| The PLO hired a PR firm that specializes in repressive Arab dictatorships Posted: 16 Sep 2011 11:47 AM PDT This slipped under the radar. From The Holmes Report, August 26 (later mentioned in TheJC and The Algemeiner): Bell Pottinger has begun providing public relations counsel to the organization that represents the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the US.
According to documents filed earlier this month with the US Department of Justice, Bell Pottinger USA has been contracted to provide "advice on strategic communications, public relations, media relations and congressional affairs" to the General Delegation of the PLO to the United States.
The appointment of the agency comes ahead of a critical UN vote on Palestinian statehood next month. However, Bell Pottinger USA president David Sowells declined to comment on whether his agency's work would involve this issue.
According to the DoJ filing, Bell Pottinger is reporting to Maen Rashid Areikat, chief representative of the PLO in the US. Areikat serves an ambassadorial function to the US, with a particular focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Bell Pottinger is no stranger to controversial Middle East assignments. The Holmes Report revealed earlier this year that the firm's work for the Bahrain government had been suspended in light of the conflict in that country. The agency has also handled public sector work for Yemen and Qatar. So (as I had mentioned in an update to this story) when Areikat got in trouble for saying that Jews could not live in Palestine, almost certainly it was Bell Pottinger that swooped in to do the damage control - and Politico fell for it. Hey, if they have experience doing PR for the wonderful leaders of Bahrain and Yemen, how hard can it be to make the Palestinian Arab mess look good? (h/t David G) 
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| Latest Latma Posted: 16 Sep 2011 10:55 AM PDT And Mazel Tov to Ronit on her new baby girl! 
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| Abbas accuses Jews of releasing Zionist pigs against his people! (updated) Posted: 16 Sep 2011 10:09 AM PDT The PA's official Wafa news agency has an article talking about Mahmoud Abbas' much heralded speech this evening where he declared that he would go to the Security Council in his bid for recognition. But while it quotes or paraphrases a large percentage of his speech, there is one part that they left out. According to a number of people tweeting the speech live, Abbas accused settlers of releasing trained dogs and wild hogs to attack Palestinian Arabs! Yes, the putative leader of a quasi-state, in a much anticipated and important speech, used this opportunity to push absurd conspiracy theories. It was so ridiculous that even his own official news agency seems to be too embarrassed to publish it (update: they did publish the transcript but ignored that part in the main article about the speech.) If you want to see the ultimate list of Zionist conspiracy theories involving animals, here it is. Maybe next time he'll mention the sharks or jellyfish. UPDATE: The text of the speech is out; I found this version at PNN. Here's the autotranslation of what he said: What we want is to end the occupation and tend legitimacy for, occupation and practices is the nightmare that is holding our hearts, as reflected these practices continued raids and arrests and the building of walls and demolition of houses, and the intensification of settlement activities, and attacks the settlers of Bakla trees and burning of mosques and the latest training dogs to attack us and send the wild pigs to wreak land corrupt, three things which the settlers will confront us: When any person Siatdon find it, well its streets and dogs, and pigs for the uprooting of trees, in addition of course to the tanks. (h/t Challah Hu Akbar) 
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| "Jews welcome" in Palestinian state? Who believes this? (updated) Posted: 16 Sep 2011 09:02 AM PDT From Politico: Palestinian officials are rolling out the welcome mat for Jews to come to a new Palestinian state.
Trying to tamp down a controversy over whether a Palestinian state would be Jew-free, Mahmoud Habbash, the Palestinian minister of religious affairs, said a future state would be open to people of all religions, including Jews.
"The future Palestinian state will be open to all its citizens, regardless of their religion," Habbash said, according to USA Today. "We want a civil state, which in it live all the faiths, Muslim, Christian and Jews also if they agree, (and) accept to be Palestinian citizens."
Maen Areikat, the Palestine Liberation Organization's ambassador to the United States, told POLITICO that his comments earlier this week which some interpreted as meaning Jews would not be welcome were misconstrued.
"In no way was there a suggestion that Jews cannot enter Palestine or be in Palestinian state in the future," Areikat said.
Proof that Jews could never have equal rights in "Palestine": 1) Areikat's own words last year. 2) The Palestinian Constitution, Chapter 1, article 1: Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation. Arab Unity is an objective which the Palestinian People shall work to achieve. Meaning that non-Arabs are not treated as equals with Arabs. it may also mean that non-Arabs cannot become citizens. 3) Article 4 of that same constitution: Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect and sanctity of all other heavenly religions shall be maintained.
