יום שלישי, 17 במאי 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

How anti-Israel propagandists lie - AIPAC edition

Posted: 16 May 2011 10:53 PM PDT

I just saw a slick video meant to turn Americans against Israel by demonizing AIPAC (and, subtly, Jews.) So I quickly made a response by putting captions on top.

(Sorry, not as well-done as most of my videos, but I don't have my normal video editing tools available.)

NYT calls 2001 Clinton parameters "hawkish" - because Netanyahu said them

Posted: 16 May 2011 08:15 PM PDT

If anyone needs any more proof of the bias of the New York Times, it can be seen in this article by Ethan Bronner:
Days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to meet with President Obama, he laid out his principles Monday for accepting a Palestinian state, showing greater flexibility on territory but still pursuing a far more hawkish approach than any Palestinian leader is likely to accept.
And what is Netanyahu's "hawkish" approach?

Mr. Netanyahu showed more willingness to yield territory than he had before, strongly implying that he would give up the vast majority of the West Bank for a demilitarized Palestinian state. He said Israel needed to hold onto all of Jerusalem and the large settlement blocs in the West Bank, thereby suggesting that he would yield the rest.

The other principles he enumerated included Palestinian recognition of Israel as the home of the Jewish people, an agreement to end the conflict, resolving the refugee problem only within the new state of Palestine and an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley.

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly rejected every one of those.
Netanyahu has proposed something very close to the Clinton parameters of 2001 (the major exceptions being the recognition of Israel as the "Jewish state," and possibly parts of Jerusalem.) But when a Likud leader proposes a compromise that gets utterly rejected by Palestinian Arabs without even a counter-offer, it is Israel that is regarded as being intransigent and "hawkish."

Recall, also, that it is Abbas who is refusing to hold talks, not Netanyahu.

By any yardstick, it is Abbas who is being "hawkish." But that doesn't fit into the NYT meme of Israel being the guilty party in negotiations.

Bronner, who used to be somewhat even-handed, has gone way downhill in recent weeks.

(h/t David G)

The Arab Apartheid (Ben-Dror Yemini) - MUST READ

Posted: 16 May 2011 02:12 PM PDT

The wonderful Israelinurse translated this must-read article from Ben Dror Yemini in Maariv over the weekend for me.

The Arab apartheid


The real 'Naqba' is the story of the Arab apartheid. Tens of millions, including Jews, suffered from 'Naqba', which included theft, expulsion and becoming a refugee. Only the Palestinians remain refugees because they were victims of persecution and repression at the hands of Arab states. This is the story of the real 'Naqba'.


In the year 1959 the Arab League accepted decision number 1457 and this is its text: "Arab states will reject the giving of citizenship to applicants of Palestinian origin in order to prevent their integration into the host countries". This is a shocking decision, which stands in stark opposition to international norms on all subjects concerning the treatment of refugees during those years and particularly during that decade. The story began, of course, in the year 1948, the days of the Palestinian 'Naqba'. This is also the beginning of every discussion on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, with an accusing finger pointed at Israel with the claim that she expelled refugees and turned them into miserable people. This lie has become the property of many from the academia and the media who deal with the subject.

In previous articles on the question of the refugees we have already clarified that there is nothing unique this subject to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Firstly, Arab countries refused to accept the Partition plan and started a war of total destruction against Israel, which had barely been established. Every precedent on this subject reveal that whoever initiates a war, especially with declarations of total destruction, pays a price for that.

Secondly, we are actually talking about an exchange of populations: yes, there were between 550 -710 thousand Arabs (the most accurate calculations are those of Professor Ephraim Karsh, who counted and found numbers between 583-609 thousand. Most ran away, a minority were expelled, because of the war, and a greater number of around 850,000 Jews were expelled or escaped from Arab countries ("the Jewish Naqba").

Thirdly, the Palestinians are not alone in this story. Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm in those years. They happened in tens of other sites of conflict and around 52 million people experienced loss of property, expulsion and uprooting ("And the world lies").

And fourth, in all the precedents of population exchange which took place during or at the end of armed conflict, or against the background of the creation of national entities, or the breakdown of multi-ethnic countries and establishment of national entities – there was no return of refugees to their previous areas which had become a new nation. The uprooted and the refugees, almost without exception, found refuge in places where they joined populations with a similar ethnic background: the ethnic Germans expelled from central and eastern Europe integrated into Germany, the Hungarians expelled from Czechoslovakia and other places found refuge in Hungary, the Ukrainians expelled from Poland found refuge in the Ukraine – and so on. In this sense, the similarity of the Palestinians originating from Mandate Palestine to their neighbours in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon was similar, or even greater than, the similarity between many ethnic Germans and the original state in Germany, sometimes after separation of many generations.

