West and Fatah pretends to be moderate.

A glance at recent Islamic Jihad statements shows that:

They say that the best way to Palestinian Arab unity is to shoot more rockets into Israel
They slammed Hamas for even implying that a temporary state in the post-1967 borders is acceptable, saying that no Palestinian Arab state is possible unless Israel is utterly destroyed
Another article on their website utterly rejecting any deviation from the 1964 Fatah charter that calls for the destruction of Israel
An article supporting the Tehran Holocaust "conference" as a decent, scientific inquiry

In other words, even if the rapidly fading sanctions against the Hamas government would force Hamas to pretend to recognize Israel, there is still a sizable force that can and will torpedo any movement towards co-existence, no matter how temporary.

Fatah and Hamas are fighting over the leadership of their thoroughly screwed people. No one can imagine a scenario where they would fight Islamic Jihad over their terrorist attacks - the "heroism" of shooting rockets and sending suicide bombers is something that is fundamentally agreed upon by all Palestinian Arab factions.

(It is notable that a Nazareth-based British "journalist," Jonathan Cook, who writes not only for the usual assortment of ultra-left rags like Counterpunch but also for the Guardian, just wrote an article praising Hamas for not agreeing to recognize Israel. He is trying mightily to make Islamic Jihad's goals acceptable for the mainstream.)

Even the most liberal wishful-thinker, who pretends that a Hamas in power will become peaceful, who pretends that new Palestinian Arab elections will bring a responsible government, who pretends that Oslo and the Roadmap are still alive and are bases for peace - even that person needs to come up with a creative way to wish Islamic Jihad away.

And so far, no one has.

US State Dept promotes Muslim hip-hop group

Your tax dollars at work...from a State Department website.

Muslim-American Rappers Promote Tolerance in Middle East
Native Deen hip-hop group energizes Palestinian youth in Jerusalem
By Carolee Walker
USINFO Staff Writer

Muslim-American rappers Abdul Malik, Joshua Salaam and Naeem Muhammad of Native Deen perform in Jerusalem. (photo: Native Deen)

Washington – When Native Deen took hip-hop music to Jerusalem in fall 2006, the group of Muslim-American rappers was moved deeply by the holiness of the place and the energy of the hundreds of teens who attended their concerts. Yet nothing came close to the connection the performers felt to their faith during their Middle East trip.

“I could feel it in the stone and the rocks,” said Naeem Muhammad of Native Deen, a Muslim-American hip-hop group based near Washington that has a strong following in the United Kingdom and the United States.

“Our music inspires Muslims to be better Muslims, but it also gives other people a better view of our faith,” Joshua Salaam told USINFO in an interview.

The rhythm is there, and the beat is contemporary. But the heart of inspirational hip-hop music is in the powerful rap lyrics coaxing listeners to live better lives and be better people.

Native Deen traveled to Turkey, Dubai, the Palestinian Territories and Israel on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, incorporating the teachings of Islam into songs about respect and humanity. At all the concerts, the performers were greeted like “American superstars,” they said. In Dubai, Native Deen won the 2006 Mahabba Award at an event showcasing musicians, artists and filmmakers inspired to spread Islam through art.

The group, founded in 2000, is known for its positive energy, use of traditional percussion and lyrics focused on tolerance and the teachings of Islam.

“We use the Quran as a source of guidance for us when we write our songs,” said Abdul Malik. “We use the morals and guidelines that we find in the Quran to teach people and to guide people.” This means that the beat, or rhythm, comes second, according to Salaam. The lyrics are the most important aspect of the song, so in Native Deen’s sound, the rap is always in front of the percussion.

“Deen” is the Arabic word for “religion,” or way of life.

While I didn't see anything explicitly offensive in the lyrics, it is clear that the "tolerance" mentioned is only teaching others tolerance for Islam, not teaching Muslims tolerance for other religions or ways of life. In many ways the lyrics are proselytizing, which is a questionable activity for the State Department to be promoting:

He (satan) wants to bring you down, he whispers everyday
You started on the path and he led you astray
I know you will come back, you never feel at peace
You're searching for the truth to put your mind at ease
You know you're missing me, I know what you've been through
When we meet again, we have a lot of work to do
I am the Deen you know
I am the Deen you need
I am the Deen you love
Please come back to me
Your life had just begun, I helped to raise you up
You thought it'd be easy but your life turned out to be rough
You thought I let you down, I never let you go
I'm worried ‘cause you left me and you didn't even know
You know you're gonna die, who knows when that will be
Before you meet Allah you should come back to me
I am the Deen you know
I am the Deen you need
I am the Deen you love
Please come back to me
People coming back, People coming back To Islam, people are coming to this Deen
To Islam, you are invited to this Deen

The leader of the band has a blog where he tries hard not to publicize his true feelings:

We are in Palestine now. I will have to keep this blog short before I start to get heated and make some political statements that will get Native Deen arrested.