The principles of Islamic Shari'a shall be the main source of legislation. Jews do make it to dhimmi status, as their religion is one of the "heavenly" ones. But if you are Hindu or Buddhist, watch out. 4) The Palestinian Declaration of Independence refers to the "Palestinian Arab people" no less than 15 times, implying that if you are not Arab, you cannot be a Palestinian. (Almost certainly this was done to imply that there were no such thing as Palestinian Jews.) 5) Hamas is nominally part of the government, and it certainly rules over parts of "Palestine," and it has never changed its anti-semitic charter ("For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave...The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children...") 6) Do you think that Jews would have equal rights to visit the Temple Mount that Muslims do? UPDATE: David G notes that this attempt at damage control looks like it was done by the Palestinian Arabs' new PR firm in the US - one that was hired by none other that Maen Areikat himself! 
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| Free speech "expert" defends shutting down Israelis' free speech Posted: 16 Sep 2011 08:00 AM PDT From the LA Times: A UC Irvine professor overstepped his boundaries when he told students that no disruptions were allowed during the Israeli ambassador's visit on campus last year, according to testimony given Wednesday in the so-called Irvine 11 trial in Santa Ana.
UC Irvine professor Rei Terada, an expert on the history and guidelines of free speech, told the Superior Court jury that fellow professor Mark Petracca, the event's emcee, had no authority to set stringent ground rules.
Before bringing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to the stage on Feb. 8, 2010, Petracca told the audience that he expected the highest civility.
"This is, after all, not a street corner; it is a university," Petracca said in a video of the event shown in court. "It is not the British Parliament; it is a university. And it is not even a joint session of Congress hearing the president of the United States. It is a university."
Terada said that in her 20-year career she had never seen someone attempt to impose such rules during a politically charged event on a university campus, especially one that had been expected to attract protests.
Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Wagner challenged Terada, pointing out that what Petracca said echoed statements from UCI Chancellor Michael Drake. Terada, however, said neither Drake nor Petracca had the authority to set that standard. "They were saying what they wanted to happen," she testified.
The 10 defendants, seven of them UC Irvine students and three from UC Riverside, are charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly conspiring to disrupt Oren's speech and a misdemeanor for allegedly disrupting his speech. Professor Terada's thesis is that, apparently, anyone has the right to stop anyone else from speaking in the name of "free speech." Her ideas are very skewed, to say the least. Allowing Oren to talk is free speech. Supporting people to conspire to stop his speech is against free speech. The Muslim Students Union is free to invite whomever they want to speak, and he or she should be allowed to speak - with any protests properly being outside the door or challenging questions during the Q&A. In an ironic twist, the first interrupter claimed explicitly that Oren does not have the right to free speech, yelling "Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech." Yet Terada said that these anti-speech thugs " bring honor to the University of California." (at 1:27 mark.) Perhaps Terada would cheer if students - and even non-students - barge into her lectures in comparative literature and obscenely insult her for the entire class period. Their right to free speech is obviously more important than anything she might have to say, according to her own words. (h/t Silke) 
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| The Egyptian embassy "love protest" in Tel Aviv (video) Posted: 16 Sep 2011 07:10 AM PDT I mentioned yesterday that Israeli youth planned to counter the violent Egyptian mob that attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo last Friday with what would be, effectively, a party that celebrates peace and love outside the Egyptian embassy in Tev Aviv. Here are videos. Releasing balloons with the colors of Egypt's and Israel's flags: Party atmosphere: Another video at Israel's Channel 2. 
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| Hamas and Fatah meet and agree - to pretend to be unified Posted: 16 Sep 2011 06:14 AM PDT From Ma'an: Political rivals Fatah and Hamas met Thursday evening in Gaza City, in a surprise discussion which touched on the upcoming Palestinian bid for membership of the UN.
Fatah national relations commissioner Diab al-Loh told Ma'an that officials from both factions discussed the reconciliation agreement which has faltered in implementation since its signing in May.
Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said the meeting focused on the unresolved facets of the reconciliation, and insisted that the issue of political detainees should be addressed first.
On the UN bid, Radwan said each party has its own point of view, but the main priority is the protection of national unity.
The Hamas official added that parties talked about making further efforts to have more meetings. In English: They met, and they didn't agree on a single real issue. But they did agree to keep the farce of "unity" alive so as not to anger fed-up Palestinian Arabs who might rise up against them. Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas rejected a request by Fatah to allow rallies in Gaza that support the unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN. 
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| Freedom of the press, PA-style (plus a funny video) Posted: 16 Sep 2011 05:14 AM PDT From Ma'an: A Bethlehem journalist is facing trial after the city's governor filed a complaint against him for "slander and defamation."
George Canawati, director of Bethlehem Radio 2000, was summoned to the Palestinian Authority Prosecutor-General's office on Sunday after he criticized local medical services in a report.
