Tag Archives: Mahmoud Abbas

Apr 18 2013

The Guardian refers to Palestinian terrorist Samer Issawi as a “political prisoner”.

Last week, we posted about an April 9 story by Harriet Sherwood which reported on recent efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Sherwood’s story included  details about some of the concessions demanded by PA President Mahmoud Abbas before he will agree to resume negotiations with Israel, and included the following sentence:

The Palestinians also want the release of 123 political prisoners who have been in jail since before the Oslo accords were signed almost 20 years ago, and for Israel to present a map showing proposed borders. [emphasis added]

As we demonstrated, however, most of the 123 Palestinians she alluded to (whose release Abbas has been demanding since last year), were convicted for their involvement in deadly terror attacks. Sherwood’s characterization of the 123 Palestinians as “political prisoners” – suggesting that they were imprisoned merely for their beliefs – is erroneous.  We also observed that Sherwood was evoking the Palestinian narrative which insists that even “compatriots convicted of deadly terrorist acts [are] political prisoners and fighters for the Palestinian cause”.

Sherwood’s latest, ‘EU urged to secure Palestinian prisoner’s release from Israeli jail‘, April 17, again advances this misleading narrative in a report on recent demands by Saeb Erekat that Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi – who’s been on a hunger strike to protest his detention – should be released.

Here’s the photo the Guardian used to illustrate the story:

Samer Issawi protest

Here’s the Guardian’s photo caption:

Protesters in London hold up posters calling for freedom of Palestinian political prisoners including hunger striker Samer Issawi.

Issawi – who was freed by Israel in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, but recently re-arrested for violating his release conditions - was originally sentenced to 26 years in prison for his involvement in a series of violent terror attacks, including indiscriminately firing an assault rifle at public buses, and manufacturing and distributing pipe bombs used in attacks on Israeli civilians.

A “political prisoner” is a person ‘imprisoned for their political beliefs or actions’.

No reasonable person can characterize Issawi’s crimes in a manner which fits that definition.

It is indeed that simple. 

Related articles
Apr 10 2013

Harriet Sherwood refers to jailed Palestinians who Abbas wants released as “political prisoners”

Harriet Sherwood’s April 9 report, about recent efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, included several passages about concessions demanded of Israel by Mahmoud Abbas before he will agree to resume negotiations.

Ahead of a three-hour session with Kerry on Tuesday morning, Netanyahu stated that he was “determined not only to resume the peace process with the Palestinians, but to make a serious effort to end this conflict once and for all”.

But he has refused to meet the Palestinians’ key precondition of freezing settlement expansion, although it is thought that Israel may avoid announcing any new construction projects in the coming weeks.

The Palestinians also want the release of 123 political prisoners who have been in jail since before the Oslo accords were signed almost 20 years ago, and for Israel to present a map showing proposed borders. [emphasis added]

However, according to reports, most of the 123 Palestinians she’s alluding to (whose release Abbas has been demanding since last year), were convicted for their involvement in deadly terror attacks. Sherwood’s characterization of the 123 Palestinians as “political prisoners” – suggesting that they were imprisoned merely for their beliefs – is not true. 

For instance, one of the pre-Oslo prisoners evidently on the list presented by Abbas – and dutifully characterized as a “political prisoner” by the NGOs Adalah and Addameer - is Walid Dakka (alternately spelled as “Daka” or “Dakah”).  Dakka is an Israeli Arab (“Palestinian citizen of Israel”) who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1986 (later reduced to 35-40 years) for his involvement in a PFLP cell which kidnapped and murdered an Israeli soldier named Moshe Tamam two years earlier.

On the road between Neurim and Netanya near Havazelet Hasharon, Moshe Tamam’s family built a monument in his honor:

tamam1

image

The inscription reads:

“A memorial for our son the soldier, the beloved and dear Tamam Moshe. We will remember him forever. Born on June 13, 1965 in Havazelet , Hasharon. He was kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by terrorists. He was only 19 years old. 

‘A gazelle lies slain on your heights,  O Israel. How the mighty have fallen!’”  [2nd Samuel, chapter 1, verse 19]

If you’re wondering why Sherwood decided to use such language about Palestinian prisoners, the following passage – from a recent NYT story about Maysara Abu Hamdiya, the convicted terrorist who died of cancer on April 2 - may shed some light:

Prisoners in Israeli custody hold an honored place in Palestinian society, with many Palestinians regarding even compatriots convicted of deadly terrorist acts as political prisoners and fighters for the Palestinian cause. 

Sherwood was, intentionally or otherwise, legitimizing the Palestinian narrative which glorifies terrorists and consistently characterizes even those prisoners convicted of the most gruesome crimes as ‘victims’ of Israeli oppression. 

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Apr 5 2013

What Harriet Sherwood’s “five months of calm” in Israel actually looks like.

Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, a Palestinian who was serving a life term for recruiting a terrorist to carry out a suicide attack against Israeli civilians inside a crowded Jerusalem cafe in 2002, died of cancer on Tuesday. 

(Dozens of people at the Caffit Cafe on Emek Refaim were spared death or injury when the bomber’s suicide belt failed to detonate.)

Despite the fact that the convicted terrorist – who was diagnosed with advanced cancer of the esophagus in February - had been treated by Israel’s top oncology doctors at Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital, his death was immediately used by the Palestinian Authority to stoke violence in the West Bank.  President Mahmoud Abbas, and Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe, among others, immediately accused Israel of medical negligence.

In addition to riots by prisoners in Israeli jails which ensued after Hamdiyeh’s death, Palestinians have been violently taking to the streets in Hebron and throughout the West Bank and throwing rocks and explosives at Israeli soldiers.  Israeli civilian vehicles have also increasingly come under attack on roads in the West Bank since Tuesday.

Also since Tuesday, terrorist organisations in Gaza have launched missiles at Israeli communities for the third time since the eight-day November war ended.  For three straight days, rockets were fired from Gaza, with two rockets exploding in open areas near Sderot on Wednesday “triggering alerts and sending frightened families fleeing for shelter”.  Additionally on Wednesday, a global jihadi group in Gaza  targeted Sderot with rocket fire just as parents were bringing their children to school. Fortunately, there were no injuries stemming from the attacks.

In response, the Israeli Air Force struck two terror targets in the Gaza Strip, representing the first Israeli response to Gaza rocket fire since the end of the November war in Gaza.  The IAF didn’t respond to a rocket attack launched from Gaza on March 21 during President Obama’s visit to Israel, which ended up striking an Israeli nursery school in Sderot (which was closed for the holidays), nor to a Feb. 26  Gaza missile fired towards the town of Ashkelon.