All in all, this is something that raises questions about what exactly the State Department is intending with this sponsorship.

Astounding PalArab murder statistic (updated)

As my readers know, I have been scouring PalArab press and websites looking for accurate statistics on how many Palestinian Arabs are killed by each other, and I have been keeping my own count since late June.

Very few of the murders I've uncovered were of supposed "collaborators" with Israel. While we know that Palestinian Arabs actually trying to reduce terror is a capital crime in PA-land (along with the even more heinous crime of selling land to Jews), not too many of these murders have been reported.

But the BBC recently had an article on "collaborators" that includes this astonishing statistic:

According to a Palestinian human rights group, Adel Ahmed's experience is increasingly common.

Amid the growing chaos in the West Bank, it estimates that approximately one person a day is killed having been accused of collaborating.

No-one has been arrested following any of these killings and many Palestinians say that the charges are normally false.

However, with the breakdown in law and order, the accusation has become the excuse for revenge and bloodletting.

One murder a day for collaboration? I see clan clashes, intra-PalArab security fighting, honor killings and the ever-fun work accidents, but are these people all being killed silently?

And which "human rights" organization is saying this? I follow about six of them, and have not come across any statistics of this type.

Let's give these guys a state!

UPDATE: The "Palestine Center for Human Rights" just published a position paper in which, while they do not support the death penalty, they clearly say that any Palestinian Arab who collaborates with Israel is deserving of sever pubishment, and that they opposed the Oslo agreements where collaborators would not be punished.

In other words, this twisted "human rights" organization is telling the Palestinian people that if they know about a terror attack that is imminent that is aimed against Jews, they should not under any circumstances inform Israel to allow her to defend herself and her citizens.

How can a "human rights" organization have such a twisted view of morality?

When it doesn't consider Israeli Jews to be "human," of course!

EU starting to consider paying PA terrorists directly

Another indication that the "boycott" is crumbling without any concessions on the PalArab side:

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec 13 (Reuters) - The European Union will consider making direct payments to Palestinian policemen who have gone without full salaries since Hamas took power in March, an EU aid chief said on Wednesday.

But Hans Duynhouwer, head of the EU programme that provides aid to low-wage Palestinian workers, played down the chances of the EU agreeing to pay security services across the board as requested by President Mahmoud Abbas.

Duynhouwer said it was "a sensitive issue and the EU was not enthusiastic about it".

Abbas asked the EU to expand its so-called Temporary International Mechanism (TIM) to include roughly 80,000 members of the security services, including the police force.

"We have been asked to consider the possibility of making a possible payment of police in blue civil protection and this will be taken up next year," Duynhouwer told Reuters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "It is difficult to foresee the extension to all security services, but extending it to all civil servants is an option that could be considered."

Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said the president was facing a serious problem because his presidential guard and other members of the security services had gone without salaries since March, when a U.S.-led economic blockade was imposed on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

"We are facing a very big and serious problem. We have asked the TIM to extend the mechanism to include the presidential guard and security services," Erekat said. The EU created the aid mechanism in June as a way to deliver aid directly to Palestinians working in critical sectors, like health care, without providing the money to the Hamas-led government.

The mechanism has been expanded to pay 70,000 low-income public sector employees and pensioners. The security services, and civil servants with salaries higher than $600, have been excluded.

The EU aid mechanism has so far provided "allowances" to Palestinians totalling more than 112 million euros ($148 million). EU officials say it has provided access to water, health services and sanitation for 1.3 million Palestinians and paid allowances to around a million people.

So instead of telling the PA that there is no way their terrorist-moonlighting "police" would get a dime from the civilized world, Hans Duynhouwer empowers Hamas by saying that if it can just hang on to power a bit more, the EU will be happy to fill in the gaps in its budget.

See this previous post.

Gunbattle at Rafah - Fatah kills Haniyeh's bodyguard

The idea of an independent Palestinian Arab state just keeps getting better and better all the time, doesn't it?

