More Gaza "civilians" and more PCHR lies

Even though I haven't been spending too much time lately on looking for more dead Gaza "civilians" who were actually terrorists, other people (notably PTWatch) has been diligently digging through Arabic websites and we keep adding to the list.

As of right now, we have identified 358 terrorists who were categorized as "civilians" by the PCHR. Add together the rest of the police and the "militants" that PCHR counted, and we have 667 dead Gazans who were legitimate targets, quickly closing in on half of the dead not being civilians.

Many of the civilians were clearly being used as cover or were unavoidably killed in a legitimate operation. The latest "martyr" PTWatch found is a case in point.

#901, Usama Sa’id Mohammed Lubbad, was a recruiter for Islamic Jihad (who also evidently taught Islamic Jihad tenets to the terrorist equivalent of Cub Scouts in a mosque) and he was killed on January 9th. His obituary mentions that he was killed with a few of his Islamic Jihad friends - mentioned in PCHR as #897, 899, 900 and 909. That's five Islamic Jihad members in one shot, a legitimate target by any measure.

However, during the attack two other people were killed. One was a seven year old boy, the other a 55-year old man. Their deaths were unavoidable by the IDF, and very justified under international law.

Looking back at how PCHR described the attacks at the time, we can see how they purposefully lie to make Israel look like it deliberately attacked civilians. In one section of the report they say

At approximately 09:40 on Thursday, an IOF aircraft fired a missile at three members of the resistance who were near al-Qassam mosque in Beit Lahia, killing all three:

1. Mohammed Nafiz al-Hindi, 25;

2. Anwar Jaber Abu Salim, 24; and

3. 'Abdul Nassar 'Abdul Gaffar 'Ouda, 23.

A couple of paragraphs later they say

At approximately 13:00, medical sources announced the death of Ussama Said Lubbad, 19, of wounds sustained earlier on the same day when IOF warplanes bombed a group of young people in Beit Lahia. Another 3 civilians were immediately killed in the same attack.

These were not two separate attacks, but the same one, as Lubbad's obituary makes clear. PCHR pretends that there were two attacks so that they can claim that the IDF deliberately targeted "a group of young people" - implying that the IDF targeted civilians, one of their memes that has been copied and repeated by HRW, Amnesty and Goldstone.

Out of the group of 7 killed, five were terrorists. PCHR must have known at the time they wrote the report that it was a single attack.

Notice also where the terrorists were - near a mosque.

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Erdogan accuses Israel of using WMD in Gaza

Turkey's prime minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of using "weapons of mass destruction" in Gaza in an interview with a TV station from the UAE, according to Palestine Today.

Apparently, only one side in the recent diplomatic spat between Israel and Turkey is trying to smooth things over.

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US State Dept. encourages trade with Gaza

The State Department has something called an "E-Consulate" to act as a virtual US consulate to the Gaza Strip.

It includes this page:

Yes, U.S. companies can do business in Gaza! Dozens of U.S. firms have established agencies and disrtibutorships [sic], and Palestinian consumers have a strong preferance [sic] for a wide variety of U.S. goods and services.

In particular, many U.S. companies have re-oriented their marketing efforts to acknowledge the Palestinian market as culturally, economically, and commercially distinct from the Israeli market. The U.S. Commercial Service in Jerusalem strongly encourages U.S. exporters wishing to market their goods in the West Bank & Gaza to use local Palestinian agents and distributors. Using Israeli agents for Palestinian markets does not utilize local, Palestinian market expertise, and does not allow U.S. firms to maximize their sales exposure to the local market. We can help you find well qualified Palestinian agents and distributors for your products.

Please visit us online at: http://www.buyusa.gov/westbank/en/

I found a cached variant of this page from 2006. It is interesting that the page was never updated since then and gives the appearance of reflecting current US policy, as does the linked page at BuyUSA.gov.

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Arab writer convinced Israel's Haiti aid pure propaganda

The often anti-semitic, far left People's Voice finds an Arab willing to talk about how Israelis saving lives is clearly a propaganda ploy:

Why Israel send a team to help Haiti? What is the relationship between Israel and humanitarian aid?