Arab countries, and only they, behaved in the opposite manner to the rest of the nations of the world. They trampled the refugees, despite the fact that they shared the same religion and were part of the same Arab nation. They adopted an apartheid system in every sense. So the 'Naqba', one must remember, was not created by the actual uprooting, as happened to millions. The 'Naqba' is the story of apartheid and persecution which the Arab refugees suffered (only later did they become 'Palestinians') in Arab countries.

Egypt:

During long periods of time there was no real distinction made between the residents of Egypt and the residents of the coastal plain (of Israel). Both groups were Muslim Arabs who lived under the Ottoman regime. According to the researcher Oroub El-Abed, commercial and trade ties existed between the two groups, mutual immigration and marriage took place as a matter of course. Many of the citizens of Jaffa were defined as Egyptian because they arrived there in waves of immigration such as the one to Jaffa in the days of the invasion by Mohammed Ali and his sons of many areas of the coastal plain. Residents of the Ottoman Empire, which became Mandate Palestine, did not have a different ethnic or religious identity from those of the Egyptian Arabs.

Various records from the end of 1949 show that some 202,000 refugees arrived in the Gaza strip, mostly from Jaffa, Be'er Sheva and Majdal (Ashkelon). The numbers may be inflated because some of the local poor also joined the list of those receiving welfare hand-outs. The refugees arrived in a place where they were part of the majority from all points of view: ethnic, national and religious. Egypt thought differently. For a start, as early as September 1948, the "Government of all of Palestine" was set up, under Ahmed al-Baki. This was an Egyptian-sponsored organisation, which sprang from rivalry with Jordan. The so-called Palestinian government faded away after a decade.

What happened to the people of the Gaza Strip? How did the Egyptians treat them? Strangely, there are very few items of research relating to those days. But it is a little difficult to hide that not so distant past. The Strip became a closed camp. The exit from Gaza was almost impossible. The Gazans (indigenous and refugees) were subject to strict limitations on employment, education and more. Every evening a curfew was enforced from sunset to sunrise the next day. Only in one field did Egypt help as much as it could: textbooks contained severe incitement against Jews. As early as 1950 Egypt informed the UN that "due to over-population" it could not help the Palestinians by resettling them. That was a suspect excuse. Egypt scuppered a proposal by the UN to re-settle 150,000 refugees in Libya. Even many of the refugees who had run away earlier and were in Egypt proper were forced to move to the giant concentration camp which was being created in the Gaza Strip. In fact, all the proposals for the re-settlement of refugees were brought down by the Arab nations.
Despite the total closure, there are witness statements telling what happened in the Strip in those years. The American journalist Martha Gellhorn visited the refugee camps in 1961. She arrived in the Strip too. It wasn't simple. Gellhorn describes the bureaucratic torture involved in securing an entry visa to Gaza, the days of waiting in Cairo. She also describes the "stark contrast between the pleasantries of the clerks and the anti-Semitic propaganda flowering in Cairo". "The Gaza Strip is not a hole", recounts Gellhorn, "but a big prison. The Government of Egypt is the prison guard". She describes a strict military regime, with all the elite of the Gaza Strip residents expressing devoutly Nasserite views. And so, for instance, "during 13 years (1948-1961) only 300 refugees received temporary exit visas". The only thing the Egyptians provided for the Palestinians was hate propaganda.

This isn't the only witness. In 1966 a Saudi Arabian newspaper published a letter from a resident of the Strip:
"I would be happy if the Strip was conquered by Israel. That way at least we would know that those who abuse our honour, hurt us and torture us – are the Zionist oppressor, Ben Gurion and not the Arab brother whose name is Abdel Nasser. The Jews did not suffer under Hitler as we are suffering under Nasser. In order to go to Cairo or Alexandria or other towns, we have to go through torture."

Radio Jeddah in Saudi Arabia broadcasted the following:

"We are aware of the laws which prevent Palestinians from working in Egypt. We must ask Cairo what is this iron curtain which Abdel Nasser and his band have erected around the strip and the refugees? The military governor in Gaza has forbidden every Arab to travel to Cairo without a military permit, which is valid for only 24 hours. Imagine, Arabs, how Nasser, who claims to be the Arab national pioneer, is behaving towards the miserable Arabs of Gaza, who are starving whilst the military governor and his officers enjoy the riches of the Strip."


Even if we take into account that these are exaggerated descriptions, in a framework of the struggle between Saudi Arabia and Nasser, still we are left with a repressive regime of two decades. And it is worth noting another fact – when Israel got to the Strip the local life expectancy was just 48. After a little more than two decades, life expectancy jumped to 72, and surpassed Egypt. More than allocating points to Israel, this just clarifies the depths in which the Strip was during Egyptian rule.