GAZA - Gunmen opened fire on Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniya’s convey late Thursday at the Rafah border crossing, killing a bodyguard and wounding five others including Haniya’s oldest son, medics and government officials said.

The violence capped a day of chaos at the Rafah crossing, where Haniya waited most of the day to enter from Egypt to Gaza, carrying a 35 million dollars in cash.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al Zahar blamed the attack on militants from the rival Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said that militants guarding Haniya’s convoy fired first on Abbas’ own security officials, who guard and secure the Rafah crossing. The witnesses said the presidential guards responded to the sources of fire, where one of Haniya’s bodyguards was slain, and five others wounded including Abul Sallam Haniya.

Added to yesterday's killing of a terror judge, and our count of PalArabs killed by each other since late June is now at 183.

Meanwhile, the nascent civil war inches forward. Wafa/Arabic reports:

No wonder every Palestinian Arab with a brain in his head is getting the hell out, leaving behind a higher percentage of people who enjoy and are addicted to violence.

About Olmert's nuclear slip

Omri writes that Olmert's faux pas is not a big deal, and that it makes sense for Israel to be a bit more explicit about her nuclear capabilities. While I'm not sure I agree with him (why should Israel invite international pressure to sign the NPT?) there is merit in the argument.

But that's not what bothered me about Olmert's statement.

What bothered me was that this was almost certainly not meant as a veiled threat to Iran nor as a well-planned signal to the world. It was simply a boneheaded slip of the tongue, something that a supposed head of state should not be doing.

We have an Israeli government that seems to have lost all sense of strategy or purpose. It stumbles from one crisis to the next, in reactive mode, mouthing the words that have been said for decades and then doing the opposite. It is filled with incompetence and opportunism. Above all, it exudes weakness.

This government seems to have brought the Israeli people into a malaise comparable to Americans under Carter. (Its current Supreme Court is not helping matters.)

Every day that Israelis are subjected to the blustering rule of Olmert is another day of losing their confidence. And one must not underestimate the importance of the people's will.

Israel deserves a leader. Olmert's French interview proves yet again that he is not that person.

PalArab letter to Ahmadinejad and the lack of Arab critical thinking

A few days ago it was reported that a Palestinian Arab terrorist who was imprisoned by Israel for 18 years before his release this year wrote a letter to Iran's president , telling him that his Holocaust-denial is wrong. Here is the text of the letter in English. While I am not thrilled with some of the wording, at least it shows that some Arabs still have the ability to think.

Other Victims of Denial
by Mahmoud Al-Safadi

Mr. President, I write to you following the announcement of your intention to organize a conference on the Holocaust in Teheran on 11-12 December, and I sincerely hope that this letter will be brought to your attention.

First of all, allow me to introduce myself: Mahmoud Al-Safadi, a former prisoner from occupied Jerusalem. I was released less than three months ago from the Israeli prison where I had been locked up for eighteen years for having been a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and having taken an active part in resistance to the occupation during the first Intifada. Since you were elected president, I have followed your declarations with great interest -- in particular those relating to the Holocaust. I respect your opposition to the American and Western injunctions concerning the Iranian nuclear program and believe it legitimate that you complain of the double standard that the world has with regard to the nuclear development of certain regimes.

But I am furious about your insistence on claiming that the Holocaust never took place and about your doubts about the number of Jews who were murdered in the extermination and concentration camps, organized massacres, and gas chambers, consequently denying the universal historical significance of the Nazi period.

Allow me to say, Mr. President, with all due respect to you, that you made these statements without really knowing the Nazi industry of death. To have read the works of some deniers seems to be enough for you -- a little like a man who shouts above a well and hears only the echo of his own voice. I believe that a man in your position should not make such an enormous error, because it could be turned against him and, worse still, his people.

Like you and millions of people in the world -- among whom, alas, are innumerable Palestinians and Arabs -- I was also convinced that the Jews exaggerated and lied about the Holocaust, etc., even apart from the fact that the Zionist movement and Israel use the Holocaust to justify their policy, first of all against my own people.

My long imprisonment provided me with the occasion to read books and articles that our ideology and social norms made inaccessible to us outside the prison. These documents gave me a thorough knowledge of the history of the Nazi regime and genocide that it perpetrated. At the beginning of the 1990s, by reading articles written by the Palestinian intellectuals Edward Said and Azmi Bishara, I discovered facts and positions which contradicted mine and those of many Palestinians. Their writings having piqued my curiosity and given birth inside me to the need to know more, I set about reading accounts of survivors of the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation. These testimonies were written by people of various nationalities, Jews or non-Jews.