If we were to canvass the question among 10 million Palestinians the Zionist state of Israel possessed of human compassion? I very much doubt that the consensus would be positive. More than likely those canvassed would be bewildered by such a question in light of the suffering they endured all these years.

With such a litany of crimes against humanity to its credit it is difficult to reconcile with the show of compassion Israel is extending to the Haitian people, who live half a world away, while at the same time they cause such misery and suffering to Palestinians who live only a few hundred meters from their comfortable homes and towns.

In the absence of any evidence that Zionists have any compassion towards humanity one might conclude that the aid the Zionist are giving to the devastated people of Haiti nothing more than ‘crocodile tears’. A cleverly crafted piece of propaganda, designed to clean up the reputation the Zionist state has for the brutal disregard for human suffering.

Then the article goes into fantasyland:

On the other hand it would have been very logic [sic], very natural, and in harmony with the Palestinian culture that the future post Zionism Palestine will help brothers and sisters in humanity anywhere in the world. Palestine history is the best testimony: Palestine has helped and welcomed refugees and religious and ordinary immigrants from many parts in the world.

Fatah and Hamas were throwing each other off of buildings a couple of years ago. But, given the chance, Palestinian Arabs would naturally help Haitians!

But when Palestine was struck by the Zionist earthquake it cannot unfortunately help others because it needs first to be free from the occupation, in other word the Palestinian humanism will be appear when the inhuman Zionism disappear.

Ah, now we are back to the usual PalArab self-pitying mindset we are so used to. They really want to act like normal, compassionate human beings, but the "Zionists" are stopping them! It's the occupation! The average person in Ramallah can't possibly think about those who are crushed underneath buildings because he sometimes has to go through a checkpoint!

In other words, once the Palestinian Arabs succeed in throwing the Jews into the sea, then the world can see what wonderful people they really are.

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Dwaik denies Hamas "moderation"

From Ma'an:

Palestinian Legislative Council speaker Aziz Dweik on Thursday denied reports by Israeli news outlets that he said on Wednesday Israel has a right to exist.

"The media reports in question were inaccurate," he said in a statement, adding that since his release from an Israeli prison last year, Israeli news outlets have repeatedly misrepresented his views.

The Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli newspaper, quoted Dweik as saying on Wednesday that the Islamic movement has accepted Israel's right to exist and would be prepared to nullify its charter, which calls for dismantling the state.

The person he supposedly made these statements to helpfully explains why he is so dense as to believe the opposite of what Hamas has been clearly and adamantly saying for decades:

The remarks were said to have been made during a meeting in Hebron with British millionaire David Martin Abrahams, who reportedly maintains close ties with senior Israeli and British government officials.

Abrahams, who the The Jerusalem Post identified as a major donor to Britain's Labor Party, told the newspaper he would urge Foreign Secretary David Milliband to "consider the implications of Hamas's positive overtures."

"The fact that there is a possibility for recognition of Israel is a symbolic gesture," he reportedly said. "We can all look for good in people and we can all look for bad in people. I always look for the good."

He was also quoted as saying: "People might say that I'm naïve, so let them."

I think we just proved it!

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Object lesson in Hamas duplicity

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Hamas has accepted Israel's right to exist and would be prepared to nullify its charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, Aziz Dwaik, Hamas's most senior representative in the West Bank, said on Wednesday.

Dwaik's remarks are seen in the context of Hamas's attempts to win recognition from the international community.

Dwaik is the elected speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was released a few months ago after spending nearly three years in an Israeli prison.

Naturally, this news has caused a stir in Gaza. Luckily, another hamas leader, Dr. Salah al Bardawil, has clarified Dwaik's position.

You see, Hamas' charter never called for the destruction of Israel! So there is no need for it to be nullified.

Hamas' charter does quote the Muslim Brotherhood's founder as saying "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" . But that's just the prologue. And it says obliterate," not "destroy." Big difference!

Also, it says:

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Muslim generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Muslim generations till Judgement Day?

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations till the Day of Judgement.

Now, if Hamas-bashers want to interpret that as if it means that Hamas wants to destroy Israel, that's their problem.

And this part is equally irrelevant:

The day that enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instill the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters.

Nowhere does that paragraph say "destroy Israel"! Amazing!

