Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 26, 2010

The Independent spins the Gaza Mall

The Independent (UK) has an article about the new Gaza Mall:

Hila Abdul Wahad, a new graduate in commercial accounting from the Islamic University, was enthusiastic as she window-shopped her way round the eight new stores on the second floor of the shopping mall. "It's great that this is happening in the situation we're in," she said. "We should be proud. It feels that we are outside of Gaza, it's like ... [she paused briefly] ... being in Egypt."

Ms Wahad was among the 3,700 visitors who flocked to Gaza's first shopping mall in the eight hours after its televised grand opening, attended by the Labour Minister in the Hamas de facto government, Abu Osama al-Kurd. The Gaza Mall is small – just two floors, with a supermarket and fast food restaurant at ground level – but air conditioned. It has no lift – as yet – but above the staircase, a screen displays real-time images of shoppers from the closed-circuit security television cameras.

...The mall has electrified the conservative blogosphere, now seething with claims that it makes a mockery of the idea that its residents are suffering from the blockade which Israel imposed on the territory three years ago and last month decided to partially ease.

But in fact the shops are selling much the same wares that have long been available in other stores and at a lower price, an important plus when unemployment has been running above 40 per cent and over 60 percent live below a poverty line of $2 per day.

That's the entire point! The problem in Gaza has never been available goods - it has been poverty for the many unemployed people, unemployed in a large part because of Hamas policies. Remember the Erez Industrial Zone and what happened to that? Israel kept it open as long as it could until the terror attacks that Hamas performed there became too much. Thousands of employees lost their jobs as a result.

We seething conservative bloggers, as the Independent condescendingly refers to us, are pointing out that all the "aid" ships that the British newspaper fawns over were based on the same lies that the Independent itself peddled - that Gaza was a large prison camp. Now that the absurdity of that characterization has been destroyed by the Gaza Mall and other quite nice hotels, restaurants and tourist spots that we have discovered and publicized, the Independent refuses to admit its mistakes and instead reframes the discussion to minimize its lies.

The Independent is now moving the goalposts, not willing to admit that the myth of Gaza as a "prison camp" was one that it helped to push and now deriding those who proved that this very newspaper was among the worst purveyors of that very myth.

(h/t Zach)

About that PLO flag in Washington

Over the past few days, we have found out that the White House has decided to give the PLO mission in Washington a symbolic upgrade of status:

The Obama administration will allow the PLO office in Washington to fly the Palestinian flag and assume the title of "delegation."

The change in status comes with no enhancement in diplomatic status, U.S. officials said.

The new privileges for the Palestine Liberation Organization office do not mean the representation has "any diplomatic privileges or immunities," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said last Friday.

"At the request of the PLO representative, which we have granted given the improvement in the relations between the United States and Palestinians, they have requested permission to fly the Palestinian flag," he said. "And they have requested permission to call themselves the General Delegation of the PLO, which is a name that conforms to how they describe their missions in Europe, Canada, and several Latin American countries."

Crowley said the steps have symbolic value and reflect improved relations between the United States and Palestinians, but they have no meaning under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

A White House spokesman suggested the changes would help spur the Palestinians toward direct peace talks with Israel, a key demand of the Israeli and U.S. governments.

Why does the PLO have a mission in Washington, and not the pseudo-democratic Palestinian Authority?

The answer to that question is terrifically important.

The Palestinian Authority is extraordinarily limited in what it can do. It reports to the corrupt, non-democratic, terrorist PLO.

The Palestinian National Authority was meant to be merely a temporary administrative entity to govern areas of the territories that Israel abandons. It has no independent power. It cannot engage in foreign policy. It does not claim to represent any Palestinian Arabs outside the territories.

Only a couple of months ago, PA prime minister Salam Fayyad admitted that the PLO has the official mandate of all affairs of the Palestinian Arab people, and that the PA was just a tool of that organization.

The Palestinian Authority has no independent power.

