Egypt's foremost Muslim Brotherhood official called on the Arab world Thursday to replace negotiations with Israel with "holy Jihad," claiming that if Jews are allowed to pray on the Temple Mount they will destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and supplant it with the third temple.
Mohammed Badie, Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared in a public message published by Egyptian daily Al-Ahram that "the Zionists only understand force," and that Arabs cannot hope to achieve justice from the Jews "through the corridors of the United Nations or through negotiations."
'Zionists only understand the language of force and will not relent without duress,' Badie continued. 'This will only happen through holy Jihad, high sacrifices and all forms of resistance'
"The time has come for the Islamic nation to unite around one man for the sake of Jerusalem and Palestine," Badie said. "The Jews have dominated the land, spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profaned holy places, including their own."
"Zionists only understand the language of force and will not relent without duress," Badie continued. "This will only happen through holy Jihad, high sacrifices and all forms of resistance. The day they realize we will march this path and raise the banner of Jihad for the sake of God, is the day they will relent and stop their tyranny."
Don't worry. We know that there will be dozens of Arabic op-eds decrying his warmongering and anti-semitic statements. Because we are told that most Muslims aren't extremists, and certainly we'll see the backlash from the moderates soon.
Except that this was first published 15 hours ago as of this writing, and so far...nothing.
The Palestinian Authority, facing a major cash crisis, has warned 150,000 employees it does not know when they will receive their September salaries.
The crunch has been caused largely by the failure of international donors to make good on aid pledges. Nour Odeh, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Authority government, told The Independent that international donors had provided only 40 per cent of aid pledged for 2012. About half of the Palestinians' $2.54bn (£1.58bn) annual budget comes from donors.
"The President and the Prime Minister have repeatedly urged all donors and friendly countries, including the Arab countries, to expedite their disbursement of assistance to the Palestinian Authority because the situation is serious and intervention is needed," Ms Odeh said.
She said the "structural problem" of Israeli control over customs and other tax revenues had contributed to cash-flow problems, while Israel's hold over large areas of the West Bank and their natural resources were hindering economic planning efforts.
The crisis threatens to derail reforms by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's government, which has implemented major budget savings and increased tax revenues, heralding a dramatic improvement in the Palestinian economy in recent years.
Palestinian civil servants – including police, doctors and teachers – only received the final portion of their August salaries last week. Violent protests in the West Bank last month led the government to cut VAT and suspend some salary payments to top officials. Palestinian trade unions said they will strike over a new monthly minimum wage of $375 – a third of the rate in neighbouring Israel – approved by the Palestinian cabinet yesterday.
Jihad Al Wazir, head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, forecast the annual budget deficit at $1.3bn – far higher than the original projection of $950m. Aside from hundreds of millions in promised aid from Arab countries, some $200m pledged by the US has been delayed by Congress to protest against the payment of generous stipends to the families of militants imprisoned by Israel.
"We haven't heard promises to pay the PA money," a Palestinian official told the Maan News Agency. "Even the Europeans said it clearly that they have paid their dues and can't pay more."
I believe that the italicized text is wrong. In April, President Obama unfroze the $192 million that was held up by Congress. And as the article states, the Europeans have paid their pledges.
Which means that the only ones who are ignoring their pledges are the Arab nations.
What do they know that the West doesn't?
It has long been my contention that Arab nations are sick and tired of the Palestinian Arab issue. This accelerated when Hamas split with Fatah, creating two separate political entities and no hope of reconciliation. (They have even reneged on pledges to help "de-Judaize" Jerusalem.)
They will pay lip service (and fake money pledges) to the Palestinian Arab cause for Western and local consumption, but in reality they don't give a damn. Arab leaders view their money towards the Palestinian Arabs as an investment, not as charity, and it is an investment that has failed miserably in the past.
If only Western nations would be as clear-eyed about Palestinian Arabs as their own Arab brethren are.
"Since the ill-fated 2001 UN Durban, anti-racism conference, visceral Jew-hatred masquerading as "anti-Zionism" has corrupted the discourse of the global NGO community. It numbs the world's conscience, sometimes rendering it almost deaf and dumb at a time when the Mideast's newest, truest crime against humanity—the violent displacement of almost one million Syrians—demands that moral voices be raised in unison and effective international action be taken. The world's far-flung Jewish communities, the Mideast's exposed Christian minorities, and the Syrian people are all victims a false flag operation that deflects international attention from the crimes that should be its true focus. For this moment at least, we are all—Jews, Christians, and innocent Syrian Muslims—victims of history's oldest hatred: anti-Semitism."