Double-talk is a wonderful Palestinian Arab tool, because they know that there will always be stupid Westerners who cannot believe that they are being lied to.

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Terrorists love Akiva Eldar

Akiva Eldar is one of Ha'aretz' go-to analysts with a consistent agenda of demonizing his nation.

A couple of days ago he tried to pour cold water on Israel's work in Haiti by saying how poorly Israel treats Gaza. For example:

The disaster in Haiti is a natural one; the one in Gaza is the unproud handiwork of man. Our handiwork. The IDF does not send cargo planes stuffed with medicines and medical equipment to Gaza....

I was not aware that Haiti was shooting rockets at Israel.

And apparently Eldar feels his message of unremitting Israeli hate towards Gaza would be diluted if he mentions the medical clinic that Israel did set up for Gazans after the war - that Hamas barred Gazans from going to. Eldar cannot be bothered to mention the 4000 Gazans who did manage to get medical attention in Israeli hospitals in 2009. No, to Eldar, Israel is an evil nation who goes to Haiti for PR but callously ignores the people in pain in Gaza.

Not surprisingly, his op-ed has been featured all over the world in Arab and far left websites. And now, even the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades website has reprinted his article.

I wonder if they paid him?

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Al Qassam Brigades leader dies in UAE

In two separate incidents in 1989, Hamas kidnapped and murdered two Israeli soldiers, Sgt. Avi Sasportas and Cpl. Ilan Saadon.

The terrorist responsible for these murders, Mahmoud Al-Mabhuh, was one of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades co-founders. Some time later he ran away from Gaza and went off to live in the UAE.

He just died of cancer in a hospital there.

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Great BBC video on Gaza

BBC 2 sent a real soldier, Iraq war veteran Col. Tim Collins, to look at Sderot and Gaza. He saw the evidence of secondary mosque explosions that Goldstone didn't. He interviews Gaza rocket makers and gets chased out of Rafah where the weapons smugglers work. He honestly looks at one of the bigger accidents of the war, where the Gaza doctor's daughters were killed, and shows how difficult it would be for Israelis to have distinguished the civilians.

Wish I could embed it.

(h/t t34zakat)
UPDATE: Here's the article about the video that includes most of the text, from Conflictzones.tv: (h/t Gaia)

Inside the Gaza Strip – subjected to a short but bloody war against Israeli forces that ended in January 2009, and under the control of the Islamist militant movement Hamas - Colonel Tim Collins drove up to a massive roadside poster.

“It shows the Legoland town of Sderot [southern Israel] being bombarded by unguided weapons,” said the Colonel. “[Responding to] this is what the Israelis say the attack was all about. But this poster wasn’t produced by an Israeli PR company. It was paid for by Hamas, and they’ve got their badge on it – showing a war crime by any standard.”

The main target for the rocket fire depicted in the Hamas roadside billboard had indeed been the small Israeli border town of Sderot.

In the town, British-born Tottenham-supporting police officer Micky Rosenfeld showed the Colonel gaily-painted bomb-shelters into which the town’s 30-thousand citizens would flee for relative safety every time they heard a piercing “Red Alert” siren. The Colonel noted that fragments [of metal ball-bearings stuffed into rocket-heads] had ripped holes even into the thick metal walls that surround the bomb-shelters. “That’s vicious,” Colonel Collins said. “If that hits your flesh it would tear you up.”

Thousands of rockets and mortars had fallen during the eight years before Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip at the end of 2008, Colonel Collins was told.

“Growing up in Belfast during The Troubles, I can sympathise with them. It’s no way to live … These were by and large people who had decamped from an Islamic society in north Africa and found themselves living on the front-line,” Colonel Collins said, [referring to Jews from Arab north Africa who had come to Israel in the 1950s and had often settled in small towns in the country’s under-developed south.]

Behind the town’s police station was a collection of the remnants of rockets that had struck the town. Colonel Collins picked up a rusting rocket casing. “It can’t be accurate, because it’s heavy and imprecise – so this is an indiscriminate weapon,” said Colonel Collins. Police Chief Inspector Rosenfeld told him how he believed the rocket-firers sometimes managed to target their missiles -- by listening to Israeli radio which revealed where the first rocket or rockets had hit, and then adjusting their sights to make the next ones more lethal.