Rocket believed fired last month during Obama visit; kindergarten had been closed for Passover holiday, delaying discovery. (Photo courtesy of Sderot Media Center)

Rocket believed fired last month during Obama visit; kindergarten had been closed for Passover holiday, delaying discovery. (Photo courtesy of Sderot Media Center)

The recent violence was reported by Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian on April 4th.

Her report, from Hebron, was titled ‘Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli soldiers in West Bank‘, and contained the following strap line:

Clashes come as militants fire rockets at Israel for third day, sparking fears of fresh wave of violence after five months of calm

Sherwood echoed the narrative advanced in the strap line in her second paragraph:

Palestinian protesters clashed with soldiers after thousands of mourners turned out for the funerals of a 64-year-old cancer-stricken prisoner and two teenage boys shot dead by the Israeli military, the latest sign of the increasing turbulence across the West Bank.

Meanwhile Gaza militants fired rockets towards Israel for the third consecutive day in a move that threatens to trigger a fresh cycle of violence after almost five months of calm since the eight-day war last November.

Whilst some narratives about the conflict are open to interpretation, it really is difficult to understand how a professional journalist covering the region can honestly characterize the months since the November war as “calm”.

The following is terror data was compiled by the Israel Security Agency, but many of the attacks listed were also reported in the media at the time:

  • In March 2013 there were 125 terror attacks, with most of the attacks executed in the form of firebombs. Six Israelis were injured: five citizens and one security officer. Five of them were injured by firebombs (a security officer in Judea on March 3, and 4 Israelis on the Trans-Samaria Highway on March 14), and one citizen was shot (March 18) near a gas station in Kedumim (West Bank).
  • In Feb 2013, there were 139 terror attacks. Again, most attacks were in the form of firebombs. Three Israelis – one civilian and two security officers – were injured. They were all wounded during separate stone hurling and firebombing incidents during rioting in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The civilian was injured in Bitunya / Binyamin area (21 Feb.), and the two security officers were injured in Issawiya / Jerusalem (9 Feb.) and in Hebron (22 Feb.).
  • In January 2013, there were 83 terror attacks: Three Israelis were injured: an Israeli citizen was moderately injured in a stabbing attack in the West Bank (January 29), and two security officers were injured by a firebomb near Al Aroub (January 3) and by stone-throwing in the nearby area of Rachel’s Tomb (January 13).
  • In December 2012 there were 112 terror attacks. Three Israeli security officials were injured: two were stabbed in the West Bank (December 3), one was run over by car in Jerusalem (December 23).

It was difficult to gather information on terror attacks which may have occurred in the last nine days of November (after the Nov. 21 ceasefire), but, even assuming for the sake of argument that there were no attacks during that period, in the four-months beginning in December there were 459 terror attacks – a fact which definitively undermines Sherwood’s characterization of life in Israel during that time. 

One of the victims of Palestinian terrorism during this period, 3-year-old Adele Biton, is still fighting for her life in an Israeli hospital – weeks after the car she was travelling in with her mother and two sisters was hit by Palestinian rock throwers.  The rocks caused the car to swerve, and it rammed into a truck parked on the side of the road. 

LiveLeak-dot-com-a0f7bd2b4598-adele-israel-rock-victim.jpg.resized

Adele Biton

Though her mother and siblings were also injured in the attack, Adele suffered severe trauma and is still listed in critical condition.

Mar 24 2013

Guardian distorts Obama’s remarks on settlements at Ramallah news conference

A March 22 edition of the Guardian’s ongoing Middle East Live Blog, edited by , included the following dispatch on President Obama’s March 21 news conference with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

Palestinians had hoped for a gesture of friendship from Obama on his four-hour visit to Ramallah, instead, the president berated their leader Mahmoud Abbas for insisting on a freeze on new settlements as a precondition to re-starting peace talks, calling them merely “an irritant”. 

The text in the highlighted sentence contains a hyperlink which takes you to a March 21 Guardian report by Matthew Kalman reporting from Ramallah, titled ‘Obama wins few friends on flying stop to West Bank‘, which contained the same characterization of Obama’s remarks at the news conference:

Obama berated Abbas for insisting on a freeze on new settlements as a precondition to re-starting peace talks, calling them merely “an irritant”.

So, is that really what Obama said about the settlements at the Ramallah news conference with Abbas?

Hardly.

Here’s the relevant passage, (from a full transcript of the news conference) from Obama’s response to a journalist’s question about the issue of settlements:

Now, one of the challenges I know has been continued settlement activity in the West Bank area.  And I’ve been clear with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leadership that it has been the United States’ policy, not just for my administration but for all proceeding administrations, that we do not consider continued settlement activity to be constructive, to be appropriate, to be something that can advance the cause of peace.  So I don’t think there’s any confusion in terms of what our position is.

I will say, with respect to Israel, that the politics there are complex and I recognize that that’s not an issue that’s going to be solved immediately.  It’s not going to be solved overnight.

On the other hand, what I shared with President Abbas and I will share with the Palestinian people is that if the expectation is, is that we can only have direct negotiations when everything is settled ahead of time, then there’s no point for negotiations.

So I think it’s important for us to work through this process, even if there are irritants on both sides.  The Israelis have concerns about rockets flying into their cities last night. And it would be easy for them to say, you see, this is why we can’t have peace because we can’t afford to have our kids in beds sleeping and suddenly a rocket comes through the roof.  But my argument is even though both sides may have areas of strong disagreement, may be engaging in activities that the other side considers to be a breach of good faith, we have to push through those things to try to get to an agreement…

The President’s clear point was that “settlements” are indeed an impediment to peace, but that they represents an issue (as with others) which can only be worked out through negotiations – not as a precondition before talks could proceed.

Further, if you want to argue that Obama was calling settlements a mere “irritant”, then, based on his full reply, you could similarly argue that he also characterized rocket attacks as a “mere irritant”.

The lead of the Guardian Middle East Live blog could just as easily have been the following: 

The President referred to thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately at Israeli men, women and children merely as an “irritant”. 

But, of course, that would be a selective and completely dishonest characterization of what the President said, wouldn’t it? 

Mar 22 2013

Guardian Mid-East editor legitimizes the political pornography of Ali Abunimah

The Guardian’s Middle East Editor, Ian Black, provided an analysis of President Obama’s March 21 speech in Jerusalem (titled ‘Obama shows emotional and political intelligence with Jerusalem speech‘) which represents a good example the Guardian Left tendency to impute ‘authenticity’ to the most radical and uncompromising activists.  

This journalistic tick can be seen, for instance, in Harriet Sherwood’s decision to award ‘progressive’ Hechsher labels to both Joseph Dana and slain terror-abetting anti-Israel campaigner, Vittorio Arrigoni. 