When Israel negotiates, directly or indirectly, with Mahmoud Abbas, he is not representing the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank when he puts forth his positions. He represents the PLO and Fatah, both of which he leads. He is constrained not by the will of the people but by the members of the other two groups - most of whom are more extreme than he is.

The official delegations of the PalArabs to all countries are from the PLO, not the PA. And the PLO, not the PA, is recognized internationally as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."

The PLO, of course, has never really repealed its charter that calls for the destruction of Israel. It claimed to have repealed the sections that call for Israel's destruction, but never spelled out what those sections were or what they were replaced with, and until it publishes a new charter, the old one should be regarded as the only official charter that they adhere to.

And the PLO is dominated by Fatah, which still calls to "liquidate the Zionist entity politically, economically, militarily, culturally and ideologically." (The leader of Fatah, as we mentioned, is Israel's "peace partner" Mahmoud Abbas.)

[There was some talk in January that a translation of the Fatah charter written last summer did not mention destroying Israel. However, a careful look at that charter shows that it is only called an "internal charter." It refers to the "Basic Charter ratified by Fatah's Fourth General Conference held in Tunis in 1989" and defines its scope as purely "to regulate the relationship between the members, cadres, frameworks, and leaders of Fatah, and to define their tasks, duties, and methods of struggle to achieve the goals of Fatah." In other words, the published charter was not a new Fatah charter but rather a replacement of parts of the charter. The previous clauses to destroy Israel were not eliminated.)

The PLO mission in Washington is exactly what it appears - an official US recognition of an organization that is still sworn to destroy Israel, filled with members who are also sworn to destroy Israel through their party affiliation. As much as Westerners love Salam Fayyad, he is a technocratic puppet to put a moderate face on what is a fundamentally rotten infrastructure. Fayyad couldn't visit Washington or Paris or London without permission from the PLO.

And the only "moderation" that the PLO and Fatah exhibit is their refusal to explicitly call for Israel's destruction in English as Hamas and other groups do, and Westerners are keen to seize on that as proof of their pragmatism and peaceful intentions.

Lebanese "flotilla" might sail this week

Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has a brief paper that analyzes the latest on the Lebanese women's and reporters' ships that were supposed to have sailed a month ago. They agree with my reporting that Hezbollah is behind the ships and that the purpose of these ships may be to provoke a deadly Israeli response:

1. Yasser Qashlaq, chairman of the Free Palestine Movement and organizer of the Lebanese flotilla to the Gaza Strip, said the ships would leave within a few days. Qashlaq asked Lebanese politicians not to make difficulties, but rather to cooperate so the flotilla might succeed (DayPress news website, July 20, 2010). His previous declarations about its sailing were not realized, but nevertheless it is possible that this time the ships will set sail, despite a large number of international objections.
2. The current situation of the flotilla is as follows:
A. The ship called Maryam reached Tripoli and is currently participating in the routine processes required by law before a ship set sail. Rima Farah, ship spokesperson, said that contacts had been made with a number of countries to acquire authorization for the ship to be received at their harbors, because it cannot sail directly from Lebanon to the port of Gaza. Samar al-Hajj, coordinator for the organizing committee, is the director of the ship's logistic activities. Note: The ship will carry only women passengers (Al-Diyar website, July 21, 2010).
B. The ship called Nagi al-Ali (formerly Julia) is ready to set sail, and according to the organizers all that remains to be done is to load the cargo. Most of the passengers will apparently be correspondents.
C. The organizers may have another ship, but they are not divulging any information about it.
3. Yasser Qashlaq said he did not rule out the possibility that Israel would try to halt the flotilla because "there is no limit to the crimes of the entity of the occupation." He also said that there would be peace activists aboard the ships and that the cargos would include humanitarian equipment, and that any attempt to stop them would be "a terrorist action" (DayPress news website, July 20, 2010).
4. In our assessment, the ships were purchased and the flotilla organized with the involvement and support of Syria and Hezbollah, although both do not want to expose their roles and use organizations like the Free Palestine Movement as fronts for their activities.
5. Qashlaq revealed his position in an interview with Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV on June 19, 2010. He said that "the day will come when the ships [which arrive at the Gaza Strip] will take the remainder of the European garbage which came to my country [i.e., Israel] back to their homelands, Gilad Shalit will return to Paris and they [the leaders of Israel will return to Poland. Let the murderers go home. After they return we will pursue them everywhere all over the world and try them in court for the slaughters they have carried out from Dir Yassin to this day."
6. Considering the stated positions of Qashlaq and some of those involved in the flotilla, and especially their close ties with Syria and Hezbollah, he apparently wants a violent confrontation between the passengers and the Israeli Air Force and Navy with a lot of media coverage. His intention is to defame Israel, even if his agenda is not necessarily that of the other passengers aboard the ships.
7. More proof that this flotilla, like that of the Mavi Marmara, is meant mainly to create a media circus and incite anti-Israeli propaganda, and not to bring humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip was made public by an Al-Jazeera TV investigative report.
8. The Al-Jazeera TV's Gaza Strip correspondent, revealed that the Gazans responsible for the ministry of health of the de facto Hamas administration were resentful because 70% of the medicines which arrived in the Gaza Strip from the aid convoys from various countries, especially Arab countries, could not be used. They were either unfit for use or their expiry dates had passed by months and sometimes years. They said that one of the convoys had brought dialysis machines which could not be used. The report was also quoted by a daily paper affiliated with the de facto Hamas administration (Al-Jazeera TV, July 20, 2010).

