Apr 19 2013

Palestinian ‘refugees’, hypocrisy and unity: just follow the money

Cross posted at ‘This Ongoing War’, a blog edited by Frimet and Arnold Roth

The Arab-on-Arab bloodbath just across Israel’s northern border goes on and on, and with it the incredible – and worsening – suffering of ordinary Syrians. That is, in significant ways, a function of politically correct but morally repugnant decision-making of the ‘world community’.

Syrian Refugees January 2013

The decades-long handling of the Palestinian Arabs as a uniquely deserving cause is revealed for the scam it always was. People are paying with their lives for the double-talk about the ‘refugees’. Those people are not only Arabs, but in many cases they are also the close kin of the undeserving beneficiaries of the Palestinian Arab Victimhood industry.

Evelyn Gordon writes (“How UNRWA Steals Money from Those Who Need It Most“) about the current threat by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to halt all relief operations in Syria and for the benefit of Syrian refugees. 1.3 million of them are being looked after until now; the number – given the ongoing unchecked savagery throughout Syria – is certain to grow.

$1.5 billion was pledged to the UN agency by donors earlier this year; only $400 million has turned up. That’s a shortfall of more than 70%. What can we learn from this?

For anyone familiar with the way Arab national giving works, this is a constant: fancy rhetoric and high-flying speeches about Arab solidarity and Arab unity and Arab generosity, followed by… not much. Is there a shortage of available cash in the oil-soaked Arab world? Not really. (We wrote about the phenomenon of $600 million recreational yachts a few days ago. See 10-Apr-13: “I cannot help but cry out long live the descendants of apes and pigs”)

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that unless more money arrives (read: unless the promises of funding are honored, which so far has not happened), UNHCR is going to stop distributing food to refugees in Lebanon from May. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with the largest population of Syrian refugees, has said it will close its borders to more of them; it cannot cope without aid.

Now pause.

Evelyn Gordon writes about a different (a very different) UN agency that deals with refugees, one that

enjoys comfortable funding of about $1 billion a year to help a very different group of refugees–refugees who generally live in permanent homes rather than flimsy tents in makeshift camps; who have never faced the trauma of flight and dislocation, having lived all their lives in the place where they were born; who often have jobs that provide an income on top of their refugee benefits; and who enjoy regular access to schooling, healthcare and all the other benefits of non-refugee life… Their generous funding continues undisturbed even as Syrian refugees are facing the imminent loss of such basics as food and fresh water. I am talking, of course, about UNRWA.

People who have never heard this before think we’re making this up, so please read carefully and verify:

It has long been clear that UNRWA–which deals solely with Palestinian refugees, while UNHCR bears responsibility for all other refugees on the planet–is a major obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace. Since, unlike UNHCR, it grants refugee status to the original refugees’ descendants in perpetuity, the number of Palestinian refugees has ballooned from under 700,000 in 1949 to over five million today, even as the world’s non-Palestinian refugee population has shrunk from over 100 million to under 30 million. Moreover, while UNHCR’s primary goal is to resettle refugees, UNRWA hasn’t resettled a single refugee in its history… It has thereby perpetuated and exacerbated the Palestinian refugee problem to the point where it has become the single greatest obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement… Unfortunately for the Syrians, it seems that many of the world’s self-proclaimed humanitarians prefer harming Israel to helping those who need it most. [Evelyn Gordon]

Last year, we asked [in a post called "5-Jun-12: If there's one single thing about UNRWA that we wish people understood, it's this"] a question that, if it were to get an honest answer, might point to a genuine breakthrough in resolving our neighbourhood’s problems.

If (to borrow the laughable claims made by its many supporters) UNRWA’s work is so important, if it brings us closer to peace, if it restores dignity to the lives of dispossessed and destitute Arabs, then why, when you look at the top twenty list of donors to this agency that exists entirely from donations, do you see that only one is Arab (the Islamic Development Bank). What is it about UNRWA that the Arab states understand better than the nations and tax-payers of the West?

Allow us to restate this in a simpler way:

Arab leaders, many of whom preside over phenomenal cash resources, (a) to the strange UN agency that exists specifically to support the most beloved cause that exists in the Arab world – the Palestinians. And (b) they fail to honour their pledges (as we noted above) to fund the one organization that can do something to relieve the genuine suffering of the Syrians, tens of thousands of whom have been killed in the past two years’ Arab-on-Arab fighting and millions of whom are now desperate to find shelter.

