| Turkey - using "Palestine" instead of helping it Posted: 17 Jul 2012 08:41 PM PDT A biting critique in Hurriyet by Burak Bekdil: Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu must have been too busy isolating (now) Russia and China (after Israel) to notice that his favorite brothers in the Middle East, the Palestinians, recently sounded an alarm when they found out that they were incapable of paying June salaries to 160,000 employees on time.
The shortfall was considered the biggest crisis in Palestinian history, and the authorities said they heavily relied on the availability of Arab and international aid. It is bizarre that Ankara did not pay any attention to the Palestinian cry. Which other nation in recent history has been the loudest supporter of the "Palestinian cause?" Where are the Turkish brothers of our Palestinian brothers? Some facts and figures I recently came across might shed light on the situation.
In the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara tragedy, Mr. Davutoğlu said this was "Turkey's 9/11," that more Turkish-led flotillas would be on their way to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, that Turkish military planes and ships would protect these "aid vessels" and that Israel would eventually be entirely isolated.
That challenge was followed by numerous other promises for every manner of possible Turkish aid for our Palestinian brothers, including a revelation that Minister Davutoğlu was dreaming about "praying at the al-Aqsa Mosque in the Palestinian capital Jerusalem." Naturally, all that made Mr. Davutoğlu and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan heroes in the Palestinian lands – for some time.
Two years later, the Palestinians may be feeling differently. A Palestinian friend who lives in a European capital and has never hidden his admiration for his nation's greatest Turkish saviors now thinks that the Turks used the Palestinians in an Orientalist power game. "We've been deceived by many nations, and now, once again, by the Turks," he wrote to me recently. I replied that I was not the right person to contact and gave him Minister Davutoğlu's office number.
Facts and figures... Yes. Every new day we hear from the prime minister that "we are the world's 17th – and sometimes 16th – biggest economy and we are running fast to become one of the top 10." Yet, at an international donors' conference for Gaza in March 2009, the Turkish pledges stood at a mere $93 million (no typo here, ninety-three million dollars). That pledge accounted for only 2.1 percent of all international (mostly Christian!) pledges made at that conference which totaled $4.257 billion. But there is more.
If you examine the source country data of all 216 approved projects in the Gaza Strip, you will see a breakdown that is not really proportional to the Turkish extravaganza of boasting one of the world's biggest economies as well as its brotherhood with Palestine. Of those 216 projects, 180 are run by international aid organizations, three by the World Bank, three by the Red Crescent, 13 by Germany, two by France, and one by each of Belgium, Egypt, Holland and Sweden. Turkish projects? None. Zero.
Ah, but there once was one. In the late 2000s, a Turkish business organization, TOBB, launched an "industry for peace" project which would have built an organized industrial zone in Jenin and created 5,000 jobs. In 2009, a memorandum of understanding was signed, with all the dignitaries smiling in Kodak-moment happy pictures. Another signature ceremony in 2010 and a pledge to build a similar industrial zone in Gaza followed. More Kodak-moment happy faces. The most recent news on the Jenin project appeared a few months ago when a Turkish official briefed Palestinian journalists on "the latest developments." We journalists have the immediate reflex to know that this simply means there is no real progress to speak of.
And, by the way, any ideas about the Turkish-Palestinian foreign trade? After I saw that the annual two-way figure for 2010 was $29 million and that Palestinian exports to Turkey stood at $270,000, I didn't bother checking the 2011 numbers. It isn't only Turkey. Every Arab and Muslim nation uses the "Palestinian cause" to distract their people from what's happening at home, but when it comes down to it they do little. Except for Iran, which is happily arming any terror group who claims to want to destroy Israel. (h/t Herb) 
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| Switched at birth in Gaza? Posted: 17 Jul 2012 01:30 PM PDT A reader emailed me about a CBC radio program he heard recently about Ahmed Masoud, a British writer and playwright who was born in Gaza. During the program, Masoud told this story that h e had written for The Guardian last year: I had a very happy childhood in a very large family, with five sisters and six brothers. I'm right in the middle, which is a good place to be. But we lived in one of the worst places on Earth – the Gaza Strip in Palestine – and when I was six, in 1987, the first intifada started.