The more I learned, the more I realized that the Holocaust was indeed a historical fact and the more I became aware of the monumental dimension of the crime committed by Nazi Germany against the Jews, other social and national groups, and humanity in general. I discovered that Nazi Germany aspired to found a "new world order" dominated by the "pure Aryan race" thanks to the physical annihilation of "impure races" and the enslavement of other nations. I discovered that various "normal" official institutions -- bureaucracies, judicial systems, medical and educational authorities, municipalities, railroad companies, and others -- had taken part and collaborated in the implementation of this new world order. From a theoretical point of view, this objective, just like the victories won at the time by the Nazi armies of occupation, threatened the existence of the Arabs and Muslims as well.

Whatever the number of victims -- Jewish and non-Jewish -- the crime is monumental. Any attempt to deny it deprives the denier of his own humanity and sends him immediately to the side of torturers. Whoever denies the fact that this human disaster really took place should not be astonished that others deny the sufferings and persecutions inflicted on his own people by tyrannical leaders or foreign occupiers. Ask yourself, I beg you, the following question: were hundreds of thousands of testimonies written about death camps, gas chambers, ghettos, and mass murders committed by the German army, tens of thousands of works of research based on German documents, numerous filmed sequences, some of which were shot by German soldiers -- were all these masses of evidence completely fabricated?

Can all that be summed up simply as an imperialist-Zionist plot? Are the confessions of high-ranking Nazis officials about their personal role in the project of extermination of whole nations only the fruit of the imagination of some disturbed spirit?

And all these heroic deeds of the people subjected to the German occupation -- the first among whom were Russians, Polish, and Yugoslavs -- only lies and gross exaggerations? Could the struggle of the Soviets against Nazi Germany be only a phantasm? The Russians continue to celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany and remember millions of their civilian and military compatriots who lost their lives in this struggle. Are they lying, too?

I invite you to read historical studies and serious testimonies before making your public statements. You divide the world in two camps: the imperialists-Zionists, who manufactured the myth of the Holocaust, and the adversaries of imperialism, who know the truth and uncover the plot. Perhaps you think that the act of denying the Holocaust places you at the vanguard of the Muslim world and that this refusal constitutes a useful tool in the combat against American imperialism and Western hegemony. By doing so, you actually do great disservice to popular struggles the world over.

At best, you cover your people and yourself with ridicule in the eyes of political forces who reject imperialism but cannot take your ideas and arguments seriously, due to the fact that you obsessively deny the existence of an abundantly documented and studied historical period whose consequences are still felt and discussed today.

At worst, you discourage and weaken the political, social, and intellectual forces who, in Europe and in the United States, reject the policy of confrontation and war carried out by George Bush, but are forced to conclude that you, too, jeopardize the world by your declarations denying the genocide and by your nuclear program.

Concerning the struggle of my people for their independence and their freedom: perhaps do you regard the negation of the Holocaust as an expression of support for the Palestinians? There, again, you are mistaken. We fight for our existence and our rights and against the historical injustice which was inflicted on us in 1948. We will not win our victory and our independence by denying the genocide perpetrated against the Jewish people, even though the forces who occupy our country today and dispossess us are part of the Jewish people.

This letter implies how difficult it is for Arabs to even have a clue about real world history, as the Arabic literature on secular topics is very sparse. This is a tragedy that is usually overlooked - a billion people who only can read one language are imprisoned by the non-existence of any ideas that are not politically-correct for the Arab world. The UN had a report on this in 2003 that looked at this problem in detail but it watered down the pertinent facts sprinkled among its 217 pages:

Curricula and education methodologies
Typically, educational material is contained in
the curriculum, which comprises a body of
lessons that is ideally a synthesis of the best of
what decision-makers and authors agree to be
worthwhile and necessary for the learning
process. In purely formal terms, curricula in
most Arab countries do not appear to be
greatly different from what many countries
around the world are adopting.
During the last decade several Arab countries
have embarked on educational reform
programmes that concentrate particularly on
revising and making modifications to the content
of curricula and syllabi.