The role of rampant hypocrisy in explaining what happens in global politics is under-appreciated.

An alternative future for Middle Eastern refugees (cifwatch.com)

Feb 3 2013

Harriet Sherwood misleads on Syrian weapon crisis with distorted reading of Res. 1701

The Guardian has published several articles on suspected military strikes, over the last several days, by the Israeli Air Force, which likely targeted sophisticated weaponry (possibly Russian made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles) reportedly on its way to the Iranian backed terror group, Hezbollah, illegally based in Lebanon.

Israeli officials have been warning for months that the IDF will not allow the transfer of advanced Syrian weapons – including chemical and biological weapons – to terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front and Hezbollah.

Assuming reports of the Israeli strikes are accurate, it may indicate that Assad had decided test Israeli resolve to prevent such arms transfers.

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report on the conflagration in Lebanon, ‘Israeli warplanes violate Lebanese airspace‘, Feb 1, included these passages:

Israeli warplanes flew over Lebanon again on Friday, two days after air strikes targeted a convoy of arms or a weapons research base inside Syrian territory.

…

Under UN security council resolution 1701, passed following the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, Israeli planes are forbidden from flying over Lebanon. [emphasis added]

Sherwood is referring to the UN security council resolution which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Here are relevant provisions of 1701:

14. Calls upon the government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel and requests Unifil as authorised in paragraph 11 to assist the government of Lebanon at its request;
15. Decides further that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent, by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft;
a. the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories, and;
b. the provision to any entity or individual in Lebanon of any technical training or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items listed in subparagraph (a) above, except that these prohibitions shall not apply to arms, related material, training or assistance authorised by the government of Lebanon or by Unifil as authorised in paragraph 11;

So, by any reading of 1701, arms transfers from Syria to Hezbollah (in Lebanon) are prohibited and, therefore, Israeli efforts to prevent such transfers would arguably be justified, according to at least the spirit of the resolution.

Further, and more relevant to the current crisis, 1701 includes the following, which specifically prohibits the continuing presence and arming of Hezbollah – an illegal militia – in Lebanon, by calling for:

security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL as authorised in paragraph 11, deployed in this area;
Full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state;
No foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government;

Yet, it is widely known that Hezbollah has flagrantly violated 1701, as it has continued to maintain and develop a military infrastructure, including sophisticated offensive and defensive weaponry, south of the Litani river, and are believed to possess nearly 1,000 facilities in southern Lebanon, located in up to 270 civilian villages.

Here’s an IDF map illustrating Hezbollah’s ‘illegal occupation’ of Lebanon.

Not only has Hezbollah failed to disarm, but has in fact acquir ed (from Iran and Syria) an astonishing array of up to 50,000 rockets (4 x the amount they possessed at the end of the 2006 war) which threaten Israel and the entire region – all under the eyes of UN observers (UNIFIL) tasked with preventing the Shiite terror group’s re-arming.

Interestingly, Sherwood does add, further in her report, that “Western…sources said Israel’s target was a convoy of trucks carrying Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles from Syria to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon”, but, not surprisingly, fails to note that such a transfer would necessarily violate 1701.

Even if Sherwood is to argue that reported IAF missions over Lebanon technically violate 1701, the absence of any context regarding Hezbollah’s flagrant violation of the letter and spirit of the resolution for over six years represents another classic example of a Guardian omission which serves to grossly distort the political reality of the region.

BBC reports on alleged air strikes: high on speculation, low on context (bbcwatch.org)
Guardian analyst laments that Israel’s ‘far-right’ gov’t won’t make peace with global jihadists (cifwatch.com)

Feb 1 2013

Guardian analyst laments that Israel’s ‘far-right’ gov’t won’t make peace with global jihadists

A recent edition of the Guardian’s ongoing Middle East Live Blog (edited by Matthew Weaver and Jon Henley) added a bit of analysis to recent reports that the IDF has been striking sophisticated (possibly Russian made) weaponry which was reportedly on its way to the Iranian backed terror group, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Version of the advanced anti-missile system that Israel reportedly intercepted in a Syria which was heading to Hezbollah

The reported strikes would be consistent with previous warnings by Israeli leaders of the possibility of military action to prevent the Syrian regime’s arms – including chemical and biological weapons – from falling into the hands of Hezbollah, or ”global jihadists” [such as al-Qaeda-linked rebel groups in like Jabhat al-Nusra], fighting inside Syria, especially in light of the increasing instability of the Assad regime.

