Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Voodoo Palestinian Arab economics and The Guardian (correction)

The Palestinian Authority came out with a paper last month that attempts to place a dollar value of how much the "occupation" costs the Palestinian Arab economy.

I haven't had time to go through the whole thing, but the one section I skipped to shows a serious mathematical error that results in an error of, oh, about 4400%.

Here is their entire chapter on fruit trees, with some very questionable assumptions to begin with:

The Urbanization Monitoring department at the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem estimates that about 2.5 million trees have been uprooted since 1967. The Israeli policy of uprooting trees has been executed for a number of reasons, including the construction of Israeli settlements, the construction of the separation wall, and settlements infrastructure; all of which exclusively benefits the settler population.

Besides representing an irreparable loss to an inherent part of the Palestinians’ land, Israel’s policy of tree uprooting also creates a grave economic damage for the Palestinian people. The vast majority of the uprooted trees have been fruit bearing trees in their highly productive period of life; thus the uprooting has deprived Palestinians of a valuable source of income.

The annual loss for the Palestinian economy is given by the foregone value of the trees’ economic production. ARIJ estimates that around one third of the 2.5 million uprooted trees were olive trees and the remaining consist of other types of fruit trees, including around 34,000 palm trees.

The average annual productivity of one olive tree is about 70 kg (Agriculture department of ARIJ), with olive production being valued at ex farm price of USD 1.103 per kilo, which is an estimate on the basis of data from PCBS (2009b).

Therefore:
The cost of uprooted olive trees/year = 2.5 million x 0.33 x 70 kg /tree x $1.103/kg = USD 55,133,602

The other fruit trees are estimated to have an average annual production of around USD 50, with the exception of palm trees which yield an average production value of USD 70 (data from the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture). Therefore the total production value of these trees is USD 85,713,333 million.

Considering that there is very little intermediate consumption in the production of rain-fed fruit trees, we estimate that the gross value added is around 98% of the production value, so the total forgone value added as a result of uprooted trees by the Israelis is equivalent to USD 138 million per year.

See the error?

Even if you believe the absurd number of 2.5 million trees destroyed, of which over 830,000 were being actively cultivated, and of which the "vast majority" are in their prime productive years...

And even if you ignore the trees that Israel has compensated Palestinian Arab farmers for under various circumstances....

And even if you ignore the new trees that have been planted, not all of which would have been planted had there been no "occupation" to begin with....

And even if the other assumptions given are 100% accurate (I confess I know nothing about the "gross value added" paragraph)....

The paper is taking the total number of 2.5 million trees allegedly destroyed since 1967 and calculating the cost as if it is an annual cost!

Which means that even if the other questionable assumptions are 100% true, you must divide the $138 million figure by the 44 years of Israeli control. the real annual cost of those missing trees is $3 million, not $138 million!

$3 million dollars a year is barely a blip even in the Palestinian Arab economy. They get more than that amount in international aid every day. Arafat used to send his wife over seven times that amount of money annually.

If this is the quality of statistics that the PA is pushing out into the world, then perhaps some people who really understand economics and accounting should be taking a second look at their other figures. It would be difficult to believe that this was a mere oversight; rather in the zeal to inflate the amount of money that Israel is supposedly costing the PA we can expect lots of "mistakes" like this - of course, in only one direction.

If I could find an error this egregious by only glancing at the report, imagine what a real auditor could do with it.

Oh, and I found this report from a link in an article by Harriet Sherwood in The Guardian. Obviously that newspaper does not have the ability to look at anything that is anti-Israel with a critical eye at all, no matter how obvious the errors.

UPDATE: Joe from Australia notes my own error. If the total number of trees destroyed is 2.5 million, and none of them have ever been replaced over the past 44 years, then the annual amount of the loss would be a large number annually this year and going forward. Again, the assumptions are ridiculous, but I made a mistake in my own calculations, which is why I am not an accountant :)

The Harlem Globetrotters played over the weekend in a country that has discriminated against its Palestinian population for over sixty years. Hundreds of thousands of this country's residents are barred from becoming citizens, from buying land, from taking up many types of jobs and even from leaving the wretched, impoverished ghettos they live in. The general population despises their Palestinian Arab minority and would love to ethnically cleanse them if they could.