Bethlehem governor Abdel Fattah Hamayel summoned Canawati to his office and requested he remove critical comments from the Sept. 8 report on his Facebook page, the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) said.
Canawati's report detailed indifference and neglect at the health directorate and noted Israeli-made juices provided at a health department meeting, contravening the Palestinian Authority's call to boycott Israeli products.
The Bethlehem radio-journalist told MADA he had removed the Facebook notes prior to the charges. Can there be any worse slander than the existence of Israeli juices at a department meeting? Actually, he claimed the juices were from "settlements." But the juice was Tapuzina, which is a popular Israeli drink that can be found all over the PA-ruled territory. So it is unclear if he was complaining that the health department would have Israeli drinks, or if he really thought it was from the "settlements." Which makes the reaction from the governor even more perplexing. Perhaps the department should have come up with creative ways to hide the illicit Israeli drinks, as this young woman did in this funny ad for the product: (h/t GH) 
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| Jordan's Palestinian problem Posted: 16 Sep 2011 03:20 AM PDT A must-read piece in Hudson-NY by Mudar Zahran: The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, delivered a speech on September 11, in which he mentioned the Jordanian civil war of 1970 for the first time ever: "There are not any issues we are too embarrassed to discuss, even if there is someone who wants to discuss the incidents of 1970, this is a part of history; let us think of the future and not the past."
Commenting on the fear of Jordan's Bedouin minority -- who make up the king's military and are the protected class -- that Jordan might become the Palestinian majority's homeland -- a plan dubbed "the alternative homeland" by the local media -- the king said: "I would like to assure everyone that Jordan will not be an alternative country to anyone. Is it even logical that Jordan will become an alternative to anyone while we sit there and do nothing? We have an army and we are willing to fight for our country and for the future of Jordan, and we must speak vigorously and not ever allow this idea to remain in the minds of some of us….We have fought Israel before many times."
"Jordan and the future of Palestine," he added, "are much stronger than Israel today; the Israeli is the one who is afraid….When I was in the United States, I spoke to an Israeli intellectual; he told me that what was happening in Arab countries today is in the interests of Israel. I told him, 'I think it is the opposite: your situation today is much harder than before.'"
King Abdullah also mentioned the need to address the issue of "national identity" in Jordan -- a phrase associated with isolating the Palestinians, who make up 80% of the population, in favor of the Beduin minority, for whom he would establish Jordan as a purely Bedouin state: "We must speak with a loud voice about the Jordanian identity," he said, "yet national unity is a red line." In other words, the king openly supports talk about imposing a Jordanian Bedouin identity on the country, while at the same time prohibiting any "unity" with the Palestinians -- a notion he had previously denounced.
The king, in his speech, was using a common Arab political trick of saying an undesired thing to the public -- reminding the Palestinians of the civil war in which they were slaughtered -- and then, in the same sentence, ostensibly defusing the threat of another slaughter by adding that he would spare the Palestinians so long as they accept the situation as is, where they are citizens, but still treated as refugees and outsiders in every way.
Although it is common for Arab regimes that are pro-Western to talk tough about the US and Israel every now and then -- to rally their people behind them by threatening these cost-free targets, and thereby divert anger away from their own repressive regimes onto other countries -- this time the context was different: The King's speech, aired on Jordanian national television, came two days after Wikileaks released several US Embassy, Amman, cables that described the testimonies of some Jordanian Palestinians officials who were complaining to Embassy officers about the discrimination against the Palestinians in Jordan. One cable, entitled, "The Grand Bargain," mentioned a Palestinian political leader's belief that the "right of return" was unfeasible - signifying the Palestinians' willingness to accept a permanent home in Jordan --rather than in hoping to return to Israel, as the refugees and five generations of descendants are continually being promised -- in exchange for finally attaining civil rights in Jordan.
The government-controlled Jordanian media expressed anger at the US Embassy -- to the point of issuing calls for a protest against both the American and Israeli embassies in Amman, which they called "the espionage beehive."
The King's talk sounded provocative and terrorizing to the Jordanian Palestinians, who are already discriminated against and disenfranchised politically by the Hashemite regime. The Bedouin-dominated town of Kerak in Southern Jordan, for example, has ten parliamentary seats for fewer than 150,000 voters, while the Palestinian-dominated Amman has barely twenty parliamentary seats for three million voters.