Rosenfeld also showed him the remnants of more advanced Grad rockets, which he said had been smuggled to the armed Palestinian groups via a number of countries through tunnels under the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt. Twenty of these had hit cities far further up the coast or far further inland during three days at the start of the Gaza-Israel war, he said. Israel feared that if it failed to act, Palestinian militants in Gaza would over time be able to smuggle in or develop rocketry that could hit further and further away until missiles reached the main Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

Late at night, the Colonel managed to rendezvous inside the Gaza Strip with men who fired rockets across the border into Israel. The Colonel was being driven by Abu Haroon, a beaded fighter from a sub-group of Fatah called the Abu Rish Brigade. At the rocket men’s makeshift base inside a refugee camp, Abu Haroon and his men produced a rocket and started dismantling it. “TNT [a high explosive] was spilling out of the back of it,” recalls the Colonel, “and I was particularly nervous when they put a badly-constructed home-made fuse on top of the device, making it a live weapon, then brandished a detonator.”

Abu Haroon made it clear that these rockets were “simple” devices that could not be accurately targeted. “We don’t know where these drop,” he told the Colonel. “Because there are no electronics here. Not big shooting rocket like Israel says about it.” Expressing the hope that conflict will end and that “the children can grow up without ever having known the war that Abu Haroon and his men have known, God willing,” Colonel Collins left and was driven back to his hotel in Gaza City.

Later, in Bet Hanun, northern Gaza Strip, the Colonel examined the remains of a deserted and destroyed mosque -- one of several that had been smashed during the Gaza-Israel war. Inside the now deserted mosque, Colonel Collins looked up at a gaping hole left by an air strike. “The allegation was that this was used as a storage facility for weapons,” said the Colonel as he tramped about the ruined structure. “I have to say that what was commonplace in Iraq was also seemed to be evident in Gaza as well. Down in the cellar of the mosque there was clear evidence of secondary explosions. It’s my opinion that the only thing that could have caused this was that explosives were stored here.”

The Colonel also went to the scene of possibly the most well-publicised tragedy of the war. A tank had fired two rounds into an apartment block. The shells struck a bedroom and killed three daughters and a niece of a local doctor, Ezzedeen Abualaish. Colonel Collins found the scene “heart-rending”, but when he painstakingly found the exact spot from which the tank, perched on a hillside overlooking Gaza City, had fired two rounds, he was able to work out what the Israeli tank-gunner would have been able to see.

“The civilians had been evacuated into Gaza…. I have to say that it would be difficult from this range, even through optic sights, to make out clear targets. So you would only see shadows.” However the Colonel said firing a main armaments round without actually identifying the target was “questionable”. [An Israeli military investigation in 2009 stated that the gunner had believed there were Palestinian fighters moving around in what he and his commander thought was an abandoned building. The doctor had been telephoned by an Israeli military officer days before advising him and his family and all inhabitants to leave the building, the report stated.]

On his way out of the Gaza Strip, Colonel Collins passed alongside a plethora of roadside pictures and billboards plastered with the faces of young men killed in years of conflict with Israel, each shown in a heroic pose wielding a weapon. “Some call them ‘legitimate targets’, others call them ‘martyrs’. They’ve certainly been ‘martyred’ to suit someone’s agenda. In my view, like in Ireland, it’s a waste of young lives.”

As Colonel Collins walked towards a heavily fortified checkpoint to exit Gaza, he reflected on his visit. “The real victims here are the people of Gaza, and the people of Sderot, who’ve been used like cattle,” he said. “In my view that’s the real crime.”

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More on Arabs and Haiti.

According to the UN, so far, the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia have contributed nothing towards Haiti earthquake relief. Neither have Egypt, Jordan*, or Syria.

On the other hand, (possibly because of the bad press,) the Organization of the Islamic Conference has asked Muslim nations to help the victims.

The Al-Arabiya article about this call to help is interesting in the reactions by the readers.

