יום שבת, 28 בינואר 2012

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

84 killed in Syria today

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 10:40 AM PST

Al Arabiya is reporting that the death toll in Syria today is 84 people, most of them in Hama. There was also a car bomb attack and an ambush against Syrian forces, killing 12.

This is besides the massacre in Homs yesterday, where 14 members of a single family were shot or hacked to death, including 8 children.

Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army says it captured five members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Homs:
A group of Syria's opposition "Free Army" has released a video showing what it was said were seven Iranians, including five members of the Revolutionary Guards, captured in the city of Homs.

The video showed travel documents of the captives, some of whom appeared to be speaking Farsi.

"I am Sajjad Amirian, a member the Revolutionary Guards of the Iranian armed forces. I am a member of the team in charge of cracking down on protesters in Syria and we receive our orders directly from the security division of the Syrian air force in Homs," one of the captives said.

"I urge Mr. Khamenei to work on securing our release and return to our homes," he added.
Syria's official SANA news agency says that a group of Iranians captured, probably the same group, were just pilgrims on their way to visit holy sites.

Fayyad whines that the world isn't focused on Palestinian Arabs anymore

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 09:10 AM PST

From Al Arabiya:
Fayyad and Peres at Davos
The Middle East peace process is at its lowest point in two decades and the events of the Arab Spring have forced it down the world agenda, the Palestinian prime minister complained Thursday as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said that the end of informal talks between Palestinians and Israel does not mean the two sides have reached an "impasse."

Salam Fayyad, a moderate whose remit does not extend beyond the West Bank, told delegates at the Davos forum of global business leaders that the peace process was desperately in need of outside help.

Fayyad told delegates that things had never been so bad since the start of the peace negotiations in 1991 that eventually led to the Oslo accord in 1993.
Oh, to return to those halcyon days of 2002-2005, when Fatah and Hamas terrorists worked together in blowing up Jewish babies and the peace process was still considered possible! Good times. Things are so much worse now.
"There must be hope, we have to maintain hope. If you are Palestinian, hope is something that must be part of conscious decision-making," said Fayyad.

"But right now one would have to really work hard to be hopeful as to where the political process is."

"Since the beginning of Oslo, the political process has never been so lacking in focus."

"Obviously we need to sit down and negotiate but it's recognized that we need a significant amount of international help and chaperoning in order to do this."
No, all that is needed is a little flexibility on the part of the PLO, something that they brag about not having.
Fayyad said the Palestinian cause was taking a back seat in the region as Arab governments try and come to terms with the popular revolts which swept the region last year.

"There's much better understanding of the need to have a responsible, responsive government" in the Arab world after the uprisings, said Fayyad.

"But it seems to me that an immediate consequence of the Arab Spring, our cause has been marginalized by it in a substantial way.

"I do not recall that the Palestinian cause has been as marginalized in the way that it has been for many decades.

"We must work out how do we deal with this marginalization... It may take quite a number of years before the region settles down with a better state of equilibrium."
Aw, poor Palestinian Arabs. They are so used to being in the spotlight. Airplane hijackings, murder of Olympic athletes, triumphant speeches at the UN with a gun, uncountable front-page stories, terror sprees, allying with dictators, thousands of rockets, turning suicide bombing into an art - wasn't it wonderful when they were the big story? Now that nasty Arab Spring pops up, showing that in comparison with their brethren they have decent lives, self-governance, better education, a much better economy, and relative peace.

Not to mention an uncanny ability to shoot themselves in the foot every time real peace seems to be at hand.

For sixty years, their fellow Arabs have given them lip-service support, and for sixty years they have taken this all for granted in order to use them to pressure Western governments with threats of uprisings and riots and terror for their cause. Now, the Arabs have their own issues, and the Palestine topic is shown to be not important at all.


This is why they love stunts instead of substantive negotiations. Negotiations are hard and boring and under the radar. Stunts are easy and public and often get attention by the media. 

So even their moderate, Western-educated leaders are whining about them no longer being the center of attention. Like spoiled children, they don't care about what else might be happening in the world - they cannot conceive of a reality where they are not the protagonists. They prefer the days of terror when they were in the headlines to the days of relative peace when they aren't. Arabs are being killed by the thousand, and they hate it - not because they care about their fellow Arabs, but because it diverts world attention from their own, comparatively picayune issues.

Whine, stunt, whine, stunt. Anything to avoid doing something constructive and lasting.