Such political posturing also colored their coverage of the so-called ‘Palestine Papers’ in 2011, where Mahmoud Abbas’s putative flexibility during negotiations with Israel over the refugee issue was characterized as ”craven” – as ”selling out” Palestinian rights – in a series of reports which seemed to reflect the media group’s attempt to ‘out-Palestinian’ the Palestinians themselves. 

Their institutional tendency to promote a radical chic (and even terrorist-chic) brand is also evident in their frequent decisions to publish Islamist extremists, and the dearth of space they provide to peaceful and truly moderate two-state proponents.

In his March 21 report Black praised Obama’s speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center as “appealing to ordinary Israelis over the heads of their political leaders”, and as representing “a smart combination of emotional and political intelligence in pressing the buttons that matter to mainstream Jewish opinion in Israel.”

Palestinians, however, observed Black, were not impressed.  He noted that some Palestinians complained that Obama’s speech lacked depth or substance, before citing a critique by Ali Abunimah, the American born, Ivy League educated son of a Jordanian diplomat who founded ‘Electronic Intifada’ (EI) – and who, from his home in Chicago, engages in hate-filled ”commentary” about the Jewish state with abandon.

ali

Indeed, the Tweets by Abunimah (a former ‘Comment is Free’ contributor) cited in the following passage by Black are a fair representation of the activist’s social media style.

Black writes the following: 

Ali Abunimah, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and a supporter of the one-state solution, tweeted in anger: “Palestinians yearning for peace live in a tough neighborhood, surrounded by racist settlers and a murderous US-backed sectarian ‘army.’ Obama’s ‘history’ of Israel is as delusional as his US history which still praises slave-owning, slave-raping founding fathers. This speech will drive liberal Zionists wild because it legitimizes their segregationist desires & dresses them up as ‘peace’ & ‘democracy.’”

The text cited, however, represents several separate Abunimah Tweets.  So, for clarity, here are the three (140 character or so) ‘meditations’ by Abunimah which the Guardian Middle East editor evidently found elucidating. 

Here are a few additional Tweets that day by Abunimah not cited by Black:

Zionist psychopaths: 

Israel slaughters children:

Israel is a “supremacist” state:

Though Abunimah blocks many pro-Israel activists from following him, it still isn’t difficult to locate his Twitter paper trail – which includes a tweet concerning the murder of Israelis by Hezbollah terrorists in Bulgaria in 2012, which clearly suggested a Mossad conspiracy,  and another one calling for Palestinians to start a 3rd Intifada.

However, Abunimah is no mere American pro-Palestinian activist.  He’s defended Hamas and has flirted with insidious Israel-Nazi analogies – once even Tweeting the following: 

nazi

The fact that the Guardian’s Middle East editor – who undoubtedly could have found a more moderate, lucid and truly peace-seeking pro-Palestinian critic to cite – decided to hitch his wagon to Abunimah’s hateful political brand is an apt commentary on the Guardian’s continuing  fealty to the most belligerent voices in the region.

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Mar 21 2013

Harriet Sherwood on today’s Palestinian rocket attack: An error & an improvement

Earlier today Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired four Kassam rockets at Israel, triggering red alert sirens throughout the south.  One rocket landed in a residential courtyard in Sderot, seen here:

rocketAt 10:26 GMT, the Guardian’s Live Blog on President Obama’s visit to Israel included the following dispatch by Harriet Sherwood.

Two rockets fired from Gaza landed in Sderot, an Israeli city in southern Israel, this morning. It was the first time that militants in Gaza have fired rockets since a truce ended the eight-day mini-war, Operation Pillar of Defence, in November.

According to Israel’s Army Radio, one of the rockets exploded in the yard of the Haziza family. The mother of the family, Sara, said: “Let Obama come and see how people live, we build houses and villas but we live inside a cage, in a protected room. Nothing is worth it for us. Let Obama come and see how an eight-year old girl has to run to a protected room that is completely open, and how I can’t close the door of the protected room.”

Obama referred to the southern Israel city, which he visited before becoming president, in his short speech on arrival in Israel, saying: “I’ve stood in Sderot, and met with children who simply want to grow up free from fear.”

There were no casualties, and no immediate claim of responsibility. [emphasis added]

First, it is important to note that Sherwood’s brief post represents an improvement in comparison to how the Guardian typically covers news of such terrorist attacks. She personalized the Israeli victims, noting the name of the family whose home was nearly hit, and even included a quote by the mother of the family.  (For additional posts on Sherwood’s improvement in covering the region, see here and here.)

However, Sherwood made an error. Today’s rocket attacks were not the first since the end of ‘Pillar of Defense’.

On Dec. 23, 2012, Palestinians in Gaza fired a rocket aimed at Israel (but which didn’t reach the Israeli side of the border).  

Additionally, on Feb. 26, 2013, Palestinians fired an M-75 rocket at the city of Ashkelon.  (The rocket fell on a road south of the city.) Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the terrorist group associated with the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack.  The group reportedly stated that the attack was a response to the death of Al Aqsa Brigades member Arafat Jaradat while in Israeli custody. 

Of further interest in the context of Sherwood’s omission, the the Guardian’s  actually reported the Feb 26 rocket attack on Ashkelon, on that day’s edition of their ongoing Middle East ‘Live Blog’.

Related articles
Jan 25 2013

What the Guardian won’t report: Israel’s thriving, liberal democracy

Our friends at CAMERA wrote the following, in a post titled ‘Where’s the coverage? Israel the Only Free Country in the Middle East‘, Jan. 23, the day after yet another free and fair Israeli election.

Maybe they were too busy bemoaning the state of Israel’s democracy to do any actual reporting, but the mainstream news media [as well as the Guardian] completely ignored a report by Freedom House, an independent watchdog group dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world, that rated Israel as the only free country in the Middle East.

As we noted in a post on Jan. 22, predictions by Guardian journalists, analysts and commentators that Israel’s democracy was in decline – and that the Jewish state was lurching towards an extreme right political abyss – were proven wildly inaccurate.

CAMERA continues:

In the 2013 edition of its annual report, “Freedom in the World,” the organization wrote: “Israel remains the region’s only Free country. In recent years, controversies have surrounded proposed laws that threatened freedom of expression and the rights of civil society organizations. In most cases, however, these measures have either been quashed by the government or parliament, or struck down by the Supreme Court.”

In other words, Israel’s democracy works. By contrast, both Gaza, under Hamas, and the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority were rated “Not Free,” as was Jordan. Lebanon and Egypt ranked as merely “Partly Free.”

To look at a map of world freedom, click on this link. You’ll have to enlarge it quite a bit to see the sliver of green freedom that is Israel in the sea of yellow (“partly free”) and purple (“not free”) that is the Middle East and North Africa.