"Days and nights in southern Israel have been punctuated by a growing number of sirens and rocket explosions, with over 60 rockets striking Israeli cities and communities this past week. On Monday morning alone, 55 Qassam and mortar shells were fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. The rocket strikes damaged buildings, properties and a kibbutz petting zoo that is usually filled with children, but was empty because of the early morning hour."
Analysis: Critics slam Movement founder for posting on Twitter blaming Zionists for Holocaust. "The growing assessments about the future of FGM suggest that the organization has experienced irreparable harm and is now viewed as a kind of left wing neo-Nazi group. The open questions are, will FGM's supporters pull the plug on its fundraising streams and will additional FGM advisory board members–like the US linguist Noam Chomsky and Archbishop Theodosius (Atallah) Hanna from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem–resign from the FGM?"
Perhaps this could explain even a most recent event in Toronto; during a large demonstration across the street from the US consulate regarding anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims, hatred for Israel and the Jews "ran so deep throughout the protest that one would have to be willfully blind to have missed it," according to blogger Blazing Catfur, who documented the event. Yet the anti-Zionist posters and chants were almost totally ignored by the mainstream media. "This book is an attempt to get to grips with the paranoid conspiracy-mongering on the left, which invariably parades as a humanitarian endeavour and a compassionate defence of the 'oppressed' or powerless against the might of the 'Zionist-Crusader' axis," Wistrich states. "This book goes to the heart of what has become a serious mental derangement in the hope that it may help the left (and others afflicted by the same malady) to regain their sanity.
The London Middle East Institute (LMEI), which is based at the School of Oriental and African Studies, used to give serious lectures. Not any more. The recently established Centre for Palestine Studies (CPS) now sits like a cuckoo in the nest of the LMEI.
On his book promotion tour in the U.S., Likud MK Danny Danon accuses President Barack Obama of "catastrophic" policies for Israel. Danon insists he is not interfering in the presidential race, but merely stating his personal opinion. Danon has praised Mitt Romney in the past.
Turkish PM Recep Erdogan may have been entirely justified in his response to the recent aggression by Syria. However, his actions reek of hypocrisy given his vitriolic attacks against Israel "Just as Turkey has the inalienable right to defend its citizens against acts of aggression and terror from Syria, so too does Israel have the right to defend its citizens from terror attacks by Hamas and those seeking to support them. Instead of demanding an Israeli apology over the Flotilla, it is Mr Erdogan who is the one that should be apologizing to Israel for his entirely unjustified and vitriolic attacks in light of his government's recent actions. Anything less, would be completely hypocritical."
"Another rare statement was broadcast on PA TV when a Palestinian artist, introducing a painting, acknowledged that there was a Jewish historical period in Jerusalem"
Palestinian terrorists killed a Jewish toddler in the assault on city's main synagogue Renzo Gattegna, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, praised Napolitano for past condemnations of anti-Jewish sentiment and for his pledge to fight anti-Semitism, "even when it masquerades itself as anti-Zionism."
Italian women's group protests publicly funded memorial to Rodolfo Graziani JTA – A new Italian women's group has added its voice to protests over a publicly funded monument honoring the World War II-era fascist leader Rodolfo Graziani.
Argo Medical Technologies Ltd., an Israeli company that makes devices enabling paraplegics to walk, said Tuesday that it will open its US headquarters in Massachusetts and expects to hire up to 40 people here within the next three to five years. The move was disclosed in dramatic fashion at the AdvaMed 2012 medical technology convention, where a US Army veteran who uses a wheelchair demonstrated Argo's ReWalk device by climbing down from a podium with crutches and ambling through the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
Israeli women are dominant in all three areas of biomedical engineering — inventions, industry and investment. Women are the superstars of the vibrant Israeli biomed industry, filling leading roles as entrepreneurs, CEOs, funders and head researchers in this increasingly significant field.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is making a speech in Lebanon now, and the first topic he is speaking about is the UAV that made it to Israeli territory last week. From Now Lebanon:
-The main topic I will discuss is the reconnaissance drone which crossed into the space of occupied Palestinian lands.
-After this, I will address other issues which received attention in Lebanon and [the region], depending on time.
