Daily Archives: August 29, 2012

Aug 29 2012

An alternative future for Middle Eastern refugees

A guest post by AKUS

Washington Post, August 26, 2012: Sharp increase in refugee flows from Syria

The closure [of the Turkish border] left more than 7,000 refugees stranded in olive groves just inside Syria at the two places where most of the Syrians cross, while Turkish officials look for a way to accommodate them at camps that can’t keep pace with the influx. … But with more than 80,000 refugees in Turkey, nearly double the number a month ago, officials warned that the country is rapidly approaching the point at which it will no longer be able to cope … The number of refugees being accommodated by Syria’s neighbors has already outstripped the United Nations’ projection of 185,000 by the end of the year, with more than 200,000 registered in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon as of Friday. The number in Turkey has climbed by 10,000 since Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, warned a week ago that Turkey would press for international action if the figure passed 100,000. The latest arrivals suggest that threshold could be reached within weeks, if not days.

Washington Cyberpost, August 26, 2072: UNSCOSR Budget must increase to serve needs of Syrian refugees

The UN Special Commission on Syrian Refugees, UNSCOSR, issued a warning that its budget was no longer sufficient to feed, clothe and house the Syrian refugees living in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.  Commissioner George Galloway Jr. stated in June:

Since the UN agreed in 2015 to follow UNRWA protocol and to award perpetual refugee status to those who fled Syria in the upheavals of 2012, and to their descendents, the number of refugees which was estimated at approximately 350,000 by mid-2013 when Iran took control of Syria now numbers approximately 3.5 million. All efforts during the last six decades to persuade the Sunni-led government, which, with Iranian support has controlled Syria since that time, to allow refugees to return to their homes have failed. The Syrian government says it cannot afford to take back a group of people who left the country 60 years ago. Our efforts to reach accommodation on budget sharing with UNRWA, which is responsible for the feeding, clothing, and housing of approximately 25 million Palestinian refugees have not yielded any results.

UNSCORS’ Year 2072 budget of $35 billion dollars is stretched to the limit, UNSCOSR claims. Its need for 2073 is for $42 billion, based on a budget of $12,000 per refugee for clothes and special programs similar to those managed by UNRWA for the last 124 years.

UNRWA has an estimated budget of approximately $400 billion dollars, compared to its 2011 budget (the last time budget numbers were published) of $1.2 billion. This is due to natural increase from 7 million people to 35 million still considered refugees despite attempts at encouraging birth control, and inflation that averaged 4% during the last 60 years. Inflation has necessitated the payment to Palestinians per capita from about $1,000 annually to $12,000 per capita. It represents approximately 35% of the total UN budget.

This year rioting in the streets of Oslo and Stockholm forced the governments  of Norway and Sweden to rescind the laws instituted in 2025 following a referendum that made it compulsory to provide funding, without limitation, to UNRWA after the USA, UK, Germany and France decided that they would only provide funding to refugees who had actually left homes in 1948 Palestine and not to their descendents.  By 2035, the last refugee meeting that definition had passed away, and no funds have been received since from those countries. Thus UNRWA is also finding funding inadequate. Some estimates for UNRWA’s budget requirements run as high as $1 trillion ten years from now, squeezing out aid to all other UN relief agencies as it passes the 50% mark for all UN activities.

While this Scandinavian refusal to continue funding UNRWA might have been assumed to free up funds for Syrian refugees, the same demand has been made to reduce funding to the Syrian refugees so no additional funding has become available from that source.

Arab states that initially supported the Syrian refugees have stated that they can no longer afford to do so. Their oil reserves have greatly diminished, reducing their ability to support their growing and largely unemployed populations.  The use of alternative energy sources in the developed countries of North America, Europe, and the Far East coupled with the enormous reserves of shale oil and natural gas discovered in North America, Siberia and China have drastically reduced demand and therefore prices and thus their ability to provide much-needed aid to Syrian refugees.

In addition, China has preferred to provide funding to the African countries, where starvation and warfare continue to make it difficult to tap the immense natural resources of the continent. These resources are necessary for China’s huge nano-electronic business  and the special materials used in building asteroid mining spaceships critical to China’s high-tech economy. All efforts to encourage the Chinese to broaden their assistance to Syrian refugees have been met with refusal.