Here’s a snapshot of the Freedom House political freedom map, with a red arrow pointing to the sliver of democracy in the Middle East.

freedom

CAMERA adds:

Given the hyper-focus on Israel by the press, one might expect news outlets to at least mention this positive evaluation of the Jewish State. However, although Israeli and Jewish outlets reported the Freedom House study, CAMERA could not locate any mainstream news media that covered it. More embarrassing still, even Egypt’s Daily News wrote: “Egypt is now one of six countries in the Middle East that is classified by Freedom House as “partly free”. Eleven are classed as “not free”, while Israel is the region’s only “free” country.“

A newspaper in a country that has only recently been upgraded to “partly free” covered Israel’s “free” ranking but news outlets in “free” countries did not.

…

One has to ask, why the hesitancy to report something positive about Israel’s democracy? 

While there are many factors which explain why the Guardian ignores evidence of Israel’s clear democratic advantages in the region, one of the most central is the ideological orientation of the Guardian Left which typically reduces complicated political phenomena down to a binary David vs. Goliath paradigm.

Such framing nurtures coverage of the region which routinely characterizes Israeli leaders, even in the context of fair and free democratic elections, as extremely “right-wing”, while avoiding such pejorative depictions of even the most reactionary Palestinian leaders.  

Indeed, as Simon Plosker observed, such a political orientation inspired the Guardian to describe Mahmoud Abbas, in one editorial, as the “most moderate Palestinian leader”.  Abbas is similarly framed as a “moderate” by Guardian journalists and CiF commentators despite the fact that the Palestinian President is currently serving the 8th year of a 4 year term, has engaged in Holocaust denial, and leads a government which promotes martyrdom and antisemitic incitement, and severely oppresses women, gays, religious minorities, critical Palestinian journalists and political opponents.  

Further, it simply strains credulity to imagine that a new independent Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank would be truly democratic, any more liberal, or nominally respect the human rights of its citizens. 

However, as long as Israeli politics are myopically viewed through the ideologically skewed filter of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, even the most intuitive evidence regarding the extreme right political center of gravity within Palestinian society on one hand, and the Jewish state’s liberal, democratic advantages on the other, will continue to be downplayed or ignored.

Related articles
Jan 17 2013

Harriet Sherwood ‘Likes’ Facebook group which ‘pokes’ at Israel’s legitimacy

Harriet Sherwood’s latest post ‘Israelis use Facebook to deliver poke at democracy during elections‘, Jan 17, is about a Facebook initiative, called Real Democracy, which has “allowed hundreds of Israelis to ‘donate’ their votes to Palestinians as a symbolic protest at what they perceive as a lack of democracy.”

rd

Lack of democracy? In Israel?

Let’s see what they’re referring to.

Sherwood writes:

“[The scheme] matches Israeli voters who are willing to give up their vote with Palestinians who decide how – or whether – the vote should be cast. The organisers say it is “an act of civil disobedience against … the undemocratic nature of the Israeli elections … elections of a government which controls four million Palestinians without a voting right”.”

Note that Sherwood’s protagonist cites “four million” Palestinians “without a voting right’.  So, we’re not only talking about Palestinians in the West Bank, but, evidently, those in Gaza, too.

Perhaps the organizers are unaware that Palestinians in the West Bank are being ruled by a President, Mahmoud Abbas, who recently began serving his 9th year of a 4 year term, and that Palestinians in Gaza are citizens of an independent polity governed by Hamas – the masters of statecraft who expelled all political opposition in a violent coup over 5 years ago.

Sherwood continues:

“Shimri Zameret, one of those behind the scheme, hopes that the numbers participating will be in the thousands by polling day. The aim is to give Palestinians a potential say not just in the next Israeli government but also in its “de facto control over the United Nations security council“. [emphasis added]

Since Israel doesn’t have veto power at the security council, let me venture to guess that Zameret, an Israeli “peace” activist imprisoned for refusing to serve in the IDF, is suggesting that Israel ‘effectively’ controls the UN security council by exercising de-facto control over a nation which actually does has veto power – an Israeli vassal known as the United States.

Here he is on Twitter proudly announcing the Guardian promotion of his campaign:

Finally, the goals of the program become a bit clearer in the penultimate paragraph.

“Ayah Bashir, 24, a university teacher in Gaza, has asked her Israeli counterpart, Dror Dayan, to boycott the election on her behalf. “I call for boycotting Israel at all levels, not just the election but academic, cultural and sporting boycotts,” she said. “The Israeli system is an apartheid system, and the Israeli Knesset [parliament] is a Zionist and racist institution.”"

Truly surreal.

Ayah is a Palestinian living in a Palestinian controlled territory tyrannically governed by the undemocratic Islamist movement which calls for Israel’s destruction.

Ayah calls for the complete boycott and international isolation of Israel.

Ayah evidently believes that she is being disenfranchised, not by Hamas, but by Israel.

Ayah believes she should have a say in Israel’s election.

Of course, anything less would be completely undemocratic! 

Related articles
Jan 12 2013

Guardian asks ‘expert’ what Hamas can do to “kickstart the peace process”

A story by Paul Owen on the upcoming Israeli elections and the prospects for peace with the Palestinians, in a Jan. 11 edition of the Guardian’s ongoing ‘Live Blog on the Middle East‘, relied almost exclusively on the analysis of Amnon Aran of City University, London.

Aran explained that there were a number of dynamics currently “working against peace”.

Owen then asked the following, evidently without a hint of irony or sarcasm:

“Khaled Meshal of Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, the leaders of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank respectively, met in Cairo for talks on Wednesday. Was there anything they could do to kickstart the peace process? [emphasis added]“

Here’s Aran’s even more surreal reply to Owen’s risible query:

“Serious reconciliation and unification” between the two factions would “certainly help”, Aran said, and there were positive signs there, such as the recent pro-Fatah rally in Gaza.”

Aran is of course referring to the recent rally in Gaza celebrating the anniversary of its first terror attack.

While Abbas has made it clear that he will “would never, in a thousand years, recognize a Jewish state”, Mahmoud al-Zahar, senior leader and co-founder of Hamas (a group whose founding charter cites the wisdom of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), has waxed even more eloquently about the the Jews’ future in the Middle East.

Here he is speaking on Al-Aqsa TV in 2010:

I guess it never occurred to the British academic that a good way to “kick-start the peace process” would be for the Palestinian leadership in the W. Bank to avoid aligning themselves with a group whose leadership characterizes Jews as “blood suckers” and “wild beasts” who deserve to be annihilated. 

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Jan 7 2013

2013 minus 1965 equals 48 years of Fatah terrorism

H/T Israellycool

As Hadar Sela noted, the BBC erroneously reported that Fatah celebrated its 48th anniversary, at a huge rally in Gaza on Friday, when, in fact – as the group was founded in 1959 – 2013 marks 54 years since the birth of the Palestinian group.