-First of all, regarding the drone, we are witnessing a unique operation in the history of Lebanon and the region.
-The Resistance claims responsibility for the operation.
-The Resistance in Lebanon sent a sophisticated reconnaissance drone from Lebanon toward the [Mediterranean] Sea, which it crosses for hundreds of kilometers, before it entered [Israeli airspace] and hovered over many important locations before it was discovered by the Israeli air force.
- Today, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu held Hezbollah responsible for [sending] the drone.
-The drone was not Russian made, but Iranian. It was [assembled] in Lebanon.
-The drone took off in the specified trajectory for hundreds kilometers and arrived in an area close to the [Israeli] Dimona [nuclear] plant.
-As for the Israeli [claims] that they discovered it over the sea, and [forced it over] land, I say they are lying to their people. -The achievement [was to make] the drone fly all this way in an area full of US-Israeli [air defense] systems.
-The shoot down of the drone was natural and expected.
-We will leave it for the Israelis to sit down and [discover] the drone's abilities to gather information… We are revealing part of our capabilities and concealing many others.
-In light of this event we recall the over 20,000 Israeli violations [of Lebanese airspace] at the time when the government is unable [to prevent the violations] and the international community is silent.
-It is our natural right to launch other reconnaissance [operations] to occupied Palestine whenever we want. This will not be the first time and not the last. We stress that we can reach any [location] we want.
-We named the operation after martyr Hussein Ayoub who was the first [Hezbollah] expert in this field. We want to name the drone "Ayoub" [which is also the name] of our prophet.
There are many unanswered questions about the UAV and the Israeli response to it. While Nasrallah is obviously engaging in serious spin, it would have been nice if Israel had put out a consistent story about why it was allowed to fly for so long over Israeli territory and why it was shot down the way it was.
Today, for the first time since 2007, furniture made in the Gaza Strip was shipped to the West Bank. The merchandise, ordered by the Palestinian Ministry of Education in the West Bank, includes thousands of parts for school chairs and desks. It was transported in four double trailer trucks via the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Date bars produced in the Gaza Strip are set to be shipped to the West Bank on Tuesday as Israel reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing after closing it for a Jewish holiday, a Gaza official said.
Crossing official Raed Fattouh told Ma'an that three truckloads of date bars produced in Gaza would be transferred to the West Bank under the supervision of the United Nations World Food Programme.
With the exception of bananas and apples, Gaza is no longer admitting fruit from Israel, the Agriculture Ministry said on Monday. The ban affects at least seven kinds of fruit and, in terms of sales, constitutes around a 50% cut in imports whose 2011 value the ministry put at $26 million.
Gaza fruit importer Jaber Al-Shanty said the Hamas government ban was "irresponsible and unrealistic" as it overlooked the losses to hundreds of Palestinians whose livelihood depends on marketing the fruit.
"The local product is not nearly enough" to offset the shortfall, he said. "What do we have in large quantities, other than guava?"
Since the import ban went into effect on Friday, the price of peaches has doubled to NIS 8 ($2) a kilo, while dates were selling at NIS 11 ($2.81) a kilo, up from NIS 7.
Since these stories contradict the mantra of a choking Israeli siege on Gaza, they are being ignored by the press. Reporting that contradicts memes only confuses the masses, so media outlets are protecting us from knowledge that might cause actual thinking.
"Jews of Egypt," an Egyptian documentary film that records the life of Jews in Egypt before their departure from the country in the 1950s, has stirred controversy after it was screened in a film festival in Cairo.
Amir Ramsis, director of the film, was accused of promoting normalization of ties with Israel through attempting to gain the audience's sympathy for Jewish Egyptians, currently seen as Zionists by many Egyptians.
"Those accusations are absolutely groundless," Ramsis told Al Arabiya. "Those who think the film promotes normalization either did not watch it or analyzed it very superficially."
It is very obvious, Ramsis explained, that the documentary is against Israel and against normalization.
"The film showed how Jewish Egyptians were against the creation of Israel before the July 23, 1952 Revolution and that many Egyptian anti-Israeli institutions were actually led by Egyptian Jews."
Ramsis noted that the purpose of the film is to set straight many of the misconceptions Egyptians have about Jews.
"Many people do not distinguish between being Jewish and being Israeli or Zionist. Many Egyptians automatically consider Jews enemies."