One bright spot is that Jordan’s success in developing its agricultural sector with Israeli assistance has somewhat reduced the risk of the kind of starvation for refugees in its territory that can be seen in Africa. In addition, Israel no longer has to send supplies to Gaza since Egypt’s UN-brokered annexation of that territory in 2017 and the disbanding of Hamas. It has allocated that portion of its budget to shipping food to refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. Turkey has yet to follow suit, claiming that the Egyptian annexation of Gaza was an illegal deal between Israel and Egypt that has no standing under international law.

However, Israel, while recognizing that it has a regional interest in settling the Syrian refugee problem, maintains that the cost of feeding its largely unemployed religious community without UN assistance has become prohibitive. The Israelis have not agreed to continue to contribute additional funds  to UNRWA or UNSCOSR (except for shipping food and medical supplies as stated) as they did for a few years in exchange for the Egyptian annexation of Gaza given the reduction in defense spending that followed the annexation. Turkey has prevented various aid shipments and flotillas from European countries from passing through its territory. It has tied any progress on that front to acceptance as a member of the EU.

Those who fled Syria and their descendents now live as stateless citizens in dismal camps along Syria’s borders.  Competition for work with Palestinian refugees which started even as early as 2012 for waste disposal positions, traditionally given to those living in the camps, has led to tensions and factional fighting between the two groups. Decades of enforced idleness, lack of opportunity and education, continuing denial of women’s rights, and a high birth rate have only exacerbated the challenges facing these unfortunate people despite UNSCOSR’s best efforts.

Given the similarity of the challenges facing the two refugee groups, and the identical regulatory framework in which UNSCOSR and UNRWA operate that demands that all descendents of the original refugees continue to be maintained as refugees, UNSCOSR has requested a special session of the General Assembly be convened to discuss how to meet the pending budgetary, and therefore humanitarian, crisis among those it has been looking after for the last six decades. If no additional funding is available, it proposes that the UN combine the budgets of UNSCOSR and UNRWA and share the total based on an equal per capita allocation.

This proposal has been vigorously opposed by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority from its headquarters in Lichtenstein and by members of the Palestinian Solidarity Councils in Britain, the US, and South Africa. A spokeswoman for the Fatah Resistance faction of the PA wrote in an op-ed in the New York Guardian (formed through the simultaneous bankruptcy of the NYT and the Guardian UK, then purchased in 2014 by the PA to act as its media arm using funds provided by UNRWA as part of its support for Palestinian cultural activities) that until the Palestinian refugees are returned to their homes in Palestine not a cent will be taken from UNRWA’s budget. The PA insists that the budget for its refugees in the Middle East will continue to be administered from its Budget Office in Lichtenstein.

Commissioner Galloway Jr. of UNSCOSR stated:

 “We at UNSCOSR, however, believe the same logic applies to our refugees, and will continue to propose equitable allocation of funds for Arab refugees in the Middle East”.

Israel has objected to the use of the term “Arab refugees”, claiming that Jewish refugees from Arab countries should also be included in this allocation of funds. The special session is expected to take place at Durban 33, to be held in Tehran next year, where a motion has been put forward condemning Israel for not intervening in Syria in 2012. The USA has announced it will not attend, an action condemned by the EU and Zimbabwe.

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By Guest/Cross Post • Posted in AKUS • Tagged
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Aug 29 2012

The Guardian’s Rachel Corrie obsession.

The Guardian’s coverage of the culmination of the civil law suit brought by the parents of Rachel Corrie, the verdict for which was handed down in Haifa on Tuesday August 28th, has become obsessive. 

On Sunday August 26th Harriet Sherwood wrote a long pre-emptive puff piece based on an interview with the Corrie family. Notably – despite the recent “bruising” Guardian scandal on the subject of conflicts of interest – Sherwood saw fit to promote the play ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’ in her article, but failed to mention that it was co-written by her Guardian colleague Katherine Viner.

 “The family released Rachel’s emails to the media. “It was the Guardian that picked them up very quickly, and it was huge, very significant. All kinds of things came from that.” Rachel’s powerful writing was adapted into an acclaimed stage play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, performed in at least 10 countries, including Israel.”

