יום שלישי, 6 בספטמבר 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

PCHR's condemnation of Palmer shows its hypocrisy

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 04:03 PM PDT

It is hardly surprising that the Palestinian Center for Human Rights is livid at the Palmer Report finding that many of its well-worn anti-Israel tropes over the years are invalid:

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the report of the Panel of Inquiry (Palmer Committee) established by the UN Secretary-General to investigate the attack on Mavi Marmara, one of the ships of the Freedom Flotilla, while it was in international waters and headed to the Gaza Strip, carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza's civilian population. PCHR believes that the Committee prioritized political considerations over the rule of international law and the rights of victims, while legitimizing the policy of collective punishment represented in the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip.
...PCHR believes that the Panel of Inquiry, established by UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon on 02 August 2010, which started its mission on 10 August 2010, is purely political, and consequently, its conclusions are purely political.
PCHR further believes that the Panel of Inquiry lacks professionalism as its conclusions contradict various legal opinions issued by many international legal experts and UN bodies concerned with human right and international humanitarian law...
PCHR totally rejects the findings of the report of Palmer Committee considering it is politicized and disregards for the international law. PCHR calls upon all international organizations to condemn the report, and not to deal with the findings that contradict with international law and human rights standards.
Have you ever seen a so-called "human rights" organization demand that other human rights organizations condemn a UN Panel of Inquiry?

This part is even more interesting:
PCHR supports the move of the Government of Turkey to the International Court of Justice, as the highest international judicial body to consider this crime, and reminds of its Advisory Opinion on the wall in the West Bank issued in July 2004, which considered the siege imposed on the Occupied Palestinian Territory a form of collective punishment prohibited under the international law.
The ICJ's flawed advisory opinion on Israel's security barrier did find it to be illegal, but nowhere in that document did it say that the reason is because the barrier is "collective punishment."

The PCHR makes up its own facts. 

We can see more than a little psychological projection going on here. While the PCHR said no less than four times that the Palmer Commission was politicized, it brought not a scintilla of evidence to back up that charge. But the PCHR itself is suffused with anti-Israel politics, as it cannot even use the term "Israel Defense Forces" in any of its press releases, instead referring to Israel's army as "Israeli Occupation Forces."

As I and my team exhaustively proved, the PCHR knowingly referred to hundreds of terrorists killed during Cast Lead/Operation Oil Stain as "civilians."

There are plenty of other examples where the PCHR clearly played politics rather than report the truth.

This lying and thoroughly politicized organization gets funding from donors like The Ford Foundation, Christian Aid, Oxfam, the EU, Norway and Denmark (as well as from George Soros.)

Perhaps these donors should start to require that PCHR adheres to a minimum standard of objectivity and truthfulness.

Abbas: "Palestinians have been under occupation for 63 years"

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 12:25 PM PDT

From NYT, in an interview with Mahmoud Abbas:

We don't want to isolate Israel but to live with it in peace and security. We don't want to delegitimize Israel. We want to legitimize ourselves.
All well and good - except for what he said immediately prior to this:
We are going to complain [at the UN] that as Palestinians we have been under occupation for 63 years.
How can one reconcile those two statements? If Israel has been occupying their land since its birth in 1948, doesn't that make Israel illegitimate?

(Somehow, I don't think he was referring to Jordanian occupation.)

The New York Times' Ethan Bronner, as usual, did not ask for clarification. And Mahmoud Abbas remains free to say whatever he wants to whatever audience he wants without fear of someone pointing out that he is a liar.

(h/t Dan)

Labor Day open thread

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 10:00 AM PDT

Vacation day here in the US, so here's an open thread while I do some things in the real world....

Arabs accuse USAID of being a spy agency

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 08:30 AM PDT

Palestinian Arab newspaper Al Majd has a study about USAID, the American governmental agency dedicated to offering humanitarian assistance and to help build democratic institutions.

The report accuses USAID of actually being involved in espionage and describes it as one of the most dangerous organizations in the world.