Refugees from Mandate Palestine also lived in Egypt itself. Many of them did not feel Palestinian and preferred integration. The Egyptians prevented them from achieving that. Apart from a short period of time considered a 'golden era', in some of the years of Nasser's rule, which did not include the Gaza Strip refugees, those in Egypt too suffered restrictions on land purchase, employment in some professions and education (for instance a ban on the establishment of Palestinian schools). Egyptian citizenship law allows citizenship for anyone with an Egyptian father, and was subsequently extended to include Egyptian mothers. But in practice, limitations were placed upon those considered Palestinian. Even an Egyptian court decision to cancel the restrictions did not help. The new regime in Egypt recently promised change. The change, if it does occur, can wipe out years of discrimination, which even reached collective punishment. For instance in 1978 the Egyptian Minister of Culture - Yussuf al Shiba'I - was murdered in Cyprus by an assassin from the Abu Nidal group. In retaliation, the Palestinians suffered a new wave of attacks and the Egyptian Parliament renewed laws putting restrictions on Palestinians in education and employment.

Jordan:


Exactly as the identity and the unity between the Arabs of Jaffa and the south of Israel and the Arabs of Egypt were one, a similar identity existed between the Arabs of the West Bank and the Arabs of Jordan. So, for instance, the Bedouin of the Majalis (or Majilis) tribe from the Al Karak area are originally from Hebron. In the days of the Ottoman Empire the eastern bank of the Jordan was part of the province of Damascus, just like other parts of what later became the protectorate of the British Mandate. The area today called Jordan was supposed to be part of the Jewish National Home, according to the Balfour Declaration.

The initial plight of the refugees on both sides of the Jordan was enormous. In the Schem area, for example, witness statements said that "Iraqi soldiers take the children of the rich and others for indecent deeds and return the children to their families the next day, the residents are frequently arrested". Yes, Arab solidarity. Jordan, so it would seem, related differently to the refugees. According to a Jordanian law from the year 1954, every refugee who was in Jordan between 1948 and 1954 had the right to citizenship. Except that this was no more than an external façade. The following is a description of the reality under Jordanian rule in the West Bank:

"We have not forgotten and will never forget the nature of the regime which denigrated our honour and trod on our human feelings. A regime which was built on inquisition and the boots of the people of the desert. We lived for a long time under the humiliation of Arab nationalism, and it hurts us to say that we needed to wait for the Israeli occupation in order to become aware of humanitarian treatment of citizens."


As these words may sound like a public relations booklet from the occupation regime, it is necessary to point out that they were published, in the name of visitors from the West Bank, in an interview in the Lebanese newspaper 'Al Huadat' on 23.4.71.

As in all the other Arab nations, Jordan did nothing to dismantle the refugee camps. Whilst Israel was receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees, from Europe and from the Arab states, into similar camps (Ma'abarot), but went through a tortuous period of rehabilitation, building of new settlements and the dismantling of the camps, Jordan behaved in the opposite manner, and prevented all rehabilitation. In those same two decades not one institution of higher education was built in the West Bank. Higher Education there began in the seventies as a result of the Israeli rule.

The citizenship which had been given to the refugees was mostly for appearances' sake. Even though the Palestinians make up more than 50% of Jordan's population, they are eligible for only 18 seats, out of 110, in the Jordanian Parliament, and only 9 senators, out of 55, which are appointed by the king. It must be remembered that in only one month, September 1970, in one clash, Jordan killed more Palestinians than all the Palestinians harmed in 43 years of Israeli rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Syria:

In the year 1919 in Jerusalem the first conference of associations was held, the first Arab Palestinian conference. At the conference it was decided that Palestine, which had just come under British conquest, was southern Syria – an integral part of Greater Syria. During the years of the Mandate the immigration from Syria to the British Mandate area increased. For instance, the Al-Horani family, which arrived from the Horan area in Syria, and others. The idea of 'Greater Syria', including mandatory Palestine, was expressed in the growing involvement of the Syrians in both the great Arab revolt and the gangs which arrived from Syria during the war of independence. The refugees, therefore, were not strangers politically, religiously or ethnically. The opposite. Their fate should not been different to that of any other ethnic group which were expelled to a place where they made up the ethnic and cultural majority.

Between 70 and 90 thousand refugees arrived in Syria, the majority from Tzfat, Haifa, Tiberias and Acco. In 1954 they were awarded partial rights, which did not include political rights. Until 1968 they were forbidden to hold property. Syrian law allows any Arab to obtain Syrian citizenship as long as his permanent residence is in Syria and he is capable of supporting himself economically. But the Palestinians are the only ones excluded from the terms this law. Even if they are permanent residents and affluent, the law prevents them from receiving citizenship.

Only thirty percent of those still considered for some reason 'Palestinian refugees in Syria' live in refugee camps. In fact, they should have been considered as Syrians from all points of view a long time ago. They were part of the Arab national identity, they are linked by family connections, they should have been integrated into economic life. Yet despite this, as a result of political brain-washing, they remain in Syria as a foreign body, dreaming endlessly of 'the right of return', and beaten by their inferior situation. Most of them are at the bottom of the career ladder, in service industries (41%) and construction (27%). But there is nothing like the field of education to clarify their situation. 23% do not even get to elementary school and 3% only get academic education.