However, it has indeed been 48 years since one particular event in Fatah history.

Sela wrote:

“What Fatah is in fact celebrating is the 48thanniversary of its first armed attack on Israel which took place on January 1st 1965.”

Interestingly, while other news sites also curiously got the political math wrong, the Guardian got it right, before getting it wrong, in an Agency report titled ‘Mass rally in Gaza to support Palestinian President’s Fatah faction‘, Jan. 4.

First, there was this:

“Throngs camped out overnight in a downtown Gaza square to ensure themselves a spot for the anniversary commemoration of Fatah’s 1959 founding, and tens of thousands marched early Friday, carrying yellow Fatah banners.”

Later in the same piece, there was this:

“The demonstration marked 48 years since Fatah’s founding as the spearhead of the Palestinians’ fight against Israel.”

Indeed, in only 48 (or 54) years, Fatah has achieved so much.

Per CAMERA:

“Fatah’s armed units such as the Tanzim, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Force 17 have organized, coordinated and carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks against civilians.

During the second intifada, Fatah Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for over 300 attacks in which civilians were killed, and according to Israeli authorities, Fatah-linked groups have attempted or carried out more than 1,500 attacks. (International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT)”

Elder of Ziyon posted some photos from the joyous festivities in Gaza.

1st

As usual, Fatah created a decidedly family-friendly event:

Fatah 1

Fatah 9

Sela noted that among those terror leaders praised by the “moderate” Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, “were Hamas founders Ahmed Yassin and Abed Aziz al Rantissi as well as the founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Fathi Shiqaqi“.

The frequently shrill, often unserious and increasingly hysterical warnings about Israel’s supposed dangerous move to the right – parroted most recently by the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland - is almost entirely devoid of context regarding a sclerotic Palestinian political culture which hasn’t even marginally moved beyond the glorification of violence and demonization of Jews.   

It’s truly baffling why so many sensitive souls who advocate on behalf of Palestinians don’t recoil in the face of such political pathos, and evidently can’t empathize with the large majority of Israelis who hesitate to midwife a new state on its eastern border which will, in all likelihood, continue to be compromised by such a reactionary, racist and terrorist ethos.  

Related articles

Jan 5 2013

New Year’s Resolutions We’d Like the Media to Make

 

Here’s a list of New Year’s resolutions for the media our friends at CAMERA compiled.

1. Stop misreporting on Gaza.

Gaza is not occupied, not a “prison camp” and the people are allowed to fish. The Palestinians in Gaza rank above average in the Arab world by all indicators: health care, immunizations, education, nutrition, longevity, and low childhood mortality. Israel withdrew every last soldier, civilian and interred body from Gaza in 2005, the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza is legal and Israel does not control all of Gaza’s borders – Gaza has a border with Egypt which Egypt controls. Hamas rules the Gaza Strip and responsibility for any suffering on the part of its residents lies primarily with the terrorist organization.

2. Stop calling Mahmoud Abbas a “moderate”.

Since succeeding Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president and leader of Fatah, Abbas almost invariably has been described as a “moderate.” This, despite the fact that Abbas, Arafat and a few colleagues founded Fatah in 1959 to “liberate” Israel, not the West Bank (then occupied by Jordan) or the Gaza Strip (then held by Egypt); that Abbas continues to incite his people against Israel; that he refuses to even negotiate with Israel; and that Abbas published his doctoral thesis as a book, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement,” which denied the severity of the Holocaust and claimed “a secret relationship between Nazism and the Zionist movement.” His PA TV and other media outlets continue to praise terrorist killers as “heroes” and describe Israeli cities as part of “Palestine.” What is moderate about this?

3. Call terrorists “terrorists,” not “militants”.

Terrorism, defined by the U.S. Law Code, Title 22, Chapter 38, Paragraph 2656 f(d) and used in the State Department’s annual reports to Congress is “… premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents….” The Department of Defense definition recognizes that terrorism is a crime: “The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological.” “Militant,” on the other hand, is undefined by American law and its consensus usage journalistically – militant unionist, militant environmentalist, militant vegetarian – is as an adjective. It suggests vehemence and persistence but not illegal violence. Farmers farm, lawyers practice law, and terrorists commit terrorism – they don’t advocate causes.

4. Report accurately on the security barrier.

The security fence is a nonviolent way to reduce terrorism and it has been extremely effective in saving lives – both Jewish and non-Jewish. It was constructed in response to the second “intifada” and has significantly reduced terror attacks originating from the West Bank. It does not “completely surround Bethlehem”, it is not “a wall” nor an “iron curtain.” Furthermore, there are security and separation barriers all over the world that get no criticism – or coverage – whatsoever.

5. Report that it is the Palestinian Arabs – not Israel – who refuse to negotiate peace.

While Israel has repeatedly invited Palestinian leaders to return to the negotiating table for peace talks, they have insisted they won’t do so unless Israel first satisfies their preconditions. Even after Israel in 2009 announced a 10-month moratorium on new settlement construction, Mahmoud Abbas avoided talks until just weeks before the moratorium was set to expire. And when the moratorium did expire, he again spurned negotiations.

6. Report on the constant incitement to hatred of Jews and Israel in Palestinian media, schools and the public square.

Major media have failed over many years to report accurately, consistently and with due prominence the pervasive and genocidal rhetoric against Israel and the Jewish people. Blood libel, the false accusation that Jews murder children, is a favorite theme of Arab media, used as the story line for comedy sketches and dramatic programming. Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous instances of Palestinian Authority dehumanization and vilification of Jews and Israelis. And does this incitement have any effect? According to Abdelghani Merah, his brother perpetrated the Toulouse massacre early last year because he was exposed to “hatred, racism and anti-Semitism … from a very young age.”

7. Report on the Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

The media report frequently about Palestinian refugees, but of the 850,000 Jews living in Arab countries who were dispossessed and forced out between 1947 and 1972, almost nothing is said. Ancient Jewish communities had existed in Arab countries for millennia until the Arab League defined all Jews as enemies of the state in 1947. State-sanctioned violence, arbitrary arrests, and forced expulsions followed. Arab governments confiscated billions of dollars of Jewish property. The total area of land seized from these Jews is five times the size of the state of Israel. While CAMERA has detailed the story of Jewish refugees from Arab countries extensively (see here, here, here, and here), few major media outlets cover the issue.

8. Shed the false narrative that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the heart of all the problems in the Middle East.