But no one called for the basketball entertainers to boycott this country and to highlight the nation's official policy of discrimination against Palestinian Arabs.

Why not?

UNRWA just can't avoid blaming Israel

I have noted that the Hamas-dominated teachers' union in Gaza has declared it would go on strike this week to protest UNRWA's suspension of its leader for being politically linked to Hamas. Hamas regards UNRWA as its last major rival in Gaza to be defeated and placed under submission to the self-proclaimed "Islamic Resistance Movement," after Hamas has destroyed or co-opted Fatah and many other militant groups, independent unions and NGOs.

Hamas has attacked UNRWA summer camps, it has waged a lengthy war of words about UNRWA's curriculum, and it has even confiscated UNRWA humanitarian aid.

Yet UNRWA's spokesman will never say a negative word against Hamas.

Here's his latest unbelievable statement, after weeks of silence about this Hamas escalation against UNRWA:

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness called for the union to stop the strike action.

"UNRWA appeals to the staff union in Gaza not to drag some 219,000 innocent children into their escalating campaign of industrial action," he said in a statement received by Ma'an.

"The children of Gaza, living under the Israeli blockade and the constant threat of military action have suffered enough.

"Along with the parents of Gaza and all those who believe in a dignified future for the next generation, we appeal to the union to call off the strike which is damaging the education of our children in 243 UNRWA schools."

Yes, yet again, UNRWA studiously avoids saying a single thing against the Gaza government that has constantly attacked it - and instead says that Israel is the real enemy.

As if Israel is the one that has a problem with UNRWA teaching liberal values and upholding policies to distance its employees from terror groups.

More reports that Abbas plans to dissolve the PA

As I was the first one to report in English last week, afterwards confirmed by Ma'ariv, there is more evidence that Mahmoud Abbas plans to dissolve the Palestinian Authority.

From Asharq al-Awsat:

Despite a number of denials by members of Fatah Movement regarding Israeli press reports that Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas intends on dissolving the Palestinian Authority [PA], sources have stated to Asharq Al-Awsat that President Abbas intends on reverting the situation in the Palestinian territories to what it had been before the creation of the PA in 1994, which means handing over the management affairs of the West Bank to the administration of the Israeli occupation, which means, in other words, dissolving the PA.
Asharq Al-Awsat has learned from a high-ranking Palestinian source that Abbas has recently sent two messages that include this idea to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and the US Administration. This has been confirmed by a source of the Fatah Central Committee, but the difference between the two sources is that the first speaks about written correspondence while the second talks about verbal exchanges.

However, the two sources agreed on the identities of the conveyers of the these two messages since the message to Israel was conveyed by Hussein al-Sheikh, member of Fatah Central Committee and the official in charge of civil affairs in the PA who is responsible for coordination with the Israeli Civil Administration. As for the message to the United States, it was conveyed by Saeb Erekat, the PLO chief negotiator and member of Fatah Central Committee.

According to the high-ranking source, this is an important, serious, sudden step, which President Abbas spoke about, and it will be revealed within a month (which means soon after the Security Council votes on the UN membership request for the state of Palestine, the discussion on which is scheduled to start on 11 November). Abbas spoke about this step in an interview with an Egyptian satellite channels a few days ago, and repeated it in his speech at the Revolutionary Council of Fatah Movement, which began its meetings in Ramallah last Wednesday night and concluded yesterday with a joint-final statement.

During his visit to New York to submit the application of Palestine to the United Nations last September, Abbas told Asharq Al-Awsat that actually a National Authority [PA] does not exist and he is not going to accept to carry out the tasks of a head of municipality.