Left: Useless dialysis machines. Right: Drugs whose expiry dates have passed
(Al-Jazeera TV, July 20, 2010).

(h/t Israel Matzav)

Gazans aren't paying their electric bills

Palestine Today reports that a new plan will be put into place to collect overdue electric bills from the tens of thousands of PA employees in Gaza.

The plan, announced today, involves garnishing up to 25% of Gaza employees monthly wages.

As we have mentioned before, Gaza's power plant suffers from a shortage of fuel - but not because of any Israeli policy that limits fuel distribution, but rather because they aren't paying for it.

This new policy will attempt to make a dent in the huge debt that the electric company is under - some 5.2 billion shekels ($1.3 billion.)

New PalArab computer training center

PalPress reports that a new computer training center was opened in Ramallah.

It was named after Mamdouh Sabri Saydam, "one of the most prominent leaders of the Palestinian revolution...who gave his soul the redemption of the homeland" on the 39th anniversary of his "martyrdom."

Who was Saydam?

Mamduh Sabri Saydam [Abu Sabri]:

Former Fatah field commander. Refugee from ‘Aqr (al-Majdal) to Gaza; taught in Algeria and trained in its army in 1964. Recruited through Wazir, and moved to join Fatah field command in Damascus (1965). Member of first Fatah-CC, heading Fatah forces in Jordan in 1970. Died in Jul 71 of cancer.

I wonder if Jordan is happy that Palestinian Arabs are naming institutions after people who tried to topple its government.

Nasrallah continues to make Lebanon nervous

From Ya Libnan:

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech during a ceremony honoring children of the party’s martyrs.

He started out by defending the resistance and pointing out its achievements in 1982 , 2000 and 2006 .

He said :” [Lebanon's enemies] may bargain on gas and oil but they can never bargain on the Resistance.”

He concluded that the “Resistance is the most precious of what we have. We will not allow any small or big person in this world to touch any of its dignity. ”

Nasrallah used the occasion to attack the Special Tribunal for Lebanon for the third time in 10 days.

He accused the UN investigation team of being formed from officers closely associated with Israeli Mossad spy agency :

“Should an Investigation Committee made of Americans and the British government where investigating officers are brought from intelligence services closely linked to the Mossad be entrusted with a big issue at this level?” , he said.