The phrases “the Middle East conflict” and “the Middle East peace process,” as applied to Israeli-Palestinian affairs, always have been more exaggerations than synonyms. The Iran-Iraq war and Algerian civil war are examples of inter-Arab bloodshed that dwarfs the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Others include the Lebanese civil wars from 1975 to 1990, with hundreds of thousands of casualties and Syria’s annihilation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama in 1982, with an estimated 10,000-40,000 fatalities. Today, a bloody civil war rages in Syria with over 60,000 dead and tens of thousands more wounded. Of course, the “Arab Spring” demonstrated clearly that turmoil in the Middle East frequently has nothing whatever to do with Israel.

9.  Report on the real suffering of women, homosexuals, religious and ethnic minorities in Arab and Muslim countries.

Women’s rights are grossly constrained in Arab countries, where so-called “honor killings” are still common and largely unpunished.Gay Iranians, if caught, face execution. Gays in Saudi Arabia, if arrested, face, at best, flogging or imprisonment. In Gaza, homosexual acts are illegal and punishable by up to ten years in prison. Palestinian Christians, like other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East, are the target of mistreatment, harassment and in some instances, violent oppression at the hands of their Muslim neighbors.

10. Report that both the Hamas charter and Fatah constitution call for the destruction of Israel.

The Hamas charter calls for Jihad against Israel and dismisses any political solution. “Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it,” reads an introductory quote on the document. It also asserts genocidally that that Hamas’ battle with the Jews extends beyond Israel. The constitution of the Fatah movement also calls for the “complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence” through violence, and similarly dismisses political solutions.

11. Stop suggesting that Israel’s democracy is under threat.

At this very moment, the Syrian regime is murdering its own citizens. Lebanon is run by a terrorist group, Hezbollah. Jordan is an absolute monarchy that recently revoked the citizenship of thousands of residents of Palestinian descent. Gaza is run by Hamas, a terrorist group that hasn’t had elections in years and the West Bank is run by a corrupt kleptocracy whose term also expired years ago and continues to hold office illegally. These governments are truly embattled and their citizens suffer, yet Israel’s internal politics attracts the lion’s share of media scrutiny and, usually, criticism.

12. Focus less on Israel.

If the media were not obsessed with hectoring Israel, imagine the column-inches and airtime that could be freed up for coverage of… the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the continued imprisonment of Christians in Iran, deadly Turkish attacks on the Kurds, police brutality throughout the Arab Middle East, the plight of Liberian, Angolan, Congolese, Ivorian and other refugees, not to mention world-leading breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, communications, microtechnology and other fields by Israelis and others around the globe.

13. Follow the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.

From the preamble: “Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” Just a reminder.

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Dec 25 2012

O Little Near-By Town of Bethlehem: Christmas 2012

The following was published on Dec. 24 at Times of Israel by Judy Lash-Balint

Every Christmas I make the 15-minute drive from my Jerusalem home to Bethlehem for a reality check on the beleaguered town five miles away.

This year, contrary to the customary gloomy reports from the international media, things were bustling in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. Bright blue skies and comfortable temperatures help make things more pleasant than in previous years when a cold, grey drizzle dampened spirits.

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Driving up to the Rachel’s Passage checkpoint in my car with Israeli plates, a quick check of my press credentials is all that’s needed to get waved through. Tour buses and private cars get the same summary but courteous treatment by the Israeli soldiers stationed at the checkpoint.

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In Bethlehem on the other side of the security barrier, the most striking thing this year is the massive presence of Palestinian police and other security personnel. Two uniformed men are stationed on every corner, at every intersection, and every 50 yards along the narrow streets leading from the checkpoint to Manger Square. Dozens of police cars, army vehicles, jeeps and assorted other cars with flashing lights are dotted all over town.

Palestine security personnel out in force on the streets of Bethlehem

Palestine security personnel out in force on the streets of Bethlehem

The European and Asian-funded restoration projects in Bethlehem’s old city have mostly now been completed, and Star Street that leads into Manger Square is a lovely pedestrian walkway lined with Ottoman-era buildings.  Flower-lined alleyways; interesting courtyards and steep, winding stairways lead off the street.

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Inside the Church of the Nativity, scene of the 39-day siege by Arab terrorists in April 2002, lines form to get into the crypt. As sunlight pours in through the windows just below the ornate ceiling, tour guides lead their groups around the marble pillars and under the brass lamps adorned with Christmas baubles, while those selling candles do a brisk business among the predominantly Asian pilgrims.

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This year, the center of Manger Square is packed with media and tourists, averting the scene I witnessed back in 2004 when hundreds of Moslems poured out of the mosque at the edge of the square and took over the area directly in front of the Church of the Nativity for midday prayers.

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Another thing missing from previous years—the pictures of Yasser Arafat.  One or two small pictures of Yasser are still to be found on official buildings, but images of current Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad are nowhere to be seen, apart from on the window of one cop car.

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And the ubiquitous martyr pictures of recent years?  A few hang forlornly on some shuttered shopfronts, but there are far more posters for upcoming concerts.

We get to Paul VI Street just in time to catch the traditional Palestinian bagpipe parade, where some fifty smartly uniformed musicians march through town squeezing their bagpipes to the accompaniment of several oversize booming drums.

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Mid-afternoon, the local faithful are to be found at prayer in the Santa Caterina church in the grounds of the Church of the Nativity. Several thousand worshipers wait reverently to take part in the ritual as the voices of the choir resonate from the tall arched walls. Apart from a large presence of nuns, almost everyone in the church is Christian Arab. It’s clear from their dress and their bearing that they’re from the dwindling upper strata of Bethlehem society.

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 In the Bethlehem Peace Center that houses the tourist information office in Manger Square, the standard Palestinian propaganda is on display.

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On the way out of town, the Rachel’s Passage checkpoint has closed for some reason and we’re re-routed via picturesque Beit Jalla, a once-friendly village of ancient Christian origin that became the launchpad forArafat’s attacks on Israeli civilians in neighboring Gilo during the second intifada.  Today, Beit Jalla, like Bethlehem, is under Palestine Authority control and the streets are lined with PA security forces.

The road winding down from Beit Jalla to the Ein Yael checkpoint near Jerusalem’s Malcha train station boasts some of the most spectacular scenery in the area and provides time to adjust to re-entry to western Jerusalem, where it’s just another Monday in December.

[All photos © Judy Lash Balint.  All rights reserved]

Dec 25 2012

‘The Jewish state which ruined Christmas in Bethlehem’: A Guardian Production

wise-men-tunnellingChristianity is close to extinct in the Middle East.

The only place in the region where Christians are free, and indeed thriving, is the Jewish state.

In contrast, a new study, highlighted at the Telegraph, warns that “Christians suffer greater hostility across the world than any other religious group” and quotes estimates that “between half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left the region or been killed in the past century.”