Lebanon:


In the Gaza Strip the Palestinians only suffered for two decades because of the Egyptian regime. In Lebanon the apartheid continues to this very day. The result is poverty, desolation and high unemployment. Until 1969 there were refugee camps under a harsh military regime in Lebanon. According to Martha Gellhorn's description, most of the refugees lived in a reasonable state. Many even improved their situation compared to the days before the 'Naqba'. But then in 1969 the Cairo Agreement was signed which passed the control of the camps to the refugees themselves. The situation only got worse. Terror factions took control of the camps, which turned them into sites of struggle, mainly violent, between the differing factions.

New research, published in December 2010, presents statistics which make the Gaza Strip look like paradise when compared to Lebanon. Yes, here and there appeared some slight publicity on the subject, but as far as is known, there was no international outcry, and no Turkish or international flotilla.

Unlike in Syria and Jordan, where most of those defined as refugees no longer live in refugee camps, two thirds of the Palestinians in Lebanon live in camps, which are "outposts outside the rule of the state". The most amazing statistic is that despite the fact that around 425,000 are registered with UNWRA as refugees, the research found that only between 260 and 280 thousand Palestinians live in Lebanon. The paradox is that UNWRA gets funding for over 150 thousand people who are not in Lebanon at all. This information alone should have led to a serious investigation by the funding countries (mostly the US and Europe) – but there is no chance that will happen. The question of the Palestinians is laden with so many illusions and lies that another lie makes almost no difference. And so, UNWRA can demand from the international community budgets for 425,000 whilst on its website there appears research showing that this is fiction.

According to the research the refugees suffer from 56% unemployment. It seems that this is the highest figure not only among the Palestinians, but in the entire Arab world. Those who do work are to be found at the bottom of the ladder. Just 6% of those within the work-force have an academic qualification of some kind (compared to 20% in the Lebanese work-force). The result is that 66% of the Palestinians in Lebanon live under the poverty line set at $6 per person per day. That's double the number of Lebanese.

This grim situation is a result of real apartheid. A series of laws in Lebanon limits the right to citizenship, to property and to work within the legal professions, medicine, pharmacy, journalism and more. In August 2010 minimal reform was made to the employment laws but practically, the amendment has not led to any real change. Another rule prevents the entrance of building materials to refugee camps and there are reports of arrests and house demolitions as a result of building in the camps. The partial and limited restrictions which Israel put on the entry of building materials into the Gaza Strip was a result of the firing of rockets at civilian areas. As far as is known, in Lebanon the restriction was not the result of similar firing of rockets at civilian populations. And despite that, again, beyond the dry reports of human rights organisations, from the point of view of 'they are allowed', no serious objections have been recorded, and no "apartheid week" against Lebanon has taken place.

Kuwait:


In 1991 Palestinians made up 30% of the country's population. Compared to other Arab countries, their situation was reasonable. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In the framework of attempts at compromise which preceded the first Gulf war, Saddam brought up the 'suggestion' of withdrawal from Kuwait in return for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank. The PLO with Yasser Arafat at its head supported Saddam. That support was the opening shot for one of the worst events in Palestinian history. After the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation began an anti-Palestinian campaign which included persecution, arrests and show trials. The difficult saga ended with the expulsion of 450,000 Palestinians. Some of which, incidentally, had been there since the 1930s and many had no connection to Arafat's support for Saddam. And despite that, they were subject to collective punishment, transfer of proportions similar to the 'Naqba' of 1948, which barely merited a mention in the world media. There are numerous academic papers on the expulsion and fleeing in 1948. There are close to zero papers on the subject of the 'Naqba' of '91.

*****
These are the main nations in which refugees are to be found. Apartheid exists in other countries too. In Saudi Arabia the refugees from mandatory Palestine did not receive citizenship. In 2004 Saudi Arabia announced concessions, but made it clear that they did not include the Palestinians. Jordan too withholds the naturalisation of 150,000 refugees, most originally from Gaza. In Iraq the refugees actually received preferential treatment under Saddam Hussein's rule, but since his fall, they have become one of the most persecuted groups. Twice, on the Libyan-Egyptian border and on the Syrian-Iraqi border, thousands of Palestinians were expelled to temporary camps, whilst no other Arab country would take them in. That was an amazing display of 'Arab solidarity', on behalf of 'the Arab Ummah'. And it goes on. Palestinians from Libya, refugees from the civil war, are arriving at this time at the border with Egypt, which refuses to let them in.