The contents of these messages are the same, according to the two sources who differed on some words, since the Fatah source said that the two messages do not at all include the phrase of dissolving the PA "because we are against dissolving the PA, which we consider a national achievement, but they speak about the collapse of the PA, and the occupation [authority] assuming its role." The Fatah source added that "Hussein al-Sheikh informed the Israelis to prepare themselves to receive these administrations and what they handed over to us (which means after Oslo Accords) because we do not work for them"

The source added: "Hussein al-Sheikh told the Israelis that we are going to return the 3,000 rifles that you allowed for us (in reference to halting the security coordination)." The official said that "this talk in this way means that the PA does not exist, and therefore, let the occupation authority return to shoulder its responsibilities in the Palestinian territories."

Some Arabic-language analysts predict that a new intifada will inevitably break out if the PA is dissolved, which is probably true. Also remember that the single biggest employer in the West Bank is the PA, with some 170,000 jobs. Take that away and all of the economic and lifestyle gains that Palestinian Arabs have enjoyed since Oslo will disappear, and unemployment will skyrocket.

Will the Palestinian Arabs in Area A, who now enjoy essentially all the benefits of a state, be happy with this?

Can you imagine Kurdish leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan dissolving their autonomous region in order to gamble their people's lives to gain a UN seat?

What this all comes down to is more proof, as if more were needed, that the welfare of the Palestinian Arab people has never been a priority for any of their so-called "leaders." They are willing to throw all of their gains away for their own twisted senses of "honor" and "justice." They are anxious to use their own people's lives as pawns on the off chance that by doing so they can hurt Israel. The very concept of compromise with the Jewish state is so unthinkable that they prefer to choose an all-or-nothing scenario that is guaranteed to end up disastrous. And the ones who will be hurt the most are their own people.

It is a truly sick mentality, but one that the West refuses to notice.

Yet it is exactly now that Western leaders must stand up and publicly shame Abbas for even considering the idea. Now is the time for ordinary Palestinian Arabs to undergo their own "spring" where they tell their unelected leaders to stop playing stupid political games with their lives.

(h/t CHA)

Abbas, look in the mirror (poster)

From Ha'aretz:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday in an interview with Channel 2 that the Arab world erred in rejecting the United Nations' 1947 plan to partition Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish state.

The Palestinian and Arab refusal to accept a UN plan to partition the then-British-controlled mandate of Palestine sparked widespread fighting, then Arab military intervention after Israel declared independence the following year. The Arabs lost the war.

"It was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Channel 2.

Yet Abbas is just as rejectionist as the Palestinian Arab leaders were in 1947, as he has rejected offers of peace that would end the conflict - and today keeps adding pre-conditions before even talking to Israel.

So while hindsight is 20/20, Abbas cannot learn the obvious lessons:

It's amazing that Arab leaders keep claiming that time is on their side, and only realize that their intransigence has set their cause further behind decades after the fact.

And one only has to read the many articles in the 1950s and 1960s where Arab leaders say that Israel is not viable, that it cannot succeed economically, that all they need to do is wait - to see that nothing has changed.

EoZ poster sighting at Columbia U

From The Forward:

Pro-Palestinian student activists are planning a national conference this month that they hope will bring new coordination and potency to the anti-Israel movement on campus.

The group Students for Justice in Palestine is already one of the most active pro-Palestinian groups at North American universities, but its diffuse chapters share no formal organizational ties. That could change this month, as student members try to unite into a more cohesive national group.

“SJP’s have decided to form their own national body to make sure students are at the forefront of deciding what the student movement is pursuing and how it pursues it, rather than off-campus organizations,” said Yaman Salahi, a student at Yale Law School and member of the ad hoc national committee that has organized the event.

From The Silent Majority:

The Anti-Israel Conference, unopposed, was held ON campus at Columbia University.

Of course, the conference isn’t the first time these students were fed such a heavy dose of racism.

But, we were pleased to see a counter-protest outside the campus gate.