The Guardian report notes the following:

Expect to see more Israeli air strikes against Syria, warns analyst Nicholas Noe, who is concerned that the crisis threatens to escalate into a regional conflagration.

Noe, co-founder of MidEastwire.com and expert on Hezbollah, said: “Unfortunately if the past is any guide to the future we are in for more Israeli air strikes, and a political process to settle this is not going to be forthcoming.”

Noe then is quoted thus:

“Unfortunately I don’t think this extraordinarily right wing Israeli leadership is interested in sending messages of peace.

They see some of the greatest enemies to the north, Hezbollah and Syria, as very vulnerable and I’m greatly concerned that there is a strong desire among parts of the Israeli establishment who want to use this opportunity to strike some strong blows against their strategic enemies.

Noe, a ‘Comment is Free’ contributor, would evidently have us believe that, if not for the “extraordinary right wing Israeli leadership”, peace between Israel, Syria, al-Qaeda affiliated groups and Hezbollah could possibly be forthcoming.

This sage commentary by Noe, an “analyst” who has shilled for Hezbollah previously at CiF, suggesting that it is Israel which is the the military aggressor, represents yet another in a series of increasingly hysterical characterizations of Israel’s alleged “extreme right” political orientation – a specious and misleading narrative in the political context of the region, and one which evidently hasn’t been modified by contradictory evidence produced by the Israeli elections.

“Progressive” global jihadists and “liberal” Hezbollah leaders are no doubt increasingly depressed about the prospect of having their peaceful acquisition of sophisticated Syrian arms stymied by the belligerent Jewish state.

The Guardian’s Michael Cohen & terrorist atttacks which ‘help’ the peace process (cifwatch.com)

Jan 6 2013

“Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal”: Guardian Mid-East editor misleads on roots of ’82 Lebanon War

A February, 2012 piece by the Guardian’s Middle East editor, Ian Black, which attempted to draw an analogy between Israel’s 1982 war against the PLO in Lebanon and current tensions with Iran, suggested that both scenarios demonstrate the Israeli propensity to cynically use a phony “pretext” to start a dangerous war.

Black wrote the following in the final paragraphs of his story:

“…In June 1982 an assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador to London by the renegade Palestinian faction led by the Iraqi-backed Abu Nidal provided the pretext for war against Yasser Arafat’s PLO in Lebanon, despite a ceasefire that had held for nearly a year. Ariel Sharon, then defence minister, was pressing to attack and persuaded the prime minister, Menachem Begin, to go ahead

“Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal,” Begin reportedly replied as his security chiefs explained the crucial detail and significance of the London attack. Full scale invasion, thousands of dead and years of war and occupation were the result.” [emphasis added]

Black, evidently delighted by the chance to cite the alleged use, by an Israeli leader, of the Yiddish-inspired verbal tradition (using “sh” or “shm” to dismiss something with mockery) in order to, himself, dismiss Israel’s motivation for entering the war, evoked the the same alleged quote – which, interestingly, has alternately been attributed to Israel’s then army chief, Rafael Eitan – in his piece on Friday, ‘January 4, ‘Arabs are losing faith in America: Lessons from Lebanon 1982‘.

Black, in an effort to buttress his narrative that the ’82 war was the beginning of the Arabs’ disenchantment with an America unwilling, evidently, to check Israel’s reckless aggression with a stern and mighty hand, writes the following:

“The war began in a sense in London, where, on June 3, a Palestinian gunman shot the Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Argov. It was clear from the start that the hit team was not from the PLO but from the dissident Iraqi-backed outfit run by Abu Nidal, Yasser Arafat‘s sworn enemy. Israel‘s prime minister, Menachem Begin, egged on by his defence minister, Ariel Sharon, went to war against the PLO in Lebanon anyway. “Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal,” another Israeli minister said.” [emphasis added]

Black’s breezy dismissal of Israel’s decision to enter the Lebanon Civil War (which, by 1982, had already been raging for seven years) is historically unserious.

No, the war didn’t, “in a sense”, start in London.

The roots of the Lebanon war lay in the bloody expulsion of the PLO from Jordan, their relocation to Lebanon in 1971 and subsequent attacks against the Jewish state by the Palestinian terrorist group.

In March 1978, PLO terrorists infiltrated Israel, hijacked a bus and ended up murdering 34 Israeli civilians on board. In response, Israeli forces crossed into Lebanon and overran terrorist bases, pushing the PLO away from the southern border. The IDF shortly withdrew and allowed UN forces to enter, but UN troops were unable to prevent PLO terrorists from re-infiltrating the region and acquiring new, and more dangerous arms.