Time after time the Arab countries have rejected suggestions for the resettlement of the refugees, despite there being both place available and the need. The march goes on. In 1995 the Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi decided to expel 30,000 Palestinians, just because he was angry about the Oslo accords, with the PLO, and about the creation of the Palestinian Authority. A Palestinian doctor, Dr. Ashraf al Hazuz, spent 8 years in a Libyan jail (together with Bulgarian nurses) having been accused of spreading AIDS. In August 2010, before the current uprising, Libya passed laws making the lives of Palestinians impossible. These were the same days in which Libya sent a 'humanitarian aid ship' to the Gaza Strip. There is no limit to the hypocrisy.
These words are just the essence of the apartheid against minorities in the Arab world as a whole, and against the Palestinians in particular. But there is a difference. Whilst the Copts in Egypt or the Kurds in Syria are real minorities, the Arabs from mandate Palestine were supposed to be an integral part of the Arab nation –the Ummah. Two of the symbols of the Palestinian struggle were born in Egypt - Edward Said and Yasser Arafat. Both of them tried to invent for themselves Palestine as a fatherland. Another two of the prominent symbols of the Palestinian struggle are Fawzi Kuakgi (who contended with the Mufti for the leadership of the Arab revolt against the British) and Izz a Din Al Kassam. The first was Lebanese and the second Syrian. There is nothing strange in that. Because the struggle was Arab. Not Palestinian. And despite that the Arabs of mandate Palestine turned into a downtrodden and rejected group, as a result of the Arab defeat in 1948. In the vast majority of the descriptions from those years are of Arabs. Not of Palestinians. Later, only later, did they become Palestinians.

Anti-semitic songs on YouTube: Legit or spoofs?

Posted: 16 May 2011 01:16 PM PDT

A reader alerted me to this video, which features the lyrics "I wanna blow you up yeah Jew boy come on":


The person who uploaded it claims to be Hassan Firuzabadi, Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces. This is highly unlikely, especially when you look at another more explicitly anti-semitic video he has posted, which includes shout-outs to Saddam Hussein, mentions "72 bitches" and whose chorus is "I'm a terrorist and I kill Jews":


I admit that these both appeal to my own twisted sense of humor, but even assuming that they are spoofs, I don't think that many of the people watching them are taking them that way!

Again, assuming that they are meant to be jokes, they might cause more damage than they intended. A cardinal rule to remember is that Jew-haters are quite stupid to begin with.

(h/t O)

Hamas MP calls for massacre of Jews - on TV

Posted: 16 May 2011 12:15 PM PDT

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on May 11, 2011:

Yunis Al-Astal: The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians – and the Islamic nation behind them – will have the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang.
...All the predators, all the birds of prey, all the dangerous reptiles and insects, and all the lethal bacteria are far less dangerous than the Jews.
...In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.
...
When Palestine is liberated and its people return to it, and the entire region, with the grace of Allah, will have turned into the United States of Islam, the land of Palestine will become the capital of the Islamic Caliphate, and all these countries will turn into states within the Caliphate. When this happens, any Palestinian will be able to live anywhere, because the land of Islam is the property of all Muslims.

Until this happens, we must reject all the resettlement plans, naturalization, or even reparations prior to the return of the refugees.
Besides the genocidal statement on Hamas TV that the world will be happy to ignore because it doesn't fit into the latest mem of how "unification" is so wonderful, look at what al-Astal is saying:

Palestinian Arabs will be able to live anywhere they want in the larger Caliphate when the Jews are destroyed, but to allow them to live normal lives now in those exact same countries is unacceptable.

Does this sound like someone who loves Palestinian Arabs, or someone who wants to use them?

(h/t Just Journalism)

Mass graves found in Syria

Posted: 16 May 2011 11:15 AM PDT

From Ya Libnan:


A mass grave was discovered on Monday in the southern Syrian town of Daraa, at the heart of protests roiling the country for two months and virtually shut off from the outside world, an activist told AFP by telephone.
"The army today allowed residents to venture outside their homes for two hours a day," said Ammar Qurabi, of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.
"They discovered a mass grave in the old part of town but authorities immediately cordoned off the area to prevent residents from recovering the bodies, some of which they promised would be handed over later," he said on the phone from Cairo.
Qurabi said the Syrian regime must bear full responsibility for the crimes committed against unarmed citizens and urged the international community and civil society to pressure it to stop the repression of its people.
He said he did not know how many people were buried in the mass grave.
Hundreds of Syrians have been killed in the regime's crackdown on protests that began in mid-March. Now Lebanon

Update 
In addition to the mass grave in Daraa, the bodies of 34 people killed by government forces over the past five days were found in nearby villages of Jassem and Inkhel, Qurabi, told Bloomberg by phone on Monday .
Watch this You Tube video on the excavation of the mass grave.

By the way, over the past month Syria has put far more people in prison than the total number of Palestinian Arabs who are, or ever were, in Israeli prisons at any point in time.

Turkey kills 12 trying to cross border into the country

Posted: 16 May 2011 10:10 AM PDT

Something you probably didn't hear about.

From Xinhua:
Turkish security forces killed 12 militants of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) during two operations conducted in southeastern Turkey, a military statement said on the website of Turkish General Staff on Saturday.