Some protesters came independently, alerted by e-mails or social media. Others were members of groups such as Americans for a Safe Israel, Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam, Amcha-Coalition for Jewish Concerns, National Council on Jewish Affairs, and Liberals for Israel. Among the many signs they held up to passers-by were "Occupy Columbia With Truth and Justice, not Lies and Anti-Israel Incitement".

Among the photos in the article we can see a counter-protester holding up one of my posters:

And they didn't even crop out my name:

The Cynical Arab has a much harsher piece about the counter-protesters, and specifically quotes mine (he also has photos of it.)

The original poster can be found here. (h/t CHA)

(h/t Ian)

Assad warns against Western intervention in Syria

From the Sunday Telegraph:

In his first interview with a Western journalist since Syria's seven-month uprising began, President Assad told The Sunday Telegraph that intervention against his regime could cause "another Afghanistan".

Western countries "are going to ratchet up the pressure, definitely," he said. "But Syria is different in every respect from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen. The history is different. The politics is different.

"Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the fault line, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake … Do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans?

"Any problem in Syria will burn the whole region. If the plan is to divide Syria, that is to divide the whole region."

Assad chose his interviewer, Andrew Gilligan, skillfully, as the actual interview is filled with praise for the ruthless mass murderer - and it resembles the infamous Vogue puff piece inthe Assads in a number of ways:

When you go to see an Arab ruler, you expect vast, over-the-top palaces, battalions of guards, ring after ring of security checks and massive, deadening protocol. You expect to wait hours in return for a few stilted minutes in a gilded reception room, surrounded by officials, flunkies and state TV cameras. You expect a monologue, not a conversation. Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, was quite different.

We sat, just the three of us, on leather sofas in Assad’s small study. The president was wearing jeans. It was Friday, the main protest day in Syria: the first Friday since the death of Colonel Gaddafi had sunk in. But the man at the centre of it all, the man they wanted to destroy, looked pretty relaxed.

On Thursday night, the beginning of the Muslim weekend, Damascus’s Old City was heaving with people having a good time. Men and women were mixing freely. Alcohol was widely available. A pair of Christian Orthodox priests, in their long cassocks, walked through the crowded alleys, and small Christian shrines were tucked away in the corners. The regime is successfully pushing the message that all this is at risk. “I don’t like Assad, but I am worried that what follows could be worse,” said one of the partygoers. On Wednesday, Damascus witnessed a large pro-Assad demonstration: Western journalists who observed it say that the participants did not appear to have been coerced.

Assad himself could not be further from a ranting, Gaddafi-like Arab dictator. His English is perfect — he lived for two years in London, where he met his wife. In conversation he was open, even at times frank. “Many mistakes,” he admitted, had been made by the security forces – though no one, it seems, has been brought to book for them. He could both make, and take, a joke. A former president of the Syrian Computer Society, he sometimes explained things in computer terms.

Comparing Syria’s leadership with that of a Western country, he said, was like comparing a Mac with a PC. “Both computers do the same job, but they don’t understand each other,” he said. “You need to translate. If you want to analyse me as the East, you cannot analyse me through the Western operating system, or culture. You have to translate according to my operating system, or culture.” That’s the inner nerd in you speaking, I said, and he laughed out loud. I can’t imagine too many other Arab leaders you could get away with calling a nerd.

Assad lives in a relatively small house in a normal – albeit guarded – street. He believes that his modest lifestyle is another component of his appeal. “There is a legitimacy according to elections and there is popular legitimacy,” he said. “If you do not have popular legitimacy, whether you are elected or not you will be removed – look at all the coups we had.

“The first component of popular legitimacy is your personal life. It is very important how you live. I live a normal life. I drive my own car, we have neighbours, I take my kids to school. That’s why I am popular. It is very important to live this way – that is the Syrian style.”

That might not amount to much against the pile of corpses in Homs, Hama, and elsewhere, but from conversations with residents in Damascus at least, it does in fact seem to make Assad somewhat better esteemed by his own people than many other Arab rulers.

Wow, sounds like a really hard-hitting interview!