The first one said:

My Heart Dances Of Joice Just Thinking About It

May The Biggest Catastrophe in Human History,since the creation of this planet wipe USA from the face of the Earth.Deep inside me i feel it happening but i ask THE ALMIGHTY to make me live to witness it with my own eyes..Amen Amen Amen

The third addresses the issue of aiding Haiti a little more directly:

To donate money for an alcoholic is prohibited (haram),so how about the devil's worshipper?

Why didn't/don't these so-called "Islamic" organizations urge Muslims,to help Muslims in Afghanistan,Pakistan,Gaza,Yemen,Somalia,Chechneya,..Anywhere?! How do you call for outside Cleansing while inside is full of $h*t? They and the apostate traitors are Muslims' real turmoil,so..?! Deaf,Blind and Dumb

*UPDATE: This Muslim website says that Jordan sent a field hospital, medics and supplies pretty early on. The Iranian contribution it claims was through its Red Crescent, not the government.

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George Mitchell dooms any chance of peace

The US envoy to the Middle East just doomed any remote chance there might have ever been for a peaceful two-state solution.

Palestine Press Agency quotes Mitchell as having told his Lebanese hosts that the US "does not support the resettlement of the Palestinians" in Lebanon. The US Embassy website in Lebanon said "As the Special Envoy, Mitchell confirmed to Prime Minister Hariri in their meeting last evening the U.S. will not support the forced naturalization of Palestinians in Lebanon."

As we've mentioned numerous times before, the definition of "Palestinian refugee" is unique among all world refugees. The UNRWA created an entirely news class of refugees where the descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees are considered refugees themselves. Using this bizarre definition, the number of Palestinian Arab "refugees" is fated to grow, forever. It is simply impossible to imagine that they will all ever "return" to "Palestine." They are now at about 10,000,000 and counting.

As far back as the 1950s, the world realized that there was no solution for the (then) hundreds of thousands of refugees that did not include their eventual resettlement in Arab countries. Yet the Arab League, in an astonishing display of bigotry against their fellow Arabs that persists to this day, ruled that no Palestinian Arabs can become naturalized citizens of Arab countries - while all other Arabs can.

This is, in sum, the major reason why millions of Arabs are stateless today. Even if you want to blame Israel for expelling every one of the 600,000 Arabs in 1948 (which is clearly not true,) the only people responsible for their continued suffering over the past 61 years are the Arab leaders who pretend to support them while refusing to take in their "brethren" and give them full rights.

Even for the Palestinian Arabs who left the UNRWA camps and attempted to build their lives in the Gulf states, in many ways helping to build those very countries, their children and grandchildren remain stateless.

It is not as if Palestinian Arabs would refuse the offer to become citizens of other Arab countries because of their supposed nationalism. In the 1950s, Lebanon offered citizenship to many Christian Palestinians as well as Muslims who could prove Lebanese ancestry, and some 50,000 people jumped at the offer. A loophole that opened up in 1994 that offered citizenship was equally pounced upon and tens of thousands more became Lebanese citizens - many even falsifying papers - before that loophole was closed.

So today we have millions of people, falsely labeled as "refugees," who never stepped foot in British Mandate Palestine and who, if they were any other group of people, would have become citizens of the nations they were born in. The reason is purely because of Arab bigotry and intransigence.

There is no realistic solution to the "Palestinian" problem as long as this naked bigotry is allowed to continue. Millions of Palestinian Arabs are not going to stream into a nation of "Palestine." The only solution must include treating this population exactly the same way as other refugee populations are treated.

The US should be in the forefront of insisting that the "moderate" Arab nations and allies step up and take their share of responsibility for decades of Palestinian Arab suffering.

Instead, George Mitchell (who has Lebanese ancestry) has now officially stated that the US supports this institutionalized discrimination by Arab leaders. A golden opportunity to point out embedded Arab bigotry and to publicize and shame Arabs into taking responsibility for their treatment of Palestinian Arabs is now lost.

Lost with it is any chance for a reasonable peace plan. The Arab nations keep the fake "refugee" issue alive specifically in the hopes that there will be world pressure for Israel to take in millions of Palestinian Arabs and become another Arab state. Israel will never agree to this. The losers, as always, are the actual Arabs of Palestinian Arab ancestry who are kept in limbo by the very people who are claiming to care the most about them.