Nasrallah also attacked the March 14 leaders who were critical of his previous two speeches:

“Is the behavior of some political forces in Lebanon and the Attorney General and the International Tribunal the behavior of those who seek the truth?, he said

Nasrallah suggested setting up a Lebanese committee to investigate the issue of false witnesses, who he said “misled the investigation for 4 years.”

“Distortion of the Resistance, the dearest to us, will not be allowed,” he added.

As an editorial in Now Lebanon put it after Nasrallah's second speech attacking the STL:

On the face of it, Thursday night’s speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah marked another milestone in the party’s proud policy of intimidation. Those of us who lived through the attempted coup of May 7, 2008 know only too well what Hezbollah and its allies in the opposition March 8 bloc can and will do if they feel their agenda is under threat.

Nasrallah’s speech, the second in which he has sought to discredit the Special Tribunal for Lebanon – the court formed to find the killers of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others as well as the victims of subsequent political violence – targeted the March 14 bloc and urged its members to reconsider the “choices they made.” In short, as March 14 General Secretariat Coordinator Fares Soueid said in an interview on Saturday with Radio Free Lebanon, Nasrallah was suggesting March 14 surrender the ideals forged in the heat of the 2005 Independence Intifada.

If we follow Hezbollah’s advice, we will have allowed threats and intimidation to derail justice, even if it is sold as a move to avoid civil violence. Nasrallah wants us to believe that the Resistance is more important than justice and that we should give up our pursuit of it because he will allow nothing to harm the Resistance.

Meaning what? That Hezbollah and its allies will take their gunmen onto the streets once again? That the government will be toppled and another more pliant cabinet installed to derail the tribunal? Both courses of action are hardly likely. They would not only be an admission of guilt to all but the most blinkered supporters, but would also once again prove that Hezbollah has no policy for advancing Lebanon as a modern state and no blueprint for building state institutions. It can only offer violence and conflict on behalf of its Iranian clients.

In fact, since 2005, Hezbollah’s contribution to the national whole has been one war, one downtown sit-in and one bout of murderous, civil violence. Let us also not forget the vast array of tools it has at its disposal for obstructing basic constitutional processes, such as elections, the selecting of a president and the forming of a government.

However, Nasrallah's threats may be masking his own nervousness:

But short of throwing out the tried and tested, but ultimately weary Zionist card, Nasrallah has few options. This has been demonstrated by the mixed signals he has sent in the previous 24 hours. He will not allow the Resistance to be harmed, and yet he will enter into talks on the matter, either within the cabinet or at the national dialogue table, but only on the condition that the talks do not start on the basis of Hezbollah’s presumed guilt. These provisos have all the hallmarks of desperation.

First female Arab combat soldier in IDF is proud to serve Israel

From the IDF:

“Look at the beret,” says Elinor, smiling from ear to ear, showing off the bright green beret that she earned after completing the trek which is part of her combat training in the Karakal Battalion. Her excitement is accompanied by a new historical precedent, since Elinor is the first Arab female combat soldier in IDF history.

Cpl. Elinor Jozef was born and raised in an integrated neighborhood of Jews and Arabs in Haifa, but attended a school in which all her classmates were Arab. She later moved to Wadi Nisnas, an Arab neighborhood where she currently lives. Despite the fact that she would always wear her father’s IDF dog-tag around her neck from when he served in the Paratrooper’s Unit, she never thought she would enlist. “I wanted to go abroad to study medicine and never come back,” she said. To her father it was clear that she would enlist in the IDF, as most citizens in Israel do. This was something that worried her very much. “I was scared to lose my friends because they objected to it. They told me they wouldn’t speak to me. I was left alone.”

Despite their opposition, she decided to move forward and enlist. She explained her motive: “I decided to go head-to-head, to check who my true friends are, to do something in life that I have never done before. I understood that it was most important to defend my friends, family, and country. I was born here.” At the end of the day, she says she realized it was the right thing to do, “With time, when you do things from the heart, you begin to understand their importance.”