On Monday August 27th Sherwood was back with another one-sided article, opening with the following odd – and completely evidence-free – “etched in stone” declaration: 

“Her blonde hair, megaphone and orange fluorescent jacket with reflective stripes made 23-year-old Rachel Corrie easily identifiable as an international activist on the overcast spring afternoon in 2003 when she tried to stop an advancing Israeli military bulldozer.”

Tuesday August 28th found Sherwood in Haifa, reporting from the court, with one article published at 08:05 BST (less than an hour after the verdict was given) containing a mere six sentences on the verdict itself, and with the rest of the article devoted to the Corries’ point of view. 

At 11:31 BST, Sherwood published another article on the same subject which included videos of the Corrie family. 

At 12:43 BST the Guardian published a particularly malign piece by Chris McGreal  which included – among many others – the following bizarre claims. (Emphasis added)

“An Israeli judge on Tuesday perpetuated the fiction that Corrie’s death was a terrible accident..”

“…her death was not arbitrary but one of a pattern of killings as the Israeli army pursued a daily routine of attacks intended to terrorise the Palestinian population of southern Gaza into submission.”

“The case laid bare the state of the collective Israeli military mind, which cast the definition of enemies so widely that children walking down the street were legitimate targets..”

“With that went virtual impunity for Israeli troops no matter who they killed or in what circumstances – an impunity reinforced by Tuesday’s verdict in Haifa.”

[For more on the subject of the choice of term 'impunity', see here. ]

At 15:49 BST the Guardian had Glen Greenwald jump in with an article on “How the US and Israeli justice systems whitewash state crimes”. 

Harriet Sherwood was back at 20:49 BST with dark prophecies concerning a “dangerous precedent” and a “legal black hole” which she tried to shore up by means of quotes from the much discredited NGO Human Rights Watch and Shawan Jabarin of Al Haq – a man with alleged ties to the PFLP.  

At 22:10 BST the Guardian published an editorial on the subject and at 22:25 BST it published the cartoon below, which has since been discussed at The Commentator. 

Nick Hayes 29.08.2012

On Wednesday August 29th at 10:29 BST, a further article on the subject was published – written by Ami Kaufman of the far Left 972 magazine. 

In other words: eight articles, one editorial and a cartoon; all on the same subject, all in the space of less than 72 hours. And still counting. 

Particularly interesting is the editorial, because it represents not just the random views of a specific writer, but the Guardian’s editorial stance on the subject. From it, we learn much about the Guardian’s blind and unquestioned faith in the automatic guilt of Israel.

The editorial states: (Emphasis added)

“Perpetuating the myth that her death was a tragic accident, the judge did not deviate from the official line.”

A myth is “a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone”. By its very nature as a belief, it is not based on facts. So for the anonymous writer of this editorial, and by extension the Guardian editorial team as a whole, no matter what facts and evidence are presented, they are to be rejected because the possibility that Rachel Corrie’s death could be a tragic accident is something which in their view will never be proved or even accommodated. It is also, by insinuation, a possibility which should be scorned by the ‘enlightened’ – as myths usually are. 

The editorial goes on to point out disparagingly that “the investigators initially assigned were 19 years old”. Whether or not that is in fact the case I cannot say, but as anyone who knows anything about Israel is aware, yes – young people here take on extraordinary responsibilities at an early age during their army service (the investigators would have been part of the Military Police’s investigation unit). In a country in which 19 and 20 year-olds also pilot F16s, the suggestion that age is a reflection of ability or responsibility is both a ridiculous and tacky tactic. 

Had whoever wrote this editorial even bothered to read either the court’s decision (over 60 pages) or at least the English language summary before putting finger to keyboard?  Apparently not, because if they had, they could not – in honesty – have written the following:

“Rachel Corrie died trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition.”

In fact, the court established otherwise. 

“The mission of the IDF force on the day of the incident was solely to clear the ground.  This clearing and leveling included leveling the ground and clearing it of brush in order to expose hiding places used by terrorists, who would sneak out from these areas and place explosive devices with the intent of harming IDF soldiers.  There was an urgency to carrying out this mission so that IDF look-outs could observe the area and locate terrorists thereby preventing explosive devices from being buried.  The mission did not include, in any way, the demolition of homes.  The action conducted by the IDF forces was done at real risk to the lives of the soldiers.  Less than one hour before the incident that is the focus of this lawsuit, a live hand-grenade was thrown at the IDF forces.”