The statement said that the security forces wiped out the 12 PKK members, who were trying to sneak into Turkey along Iraqi border, during two separate operations staged in Uludere town of the southeastern province of Sirnak between May 12 and 14.
But since when is a nation killing a dozen people trying to breach its borders considered news?

(h/t Ricochet via David G and Instapundit)

Vote in the semi-finals of the Pro-Israel Blog Off!

Posted: 16 May 2011 09:12 AM PDT

I have made it to the semi-finals of the Pro-Israel Blog Off, and this round I am up against the great  CiFWatch.

My submitted post is my "This Is Zionism" series of posters. CiFWatch has an excellent post from February called "On Non-Israeli Privilege."

In the first two rounds, I actually lost the popular vote but won on the judges' votes. If you like my post, please consider voting for it.

By the way, even though the rules allow us to submit any post created since the beginning of the competition in December, I have been only submitting posts created within a week or two of each round. Just a personal challenge, as well as not wanting to go through hundreds of old posts....

And should I win this round, I am thinking about a post that I could create for the finals that would blow you away. But you can't see it unless I win this round!

How's that for incentive to vote?

Why peace is, literally, impossible. (NewsRealBlog)

Posted: 16 May 2011 08:02 AM PDT

My latest piece on NewsRealBlog:


The events of "Naqba Day" are just one, very small proof that real peace is impossible.
Not "difficult." Not "painful." Truly, 100% impossible.
What were the thousands of protesters from Syria, Lebanon and Gaza demanding? Their demands are simple: the "right to return." They want Israel to allow millions of Arabs of Palestinian descent to flood the country and turn it into another Arab state.
This demand has been absolute and unyielding for 63 years. Never has any Arab leader publicly renounced this demand. Never have the Palestinian Arabs accepted any compromise on the matter. Today, right now, the PLO demands this so-called" right" in unambiguous terms.
There is no need here to mention that there is no such right enshrined in international law, or how easy it is to prove that Arab leaders have used this "demand" as a smokescreen to their real desire to destroy Israel, or the hypocrisy of Palestinian Arab leaders, today, who do not want even those who used to live on land they now control to "return." All those points are true and can be proven at another time.
The point here is that this demand is completely at odds with Israel's continued existence. One cannot have it both ways: either the Arabs come and destroy Israel, or Israel is allowed to exist and they never "return." There is no possible compromise.
If Israel would allow, say, 200,000 Arabs to immigrate to the country, it would not pacify the rest of them, and the demand in the rest of the Arab world would not subside. On the contrary, it would intensify.
For 63 years, the Arab world has held its Palestinian brethren hostage to the idea that they would one day "return." It has been their ace in the hole–they have purposefully kept millions of people in stateless misery just to score political pressure against Israel. Even with Hamas controlling Gaza, not a finger has been lifted to dismantle the "refugee" camps there. The entire "refugee" issue is kept alive artificially by a combination of Arab scheming, UN condonation and Western fear to tell the truth to the millions of people who are being treated cruelly by those who pretend to champion their cause.
In the framework of Arab-Israeli peace, there is no solution to the problem.
The West has assumed for decades that the solution will ultimately take the form of partial Israeli acquiescence, monetary compensation, and Arab nations stepping up to naturalize most of their Palestinian Arab prisoners. The only problem is that there has been zero indication that any of that would be accepted by the Arab world. On the contrary: when speaking amongst themselves, the issue is framed as something that can never be compromised on.
Even today, the Lebanese political party that is most admired in the West for its part in the Cedar Revolution has reiterated that it will never accept naturalization for the Arabs of Palestinian descent who have lived in Lebanon for generations. If there is anything that unites the Arab world, and which would cause a firestorm of hate if it was challenged by the West, it is the so-called "right of return." The Arab League "peace plan" that some hopeful Westerners interpreted as being flexible on the topic was not flexible at all, as it invoked UNGA resolution 194 as the basis for solving the problem–and the Arab world has been unanimous in how it interprets that resolution.
The mythical "return" is not compatible with Israel existing as anything other than another Arab-majority state.
Which means that one side wants Israel to be destroyed demographically, as a demand, as long as Palestinian Arabs continue to demand that they "return." The fake keys you see waved at demonstrations show how generations of brainwashing has made turned that demand non-negotiable.
The West fervently believes that a compromise is not only possible, but necessary–and that it must be imposed if the parties cannot agree. But a unilateral solution is no solution at all, and it would not pacify those that demand return as long as it is not 100%. Which means that a unilateral peace is not peace.
The West also believes that the Arab world acts in a Western way; that if an impartial arbitrator decides on a compromise then both parties would accept it and move on. This is also a dangerous myth–one side will not stop until they win and the other side loses, completely.
There is no solution. The conflict will go on for generations, as long as Israel continues to exist. Compromise on Israel's part does not strengthen her political posture for more than a few years, but the Arab side is in this game for centuries, if needed. If the West is really, truly committed to the idea that Israel is a just cause and deserves to exist in peace and security, it must realize that this peace will not come about by forcing Israel to do things that will never pacify her enemies.
Right now, Israel exists in relative peace and security. This is because Israel has not been fooled into accepting a comprehensive solution that it knows does not exist. Instead of solving the conflict, Israel is managing the conflict. This has been not only successful for Israel but also for the Arab groups that have cooperated–willingly or not.
Because Israel has engaged in conflict management rather than conflict resolution, the West Bank Arabs are more prosperous–and have more autonomy–than they have in their history. Even the residents of Gaza reap the benefit of Hamas being forced to limit terror attacks. The Syrian border, up until this week, has been calm, and so has the Lebanese border. Conflict management has created a better peace than anyone can ever hope for with a "comprehensive solution."
The solution, then, is not a solution in the Western sense of everybody being happy (or equally unhappy) and moving on. The only solution is the perpetual management of the conflict. Sometimes one side will break the unwritten rules and the equilibrium will be knocked out of whack, and sometimes circumstances will change forcing the methods of conflict management to be changed as well. But it is critical for well-meaning Americans and Europeans to understand that, short of one side utterly destroying the other, there will never be a "peace" in the sense that everyone yearns for. In this case, more than ever, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
And pushing a illusory peace will have far worse results than the status quo. 
For everyone.