...Despite everything going on outside I had a happy childhood. But all this changed when I was 17.
One day I came home from school and turned on the TV. There was a programme about Palestinian refugees and how their families were fragmented because of the troubles, and it talked about how children and babies were mixed up in hospitals.
I looked at my mother and she was electrified – her mouth was open, her eyes were staring and she looked like a ghost. I knew there was something she wasn't telling me. My dad, too, was staring at the screen. I could see that behind his glasses there was a tear coming down. I hadn't seen my dad cry before, and to see his tears falling down his cheek was terrifying to me.
Then he wiped his eyes and held my hand, and my mum's hand, and he started telling the story about what happened when I was born.
At the time, the hospital was being raided and I was evacuated to a special care unit before my mum had even seen me. My dad heard news that the hospital was being bombed and went straight there. When he arrived he was told the room and cot number where he could find me. He ran as fast as he could, but when he got there, he found not one but two babies in the cot. He didn't know which one was his – the one on the left or the one on the right. There was no time to make a decision. He had to take one. He wondered whether the number they had given him was a mistake, but when he looked around all the other cots were crammed with babies too. And he had to make that decision. So he picked me up. Even now, if you ask him, he can't answer why he picked me and not the other baby.
He went back to my mum and she wrapped me up, and they ran with me through the streets back home. He didn't say anything to her until they got home. My mum just put me to her breast and began to feed me. That bond, that love, that motherly feeling was there. The more she looked at me and fed me, the more she was sure I was her son. Wow...what a story! It is custom made for reader (and listener) sympathy. You can almost feel the heat from the explosions and smell the gunpowder, as you picture Masoud's father desperately trying to save his baby's life from the heartless Israeli air raid at the maternity ward, and the parents' desperate race through the streets of Gaza - with the still recovering mother forced to flee on foot, no doubt barefooted, dodging the falling bombs and debris while tenderly protecting her newborn baby. Only one problem: Israel didn't bomb any hospitals in Gaza when Masoud was born. It didn't have air raids until the second intifada. This story happened six years before the first intifada, when tens of thousands of Gazans were peacefully commuting to and working in Israel. Hamas didn't exist. Thousands of Israelis lived in Gaza. More from Israel would go there weekly to buy goods cheaper than they were within the Green Line. Arabs with the proper means would travel to Israel to be treated in hospitals there. Masoud's birthday is August 27, and I cannot find any possible actions by Israel in Gaza in 1981 or 1982 around that date. Israel was fighting in Lebanon, not Gaza, and the very few protests there were met with riot control methods, not airplanes. (In 1981, there was one highly unusual mass protest in Gaza where one protester was killed, and that was in December. Most of the protests at the time were from the PLO in the West Bank.)
This story is fiction.
Now, it is entirely possible that Masoud's father is the one who made up the story, perhaps because poor procedures in the Gaza hospital caused a possible mix-up. After all, he admits that there were two children in the same bassinet.
Or possibly Masoud himself, who has received awards for his autobiographical fiction and who co-wrote a dramatic and seemingly highly exaggerated BBC radio play about how he escaped Gaza during Cast Lead, just made it up.
What is not at all surprising is that the media would swallow such a story without the least modicum of fact-checking.
(h/t Tom) 
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| More links than you can shake a stick at Posted: 17 Jul 2012 12:00 PM PDT From Ian:
The Three-State Solution by Malcolm Lowe "Gibraltar, Monaco, and Hong Kong are all, like Gaza, small heavily populated areas with a coastline, and all are thriving. The main obstacle to further dramatic growth is Gaza's bad habit of shooting missiles at Israel."
The future is already here, but people refuse to see it. Why? Because the world's politicians and journalists froze their minds decades ago about how to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Every speech by Western leaders, and every pontification by a Thomas Friedman, has as its nucleus what I called – already back in 2003 – the "Dogmatic Chant." Where Obama failed on forging peace in the Middle East by Scott Wilson "Now it was Obama's turn to explain his view of the work he had done to secure an elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace.
