We knew he was a terrorist, but a butcher too?
Of course, the meat is Halal.
(h/t Silke)
On May 16, 2006, after four-day conference of the Arab Boycott Bureau in Damascus, Syria, a "source close to the conference" reported that "the majority of Arab countries are evading the boycott, notably the [Persian] Gulf states and especially Saudi Arabia. ... The boycott deteriorated a lot, regressed and even almost collapsed... We should not lie on each other, because the boycott is quasi... paralyzed.
The presence of the international community in the Gaza Strip is vital to the stability of the de-facto government; over 60% of the Gazan population is food insecure, according to UN sources, and unemployment surpasses 50%; thus, a majority of the population is either partially or entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. The assistance provided by the international community, particularly by UNRWA and WFP. eases the burden on the de-facto government of managing the needs of its impoverished and dispossessed population, enabling the de-facto government to achieve a modicum of legitimacy. Thus, even the partial reduction or suspension of humanitarian aid activities in the Gaza Strip as a consequence of a disintegrating internal security environment would have devastating consequences for both the population and the de-facto government's legitimacy.The skepticism of regarding Hamas as a terror organization is evident in this report, as well as the pride in how NGOs prop up Hamas as a political force.
The presence of the international community in the Gaza Strip is also a major political benefit to the de-facto government. The willingness of international governmental and non-governmental organizations to send diplomatic delegations and expatriate staff into the Gaza Strip demonstrates a level of trust in the security infrastructure of the de-facto authority.
Moreover, the presence of expatriate staff in Gaza implies that expatriates do not feel threatened by the de-facto government itself a boon to the credibility of the Hamas movement in the international arena, in which the movement has for years been labeled as a terrorist organizationh by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
In a spat last week, Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights, which helps Palestinians harvest their olives in the West Bank, confronted [Erez] Ben-Saadon and accused him of using land owned by Palestinians.This perfectly fits in with the meme of fanatic, religious settlers disregarding the law to grab land that belongs to Palestinian farmers - a meme that is so widespread as to be axiomatic among many.
Ben-Saadon said he was farming on land given to Jewish settlers by the Israeli military. He said he had no ownership papers -- but needed none.
"Our land deed is the Bible," Ben Saadon said.
Near Har Bracha, a verbal confrontation erupted yesterday between Jewish farmer Erez Ben Sa'adon and Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the head of Rabbis for Human Rights. Ascherman claimed Ben Sa'adon was harvesting olives that belonged to Palestinians from nearby Karyut. Ben Sa'adon, whose nearby vineyard had been destroyed by unidentified parties the previous night, said he had leased that plot for the past 12 years and the olives were his.It certainly looks like the AP reporter read the Ha'aretz story and purposefully omitted the part where Ben Sa'adon was proven to be the rightful owner of the olives, and Arik Ascherman proven wrong.
Civil Administration officials were called to resolve the dispute, and they summoned the mayor of Karyut - who admitted that the trees belonged to Ben Sa'adon.
Academic normalization with Israel is very dangerous, since he sees it as an attempt to perform a "Zionistic brainwash".
United Nations Special Middle East Peace Negotiator Robert H. Serry told Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Tuesday that the UN will a support the declaration of an independent Palestinian state. Serry spoke to Fayyad while the two picked olives together near the West Bank village of Turmus'ayyeh, close to the Israeli settlement of Shiloh.
According to “confidential reports,” the French Defense Ministry has information about Hezbollah’s arms supply route to Lebanon through Syria, French newspaper Le Figaro reported on Tuesday.
In the weeks following Operation Cast Lead, Israel's air and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008 and 2009, the rich oil sheikdom of Qatar and other Persian Gulf governments vowed to dig deep into their desert robes to help Palestinians rebuild. Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, pledged $40 million in February, 2009, to fund humanitarian relief operations by five U.N. agencies, including $30 million for U.N. humanitarian operations in Gaza and an additional $10 million for a U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) set up to respond to humanitarian emergencies anywhere in the world. The office of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon greeted the pledge with effusive praise.We once again see how deep Arab commitment is to helping out Palestinian Arabs in their everyday lives.