Al Arabiya has a lengthy and flabbergasted Arabic article on Jozef. When asked if she would kill Arabs if necessary, she answered that she would hardly be the first Arab to kill other Arabs.

She also said that while she doesn't celebrate Yom Ha'atzmaut, she doesn't sit and cry either.

Jews don't visit holy sites - they "storm" them

Palestine Press Agency says,

Hundreds of extremist settlers stormed the Tomb of Joseph after midnight last night, in the eastern city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, in the latest attack in the province.

Witnesses said that approximately 700 settlers arrived in the area under the close protection of the occupation army, and entered the shrine, which is exposed to these sorts of incursions from time to time.

Witnesses added that the settlers performed religious rituals inside the place for about 5 hours before they withdrew in the early morning hours.

Keep in mind that under Oslo II, Jews have the right to visit Jewish shrines under Palestinian Arab control.

Invest in Gaza (new EoZ video)

Better ways to spend aid dollars

A fantastic new video from Free Middle East:

Stomach-turning deprivation continues at Gaza museum

The poor, deprived people of Gaza have yet another place to spend their free time.

Welcome to the Al Mat-haf Museum and Cultural Center.

This is Gaza's main archaeological museum. Overlooking the Mediterranean, it boasts impeccable landscaping.

It includes a full-service restaurant:

It includes a well-manicured indoor terrace, complete with fountains.

The wretched poverty is too much to bear. Just looking at these pictures makes one want to join the next flotilla to help these poor, poor people. In June, 2009, Jimmy Carter visited Gaza. Here is what he said at the time:

To me, the most grievous circumstance is the maltreatment of the people in Gaza, who are literally starving and have no hope at this time.

During that same trip, Carter visited this museum along with John Ging. Here is a picture of Carter planting a tree there, with Ging looking on:

You can see how Carter was grieving at the starving people in the museum. Wearing suits. It looks like Treblinka. The museum part seems to be incidental to the work that goes into the terraces and restaurant spaces. Looking at the pieces in the museum, at least according to their web page, they have not identified a single archaeological object that they have display:

The reason might be because of something that the New York Times mentioned when they profiled the museum in 2008:

His collection includes thousands of items, but some of the most extraordinary will not go on display now, including a statue of a full-breasted Aphrodite in a diaphanous gown, images of other ancient deities and oil lamps featuring menorahs. Asked why, Mr. Khoudary noted Hamas’s rule and the conservative piety of the population and said simply, “I want my project to succeed.”

Gazans can take pride in knowing that their most beautiful treasures are hidden away because of prejudice.

Good news from Sweden

From the Sweden, Israel and the Jews blog:

Sweden often gives the impression that it is blinded by hatred of Israel. However in the last couple of weeks following the Ship to Gaza event, some signs of hope have appeared showing that not everybody refuses to see both sides of the story.
In a public statement, the student union of the ruling Moderate party (Fria Moderaternas Studentforbund) writes "We can unload the ships".

The statement refers to the boycott that the Swedish Dockworkers Union currently is imposing on Israeli cargo arriving to Sweden as well as Swedish cargo destined for Israel. In response to the Dockworkers Union’s boycott, the young Moderates offered to offload and load those ships which the dockworkers refuse to handle.

"Today, the Swedish Dockworkers Union has initiated a blockade of goods to and from Israel. The reason is that Israel did not let through a number of ships which were aiming to break their naval blockade of Hamas. To so clearly take a stance for Hamas and their unlimited naval access to accept all the goods they wish, including weapons, is a manifestation of hate towards Israel, not a support for the suffering population. Those who really want to have peace in the Middle East should instead take a stance against the terror group Hamas and the horrible suffering which it has caused Gaza’s population. It is Hamas's fault that people are suffering in Gaza, not Israel’s."

As a sign of their support of Israel the students have consequently decided to act in order to break the Swedish blockade against Israel and load and unload those ships which the dockworkers refuse to handle.

UPDATE: I didn't realize that this story was from a month ago. Still interesting.