A series of PLO attacks and Israeli reprisals ended briefly due to a U.S. brokered ceasefire agreement in July 1981, but the PLO repeatedly violated the cease-fire over the ensuing 11 months. (Between July 1981 and June 1982 26 Israelis were killed and 264 injured.)

Meanwhile, over 15,000 PLO fighters were encamped in locations throughout Lebanon, armed with an extensive cache of weaponry – which included mortars, Katyusha rockets, an antiaircraft network and even surface-to-air missiles.

Israel was unable to stem the growth of the PLO militia, and the frequency of the attacks had forced thousands of Israeli residents in the Galilee to flee their homes and take refuge in shelters.

So, while the final provocation occurred in June 1982 when a Palestinian terrorist group led by Abu Nidal attempted to assassinate Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Black’s suggestion that Israel may have cynically exploited the assassination as a pretext break a peaceful “truce”, in order to launch an unnecessary war, is patently untrue.

The casus belli for Operation Peace for the Galilee was self-evident, building for years, and needed no “pretext”.

What country on earth would permit a terrorist group (with an increasingly deadly arsenal of weaponry) on its border to launch frequent terror attacks against its citizens without a robust military response?

Today, as in 1982, the Jewish state can not afford to shy away from confronting clear and present dangers it faces, and, more importantly, need not morally justify – to Ian Black and others who evidently fancy themselves sophisticated political sages – a robust defense of its national interests and its citizens’ lives.

“I am going to start an Intifada.” (cifwatch.com)
Guardian’s obsessively critical coverage of E-1 construction proposal, by the numbers (cifwatch.com)
The stranglehold on the US by one lobby: One minute with Glenn Greenwald (cifwatch.com)

Oct 14 2012

Guardian video falsely claims that Hezbollah drone was shot down over “Palestinian territory”.

The Guardian posted the following video story on the Hezbollah drone shot down by the Israeli Air Force on Oct. 6.

Note the text on the screen claiming that the drone was shot down over “Palestinian territory”.

The video included a clip of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah claiming that the Iranian sponsored Islamist terror group had the right to send such UAVs over “southern Palestine”.

The Guardian’s caption for the video reads as follows:

“The Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, says it sent the drone shot down by Israel over Mount Hebron in the West Bank on Saturday. Nasrallah says it is the right of Hezbollah to fly drones in the occupied territories. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu says his country will act to defend its borders.”

However, the drone, which was launched from Lebanon, was not shot down over Palestinian territory.

The UAV traveled down the Mediterranean coast before crossing into Israel from Gaza. Then, it traveled east across Israel’s Negev desert, and was s hot down above the Yatir Forest - south of the border with the West Bank, clearly inside Israel.

“A” marks the Yatir Forrest

The text on the video, as with the caption, is not accurate.

You can contact the Guardian’s readers editor, Chris Elliott, to seek a correction.

reader@guardian.co.uk

Hezbollah takes responsibility for last week’s drone over Israel (longwarjournal.org)

Mar 30 2012

Fences: Blogging from Metula @ Lebanese Border, where Global March to Jerusalem clashes may erupt

Metula, overlooking Lebanese border

There’s a fence just beyond the white building on the upper left of the photo, where the border between Lebanon and Israel stands.

So far, there’s been no GMJ related provocations, though the IDF thinks there’s a good chance it may sometime during the day.

I just met a man in Metula, in northern Israel along the Lebanese border, whose home overlooks the field shown in the photo – who not only let me recharge my laptop battery by his garage, but invited me in his home to chat.

George is a Christian Lebanese-Israeli. That is, he is Lebanese but fled S. Lebanon with his family not too long after Israel withdrew in 2000. Their decision to leave was based entirely on the fear of Hezbollah and what he thought would be the corresponding intolerance towards Christians as the result of the ascendant Shiite Islamist movement.

George told me, when asked, over a cup of intense Lebanese coffee, that he would never consider returning to his country of birth, even if his safety could be assured.

Israel is now his home.

Just one little anecdote perhaps, but a tale which speaks volumes about the small physical fissures, and quite large moral ones, separating the Jewish state from its neighbors.