Yet, like a holiday ritual, Harriet Sherwood, in the spirit of Phoebe Greenwood’s ugly Guardian piece last year (‘If Jesus were to come this year Bethlehem would be closed’, Guardian, Dec. 22, 2011) chose to advance, as if by rote, a predictable Christmas tale of Israeli oppression against Christians.

Sherwood’s piece, Bethlehem Christians feel squeeze of settlements, avoids entirely any context about the comparative treatment of Christians in the Middle East, and myopically obsesses on the putative threat to Christians posed by Israeli “settlements” in the Jerusalem region.

Sherwood writes:

“In the birthplace of Jesus, the impact of Israeli settlements and their growth has been devastating.”

Sherwood then allows the following quote by Mahmoud Abbas to go unchallenged:

“For the first time in 2,000 years of Christianity in our homeland, the Holy Cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem have been completely separated by Israeli settlements, racist walls and checkpoints.”

First, as CAMERA pointed out in response to Bob Simon’s 60 Minute piece:

“Maps provided by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United Nations, B’tselem, and the PLO all indicate that the security barrier is located to the north and west of the city, and does not completely surround Bethlehem.”

Further, all Sherwood would have needed to do was visit the site of the Palestine Visitor Information Center, where she could have found the following helpful information:

“Most of the travellers arrive to Bethlehem via Jerusalem.

Bus  no. 21 runs from the Arabic Bus Station at the Damascus Gate (“Bab el-’Amoud”) in East Jerusalem via Beit Jala to Bethlehem. The average trip length is 40 minutes and costs 7 NIS.”

The Palestine Visitor Information Center helpfully suggests other bus routes, the option of driving, or even, for the physically ambitious, a walking route.

There’s no warning on their site reflecting Abbas’s claim that the two Biblical cities are cut off.

Sherwood continues:

“The city is further hemmed in by the vast concrete and steel separation barrier, bypasses connecting settlements with Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Israeli military zones. With little room to expand, it is now more densely populated than Gaza, according to one Palestinian official.”

The Palestinian official was lying.

According to the PA’s own statistics, Bethlehem’s population density is 3,383 person/km, while the density of Gaza is higher at 4,603 person/km.  It should also be noted that Gaza is not even in the top 50 of most densely populated places on earth. (If the PA official was comparing Bethlehem to Gaza City, as opposed to the entire Gaza strip, naturally the disparity in density would be even greater).

Sherwood then turns to economic issues, writing:

“The wall already snakes around most of Bethlehem, its 8m-high concrete slabs casting a deep shadow, both literally and metaphorically. At the Christmas Tree restaurant, where there are almost no takers for the “Quick Lunches” on offer, business has slowed to a standstill since the wall blocked what was once the main Jerusalem-Bethlehem road. Scores of shops along the closed-off artery have shut down altogether.”

…

“…the lack of routine access has had a dire impact on businesses and employment rates.”

The suggestion that Bethlehem is economically depressed is another profound distortion, as the city has been experiencing an economic boom over the last few years, with the number of tourists (and hotel stays) having dramatically increased over the last few years.

In fact, the narrative advanced in Sherwood’s passage was contradicted by Sherwood herself, in a piece published a couple of days earlier (Dec. 21), ‘No room at the inn – but Bethlehem’s popularity is a boon to Palestinians‘, where she wrote:

“Tens of thousands of pilgrims and tourists are expected to visit the birthplace of Jesus over Christmas. All of the West Bank city’s 3,700 hotel rooms are likely to be filled, with thousands more visitors making day trips from nearby Jerusalem.

This year has seen a 20% growth in the numbers of visitors to Bethlehem compared with the previous year, and officials hope for a further rise in tourism to Palestine next year. The biggest number of tourists – more than a quarter – come from Russia.

Officials are heartened by the increasing number of visitors who are opting to stay in hotels in Bethlehem rather than just making the trip from Jerusalem. The number of overnight stays is expected to reach 1.5m by the end of this year.

The city is planning to increase the number of hotel beds, offer improved packages and invest in marketing and promotion…”

Undeterred, Sherwood continues:

“Bethlehem has one of the highest rates of unemployment of all West Bank cities, at 18%, says Vera Baboun, who was elected as its first female mayor in October. “We are a strangulated city, with no room for expansion due to the settlements and the wall.”"

However, according to the PA’s own statistics, any suggestion of a causation between the security fence and unemployment in Bethlehem is not supportable. In 2002 for instance, two years before the fence’s completion om 2004*, the unemployment rate was higher (at 20%) than the current rate.  Inexplicably, unemployment in Bethlehem actually dropped in 2005 and 2006 to 13.4 and 13.7% respectively. So, at the very least, unemployment figures for Bethlehem don’t seem at all to correspond with the fence’s construction history.

Sherwood’s narrative then descends even further with the following passage:

“In a booklet to mark Christmas 2012, Kairos Palestine, a Christian alliance, says: “Land confiscation, as well as the influx of Israeli settlers, suggest that there will be no future for Palestinians (Christian or Muslim) in [this] area. In this sense, the prospect of a clear ‘solution’ grows darker every day”.

However, Kairos, as CAMERA has documented, is certainly not a group dedicated at all to “peace, love and understanding”.

A 2009 Kairos document calls the Israeli “occupation” a “sin against God,” and characterizes Palestinian acts of terror as “legal resistance.” 

The document also states that if “there were no occupation, there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity.”

As CAMERA asked in response to such specious occupation causation:

“Really? Then why did the rocket attacks against Israel increase after it withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005?”

More importantly, the Kairos quote insidiously suggests something of a policy of ethnic cleansing (Israel’s “solution”) of both Muslims and Christians in the West Bank, a suggestion which is matched in sheer malice by the demographic lie. Here are a couple of population facts:

  • The population of Christians in Bethlehem and surrounding area has increased since 1967 (when Israel took control of the West Bank), which (as CAMERA noted) stands in “contrast to the decline of the Christian population in the West Bank when it was under Jordanian control.”
  •  The Christian population in Israel proper has risen from 34,000 in 1948 to over 150,000 today.

Additionally, as Akus noted in a post last Christmas, the Church of England, for instance, is quite aware of the demographic realities for Christians in the Middle East. A report by the Church noted the following:

“While Christians have fled from areas controlled by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in Israel their numbers have grown rapidly. The Statistical Abstract of Israel 2008 reports that Israel’s Christian population grew from 120,600 in 1995 to 151,600 in 2007, representing a growth rate of 25 per cent — a rate faster than the growth of the country’s Jewish population.”

That the place in the Middle East where the population of Christians is growing just happens to be the sole country where Islamism is not a serious threat is essential to understanding the fate of Christianity in that part of the world – context about the contrasting religious freedom, tolerance and democratic values in the Middle East which Harriet Sherwood’s reports on the region do not provide.  