Ramsis said the film does not seek to embellish the image of Jews either, but basically to "present the truth as well as his own point of view."
Ramsis said that the people he interviewed in the film were either Jews who still live in Egypt or who are currently residing in Europe.
"Egyptian Jews were apprehensive about taking part in the film because they were afraid they would be hunted down by State Security at the time of Mubarak. They were actually given clear instructions not to make any media appearances."
The film is a history lesson, not simply for these fascinating and important details, that have slipped out of popular memory. It is a history lesson in its stories. The stories they tell are of an Egypt that is almost unrecognizable.
Even if we suppose that these depictions of smooth religious harmony are laced with nostalgia, we cannot escape the fact that Egypt has lost something. Not only has it lost a part of its history, but these are stories of an Egypt far less closed in on itself than it is today, far more open, respectful and integrated.
It is a tale of history that is a decline. A fraying of social fabric, as mistrust enters into the interactions between neighbors. From a way of living where to be Jewish was inconsequential to social relations, to the way that being Jewish became an accusation.
Ruth Browning interviewed her grandmother, Julie Gresh, before the onset of Alzheimer's. She speaks about her now in the film, she says, to ensure her grandmother's place in the history of Egypt's Jews. In one sense, this is indeed a history of Egypt's Jews. It is also a chapter of Egypt's history, a forgotten one, just as it is a forgotten part of Jewish history generally.
The story of Jews in the Middle East does not fold smoothly into a Jewish narrative of oppression, and many Egyptian Jews can trace their families' arrival in Egypt to an escape from persecution, whether from pogroms or the Spanish Inquisition. The history of the Jews in Europe has been told such that it becomes the history of all Jews, and it is a deeply politicized narrative, its folds influenced by Zionism, such that the history of the Jews without a homeland is simply one of persecution, and that Israel offers a solution to that perennial condition.
The Jews of Egypt tell a different story. So different was this story that, even for those who did not oppose Israel for political reasons, it simply did not resonate or speak to them. As a French journalist, the daughter of an Egyptian Jew, says: "It did not occur to the family to go to Israel. That was a place for oppressed Jews, so it wasn't for us."
...The stories become darker. There's the story of the officer who arrives at night, giving an entire family a number of days within which to leave their country. And these are stories also of resilience — the man who says to the officer, "I am more Egyptian than you," the one who challenges the officer at his door not to "challenge the patriotism standing before him," or the one who answers the officer's suggestion that he leave to Israel with, "No, why don't you go to Israel."
While no one in the film talks about being expelled from their country, they were compelled, and even coerced, into leaving. And on doing so, they had to sign a paper that stripped them of their Egyptian identity and obliged them never to return.
Grinsman, who, after being imprisoned for three years for refusing to leave, was later forced to sign the document, and put on a ship. He was expelled, he says, not really for being Jewish, but for his socialist activism. Forced to sign that document, one respondent comments wryly that it is easier for Israelis to get into Egypt than it is for Egyptian Jews.
While the film seems to be important for Egyptians to watch, it definitely seems to ignore the anti-semitism that was an undercurrent in Egypt and other Arab countries well before Zionism. Relatively speaking, the Jews of Egypt were in better shape than those in Europe, but they were never as fully integrated into Egyptian society as they are portrayed here. As Joseph Abdel Wahed wrote:
But even as child, I understood that Jews were second-class citizens. Signs in the street read: El yahud kalb el arab, "The Jews are the dogs of the Arabs." At school, my best friend Menyawi turned to me and said with a half-smile, "One day, all the Jews will have their throats slit." An older Muslim man advised that if I was threatened in the streets, I should say: Ana Muslum, M'wahed billah, "I am a Muslim and believe in one God."
I'm also not convinced that the Jews in Egypt in the 1940s were uniformly anti-Zionist as the director says. No doubt some were, but he clearly didn't interview any Egyptian Jews who now live in Israel.
UK medical journal The Lancet has published a series of abstracts drawn from a meeting of public health researchers, The Lancet-Palestine Health Alliance, in Beirut in March 2012.
According to one of the studies, by researchers from the American University of Beirut, "discriminatory laws and decades of marginalisation" have left Palestinian refugees in Lebanon socially, politically and economically disadvantaged. Over half of them live in increasingly overcrowded camps, where "the provision of housing, water, electricity, refuse and other services are inadequate and contribute to poor health".