A D9 bulldozer of the type Rachel Corrie chose to approach.

All the same, the employment of the ‘home demolition’ meme allows the writer to launch into a tirade of misinformed conjecture on the subjects of “collective punishment” and military law. From there, he or she moves on to the emotive subject of the deaths of Palestinian children during the second Intifada. 

Of course no mention is made whatsoever of the hundreds of Israeli children who died in that same terror war as a result of deliberate murder. Cynically, the editorial then goes on to state:

“In the last nine years, Cindy and Craig Corrie have been fighting for something that any parent who has lost their child has a right to – the truth.”

There is something deeply warped about the championing of “truth” by a newspaper which stubbornly refuses to accept the truth – even as proven in a court of law – about the accidental death of Rachel Corrie. Even more disturbing is the fact that the same newspaper is an active and willing partner in the habitual concealment of the truth about terrorist organisations responsible for the deaths of thousands of other children – both Israeli and Palestinian. 

The distorted Guardian view of the Rachel Corrie case – as officially set out in this editorial – is indicative of the Guardian’s entire approach to Israel. Its whitewashing of terrorism and its supporters and its selective championing of ‘human rights’ (with no concern whatsoever expressed for those – Muslim, Christian or Jew – whose rights are compromised by its favourite pet terrorist organization) is not ‘Left’, ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’, but discriminatory, reactionary and sinister. 

This latest bout of binge publishing is all too reminiscent of the Guardian’s behavior during the Mavi Marmara incident when anyone and everyone was wheeled out to write speculative, uninformed – but uniformly condemnatory – comment in ridiculously large amounts before the facts of the case were anywhere near clear. 

In that case too, the Guardian was subsequently unable to admit its mistakes because it had so heavily invested itself in one narrow preconceived version of “the truth”, with almost religious zeal. Then too, the Guardian went into obsessive-compulsive mode, focusing on the production of repetitive articles all bearing the shared hallmark of ritual condemnation of Israel. Then too, its blinding contempt for – and illogical animosity towards – the Jewish State was laid out for all to see. 

And yet again, in that case as in this, the Guardian’s uncontrollable obsession once more exposed it as a voluntary arm of anti-Israel activism rather than a credible, sober reporter of news and events. 

Aug 29 2012

Guardian’s beacon of Islamist justice – the crescent moon shines bright on ‘Comment is Free’

Cross posted by The Commentator

The Guardian’s cartoon, 29 August 2012, Nick Hayes

You’d be forgiven for glossing over The Guardian’s daily cartoon. We usually do.

Today however, something caught our eye.

In the cartoon by Nick Hayes, The Guardian illustrates its interpretation of yesterday’s Israeli court verdict that ruled that Rachel Corrie’s death in 2003 was accidental.

The image, as you can see below, shows a bulldozer with the Israeli flag across its blade, pushing up the earth and in its wake, scooping up and supposedly uprooting or destroying ‘Lady Justice’.

The Guardian, of course, is entitled to its view that Rachel Corrie, defender of terrorists, was Lady Justice in disguise. We would expect no less of their crass and nuance-deficient analysis on the matter.

But what stands out to us is the beacon of light shining through the stormy clouds behind the scene.

The star and crescent is the internationally recognised symbol of Islam, seen in the flags of nations such as Pakistan and Azerbaijan. You know, those guiding lights of human rights, transparency and democracy.

The Islamist party in Gaza, which, to use Guardianista’s language, ‘rejects Israeli occupation and fights for a free Palestine’, is none other than the internationally recognised terrorist organisation, Hamas.

The crescent therefore, taken in context, is an effective endorsement of a terrorist entity; of Hamas.

Nick Hayes and The Guardian may well believe that the Islamist outfit guilty of endless terrorist atrocities, endangering the lives of Palestinians, the relentless murder of Israeli citizens, the subjugation of the Gazan population under an effective dictatorship (when were the next elections due, again?) is a shining beacon of hope casting a light on Lady Justice and the Israeli oppressors – but we implore the common reader to see past this subliminal and disgraceful narrative.