Jul 13 2011

Five years on: Guardian still tiptoeing around Hizbollah

Martin Chulov’s July 12^th article marking five years since the outbreak of the second Lebanon war is so anodyne in its omissions that it is positively soporific. Yes, the reader may be briefly awakened from Chulov’s Pravda-style descriptions of Lebanese construction work by the erroneous reference to Qana as a “biblical site” where Jesus “purportedly turned water into wine”, but apart from that the article tiptoes so cautiously around the issues at hand that it fails to inform its readers of anything remotely newsworthy or relevant.

“Summer has often been fighting season in the south. And in the densely wooded lands around the Litani, preparations have been made for the next war ever since the guns fell silent last time.”

That is all Churlov has to say about Hizbollah’s flagrant violation of UN SC resolution 1701 and the UN’s turning of a blind eye to the process of its rearmament. No mention of an almost four-fold increase in the number of rockets and missiles held by Hizbollah since 2006 and the doubling of its forces. No reference to the known arms stores constructed in the heart of some 270 south Lebanese villages, turning the local population into automatic human shields or the extensive system of bunkers and other military facilities.

And above all, no reminder whatsoever of from where and how Hizbollah manages to rearm right under the noses of UNIFIL: Churlov’s only reference to Hizbollah’s connection to Iranian patronage is to state that via that organisation and Amal Iran has “dispense[d] hundreds of millions in cash to Lebanese who were caught up in the war” as though the Iranian regime were some sort of benevolent charitable organization.

Hizbollah positions in Lebanon, March 2011

We may not know precisely when a third Lebanon war will break out, or what will be the incident which lights the touch paper, but we know that it will happen and that primarily it will be a war against Israel’s civilians, with Hizbollah now capable of firing several hundred rockets a day upon Israeli cities, towns and villages.

When it does commence, the next Lebanon war will come as a complete surprise to the somnambulistic Guardian reader who, thanks to articles such as this one by Chulov together with the Guardian’s disproportionate focus on the joys of the ‘Arab Spring’, remain safely and securely in the dark as regards the details of the complex internal Lebanese political situation, the rearmament of Hizbollah and the failure of yet another UN resolution to curb Iranian expansionism in the Middle East, as well as the true nature of Hizbollah itself.

Tehran itself could hardly have done a better job.

The hate and extremism at the heart of efforts to manipulate another Scottish council to boycott Israel (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian’s “Respected American Academic”: Noam Chomsky (cifwatch.com)

Mar 8 2011

The Beirut Spring, the rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian war against Israel

This review of Michael Totten’s new book, “The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War against Israel”, was written by Hadar Sela, and published in The Propagandist.

The current political and social upheaval throughout the Middle East and North Africa has highlighted something that those of us living in the region have known for a long time; just how rare accurate reporting and analysis of events in this area is.

Too much of the commentary produced by foreign correspondents and Middle East ‘experts’ is one-dimensional and it is the result of both the inability of writers to set aside their own cultural straight-jackets which have little or no relevance in this region, together with the commercial pressures to compete for headlines in a digital age in which speed and volume of content trump accuracy and quality reporting.

I often think of this prevalent sort of Middle East journalism in terms of mass-produced, flat-pack chipboard furniture. It’s not meant to last, it all looks pretty much the same, it doesn’t aspire to quality in terms of the materials used, and it comes in a one-size- fits- all form of presentation designed to appeal to the broadest possible consensus.

By contrast, Michael Totten is a master carpenter. His work is a long, slow process using only carefully selected quality materials, often acquired with difficulty. In terms of volume, he comes nowhere near the output of many of his colleagues, but what he does produce will stand the test of time because Totten does not seek to tell his readers (or himself) what they want to know – he informs them of what they need to know.

Over five years of research went into “The Road to Fatima Gate”, which begins with the ‘Beirut Spring’ of 2005 which followed the political murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri. The book documents the subsequent seismic shifts in Lebanese politics over the next half-decade and the related events in the broader region, including the 2006 summer war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Not only does Totten manage to unravel for his reader the intricacies of the various factions at work in Lebanon, he succeeds in mapping their changing alliances and connections to the broader regional picture, whilst at the same time deconstructing the often one-dimensional impressions which many Westerners hold of the players at work in the entire Middle East.

Read the rest of the essay, here.

Jan 31 2011

January 2011- the new Palestinian “Nakba”?

A guest post by AKUS

That old axiom of Abba Eban’s – “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” – may once again be the best description of the latest misfortune to befall the Palestinians. Obsessed with the new idea of demanding recognition of a Palestinian state they missed the chance to reach a negotiated settlement with Israel in 2008 with Olmert and 2010 under US pressure with Netanyahu and have been swept aside by a tidal wave of events in January.