Finally, the report linked to in the first sentence of this post concluded that the “lion’s share” of persecution faced by Christians arises in countries where Islam is the dominant faith”.  Specifically, the reports adds, “the most common threat to Christians abroad is militant Islam“, and further argues that oppression against Christians in Muslim countries is often ignored because of a fear that criticism will be seen as “racism.”

Such religious bigotry – in places like Gaza, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and elsewhere - includes physical violence, attacks on churches, forced conversions, and the imposition of Sharia law.  

Moreover, is it really even debatable that the antagonist in Sherwood’s Christmas tale, Israel’s security fence, was only necessitated by terror attacks launched largely by adherents to the same brand of radical Islamism which has prompted so many Middle East Christians to flee?  

While truly fearless crusading dailies would boldly tackle the real cleansing of Christians from Arab lands as the result of Islamist militancy, CiF Watch does not monitor a broadsheet which engages in such truly courageous journalism.

We monitor the Guardian.

(*Fence construction information obtained from Dany Tirza who served as the IDF’s chief architect for the Security Fence.)

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Nov 21 2012

Guardian claims Hamas scored political points from photo of Egypt PM cradling dead baby

An official Guardian editorial (Gaza: storm before the quiet, Nov. 21) on talks of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas cited legitimate claims of victory both sides could make if a truce is signed.

[Netanyahu] can say that while Gilad Shalit is back with his family, the man who kidnapped him, Hamas’s military chief Ahmed al-Jaabari, is dead; he can say that the stock of missiles in Gaza is depleted and that the Iron Dome missile defence system proved itself. He can say the operation gave the lie to those who claimed Israel cannot act militarily now that the regional environment has been changed by the Arab spring. 

Now, here’s the Guardian assessment of what Hamas will gain:

“Hamas has a different narrative. Whether a ceasefire takes effect or not, they will say their rockets established their reach over the majority of the population from Jerusalem to north of Tel Aviv. And far from being wiped out in the initial Israeli bombardment, they kept firing to the very end.”

Then, parroting Seumas Milne’s recent triumphant polemic about Hamas’ ‘victory’ in establishing themselves as the main Palestinian resistance movement, the editorial continues:

“At home, Hamas will have reaffirmed its role as the main resistance to the occupation – a role which it was in danger of surrendering to competitive militant groups in the Gaza Strip.” [emphasis added]

The editorial continues:

“More significant, Hamas claims, would be the political gains achieved during the past traumatic week – the pictures of the Egyptian prime minister and Turkish foreign minister clutching dead Gazan children, the stream of visits and support from the entire Arab League. What did the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, sitting all on his own in Ramallah get? Tony Blair.” [emphasis added]

It is worth noting that the Guardian is once again suggesting that Hamas, unlike the “craven” Palestinian leaders in Fatah, is more deserving of our moral sympathy, more justified in claiming the mantle of the authentic Palestinian resistance movement. 

Further, the picture of the Egyptian prime minister clutching a dead Gazan child, which the Guardian is referring to, is an incident which was revealed to be a fraud.

Though media reports initially claimed the child in question, 4-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah, was killed by an Israeli strike, it later was revealed that he was almost certainly killed by an errant Hamas rocket.

This cynical manipulation of a dead Palestinian boy to score public relation points should be a source of shame for Hamas, not a source of pride.  

However, as long as the Guardian remains enamored of Hamas, and sympathetic to their claims of legitimacy, don’t expect even the most specious moral and political claims by the Islamist group to be subjected to critical scrutiny.

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Oct 31 2012

Rachel Shabi has “fresh hope” that the Jewish state may cease to exist

Perhaps someone needs to remind Rachel Shabi, and ‘Comment is Free’ editors, that the Peel Commission has adjourned, the Jewish nation is a wonderful reality, and the state’s radical bi-national reconstitution will never, ever be countenanced by its citizens.

Shabi’s Oct. 23 piece, ‘The death of the Israel-Palestine two-state solution brings fresh hope‘, pronounces the two-state principle dead, a victim, she claims, of the impossibility of removing “half a million Jewish settlers and infrastructure from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

However, this line of argument is absurd, as it implies that nothing other than the evacuation of 100% of Israelis from the territories would achieve a two-state solution.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s proposal in 2008 would have given the Palestinians an independent, contiguous state, with 94% of the West Bank (plus land swaps in pre-1967 Israel to make up for the 6% of the WB which would remain in Israel’s control), 100% of Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of Jews would have been uprooted.

Yet, Olmert’s peace plan, the details of which have been confirmed by U.S. leaders active in the talks, were rejected by Mahmoud Abbas, who walked away from the deal - just as Yasser Arafat did in response to Ehud Barak’s offer of statehood in 2000.

Here’s a map representing the proposed deal.

As former U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice wrote in her autobiography:

“Although Palestinian negotiators spoke publicly about compromise on refugees privately they spoke of the “right of return” as a matter of individual choice that would have to be extended to each of over seven million people and with Palestinians retaining the open-ended right to try to negotiate additional “returns” beyond any number initially agreed upon in a peace treaty.

Abbas was simply unprepared to accept any offer that did not allow for the “right of return.” [emphasis added]

The Palestinians’ trickery on what they were actually willing to accept concerning the “refugees” completely fooled the Guardian in their contextualization of the ‘Palestine Papers’ in 2011.

Further, their maximalist, unlimited demand for a so-called “right of return” (for Palestinians refugees from 1948 and millions of their descendants) by Palestinian leaders  is perhaps the greatest indication that their “two-state” support is merely a chimera – that Palestinian leadership have never reconciled themselves to the continued existence of a Jewish state.  

A “right of return” for “7 million Palestinians”, back to places in Israel where the overwhelming majority have actually never lived, necessarily negates Israel’s continued existence as a state for the Jewish people.  

In her CiF piece, Shabi writes:

“…a new generation of Palestinian activists, in part inspired by the Arab uprisings in the region, are bypassing territorial demands to focus on civil rights and freedoms.

Shared-space [binational] alternatives have grassroots momentum, but no leadership support. “

Of course, the term “grassroots momentum” is one of those intentionally blurry words meant, in this case, to avoid having to acknowledge that, the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis would fiercely reject a bi-national solution. (Per a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, 86% of Israeli Jews reject such a plan.)

Those who advocate for a one-state solution are either parroting the narrative of Palestinian rejectionists, or are indifferent to the fact that any attempt to impose a one-state “solution” would be met by fierce Jewish resistance, inspired by the historical lessons Jews have painfully learned on the political necessity and ethical imperative of Jewish sovereignty.

Such Utopian dreams represent a recipe for endless war – and certainly nothing resembling peace. 

The Jewish state has been re-established in our historic homeland, and those wishing to undo 1948 should get over it.  

Their malign fantasies are not going to be realized.

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