"Mr. President, what lessons have you learned?" Goldin asked.
"That it's really hard," Obama said." Barry Rubin: Why the Mass Media's Best Effort to Understand Obama's Failure to Make Israel-Palestinian Peace Fails "The Washington Post published a detailed article by Scott Wilson on why President Barack Obama failed to make progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace. It still stands as the best mainstream media effort to explain Obama's policy. Wilson did a lot of work, conducted many interviews, and strives to be fair. The article is useful in large part because it shows how much of what we've been saying about the Obama Administration was accurate, and it also includes a lot of useful quotes." Peace Camp Activists who Support Totalitarians and Murderers Many peace campers claim that they have deep respect for human life. In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this is often only true on the surface. When one scratches a bit below that, one realizes that many of them look away from intended genocides and other crimes in the Muslim world. Galtung's recent statements have helped to show part of the malice which hides behind the false humanitarian masks of many in the "peace camp." Security forces bust terror cell planning to kidnap soldier Residents of town just north of Jerusalem hoped to free jailed terrorist A little background: The current Australian Labor (minority) Government relies on the Greens to guarantee supply bills. This week that alliance has fallen apart. Labor is now openly attacking the Greens, characterising them as a fanatical fringe group, particularly over their support for BDS. Andrew Bolt: Greens punished for what they coyly call their "anti-Zionism" How heartening to see Labor take a stance against the latest form of collective punishment of Jews - a Greens-back racism that for all the excuses seems too much like anti-Semtism:"The Greens will carry forever the stain of their support for the BDS campaign and their attempts to delegitimise Israel and the Jewish community - and this is one of the reasons why we must stand strong against the Greens," the pair said in a statement.
Also: NGO-Monitor: Oxfam calls for violations of international law YNet: IDF holds urban warfare drill - in Mea Shearim IDF thwarted ten terror cells in the Sinai Syrian defector: "Assad ready to use chemical weapons" 2 rockets explode in Sderot Hilary Clinton refers to "Here, in Israel" three times during speeches in Jerusalem. Is she going against US government policy that Jerusalem is not in Israel? Another Fatah summer camp named after a mass murderer (h/t Yoel, Yerushalimey) 
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| UN's OCHA pretends to be "neutral" Posted: 17 Jul 2012 10:30 AM PDT From a UN briefing yesterday: U.N. HUMANITARIAN ARM STRIVES FOR NEUTRALITY IN OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY Asked about a letter sent to the Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Spokesperson said OCHA's role with regard to the humanitarian situation and concerns in the occupied Palestinian territory -- as the UN coordinating body for humanitarian affairs -- focuses mainly on advocacy, both on behalf of people in need of, or dependent on, humanitarian assistance, and with both Palestinians and Israelis.
These include, for example, families made homeless by evictions or demolitions, such as in Area C of the West Bank, and people whose lives and livelihoods are affected by the impact of the Gaza blockade restrictions.
Nesirky said that this advocacy includes providing an independent assessment of the situation on the ground and making this available publicly through fact-based reports, which are routinely shared with and used by national and international partners. However, he noted that OCHA does not implement programmes or directly provide relief items, but that OCHA strives to ensure its neutrality and impartiality in all aspects of its work. Note how both their examples of "neutrality" ignore any humanitarian concerns of Israelis. But showing that OCHA is anything but neutral is even easier. In December, they published their "Humanitarian Atlas" (large download) and the very beginning shows that they are anything but even-handed: Palestinian civilians living in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) continue to bear the brunt of ongoing conflict and Israeli occupation. A lack of respect for international humanitarian and human rights law has resulted in a protection crisis with serious and negative humanitarian consequences. OCHA mentions in this report that in 2011, three Palestinians had been killed by Israeli settlers (without mentioning any context on what they might have been doing at the time.) Yet it doesn't mention that in 2011, 8 Israelis in the West Bank were killed by Palestinians (the Fogel family, the Palmer father and son and Ben Yosef Livnat) nor that four other Israelis were killed from Grad rockets and anti-tank missiles fired from Gaza (Moshe Ami, Eliyahu Naim, Yossi Shoshan, Daniel Viflic). How impartial can a report be when it only mentions people from one side being killed? Or does "neutral" mean it doesn't take sides between Fatah and Hamas? The "humanitarian" UN must not consider Jews who are killed by Palestinian Arab terror "human." (h/t Gidon Shaviv, Israel Research Fellow) 
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| Early Israeli discussions on unifying Jerusalem (Israel Archive blog) Posted: 17 Jul 2012 09:00 AM PDT From the English-language Israel State Archive blog: Looking around them at the end of the war, one thing just about all Israelis agreed upon was that Jerusalem must never again be divided, and must be united as Israel's capital. The day after the war the Cabinet decided (decision 536) to appoint a subcommittee with the revealing title "Committee of Ministers to Determine the Status of United Jerusalem". With a name lke that, what was there left to talk about?