While far away in Latin America countries are rushing to recognize a non-existent Palestinian state on the non-existent 1967 “borders” (the 1949 armistice lines), closer to home all attention has shifted to greater issues. Had the Palestinians seized their opportunity to engage in negotiations with Israel as Obama requested during the 9 month building freeze, and better yet, signed an agreement, they would be looking at a real state rather than one that exists only in the blogosphere. Better yet, had they accepted Olmert’s map and offers, they would be two years down the road to developing whatever that little patch of land on the West Bank would look like as the Palestinian state (Gaza, of course, would still be under Hamas control and no-one knows what its future will be). Now they can only sit on the sidelines and watch greater events capture the world’s attention.

In January, the roof caved in on the Palestinian Authority – a second “nakba” again of their own making, once again, as internal quarrels opened the lid on an ugly reality so reminiscent of the Arab politics of 1948. The Pallypapers destroyed what little credibility the leadership had. The Arabs and the rest of the world saw the leadership saying one thing in public in English, another in Arabic to their people, and a third to Israel and the US in negotiations – the last being, by and large, acceptance of many of the positions that Israel and the US had presented for years of not decades since there really are no logical alternatives if one wishes to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

Even worse from the Palestinian perspective, the EU countries’ obsession with “Palestine” was marginalized as the revolt in Tunisia occurred, followed by the huge demonstrations in Egypt which may yet bring the Mubarak regime to an end. Suddenly, it was clear that the Palestinian issue is not the most important issue in the Middle East, nor would settling it lead to a new reality in the Middle East. Far from it – the issues in the Arab world are internal sociopolitical issues that play on the Palestinian issue as a distraction from real and serious problems the dinosaurs leading their father–son dynasties face.

Less noted are similar events in Yemen, and, most importantly for the West Bank Arabs, Jordan. The global stock markets took a serious hit on Friday 28th as traders wondered what the effect on oil supplies from the Middle East would be – a matter of far greater concern than the Palestinian issue. The fact that Egypt controls the Suez Canal, through which a huge proportion of Europe’s oil supplies and commerce with the Far East pass, with Yemen in turmoil at the entrance to the Red Sea leading to Suez, only adds to the anxiety. Will Europe consider a repeat of the 1956 effort, perhaps this time with American support, to take over the Suez Canal by force?

News from Jordan has not been prominently displayed – perhaps because there is not enough blood in the streets yet to satisfy the ghouls running the international news organizations – but clips showing the demonstrations for food and jobs indicate that all is far from well in the Kingdom. What is particularly interesting is that the demonstrators were waving large green flags – the flag of Hamas. Approximately seventy percent of Jordan’s population is generally described as “Palestinian” and King Abdullah holds on to power by virtue of an iron Bedouin fist in a velvet glove. The glove came off during “Black September” in 1970.

Should the demonstrations gather force and Abdullah react as his father did to preserve himself, the issues of the West Bank Palestinians will once again be made trivial by comparison. If, on the other hand, the Jordanian Hamas supporters manage to topple Abdullah, where then will the PA go, trapped between Hamas in Gaza and Hamas in Jordan? Will Jordan then become a Hamas-controlled Palestinian state, and, if so, what will the future of the West Bank be? Israel will not agree to a second Gaza right next to the Green Line. Better the current situation than kassams flying into Tel Aviv, Netanya, and Jerusalem.

Continue reading →

Jan 26 2011

Who Will Sit in Lebanon’s Seat at the UN?

A guest post by AKUS

In all the excitement over the Pallypapers, the events in Lebanon are getting less attention than they deserve, even though vastly more significant.

The state of play at the moment is that results of the UN Hariri assassination investigation have not yet been released. In the meantime, Hezbollah has managed to depose Hariri as Prime Minister through a parliamentary coup and the incomprehensible support of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. One can only assume that Jumblatt hopes avoid conflict by siding with Hezbollah – a vain hope at best as the country falls further and further into the hands of these theocratic thugs. A new Prime Minister – yet another Lebanese billionaire – Najib Mikati, has been selected by Hezbollah to put a moderate face on things, but clearly will be no more than a puppet in a Hezbollah dominated government.