Shame on the US for blowing this one chance to help millions of people.

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When "resistance" passes its expiration date

An interesting op-ed in Asharq Al-Awsat, in response to the "resistance" convention in Beirut over the weekend:

The word resistance has become obsolete with time and as a result of misuse, and so this word has lost its sanctity. How can someone respect the resistance in Iraq when witnessing thousands of innocent victims killed as a result of the deliberate targeting of schools, markets, residential areas, and civilian and governmental areas? How can the resistance be sacred in Palestine when on the one hand the Palestinians are fighting against one another, whilst at the same time [one Palestinian faction] is guarding the Israeli borer against infiltration by other resistance elements? Why is it that today in Lebanon, the resistance is not playing this role, but is ruling the people of Lebanon by force, and this is almost nine years after Israeli troops withdrew from the country?

This is the state of the resistance today. This is the state of any type of resistance that passes its expiry date, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon whose resistance became an internal problem after the movement was practically transformed into a local militia [following the Israeli withdrawal]. The resistance is just a title, and it seems that its real job is to dominate the internal situation through force of arms and by silencing the opposition in the name of confronting the enemy. In Palestine, where there is occupation and an armed enemy, some resistance factions have become foreign tools.

They now seem to epitomize retired war generals in their military uniform and with their medals. Those active in the resistance know that this word lost its sanctity after it lost its job. In fact the meaning of this word had reversed and now has bad connotations when it is purposefully imposed as is the case with Hezbollah today which has become a movement that signifies sectarianism, or the Senior Council of Islamic Scholars, which is not a Council and has no scholars, but in fact is a façade to justify violence in Iraq.

This is a very good observation. The word "resistance" is used by Arab thugs to win and maintain power over their own people.

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NGO Monitor suing EU over funding pro-terror NGOs

From NGO Monitor:

NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog group, announced at a press conference today that it has brought suit against the European Commission (EC) for failing to fulfill EU transparency obligations regarding the distribution of funding to non-government organizations (NGOs).

NGO Monitor President Professor Gerald Steinberg said that his group resorted to legal recourse after 13 months of attempts to secure documents detailing non-governmental agency funding by the EC, the executive branch of the European Union. Under the European Freedom of Information law, such funding details must be made available upon request. However, the EC cited “public security,” “privacy,” and “commercial interests” in denying NGO Monitor’s information request.

NGO Monitor legal counsel, Trevor Asserson of Asserson Law Offices, dismissed these reasons as “absurd” and “essentially unsupportable.” He described the EU activity as “typical of the types of obfuscation that one gets when someone does not want to do what they are meant to do.”

The lawsuit, filed yesterday at the European Court of Justice, seeks “to obligate the European Union, which claims to be a law-abiding institution and committed to looking out for the interests of world peace and security, to act according to its mandate and reveal these documents and the full extent of their funding.”

NGO Monitor disclosed that its researchers identified 177 million shekels provided by the EC since June 2005 to NGOs active in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Many of these organizations are active in the strategy of demonization which seeks to isolate Israel, using lawfare and boycott campaigns. The organization alleges that EC allocations are made without full public disclosure of its decision-making processes or evaluation procedures.

“We therefore argue that absent appropriate documentation, European citizens are in the dark as to how their taxpayer funds are being used,” Steinberg said. “If the European Union were to actually comply with its regulations, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

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Short takes

AFP noticed that there are some exports from Gaza lately. The strawberries are being marketed to Europe by Israel's Agrexco under the brand name Coral.

Palestine Today calls the recent floods in Gaza a "realization of Rabin's and Netanyahu's dreams."

A Jordanian geologist is warning that Israel is purposefully creating man-made earthquakes to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque.

A Seattle nutcase called "T. West" made a YouTube video claiming that Israel is stealing organs from Haitians. Naturally, Iran's PressTV picks up on the story. (h/t Zvi)

A 17th century synagogue in Crete was firebombed for the second time this month. Here is its webpage.