The main issue was not if, but how. Back in 1948 Israel had been careful not to make a show of exerting its writ to the western part of Jerusalem for fear of provoking actions of internationalization. (We've already mentioned this here and here). Some of the participants in the June 12th dicussion were in favor of repeating the action, perhaps by having the Minister of Defense publish a decree about East Jerusalem being under Israel's jurisdiction. They feared Israeli fanafre would rouse Vatican pressure to internationalize the city, although they recognized the Muslim world was against the idea. Most of the participants disliked the idea, for various reasons. Some felt it important to pass an openly declarative law that would clarify Israel's determination never to leave Jerusalem. Others, most prominently Yaacov Shimshon Shapira, the Minister of Justice who was chairing the meeting, saw no need for declarative shows, but did think Israeli control of the city should be enacted by law, not by administrative stealth. Otherwise, they warned, some wise-alecs would move to the east of the city and refuse to pay taxes; they were also worried about the legal aspects of people and institutions moving back to where they had been before 1948 with no clear legal framework. Shapira summed up his position by noting that while not everyone accepted the Israeli position that Jerusalem is Israel's capital
...and most of the foreign diplomats don't come to Jerusalem, or they come only at night but not in clear daylight, I've given up on solving that problem. I don't care if even ten years from now the French or even the American ambassador doesn't come to Jerusalem for our Independance Day celebration. I can live without them and I don't need their declaration that they accept Jerusalem as our capital. What I need to do now is to unify the city, to unify the Old City and the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus. By the way, I haven't yet had the time to go look for my father's grave on the Mount of Olives. I don't want to touch Bethlehem, which is as ancient a city as Jerusalem on its own right. If I remember correctly, the Bible mentions Bethlehem even before Jerusalem.
Menachem Begin: Yes, and Hebron is also mentioned earlier.
Shapira: Hebron, no question.
Begin: As Kiryat Arba.
Shaira: That I can't say; I'd have to look in Rashi. But the Bible was written before Rashi. (Secular Israeli politicians today rarely have such conversations).