The pro-Western elements in Lebanon are now urging sit-ins against Hezbollah, something that no doubt amuses that heavily armed group. The Sunnis have rioted futilely because Hezbollah are Shiites (standard operating procedure for Islamic factions). The Saudis are backing their Sunni Muslims against Iran’s Shiite Hezbollah. According to the Washington Post article, “Hariri has insisted he will not join a government led by a Hezbollah pick”. The US has rather feebly said it would “reconsider” its aid to Lebanon if Mikati forms of a government dominated by Hezbollah. But that, of course, is exactly what is about to happen. One can only wonder, in retrospect, why America ever provided any aid to Lebanon rather than joining with Israel to destroy Hezbollah.

So we now have what amounts to the world’s first terrorist state – a country headed by the selected puppet of a terrorist group. At the next session of the United Nations, will we have the edifying spectacle of Ahmadinajad once more representing Iran and a person representing its terrorist client state, Lebanon, denouncing Israel and the United States? Will Hezbollah be asked, perhaps, to provide one of its thugs to chair the UN Human Rights Council?

Fascinating stuff, and a testament to the increasing wimpish nature of the West.

Jan 16 2011

CiF and Nicolas Noe: Shills for Hizbollah

Dramatic developments took place last week in Lebanon as Hizbollah brought down the government whilst the Prime Minister was out-of-town: just the latest in its continued attempts to prevent the conclusions of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon from being implemented.

It is, of course, too early to predict and foolish to speculate what will happen in long- beleaguered Lebanon, but there is one scenario which can be placed right at the bottom of a list of possible outcomes, and that is the likelihood of a war between Israel and Lebanon. Unless Hizbollah deliberately leaves Israel no choice – for example if Israeli civilians are targeted as was the case in 2006 – there is no reason that these latest internal Lebanese developments should lead to cross-border conflict

It therefore seemed rather strange that CiF should choose to publish an article by Nicholas Noe on January 14^th which totally ignores the internal aspects of the current crisis in favour of an elaborate hypothesis detailing why, if conflict does break out, it will be anyone and everyone’s fault except that of Hizbollah.

This isn’t the first time that Noe has predicted similar doom and gloom on the pages of CiF; in fact lately he appears to get wheeled out whenever there is some sort of crisis in Lebanon in order to promote the anti-American and anti-Israeli line. Noe’s impressive ability to ignore the objective facts at hand in favour of almost superstitious speculations may be somewhat easier to comprehend if one takes into account that he’s the founder and editor-in-chief of ‘Mideastwire’, and also runs Arabic language courses for foreign students in Beirut, the highlight of which are visits to Hamas and Hizbollah HQs.

“When Amtissal signed up to learn Arabic in Beirut, she was in for a bonus: class trips to the offices of Hezbollah and Hamas, both classified as terrorist organizations by her native America.

“It was an amazing experience,” the U.S. media studies graduate told AFP. “We saw the difference between television and reality.”

For 21-year-old Andrew Waller, the Beirut Exchange was a golden opportunity to hear the voices of groups he had only read about.

“Meeting Hezbollah was an experience I really treasure,” said Waller, an economics student at the University of Exeter in Britain.”

Continue reading →

Nov 23 2010

Ahmed Moor kicks the Zionist cat.

Ahmed Moor

As anyone who has spent time in or seriously studied the Middle East and the Arab world knows, the default option for many a political leader or struggling dictator in that region when the going gets tough is to kick the Zionist cat.

Rising opposition from within? The Zionists must be behind it. Economy going off the rails? The Israelis are of course to blame. Indeed more or less anything can be attributed to the Jews, often in a manner which would not seem out-of-place in a Monty Python sketch, because the conspiracy theories about them have been cultivated for so long that they have become part of the region’s folklore and mindset.

So when self-declared anti-Zionist, one-stater, promoter of apartheid analogies and would-be dismantler of the Palestinian Authority Ahmed Moor appears on the pages of CiF America promoting Jewish/Zionist conspiracy theories, we can be sure that here is one American who has well and truly imbibed the culture surrounding him in his chosen new home in Beirut.

According to Moor, both the Israeli government and pro-Israel American Jewish organisations are leaning heavily on the US administration to confront Iran, if not directly then by way of its proxy in Lebanon, Hizbollah.

“Josh Block – a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) – recently argued that President Obama ought to confront Hezbollah in Lebanon in order to confront Iran.”

“Only last week, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew across the Atlantic to ask Vice President Joseph Biden to launch a war against Iran on Israel’s behalf.”