Whatever readers think of Rachel Corrie’s death and of the ongoing Middle East conflict, it is certainly another step to legitimise a terrorist outfit like Hamas. It is a discredit, even to the likes of The Guardian, that this cartoon ever made it past the editors at Comment is Free.

Let’s see what some Guardian commenters said:

“Not too sure about the crescent shining rays of light at this moment in time.” – showmaster

“The reasoning behind the presence of the crescent moon is fairly obvious” –cmnimo

“Though Palestine is benighted and Justice is toppled, the crescent moon of Islam shines like a beacon through the Israeli smokescreen. Not exactly subtle.” –peterNW1

It’s also interesting and distressing to note that when Anders Behring Breivik was sentenced, The Guardian did not run any form of cartoon on the much commented upon injustice (short length) of his sentence.

It’s safe to assume they also did no such thing for the Itamar massacres and never have we seen them do anything of the sort illustrating rocket fire from Gaza landing in Israeli towns. You get the picture.

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Aug 29 2012

Guardian’s Chris McGreal suggests IDF ‘killing’ of Corrie no different than Hamas suicide bombing

While Chris McGreal may be the Guardian’s Washington correspondent, he is certainly not a “reporter”.

His shrill, tendentious activist journalism – which arguably makes Harriet Sherwood seem sober, fair and professional in contrast – rarely tries too hard to disguise the desired polemical target.  McGreal is more similar in style to Richard Silverstein than a journalist for a ‘serious’ broadsheet.

His past efforts at objective reporting on Israel have included a retweet from an anti-Zionist blogger accusing Israel of being in the grips of “psychosis”, a Tweet (and accompanying article) clearly suggesting that the Israel lobby exerts a dangerous degree of control over the U.S. Congress and a Guardian report characterizing President George W. Bush’s presumed deference to the Jewish state as slave-like.

McGreal also accused South African Jews of being complicit with the Apartheid regime in Pretoria.

The first two paragraphs of McGreal’s latest anti-Zionist screed (Rachel Corrie verdict exposes Israeli military mindset“, August 28th) lays bare the extremist ideological tick consistently on display at the Guardian: imputing a moral equivalence between Islamist terrorists who intentionally murder innocent civilians and the Jewish object of their malign obsession.

In the context of the Israeli court’s rejection of a lawsuit filed by the family of Rachel Corrie, McGreal writes:

“Reporters covering Israel are routinely confronted with the question: why not call Hamas a terrorist organisation? It’s a fair point. How else to describe blowing up families on buses but terrorism?

But the difficulty lies in what then to call the Israeli army when it, too, at particular times and places, has used indiscriminate killing and terror as a means of breaking Palestinian civilians. One of those places was Rafah, in the southern tip of the Gaza strip, where Rachel Corrie was crushed by a military bulldozer nine years ago as she tried to stop the Israeli army going about its routine destruction of Palestinian homes.”

Even if you were to ignore the details of the judge’s decision - as McGreal likely did - which concluded that Corrie’s death was accidental, and rely instead on the most unhinged anti-Zionist accounts, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone other than the McGreal characterize the 2003 incident as an “indiscriminate killing and terror” in a broader IDF strategy meant to break “Palestinian civilians”.

Indeed, such supreme moral inversions – which advance the caricature of a hideously malevolent Jewish state intentionally murdering young innocents – can typically only be found, albeit often in much cruder form, in the  Arabic media, and on the fringes of extreme left commentary; such as in the grotesque depictions of Israel found in the cartoons of Carlos Latuff.

In suggesting a moral equivalence between an IDF anti-terror operation aimed at clearing ground to expose hiding places used by terrorists (along the border where, between 2000 and 2003, thousands of terrorist grenade attacks and hundreds of anti-tank missile attacks had already occurred) and Hamas suicide bombings in crowded public places with the sole intention of murdering Jews, McGreal is parroting the most obscene and intellectually unserious leftist anti-Zionist agitprop.

Of course, “intellectually unserious leftist anti-Zionist agitprop” – once exclusively within the domain of unapologetic antisemites – has become a banality, and something more akin to a political brand identity, at the Guardian.

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