As evidence, the report notes that USAID requires partner NGOs and employees to sign an agreement renouncing terrorism and violence. 


Not only that, but USAID will actually do background checks to verify that employees aren't terrorists - and, in the Palestinian Arab territories, they will even ask Israel to help with the verification!

This "study" goes on to say that the only people who remain after this vetting process are those who have "abandoned their national heritage."

In other words, terrorism and violence is - according to Al Majd - part of the Palestinian Arab national heritage.

The report piles on the horrid things USAID does. It actually encourages Palestinian Arabs to work with Israelis in the name of coexistence and peace! It promotes normalization with the "Zionist enemy"!

The study concludes that the entire point of USAID is to humiliate the Palestinian Arabs.

Of course, no one is forcing Palestinian Arabs to accept any aid from the US. Perhaps if the conditions for aid are so onerous, the PA should politely inform USAID that their money should be better spent elsewhere in the world.

I'm certain that American anti-Israel groups, who are so concerned over their tax dollars that go to Israel, would support USAID dropping all aid to the Palestinian Arabs as well.

A quick poster

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 07:10 AM PDT

Just because people don't know the basics:


And by the way, Amnesty International wrote a very nice legal definition of "occupation" in 2003, a definition they themselves ignore in respect to Israel. They wrote:

The definition of belligerent occupation is given in Article 42 of the Hague Regulations:

"Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised."

The sole criterion for deciding the applicability of the law on belligerent occupation is drawn from facts: the de facto effective control of territory by foreign armed forces coupled with the possibility to enforce their decisions, and the de facto absence of a national governmental authority in effective control. If these conditions are met for a given area, the law on belligerent occupation applies. Even though the objective of the military campaign may not be to control territory, the sole presence of such forces in a controlling position renders applicable the law protecting the inhabitants. The occupying power cannot avoid its responsibilities as long as a national government is not in a position to carry out its normal tasks.
So 96% of West Bank Arabs are not living under "occupation" according to the Hague - and Amnesty - definitions. (The same applies to 100% of Gaza's Arabs.)

Egyptian magazine draws Netanyahu as Hitler

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 05:50 AM PDT

Here is the front cover of the current issue of Egypt's state-run October magazine:


The article goes through a history of Israel's supposed "war crimes" which they claim is on par with those of Nazi Germany.

(h/t Yoel)

Abbas admits that the territories are considered disputed

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 03:58 AM PDT

From JPost:
The Palestinian Authority is prepared to listen to any proposals that would lead to the resumption of peace talks with Israel, PA President Mahmoud Abbas told members of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in Ramallah late Sunday.

Abbas reiterated his position that the peace talks should be based on a full cessation of construction in the settlements and acceptance of the pre-1967 lines as the borders of a Palestinian state. He also said that the talks should have a clear and acceptable timetable.

Abbas said that the PA application to the UN calls for transforming the Palestinian territories from the status of disputed lands to a state under occupation.
Sure enough, his Arabic comments use those same words.

(h/t DF)

Ashkelon man succumbs to injuries during Grad attack

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 02:54 AM PDT

From YNet:
Eliyahu Naim, 79, died at the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem Sunday after falling over in his house while running for cover during a rocket attack on Ashkelon two weeks ago.

A Color Red alert sounded in Ashkelon on August 22. Naim, who was staying at his house together with his wife and nurse, rushed to the apartment's fortified space. "When he entered the foretified room he must have stumbled and hit a sharp edge of a library and as a result sustained a serious head injury," his son-in-law Eyal told Ynet.

...Naim was one of Ashkelon's first residents arriving there in the 1960s. He retired several years ago after working as an accountant at an agricultural products company. "He was a very likeable person, loved people, loved company, served as a medic in the IDF, salt of the earth," his son-in-law said.

He had apparently become used to rocket fire. "We talked about it several times. He wasn't scared or worried but was very cautious and always adhered to the Home Front Command guidelines," Eyal said. "He entered the fortified space whenever an alarm would go off."
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