What made matters especially threatening was the way Jordan's Bedouins seem to have understood the King's remarks. The King's statement, for instance, that he would "not feel embarrassed to address any issue including the civil war," seems to have been understood by the Bedouin military as permission to go out and target the Palestinians. Comments on Jordanian social websites, such as Facebook, appeared, with disturbing messages of incitement: Jordanian Bedouins began calling for violence against both Israel and the Palestinian majority. One of commentators said on Facebook: "We shall give the Palestinians another Black September," said one, "only this time we will make it red." Another said: "Those Palestinians are worse than Jews. I could never make out the difference. We will march to kick [the Palestinian] out [of Jordan] and we will knock down the Israeli embassy." Still another said, "You do the killing, guys, just leave the hot Palestinian chicks for me; I will rape their little girls." While this anti-Palestinian sentiment is not new in Jordan, after the King's speech it reached a new extreme.
It seemed as if the king was threatening Israel with a war, and the Palestinians in Jordan with a civil war. This perceived threat translated into protests: one against the American Embassy in Amman on September 15th, and one against the Israeli Embassy for Friday, September 16th. Both protests were called for and organized by Nahid Hattar, a Christian Bedouin writer, who has been calling for ousting the Palestinians from Jordan, and who has openly admitted his direct one-on-one connection to the former chief of the Jordanian Intelligence Department while the latter was in office. That Wikileaks cable he refers to doesn't only mention a minority of Palestinian Arabs in Jordan who privately believe that "return" will never happen and who want compensation instead - it also mentions East Bankers who want to use the "right of return" to kick out the Palestinian Arab majority: East Bankers have an entirely different approach to thinking about the right of return. At their most benign, our East Banker contacts tend to count on the right of return as a solution to Jordan's social, political, and economic woes. But underlying many conversations with East Bankers is the theory that once the Palestinians leave, "real" Jordanians can have their country back. They hope for a solution that will validate their current control of Jordan's government and military, and allow for an expansion into the realm of business, which is currently dominated by Palestinians.
¶12. (C) Palestinian-origin contacts certainly have their suspicions about East Banker intentions. "If the right of return happens, East Bankers assume that all of the Palestinians will leave," says parliamentarian Mohammed Al-Kouz. Other Palestinian-origin contacts offered similar observations, including Adel Irsheid and Raja'i Dajani, who was one of the founding members of the GID, and later served as Interior Minister at the time of Jordan's administrative separation from the West Bank in 1988. Dajani cited the rise of what he called "Likudnik" East Bankers, who hold out hope that the right of return will lead to an "exodus" of Palestinians.
¶13. (C) In fact, many of our East Banker contacts do seem more excited about the return (read: departure) of Palestinian refugees than the Palestinians themselves. Mejhem Al-Khraish, an East Banker parliamentarian from the central bedouin district, says outright that the reason he strongly supports the right of return is so the Palestinians will quit Jordan. East Banker Mohammed Al-Ghazo, Secretary General at the Ministry of Justice, says that Palestinians have no investment in the Jordanian political system - "they aren't interested in jobs in the government or the military" - and are therefore signaling their intent to return to a Palestinian state.
¶14. (C) When East Bankers talk about the possibility of Palestinians staying in Jordan permanently, they use the language of political threat and economic instability. Talal Al-Damen, a politician in Um Qais near the confluence of Jordan, the Golan Heights and Israel, worries that without the right of return, Jordan will have to face up to the political challenges of a state which is not united demographically. For his part, Damen is counting on a mass exodus of Palestinians to make room for East Bankers in the world of business, and to change Jordan's political landscape. This sentiment was echoed in a meeting with university students, when self-identified "pure Jordanians" in the group noted that "opportunities" are less available because there are so many Palestinians.
¶15. (C) The right of return is certainly lower on the list of East Banker priorities in comparison with their Palestinian-origin brethren, but some have thought the issue through a little more. NGO activist Sa'eda Kilani predicts that even (or especially) after a final settlement is reached, Palestinians will choose to abandon a Palestinian state in favor of a more stable Jordan where the issue of political equality has been resolved. In other words, rather than seeing significant numbers return to a Palestinian homeland, Jordan will end up dealing with a net increase in its Palestinian population.
¶16. (C) As with their Palestinian counterparts, conspiracy theories are an intrinsic part of East Banker mythology regarding the right of return. Fares Braizat, Deputy Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Jordan University, told us two of the most commonly held examples (which he himself swears by). The first is that Jordanians of Palestinian origin choose not to vote because if they were to turn out en masse, Israel (and/or the United States) would assume that they had incorporated themselves fully into Jordanian society and declare the right of return to be null and void. The second conspiracy theory, which has a similar theme, is that after the 1994 peace agreement between Jordan and Israel, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank issued a deliberate directive to "all Palestinians" residing in Jordan to avoid involvement in Jordanian politics so as not to be perceived as "going native." The main point of both theories is that Palestinians are planning to return to a future Palestinian state, and therefore have nothing substantive to contribute to the Jordanian political debate - a convenient reason for excluding them from that debate in the first place. 
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