The committee agreed on a smaller group of its members who would formulate a law which would exert Israeli law over the eastern parts of town (the line to be defined later), in the expectation that the full cabinet would adopt it and the Knesset enact it, all within a week. Other parts of the documentation prove that Israeli leaders were not hell-bent on "Judaizing" Jerusalem the way they are accused: Along the way the participants discussed other aspects of controling Jerusalem. Zerach Wahrhaftig, Minister of Religious Affairs, was peeved that no-one had yet called in his experts, so that the various holy places were not yet open to the public; he was particularly irritated that a delegation of four Israeli Kadis (Muslim holy men) had tried to visit el Aqsa Mosque for the first time since 1948, and had been turned away by Israeli troops. Zvi Zur, the deputy Minister of Defense, assured him they would be allowed in the following Friday. Zur and everyone else agreed that the Israeli soldier who had placed an Israeli flag on the Omar Mosque on the day of the battle shouldn't have. Read the whole thing. (h/t, of course, to Yaacov) 
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| Muslims upset at Hebrew translation of the Koran Posted: 17 Jul 2012 07:30 AM PDT Al Wafd reports about Ahmed Salah Albehnsa, a "specialistin Israeli affairs," who discovered a 2005 Hebrew translation of the Koran that was filled with "falsehood and lies." According to Albehnsa, who revealed this important information at a conference in Egypt, this version of the Koran does the unspeakable. It says that the text is not Divinely inspired, nor is it original, but the text is adapted from earlier books of Judaism, Christianity, and some of the myths that were prevalent in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and the Levant and ancient Egypt. Moreover, this version says that the Jews have a right to Jerusalem and the Quran never mentioned any mosque or place of worship for Muslims in Jerusalem. As any reader will have no doubt figured out by now, the Hebrew translation of the Koran is a scholarly, critical work, not a religious one. The author is Uri Rubin, who has taught at Tel Aviv University for over forty years. But the al-Wafd article makes it sound like this is a Jewish plot to hijack the Koran. It says "Intelligent and ambitious initiatives are continuously committed by the Jews to control human brains in order to reach their goal to impose complete control of the land, and they used all the methods to create an illegal and falsified history and to violate all conventions; ignoring the evidence and the cultural, religious and historical constants that can not be infringed."
I love performing Zionist mind control, myself. 
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| Gaza Christians: Muslims kidnap members to convert them Posted: 17 Jul 2012 06:00 AM PDT From Ma'an: Christians in the Gaza Strip staged a sit-in protest on Monday against the abduction of a young man who his family says was being forced to convert to Islam by an armed group, Ma'an's correspondent said.
Dozens of Christians protested in the Orthodox church in Gaza City, claiming that a Christian man and two girls had been kidnapped.
Greek Orthodox Archbishop Alexios said a young man, Ramiz al-Amash, was kidnapped by an Islamist group on Saturday after attempts to force him to convert from Christianity to Islam.
He was prevented from calling his family.
"The young man's parents went to the police to lodge a complaint about the kidnapping of their son, but it did nothing," Archbishop Alexios said.
Al-Amash's mother became sick and had to be taken to hospital. The family managed to contact the kidnappers and they took Ramiz to see her surrounded by three jeeps filled with gunmen. They then took him away again to an unknown location.
He is most likely being held in al-Bureij or al-Maghazi refugee camp, Archbishop Alexios said.
"There are some groups trying to persuade young Christians to convert to Islam. They abduct them away from their parents and their families, they threaten them," he said.
Hamas government spokesman Ayman Batniji said there had been no kidnappings in Gaza, adding that police in the coastal enclave have the utmost respect for Christians. AP reports it from the Muslims' perspective: Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest Monday, claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will.
The small but noisy demonstration showed the increasingly desperate situation facing the tiny minority.
Protesters banged on a church bell and chanted, "With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus."
Gaza police say the two are staying with a Muslim religious official at their request, because they fear retribution from their families converting to Islam. Two mediators said the two -- a 25-year-old man and a woman with three children -- appeared to have embraced Islam of their free will. Forced conversions have been unheard of in Gaza before.
Since the Islamic militant Hamas seized power five years ago, Christians have felt increasingly embattled, but have mostly kept silent.
There are growing fears among Gaza Christians that their rapidly shrinking community could disappear through emigration and conversions.
Their numbers appear to have shrunk from some 3,500 to about 1,500 in recent years, according to community estimates. They are a tiny minority among 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, most conservative Muslims.
"If things remain like this, there'll be no Christians left in Gaza," said Huda Al-Amash, mother of one of the converts, Ramez, 25. She sat sobbing in a church hallway alongside her daughters, Ranin and Rinad, and a dozen other women. "Today it's Ramez. Then who, and who will be next?"
Changing faith is a deeply traumatic affair in the Arab world, where religion is strongly interwoven with people's identities and tribal membership. To convert often means to be ostracized by the community.
The two converts, Al-Amash, and Hiba Abu Dawoud, 31, could not be reached for comment. Abu Dawould took her three daughters with her, further enraging the community. 