A leftist talks about the "Israel-Firster" label (Tablet)

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST

From Spencer Ackerman in Tablet:
At the risk of sounding like the shtetl police, there's a right way and a wrong way for American Jews to argue with one another. The right way focuses on whose ideas are better—for America, for Israel, for the Jewish community, and for the world. The Jewish left should be right at home with this kind of substantive debate, since I believe those ideas are better than those of our cousins on the Jewish right. But the wrong way, regretfully, is now on the rise among Jewish progressives.
Some on the left have recently taken to using the term "Israel Firster" and similar rhetoric to suggest that some conservative American Jewish reporters, pundits, and policymakers are more concerned with the interests of the Jewish state than those of the United States. Last week, for example, Salon's Glenn Greenwald asked Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg about any loyalty oaths to Israel Goldberg took when he served in the IDF during the early 1990s. (On Tuesday, writer Max Blumenthal used a gross phrase to describe Goldberg: "former Israeli prison guard.") The obvious implication is that Goldberg's true loyalty is to Israel, not the United States. For months, M.J. Rosenberg of Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group, has been throwing around the term "Israel Firster" to describe conservatives he disagrees with. One recent Tweet singled out my friend Eli Lake, a reporter for Newsweek: "Lake supports #Israel line 100% of the time, always Israel first over U.S." That's quite mild compared to some of the others.
"Israel Firster" has a nasty anti-Semitic pedigree, one that many Jews will intuitively understand without knowing its specific history. It turns out white supremacist Willis Carto was reportedly the first to use it, and David Duke popularized it through his propaganda network. And yet Rosenberg and others actually claim they're using it to stimulate "debate," rather than effectively mirroring the tactics of some of the people they criticize.
Throughout my career, I've been associated with the Jewish left—I was to the left of the New Republic staff when I worked there, moved on to Talking Points Memo, hosted my blog at Firedoglake for years, and so on. I've criticized the American Jewish right's myopic, destructive, tribal conception of what it means to love Israel. But it doesn't deserve to have its Americanness and patriotism questioned. By all means, get into it with people who interpret every disagreement Washington has with Tel Aviv as hostility to the Jewish state. But if you can't do it without sounding like Pat Buchanan, who has nothing but antipathy and contempt for Jews, then you've lost the debate.
This is tiresome to point out. Many of the writers who are fond of the Israel Firster smear are—appropriately—very good at hearing and analyzing dog-whistles when they're used todehumanize Arabs and Muslims. I can't read anyone's mind or judge anyone's intention, but by the sound of it these writers are sending out comparable dog-whistles about Jews.

(h/t CHA)

Report: Hamas has already unofficially quit Syria

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 06:52 AM PST

From Reuters:

The leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, has effectively abandoned his headquarters in the Syrian capital, Damascus, diplomatic and intelligence sources said on Friday.

"Meshaal is not staying in Syria as he used to do. He is almost out all the time," said a diplomat in the region who spoke on condition on anonymity.

A regional intelligence source, who also did not wish to be identified, said: "He's not going back to Syria. That's the decision he's made. There's still a Hamas presence there, but it's insignificant."

The sources said Meshaal would not publicly shut down the political headquarters of Hamas in Syria, where it has long been hosted by Assad and by his father before him.

"In the past month he may have only stayed five days in Syria and the rest he spent in Qatar, Turkey and Egypt," said the diplomat. "But he did not close the headquarters in Syria in full and there are some Hamas officials still there."

"Our belief is that Hamas will not announce a departure from Syria even if it happened," the diplomat added.

The sources said Meshaal was currently in Egypt. But "there was no agreement to open an office in Cairo. Not yet," said the diplomat. "The expected residence for Meshaal is Qatar where he may stay most of the time until the Syria smoke has cleared."
A YNet op-ed says that Hamas is in trouble, losing funding from Iran and its headquarters in Damascus.

But another Yediot article in Hebrew, quoted in Arabic sources, says that Turkey has agreed to give Hamas some $300 million annually.

Hamas radicals don't want "moderate" Meshal to step down

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 05:41 AM PST

From YNet:
Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal met with top Hamas military wing delegates in Cairo on Thursday.

According to the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, the mission, headed by Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades Chief Ahmed Jabari and his deputy Marwan Issa, urged Mashaal not to step down.

The Politburo chief had recently announced that he will not seek another term as Hamas' political leader, sprouting a torrent of rumors as to his possible successor.
The al Qassam Brigades is Hamas' terrorist wing. they are not officially part of the Hamas government, although most of their members are also employed as "police" by Hamas. Of course, they draw salaries for their terrorist activities as well.