When it comes to
the sciences, content is not usually a controversial
matter, save for some themes that are
perceived to touch on religious beliefs such as
the theory of evolution or on social taboos,
such as sex education. But the humanities and
social sciences that have a direct relevance to
people’s ideas and convictions are supervised
or protected by the authorities in charge of designing
curricula and issuing schoolbooks.
Consequently, such subjects usually laud past
achievements and generally indulge in both
self-praise and blame of others, with the aim of
instilling loyalty, obedience and support for
the regime in power. It is not unusual to find
schoolbooks in many Arab countries with a
picture of the ruler on the front page, even in
the case of textbooks in neutral subjects such
as science and mathematics.

Some researchers argue that the curricula
taught in Arab countries seem to encourage
submission, obedience, subordination and
compliance, rather than free critical thinking.
In many cases, the contents of these curricula
do not stimulate students to criticise political
or social axioms. Instead, they smother their
independent tendencies and creativity (Munir
Bashour, background paper for AHDR 2).

Generally speaking, the assigned curricula,
starting from preliminary school or even
before, embody a concept that views education
as an industrial production process,
where curricula and their content serve as
moulds into which fresh minds are supposed
to be poured.

There are various means for conveying information:
lectures, seminars, workshops, collaborative
work, laboratory work and many
others. In Arab countries, however, lectures
seem to dominate. Students can do little but
memorise, recite and perfect rote learning.
The most widely used instruments are schoolbooks,
notes, sheets or summaries.
Communication in education is didactic, supported
by set books containing indisputable
texts in which knowledge is objectified so as to
hold incontestable facts, and by an examination
process that only tests memorisation and
factual recall.

I couldn't find it in the report, I've seen reported that the number of books translated into Arabic over the past millennium is about 10,000, the same number that are translated into Spanish annually.

Arab rulers are so consumed with power that they are starving their people of the ability to think, which is why creatures like Ahmadinejad have the opportunity to brainwash hundreds of millions of people.

OK, it turns out that I'm not quite as egoless as I like to think I am.

While I have no chance of winning, I do appreciate all votes I get. And it makes the Elders look bad when I can't gather a large number of votes.

So if you think that this blog is the best in its category (Best Middle East or Africa Blog) please remember to vote for it, daily, and spare me the embarrassment of ending up with a measly couple of dozen votes compared to the hundreds and soon thousands that others are getting.

UPDATE: Now that the voting is in full wing and it is clear that I'm not in the running, I have a new goal: to beat The Sudanese Thinker. We've been neck and neck since the beginning but since I first mentioned my goal yesterday he seems to have marshaled his forces and has pulled into the lead. What kind of a Ziyonist conspiracy can I be leading if I can't even make it to fourth place? So help me reach my much more modest goal of beating TST and vote!

And don't forget to consider the other JBlogs that are up for awards as well:

Treppenwitz (in my category)
Jack's Shack/Random Thoughts in The Best 2501-3500
Dry Bones in Best Comic Strip
A Town Crier in The Best 1001-1750

Also, my excellent competitor Sandmonkey was kind enough to link to me so I feel compelled to return the favor.

Lunch break

I'm stuck in an all-day teambuilding meeting that is a complete and utter waste of time, and now all I can do is blog from my Blackberry during lunch. I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms from no Internet.

Tomorrow will be light too as I go on a short business trip.

Justice, PalArab-style

The irony:

Increasing anarchy in the Palestinian Authority: Wednesday morning, anonymous gunmen shot and killed a judge in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

Palestinian sources reported that the four gunmen got out of a civilian vehicle and opened fire at Judge Bassem el-Fara, who was killed on the spot.

This is the second murder of a Palestinian judge this week: Three days prior, Judge Jamal Abu Salim was killed in the same area.

And more:

Officials from the governing Hamas faction said Bassam al-Fara, 28, was a judge in a civil court but also a member of the group’s armed wing.

Ya gotta hand it to the PalArabs. Just when you think that Fatah is depraved for killing a judge, you realize that the "judge" was a Hamas terrorist himself.

It is somewhat interesting to see that there are any people who call themselves judges left in the territories. I recall the "Palestine Human Rights Moniitoring Group" has lists of certain types of verdicts from the PalArab "justice" system (like "collaborators" ) and their lists pretty much ended a couple of years ago. (The site is down as I am writing this.) I believe that this Google cached page has the stats.)

But I suppose that if they have so many pretend policemen, many of whom moonlight as terrorists, it only makes sense that they have pretend judges who are terrorists as well.