It doesn't even appear that Gilligan asked Assad to deny whether he threatened to shoot hundreds of missiles at Tel Aviv if Western forces intervene in Syria's bloodbath. I mean, he was so polite in his modest study, why ask something that might dampen the mood on the same day that 40 people were murdered by his soldiers?

Was this interview arranged by another PR firm hired by Assad to burnish his image? Or is Gilligan just that much of a fan of Arab despots?

See also Nir Rosen - in Al Jazeera - describe how the Alawite minority in Syria holds all the political and military power.

(h/t Yoel)

"The West is hijacking the Arab spring - to the benefit of Islamists"

When writers like Barry Rubin warn about the dangers of Islamism in the context of the "Arab Spring," the mainstream media tends to marginalize it and the Left dismisses it as right-wing paranoia and anti-Arab racism.

Which makes this article by Raghida Dergham so vitally important. Not only because she is an Arab woman, but also because it was published in both the pan-Arab Dar al Hayat newspaper and in Al Arabiya:

While the West speaks of the necessity of accepting the results of the democratic process, in terms of Islamists coming to power in the Arab region, there are increased suspicions regarding the goals pursued by the West in its new policy of rapprochement with the Islamist movement, in what is a striking effort at undermining modern, secular and liberal movements. The three North African countries in which revolutions of change have taken place, are witnessing a transitional process that is noteworthy, not just in domestic and local terms, but also in terms of the roles played by foreign forces, both regional and international.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is trying to hijack the youth’s revolution with the help of the West. This is while bearing in mind that Egypt is considered to be the “command center” for the Muslim Brotherhood’s network in different Arab countries. The followers of the Ennahda in Tunisia are wrapping their message with moderation as they prepare to hijack the democracy that Tunisia’s youth dream of, while being met by applause and encouragement from the West in the name of the “fairness” of the electoral process. Libya, where the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) is in a “marriage of convenience” with Islamist rebels, has become a hub of extremism and lawlessness, with a plethora of military aid being collected by an assortment of armed Islamists who aim to exclude others from power. In Yemen, where a struggle for power rages on, a war is taking place between extremism and a harsher and more violent brand of extremism, with so-called “moderate Islam” in the middle as a means of salvation, even as the latter’s ideology remains neither modern nor liberal, and is rather lacking when it comes to the fundamentals of democracy and equality. In Syria, where the battle for freedom is at its most difficult phase, the youths of the revolution fear what could very much be under discussion behind the scenes between the West and the Islamist movements, in terms of collaboration and of strengthening the Islamists’ hold on power, in a clear bid to hijack the revolution of a youth that aspires to freedom in its every sense, not to yet another brand of tyranny and authoritarianism.

Yet despite increasing talk and concern over the unnatural relationship between the West and Islamist movements in the Arab region, there is growing insistence among the region’s enlightened and modern youths that they will not allow this relationship to direct their lives and dictate their course. It would thus be more logical for the West to listen carefully to what is happening at the youths’ scene, as well as on the traditional secularist and modernist scenes, and to realize the danger of what it is doing for these elements and the road to change brought about by the Arab Spring.

The obsession of some Westerners with the so-called “Turkish model” of “moderate Islam,” able to rule with discipline and democracy, seems naïve, essentially because of its assumption that such a model can automatically be applied on the Arab scene, without carefully considering the different background and conditions that exist in Turkey and the Arab countries. There is also some naivety in assuming than the “Iranian model” of religious autocratic rule that oppresses people, forbids pluralism and turns power into tyranny, can be excluded as a possibility.

The New York Times would never dream of publishing such seeming heresy - yet the secular Arab press is anxious to.

The entire article is a must-read.

(h/t JW)

A small victory

Last week I discovered that a Ma'an story claiming that an 11-year old boy was released after five months in an Israeli prison, which was copied and retweeted on anti-Israel sites, was not true.

The real story was that a 17 year old stone-thrower was imprisoned for 4 months before being released.