Out of 2,500 households surveyed, 42 percent had water leaking from their walls or roofs, and 8 percent lived in homes made of dangerous building materials such as asbestos.
Hoda Samra, a spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in Lebanon, said many refugees live in shelters lacking ventilation and daylight. While about 5,000 shelters are in need of rehabilitation, the agency has funding to repair only 730. Samra added that there is also a lack of funding to address rundown infrastructure in four out of 12 of the camps.
Camp populations continue to grow but the land allocated for them has not; the resulting overcrowding has exacerbated public health problems.
"Some of the camps are growing vertically but not horizontally," said Samra, noting that many of the structures were built haphazardly, too close together and without proper foundations.
The study found a direct correlation between poor housing conditions and poor health among respondents; 31 percent had chronic illnesses and 24 percent had experienced acute illnesses in the previous six months.
The researchers also found a strong link between poverty and ill health. Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon are ineligible for social services, including healthcare, and they are banned from some 50 professions. UNRWA and the International Labour Organization have lobbied the Lebanese government to ease employment restrictions, but amendments to labour legislation enacted in August 2010, which would make it easier for refugees to secure work permits, are still awaiting an implementation decree from the Department of Labour.
According to another study in The Lancet series, also by researchers from the University of Beirut, 59 percent of refugee households live below the national poverty line; 63 percent reported some food insecurity, while 13 percent were severely food insecure. Only the poorest - about 13 percent - qualify for food rations and small cash grants from UNRWA.
The combination of poor nutrition, unhealthy living conditions and feelings of hopelessness breed "all kinds of illnesses", said Samra. ...
"When taken together," writes Lancet editor Horton, "these data expose the hidden crisis facing Palestinian refugees, whose health needs have been sorely neglected."
Of course, The Lancet refuses to say the obvious: it is the artificial classification these people as "refugees" - even though the vast majority were born in Lebanon - that is the cause of their problems. If children born in Lebanon would have been made citizens, they would not be discriminated against and would not be forced to live in squalid camps that Lebanon refuses to allow to grow.
But saying such obvious truths in the Arab world is not allowed. Indeed, the only reason they are suffering today as a separate class of Arabs in Lebanon is because the Arab League wants to use these faux "refugees" as a means to pressure Israel.
So Palestinian Arabs, and only Palestinian Arabs, have a special status in the Arab world of being permanently stateless with no recourse. The Arab world - and especially Lebanon - is wholly to blame for their situation today, but "human rights organizations" refuse to say so. Because the Arabs blame Israel for six and a half decades of apartheid against Palestinians, so must the rest of the world.
You might not have known it from watching the news, but Hamas (jointly with Islamic Jihad and other terror groups) shot over sixty rockets and mortars towards Israeli communities this week.
Terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip fired some 55 rockets and mortar shells at southern Israel early Monday morning. The shells landed in communities in the Eshkol Regional Council. There were no reports of injuries, although two buildings were lightly damaged and several goats were killed due to an explosion in an animal corner.
Hamas' military wing Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and the Ansar al-Quds group have claimed responsibility for Monday morning's attack on the south. They claimed the attack was a response to the IAF's airstrike on Gaza on Sunday.
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip exploded in an open area near Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries or damage were immediately reported.
Gaza terrorists fired a rocket at Netivot on Wednesday evening. The shell landed in an open area between Netivot and Sdot Negev Regional Council. No injuries or damage were reported
GANSO says there were four rockets fired last night.
Overnight, 4 HMRs fired from MA toward the Green Line. No injuries were reported.
I have been noting that Hamas has been working with other terror groups in Gaza. These attacks have been explicit joint operations:
Ahmed Modlal, an Islamic Jihad official said that Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are working together. He stressed that the two terrorist groups are coordinated on most military matters; however, they occasionally hold meetings in order to establish joint political policy within the Palestinian public.
"Joint action between the Defenders of al-Aqsa and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades is a good way to illustrate the Palestinian resistance," he said. "We have a joint operation room in order for us to better respond to Israeli aggression with one united national plan."
Top Politburo delegate in Gaza Mahmoud al-Zahar also confirmed that Hamas was coordinating operations with other Gaza-based Palestinian organizations in order to "respond to the Israeli aggression."
The Gaza NGO Safety Office consistently refers to these rockets as "HMRs," or "home-made rockets." Here's a video of the rockets from the Hamas website - you can judge how "home-made" they seem to be:
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