Morning links

Posted: 16 May 2011 07:11 AM PDT

New York Sun: A Teachable Moment

Palestinian Media Watch: Song on PA TV: Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Nazareth are Palestinian

Arutz Sheva: A Letter from SPME to CUNY

Melanie Phillips: Does the BBC view Israel's existence as a legitimate 'grievance'?

David Hazony at Commentary: Slanting Nakba

(See the other great Commentary pieces from yesterday: Evelyn Gordon, Evelyn Gordon, Omri Ceren, Omri Ceren, Rick Richman, Jonathan Tobin, Alana Goodman. You guys can guest post on my blog anytime!)

YNet: How Arabs stole Jewish property

(h/t Y. Medad, Richard Landes, Joel)

Abbas sort of removes leniencies for "honor-killers"

Posted: 16 May 2011 06:12 AM PDT

From Ma'an:
President Mahmoud Abbas signed into law two articles by presidential decree eliminating laws allowing leniency for civilians found guilty of assault or murder "in defense of family honor."

The move, welcomed by women's rights activists, came in the wake of the grisly discovery of a Hebron woman drowned by her uncle because he disagreed with her choice of fiancee.

Until Sunday evening, personal status laws in the West Bank were those of the 1957 Jordan Penal Code, which operated in the area from 1948, when Jordan administered the area. Under international law, statutes and legal codes remain in place when a territory is occupied by a foreign power, and remain in place until new legislation is created to replace them.
The bad news? First of all, that this took so long.

Secondly, the exact nature of the amended law:
The amendment adds "this does not include the killing of women for issues of family honor," to Article 240 of the Jordanian penal code mandates that leniency in sentencing is available to those who beat or kill their wives, mothers, sisters or women within the family if they commit adultery or other acts of sexual impropriety.
He didn't remove the law altogether, he just added that there shouldn't be leniency if the killing was made for "honor" reasons. Which means that as long as people who do "honor" killing claim that they killed their victims for some other reason, or if they beat them to within inches of death for honor reasons, then they still can get lenient sentences.

He could have removed this leniency law altogether, and didn't. Why the hell not?

Video of Syrians breaching border; evidence that Assad ordered it

Posted: 16 May 2011 04:59 AM PDT

And not an Israeli soldier to be found.


YNet adds:
Meanwhile many residents of the Druze village said they were pleasantly surprised by the IDF's ability to maintain restraint in the face of violence directed against soldiers Sunday.

"Though the soldiers were pelted by stones from both sides at once, and despite there being a number of injuries among them, I heard a commander ordering them to refrain from firing at protesters at all costs," Ali, a Majdal Shams resident, told Ynet after witnessing the events.

He added that the soldiers fired into the air at first and then, only when the rioters began closing in on all sides, did they begin to fire at their feet. "The restraint shown by the IDF today brought peace this evening. It could have ended very differently," he said.

Suleiman, who owns a candy store in the village, also claimed the army behaved wisely. "The IDF was very smart in not making things worse and being tolerant," he said. Suleiman says he closed up shop to witness the events on the border live. "I saw just ten soldiers and thousands of protesters," he recalled.
It is an amazing demonstration of restraint if the soldiers were that outnumbered - but the question is, why were so few there to begin with? At the IDF briefing yesterday they said that there were demonstrations every year at the border, but they never tried to break down the fence - yet on a year where there were thousands of Arabs online swearing to march into Israel, shouldn't that have been considered?