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| Iranian official accuses West of controlling the weather Posted: 17 Jul 2012 04:30 AM PDT From AFP: The drought in southern Iran is part of a "soft war" launched against the Islamic republic by the West, the Fars news agency quoted an Iranian vice president as saying on Monday.
"I am suspicious about the drought in the southern part of the country," Hassan Mousavi, who also heads Iran's cultural heritage and tourism organization, said at a ceremony to introduce the nation's new chief of meteorological department.
"The world arrogance and colonist (term used by Iranian authorities to label the West) are influencing Iran's climate conditions using technology... The drought is an acute issue and soft war is completely evident... This level of drought is not normal."
Iran has experienced several droughts in recent years, especially in the south where it was hit in recent weeks by violent sand storms that engulfed several cities.
Sand storms particularly enter Iran from neighboring Iraq where desertification has increased over the last two decades due to wars.
Last year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Western countries of devising plans to "cause drought" in Iran, adding that "European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump" their water on their continent. 
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| Munich widow: IOC head said Arab/Muslim nations stopping minute of silence Posted: 17 Jul 2012 02:40 AM PDT From the European Jewish Press: As London's Organising Committee of the Olympic Games prepares for the start of this summer's games, the international furore over the continued refusal to hold an official commemoration for the victims of the Munich Massacre fails to die down, as the widow of the one of the slain athletes brands the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as "corrupt."
The organisation and its president Jacques Rogge have been subject to intense criticism from across the international community for its continued refusal to honour the 11 Israel Olympians murdered at the 1972 Munich Games with a minute's silence to mark the 40th anniversary of the killings, in what has been presented as a "humanitarian" gesture.
Munich widow Ankie Spitzer spearheaded the campaign by launching an online protest, which has since garnered support from across political spectrums in several countries including Israel, Canada, the UK, Australia, the US, Belgium and Germany.
In the latest development, some 140 Italian parliamentarians signed a letter to Rogge this week, calling for minute's silence to be instituted.
The appeal was driven by Italian Jewish MP Fianna Nirenstein, who is vice president of the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs, and who said the gesture would mark "a moment of pity for these murdered athletes and a firm condemnation of terror".
Although IOC officials have on many occasions attended private memorials to the slain Olympians held in cities hosting the Games throughout the years, they have not staged a minute's silence in the 40 years since the tragedy.
In a letter launching her campaign for an official silence to mark the 40th anniversary of the Munich Massacres, Spitzer wrote:
"Silence is a fitting tribute for athletes who lost their lives on the Olympic stage. Silence contains no statements, assumptions or beliefs and requires no understanding of language to interpret."
Rogge's succinct response declared that "within the Olympic family, the memory of the victims of the terrible massacre in Munich in 1972 will never fade away."
The Israeli foreign ministry insinuated a political dimension to the IOC's refusal, when it responded that "perhaps the IOC thinks anything to do with Israel is controversial. It is not a display of great courage and integrity."
Spitzer declared the IOC's continued refusal is evidence of it being "a corrupt organisation, led by greed rather than the Olympic spirit", adding that "the IOC's refusal is pure discrimination – greed and anti-Semitism".
Citing the increasing funding the organisation relies on from oil-rich gulf states, Spitzer claims that Rogge protested his inability to act earlier this year when the two met to discuss her appeals, saying his hands were tied by admission of 46 Arab and Muslim members to the IOC. "No," Spitzer claims she responded, "my husband's hands were tied, not yours." There was a brief and much criticized ceremony immediately after the massacre in 1972, where the head of the IOC at the time compared the slaughter to the movement to stop Rhodesia from participating in the games. The Vancouver Sun recalls what happened: A memorial service was held the day after the murders, but it was more farce than memorial. When the flags of all the competing nations were lowered to half-mast, 10 Arab nations were so incensed that they had them raised as soon as the ceremony was over. A book about the 1972 Olympics notes: Arab teams boycotted the service, remaining in the Olympic Village, and officials from the Lebanese team told journalists, "We did not go to the stadium, We are confined to our quarters by our chief of mission." The response from the Saudi team was more outrageous: "What service? What shootings?" (h/t Ishai) 
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