Within Hamas, there is no group more extreme than the Qassam Brigades.

So, if Meshal is so "moderate" as we are constantly told by Western analysts, why would the most hardline Hamas group want him to stay in power?

Apparently they aren't too worried that Meshal is so moderate as to do anything to cramp the masked terrorists' style. They are also not too worried about reports that Meshal would accept Israel's existence, even if only indirectly, something that is anathema to them.

While I have seen some veiled criticism of Meshal by Gaza Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, I do not recall seeing anything negative about him in the al Qassam website. The terrorists are great fans of the so-called "moderate" Hamas leader.

Perhaps they know something that Western "experts" don't know about Meshal.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that, if true, will make both the hard-core Hamas terrorists and the Western "experts" happy:
Still, earlier in the week, London's Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that Masshal had a change of heart and the he will "definitely continue to serve as Hamas' politburo chief."

The report said that members of Hamas' Shura Council, who convened in Khartoum three weeks ago, refused Mashaal's request to step down.

The UN's sleight of hand in considering Gaza "occupied"

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 03:41 AM PST

Recently, UN Watch asked the UN to comment on why it still considers Gaza to be "occupied territory" when even Hamas has said that there is no occupation there. The UN promised to get back with a rationale.

The UN has now answered:

Spokesperson: Under resolutions adopted by both the Security Council and the General Assembly on the Middle East peace process, the Gaza Strip continues to be regarded as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The United Nations will accordingly continue to refer to the Gaza Strip as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory until such time as either the General Assembly or the Security Council take a different view.

Question: Can I follow up on that? It is the legal definition of occupation and why is Gaza considered occupied?

Spokesperson: Well, as I have just said, there are Security Council and General Assembly resolutions that cover this. For example, there was a Security Council resolution adopted on 8 January 2009 — 1860 — and that stressed that the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967. And as you know, Security Council resolutions do have force in international law.

Furthermore, there is a resolution from the General Assembly from 20 December 2010, and while it noted the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the northern West Bank, it also stressed, in quotes, "the need for respect and preservation of the territorial unity, contiguity and integrity of all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem". So just to repeat that the United Nations will continue to refer to the Gaza Strip as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory until either the General Assembly or the Security Council take a different view on the matter.
What the UN seems to be saying is that if part of the territory is occupied, then all of the territory is considered occupied, since there is are UN resolutions that declare the two territories are considered united.

This flies in the face of logic, and international law. The definition of "occupation" from the 1907 Hague Regulations - the only legal definition there is - says:
[T]erritory 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 wording shows that "occupation" exists only in areas where there is in fact a physical occupation. Obviously an army that occupies part of another nation cannot apply the laws of occupation on the portions of that nation that are not under physical occupation, and just as obviously the Hague allows occupation of a portion of territory, no matter whether that territory is contiguous or not with other territories not under occupation.

From the perspective of the Geneva Conventions, the laws of occupation are meant to protect the citizens actually under occupation. It is impossible for an "occupying army" to protect citizens when it is not physically there.

Amnesty International expands on this:
The sole criterion for deciding the applicability of the law on belligerent occupation is drawn from facts: the de factoeffective control of territory by foreign armed forces coupled with the possibility to enforce their decisions, and the de factoabsence 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.
For example, the US occupied part of Iraq - but not all of it.To say that all of Iraq was "Occupied Iraqi Territory" would be laughable.

What the UN is really saying here is that the name it has given to the territories is "Occupied Palestinian Territories." That name has nothing to do with the reality of whether they are legally occupied or not. (In fact, I would argue that the name has nothing to do with whether they are legally considered "Palestinian" or not.) It is a title, from which people may think that the territories are under occupation, but it is not a legal declaration that they are occupied.

After all, the ICRC says "A transfer of authority to a local government re-establishing the full and free exercise of sovereignty will normally end the state of occupation." Any way you look at it, Hamas is the government of Gaza, and not subjected to any Israeli restrictions on how it governs. The UN can declare the territories to be a single entity all it wants, but the definition of occupation is at odds with the title "Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Similarly, Area A in the West Bank is not by any definition "occupied;"  because Israel transferred authority over the administration of Area A to the PA, just as it did in Gaza. This is the textbook definition of how to end occupation of a territory.

The UN's answer is a contortion meant to obfuscate reality and international law.

(h/t CHA)
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