There is also some indirect evidence that the entire episode was arranged by Assad himself. As Jeffrey Goldberg writes,
Syria is one of the least-free nations on the planet. Demonstrations are not allowed to take place unless the government orders them to take place. Such is the situation on the Golan Heights today.

A Facebook page notes an Arabic talkback (not sure from where) that says that the people were bussed into the area by Syrian security forces who organized Syrian security forces arranged all the transportation and even recruited unemployed men and ex-cons to come to the border.

(h/t Marianne, Joel, David G)

Malaysian ship intercepted as it tries to reach Gaza

Posted: 16 May 2011 03:05 AM PDT

From AFP:
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – Israeli naval forces fired warning shots Monday at a ship carrying aid to Gaza as it approached the shore, forcing it to withdraw to Egyptian waters, the vessel's Malaysian organiser told AFP.

"The MV Finch, carrying sewage pipes to Gaza, had warning shots fired at it by Israeli forces in the Palestinian security zone this morning at 0654 Jordan time (0354 GMT)," said Shamsul Azhar from the Perdana Global Peace Foundation.

"The vessel was in the Palestinian security zone, about 400 metres from the Gaza shoreline, when they were intercepted by Israeli naval forces," he told AFP, adding it was now anchored 30 nautical miles away in Egyptian territory.

The Perdana Foundation is helmed by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, an 85-year-old firebrand who was a strident critic of the West and Israel over the Palestinian issue during his two decades in power.

The organisation was also involved in the first "Freedom Flotilla", a 2010 attempt to break the Israeli embargo on Gaza which ended in disaster when naval commandos raided the aid ships, killing nine Turks on board one of them.

Perdana Foundation officials said the MV Finch left the Port of Piraeus in Greece on May 11 for Gaza, carrying plastic pipes to help restore the "devastated" sewage system in Gaza.

Alang Bendahara, a Malaysian journalist on board, told AFP that in a dramatic encounter, Israeli naval ships stopped the vessel with a volley of gunfire as it approached the shore.

"The Israeli naval vessel fired a warning shot at us upon approaching and asked us to leave the waters but the ship's captain refused and the Israelis fired again, circling the MV Finch before firing twice more," he said.

"At that point they threatened the ship's captain that they would board the vessel and we were forced to turn back, it was lucky that no one was injured," he added.

Alang said the ship's propellers then got stuck in fishing nets but that it managed to move away shortly after.

"Two Egyptian naval vessels were monitoring us and they escorted us once we were in Egyptian waters," he said.

"They have now boarded our vessel and are inspecting our cargo to make sure there is nothing illegal onboard. They will be escorting us to the port of Al-Arish because they say they will detain the ship."

The journalist said there were 12 people on board the vessel -- seven Malaysians, two Irish, two Indians and a Canadian -- including anti-war activists and journalists.

Foundation officials said the MV Finch is not part of an international aid flotilla which plans to set sail for the Gaza Strip in June.
Bernama.com adds some reporting from a dubiously objective reporter who was on the ship:
All 12 passengers and crew onboard are now safe after Egyptian naval vessels came to their rescue and escorted the "MV Finch" to Al-Arish Port in Egypt, according to Bernama journalist, Mohd Faizal Hassan, who is also on board the ship.

Of the 12 people onboard the ship, seven were Malaysians, while the other five comprised two crewmen from India, humanitarian activists Derek and Jenny Graham from Ireland and Julie Levesque from Canada.

Faizal said the Israelis violated international law by blocking their ship and firing the shots.

"They were using anti-aircraft .50mm shells," he said.

Faizal also said New Straits Times (NST) journalist Alang Bendahara managed to capture a video recording of Israel's cruel action towards them.

According to Faizal, after the Israeli navy fired the first shot, the ship's Captain Jalil Mansor was heard telling the Israelis through radio: "This is a violation of law against unarmed civilians".

The following exchange then took place.

Israeli army: "This is a warning shot. Turn around."

Captain Jalil Mansor: "We are unarmed civilians on a humanitarian mission to Gaza".

Israeli army: "This is a closed military zone. It's a violation. Turn around."

Captain Jalil Mansor: "We will continue (the mission)".

The Israelis then headed to the back of the aid vessel and released a second warning shot into the air.

Derek Graham: "This is a violation (of international law). We are on a peaceful mission and unarmed."

Israeli army: "Turn around. We will fire again".

Derek Graham: "You are firing towards unarmed civilians".

Israeli army: "We didn't fire towards unarmed civilians".

Derek Graham: "Looks like firing towards us".

Israeli army: "We didn't fire towards you. That is only a warning shot".

Following that conversation, the Israeli army fired two more shots and threatened: "Next time, we will land on your ship".

Then the Egyptian navy was heard telling the Israelis on the radio: "Stop firing. They are in the Egyptian waters".

Upon realising the presence of Egyptian naval forces, the Israelis departed.

This ship really slipped under the radar! The activists on board either did a very bad job publicizing it or they were hoping for a bloodbath.

(h/t Mike)
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