“The pro-Israel lobby is aware that America is too over-committed to attack Iran. But America is evidently capable of taking on Hezbollah, an Iranian ally”

In actual fact Josh Block seemed to be arguing in favor of strengthening and supporting the Lebanese people who do not want their country taken over by proxies of a theocratic dictatorship – the link in Moor’s article is broken – see here. The Lebanese are of course not the only ones in the region concerned about Iran’s growing influence on the area and the possibility of its gaining an upper hand in the Middle East power struggle; there are several Arab countries who have no less interest than either Lebanon or Israel in containing the neighborhood bully before it is too late to prevent yet more violence. Moor completely ignores the bigger regional picture, however, in favor of a trite kick to the local cat; Israel.

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Nov 19 2010

CiF comments of the day (Bizarre political analogy edition!)

Alexander Henly’s CiF piece, oddly placed in the “Belief” section, from Nov. 17, titled “Omar Bakri trial is about politics, not Islamism or justice” (about Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed’s decision to hire a Hezbollah affiliated attorney for his upcoming trial in Lebanon) produced some really amusing and creative apologetics for the Shiite terrorist group.

First up, is rayuk.

Hmmm…Nasrallah is a modern day Churchill? I wonder if I can find another commenter to out due rayuk in the morally perverse analogy awards? Unfortunately, Harriet Sherwood was busy suggesting that Israel may be erecting a “Berlin Wall” in Ghajar, and it appears as if not even she is capable of two such moral inversions in the same day.

Oh, wait I found one, by a commenter who’s entertained us in the past: Ellis.

A modern day Christ. Thanks Ellis, you win!

Oct 19 2010

The Guardian’s Matthew Cassel feels A-Jad’s pain

Chicago-born Matthew Cassel – assistant editor for the Hamas groupie site ‘electronic Intifada’, and enthusiastic supporter of BDS against Israel - complained, in a CiF article on October 18^th, that “[Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad deserves fair reporting.”

He’s right of course. The world should be made aware exactly what Ahmadinejad stands for and what he believes in. The readers of ‘Comment is Free’ should not have the Iranian president’s views censored or distorted by coy journalists.

So why does Cassel continue in the same vacuous vein as the rest of CiF’s coverage of the Iranian President’s recent visit to Lebanon which completely glossed over the content of both his major speeches?

Contrary to Cassel’s claims, some of the Western media were doing their jobs last week in Beirut and Bint Jbeil. Take this report from the Washington Post, for example.

“A crowd of thousands waving flags of Iran and Hezbollah greeted Ahmadinejad in the stadium in Bint Jbeil, where he said that the local people had given Israel ‘the taste of bitter defeat.’ ’You proved that your resistance, your patience, your steadfastness, were stronger than all the tanks and warplanes of the enemy’, “Ahmadinejad told the throng.” ’The entire world should know that the Zionists will disappear,’ Ahmadinejad said as a pair of Israeli helicopters flew along the border within sight of the stadium. ‘Today the Zionist occupiers have no choice but to surrender to reality and return to their homes and countries of origin.‘” “‘Rest assured that occupied Palestine will be liberated from the filth of the occupation by the power of the resistance and through the faith of the resistance,’ the Iranian leader said, bringing a roar from the crowd.”

Or this report by the Daily Telegraph:

“Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has declared that the people who built Israel were “mortal”, in remarks that revived his charge the Jewish state should be wiped out.”

Heck, even the BBC managed to get this one reasonably right for a change:

“But Lebanon’s other Muslim sect, the Sunnis, and many of the country’s Christians, are not at all happy about the Iranian president’s visit. “Hezbollah, already the most powerful single group in Lebanon, has been given an extra swagger by the famous visitor. “Sectarian tension is high at the moment. “It is widely believed that the UN-led tribunal which has spent five years investigating the assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri and others, will soon issue indictments. “The talk is that members of Hezbollah, a Shia movement, might be accused of the killing of Mr Hariri, who was a Sunni. That is political high explosive in Lebanon.”

But, alas, Mr. Cassel boldly comes to the defense of the beleaguered Iranian backed terrorist movement.

“In Lebanon…Hezbollah was born. At a time when the predominantly Shia south of the country was under attack and occupation by Israel (the US’s “special friend” in the region) those same Lebanese Shias organised and armed themselves with the aiding of the nascent Iranian regime to liberate their land.”

Yes, that’s right. A contributor for the “world’s leading liberal voice” seems to genuinely see Hezbollah as a righteous national liberation movement.

As long as the Guardian continues to rely upon “journalists” such as Matthew Cassel, its reports will continue to resemble those of a radical chic undergraduate student rag.