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A new Zionism

From the Jewish Journal of LA:

If I ever decide to make aliyah and move to Israel, I can blame it on Micah Goodman. On a chilly and wet Sunday night last week at The Mark — a reception hall on Pico Boulevard that used to house Mamash restaurant — Goodman spoke on “The Crash of Old Paradigms: Why the Left and the Right No Longer Exist in Israel.” Professor Goodman, who was hosted by the Israeli Consulate as part of their new speaker series for young professionals, is part of a new generation of young and bright Israelis who are seeking nothing less than a renewal of the Zionist idea.

Goodman, who’s only 33, studied in a variety of yeshivas over the years and got a doctorate of philosophy from Hebrew University. He teaches, among other places, at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, has his own weekly television show and runs a “leadership academy” called Ein Prat, which he founded. On the invitation for his Sunday night talk, Ein Prat was described as follows: “Seeking to lead a sea change in behavior and culture, we hope to awaken Israeli society from its slumber.”

I can tell you that he woke about a hundred young professionals in Los Angeles from their slumber, yours truly included.

He did it by laying out a dramatic and depressing problem — what he calls a “crisis of ideas” for Zionism — and then fearlessly taking it on with an equally dramatic and positive vision.

He began by discussing the two original strands of Zionism: the Zionism of Peace and the Zionism of Land, explaining why both are failing and need an injection of new thinking.

The Zionism of Peace is the classic view of Israel as a safe haven for Jews. Its champion, Theodore Herzl, had seen the failure of emancipation to ward off anti-Semitism, epitomized by the anti-Semitic rage exposed in the Dreyfus affair. By enabling Jews to join the brotherhood of nations, this view went, Zionism would not only protect Jews from persecution but might even help vanquish anti-Semitism.

The Zionism of Land, as championed by Rav Kook, was not about fighting a negative, but about celebrating a positive: the return to the mystical land of our forefathers.

From 1948 to 1967, neither Zionism won the day. The state was too close to hostile neighbors to be a Zionism of Peace, and too distant from biblical Israel to be a Zionism of Land.

The Six-Day War of 1967 changed all that. Followers of both Zionisms saw an opening to fulfill their own dreams. The Peace camp finally had something (land) it could trade for peace and acceptance, and the Land camp, after 2,000 years, could finally return to the land of their patriarchs.

The ensuing 40 years saw both dreams unravel. Land couldn’t buy the Zionism of Peace, and love couldn’t buy the Zionism of Land. Today, when Goodman looks at the physical threats to Israel and the success of Jewish emancipation in America, he laments: “Jews are haunted in their haven, and accepted in the Diaspora. This is an earthquake to the Zionist idea.”

The original justifications for Zionism — both pragmatic and ideological — are under such attack that the crisis of ideas has become a crisis of legitimacy, where Jews must now answer this vexing question: Why Zionism? This crisis is compounded by the fact that, as Goodman says, Israelis are the “Olympic champions of not loving themselves.”

Yet it was Goodman’s deep love for Zionism and his people, as much as his scholarly analysis, that woke us from our slumber. Here was a man who quoted the great philosophers, but who just as easily quoted the soldiers who were under his command during the recent wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

When he critiqued his homeland, he did it with a heavy heart. But when he talked about the outbursts of solidarity in Israeli society — thousands of homes opening up to refugees of bomb attacks, 100 percent of Army reservists responding to the call of duty, scores of volunteers helping out in bomb shelters, etc. — it was with a sense of genuine wonder.

It is this sense of wonder at the possibilities of the Zionist experiment that Goodman and his ilk are hoping to rekindle in Israeli society. He calls it a Zionism of Solidarity — creating an exemplary and decent society that worries less about what the world thinks of us and more about what we think of ourselves.

It is the renewal of Zionism from the inside out. It calls for, among other things, better treatment of all citizens (including migrant workers) and a greater separation of synagogue and state, where Judaism and its values are part of education rather than legislation.

Ha'aretz looked at Ein Prat once.

The website for the group includes this fascinating video made by the students that shows the excitement that the project is creating:

The site also has a couple of videos of Micah Goodman speaking in English. This one seems similar to the talk in LA, where he unflinchingly looks at problems in Israeli society and Zionism in the wake of the Lebanon war and talks about what can (or must) be done to re-invent Zionism.

Anti-Zionists would look at this video and see evidence of Israeli weakness. It is in fact the opposite.

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