But the money has never arrived.
U.N. officials say that their repeated requests to Qatar to honor its commitment have been met with vague responses indicating that it is facing what it has described as "unforeseen circumstances." Steve O'Malley, the chief of the CERF secretariat, said simply: "We followed up with the Qataris and they are following up back in Doha."
The Qatari mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.
Qatar's Gaza pledge illustrates one of the truisms about international aid: Faced with conflicts or natural disasters that capture the world's attention, states make generous pledges. But getting them to actually cut a check requires a sustained diplomatic effort by the United Nations. The problem has been particularly acute in the Arab world, where governments have consistently fallen short of their commitments to the Palestinians, according to U.N. officials.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is responsible for assisting more than 4.7 million Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East, has been hit especially hard as a result of a global financial crisis.
The agency is facing an $80 million funding shortfall, and will not be able to pay salaries beyond November, according to UNRWA officials. The agency's largest donors -- the United States, Britain and the European Commission -- have continued to fund UNRWA, providing 95 percent of its operating budget, according to agency officials.
But they say efforts to convince Arab governments to meet their commitments have fallen short. "UNRWA faces an unprecedentedly serious financial situation this year," Andrew Whitley, the director of UNRWA's New York office, told Turtle Bay. "Certain donors have not kept up with their promises while others have been pressured to cut back because of the financial crisis."
"Our biggest donors have maintained, and in some cases increased, their contributions slightly," Whitley added. "But our efforts to broaden the donor base to non-traditional donors, particularly Arab governments, have not borne fruit."
In September, at a conference of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo, Filippo Grandi, UNRWA's commissioner general, said that Arab countries needed to address the crisis or they would face the prospect of greater political insecurity in the region.
Andrew Whitley, due to soon leave his post as director of the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency’s New York office, told the National Council for US-Arab Relations’ annual conference that...Palestinians must start acknowledging that the refugees will almost certainly not be returning to Israel, so that they can improve their situation.So how predictable was this? From UNRWA:
Palestinians have long maintained a “right of return” to Israel and the homes they – or their ancestors – fled during Israel’s 1948/49 War of Independence. The issue has been one of the most difficult to resolve in peace negotiations.
“If one doesn’t start a discussion soon with the refugees for them to consider what their own future might be – for them to start debating their own role in the societies where they are rather than being left in a state of limbo where they are helpless but preserve rather the cruel illusions that perhaps they will return one day to their homes – then we are storing up trouble for ourselves,” he declared.
Whitley acknowledged that few Palestinians or even officials in his own organization have been willing to publicly discuss the issue.
“We recognize, as I think most do, although it’s not a position that we publicly articulate, that the right of return is unlikely to be exercised to the territory of Israel to any significant or meaningful extent,” he said.
“It’s not a politically palatable issue, it’s not one that UNRWA publicly advocates, but nevertheless it’s a known contour to the issue.”
UNRWA unequivocally distances itself from the statements made by the Director of its office in New York, Andrew Whitley, at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations in Washington on 22 October 2010. These statements in no way reflect the policies or positions of the Agency and are the personal views of Mr Whitley.Because it is better to pretend a problem doesn't exist than to tackle it.
The Hamas-led government in Gaza has warned officials and leaders of Palestinian factions to avoid buying the new cars that have been entering the Strip over the month, according to media reports late Monday.So let's wait for ordinary Gazans to buy them and see if they get blown up!
"A note has been circulated to all concerned parties, warning them of the new cars the Israeli occupation has allowed in Gaza before they undergo special tests by security services," a Gaza security source said according to one report.
Gaza Interior Ministry spokesman Ihab Al-Ghussein confirmed the report, saying " ... it is still a possibility that the occupation fixes tracking devices to the cars or even booby-traps them."
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!