After I brought it to their attention, Ma'an corrected the story. (In Arabic, they corrected the age but still refer to him multiple times as a "child.")

The unanswered question is whether a Ma'an reporter was physically there during his release. The article claims that "Israeli forces tried to forbid people who were waiting for the child near the checkpoint from welcoming him and tried to remove Palestinian flags that were on cars near the checkpoint." But if the reporter, who presumably knows the difference between an 11 year old child and a 17-year old, was not there, then how was this information obtained? The article doesn't say "witnesses said" or anything like that.

Nevertheless, it is a very small victory in the war against the huge amount of misinformation out there.

Saudi prince ups reward for kidnapping Israeli soldier to $1 million

From YNet:

Saudi Prince Khaled bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud declared Saturday he would give $900,000 to whoever abducts an Israeli soldier in order to be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

In an interview with Saudi TV, bin Talal stressed that his offer was in response to a similar offer made by a Saudi cleric who earlier this week said he would give $100,000 to anyone who would kidnap an Israeli soldier.

"Al-Qarni offered $100,000 to whoever abducts (an Israeli soldier) and I say to him – I sympathize with you and am offering $900,000 to put the figure at $1 million," he said.

Prince Khaled is the third son of Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi King's brother.

Peninsula Online adds:

Prince Khaled, originally quoted by the Palestinian network Al Wattan TV, said, “Al Qarni offered $100,000 for whoever kidnaps a soldier, then (unnamed Israeli groups) offered $1m to kill Al Qarni, and now I’m saying to Al Qarni that I’m supporting you by offering another $900,000, which will make it a million for whoever kidnaps a soldier,”

He doesn't name the group that supposedly offered a million dollars to kill al Qarni. My guess is that it never happened, or some teen on Facebook wrote it where it got picked up and exaggerated in Arabic media.

Either way, this means that Saudi Arabia is officially supporting the violation of the Geneva Conventions against taking hostages

Shouldn't someone be asking Saudi officials about this?

The hypocrisy of the Israeli Left, perfectly captured

I noted an absurd Ha'aretz op-ed by Alon Idan the other day where he said, among other things:

The Shalit deal is, in fact, a public display of Israel's racist price index. The ceremony occurs every few years, and the index is designed to update the market values of the region's various races. As of October 2011, in the Israeli market, the price of one Jew equals 1,027 Arabs. And the price increases every day.

But a few months ago, during Shalit's fifth anniversary in captivity, here is what Idan wrote:

Shalit will not be freed because, contrary to conventional wisdom, the push for his release is not nonpartisan; it is part of a struggle that falls along classic political lines.

Suffice it to look at reality itself - Gilad Shalit is still in captivity.... The seeming gap between the public's desire to "pay any price" for Shalit's freedom and the government's opposition to doing so is deceptive. The fact that the situation has not changed means there isn't really a gap, that pressure isn't really being exerted from below - and if it is, it's not strong enough to break the ruling paradigm.

The absence of such pressure is no accident. It faithfully reflects the fact that the issue fall along classic political lines: the left is in favor of releasing Shalit, the right is against it, and the center says it's in favor but acts against it.

Besides how obviously wrong he was about how the right were indeed the ones that freed Shalit, Idan is identifying the desire to free Shalit "at any price" with the Left that he is a part of.

But when Israel does release Shalit for 1027 prisoners, he deems that to prove Israel's racism!

So by the calculus of his later article, the Israeli Left must be racist, since in his words they would have been willing to release many, many more prisoners to get Shalit back!

As usual, the anti-Zionist Left will twist whatever facts they can to make a political point, consistency be damned.

(h/t Guillermo)

Ashkelon father killed in rocket barrage; PIJ video of new multiple launcher

Some 24 rockets (update: 35) were launched towards civilian areas in Israel this evening, killing Moshe Ami from Ashkelon. He was a father of four.

Islamic Jihad, via their Palestine Today website, is bragging that they are using a new kind of multiple rocket launcher. Here's the video they posted:

Will the UN continue to call these "home made rockets"?