Pan-Arabism, the idea that all Arab countries would eventually combine or at least confederate, seems to be on its last legs.
Pan-Arabism had its heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Egypt and Syria created the United Arab Republic.
It has been in decline ever since.
But wishful thinking about the power of a united Arab front continued, mostly in the form of the Arab League, which would meet regularly and where every such meeting would result in de rigueur condemnations of Israel and little else.
Now that Egypt's leadership role in the Arab world has faded as it struggles to discover its own identity, and in the wake of the other Arab uprisings, even the Arab League is falling apart.
A major Arab League summit that was to take place next month in Baghdad has been postponed, and no new date has been set although they are talking about September.
The reason for the postponement is that the Arab League members are squabbling with each other. Iraq is against Saudi Arabian and UAE supporting Bahrain's government in the current Shi'ite uprising there, and Iraq is siding with Iran.
The upheavals in the Arab world are taking the focus off of "Palestine" as each government must actually think about survival. The always-ready excuse of blaming everything on Israel has outlived its usefulness for Arab despots.
While pan-Arabism has been mostly a joke for decades, its most likely successor is not funny at all: pan-Islamism, a construct that Iran hopes to control. Iran also intends to ultimately make Arab identity meaningless, subsumed under the banner of Islam.
While it is too early to know how successful Iran will be - centuries of enmity between Arab and Persian cannot be erased so quickly, and neither can the Shiite/Sunni rift be patched up anytime soon - it is clear that the Islamic Republic is the early winner as the world witnesses the death of pan-Arabism.
Reagan wasn't the last actor in the White House
A fascinating look behind the scenes of Obama's speech to the nation Sunday night, from Reuters photographer Jason Reed:
Poynter.org researched the history:
Apparently, wire service photographers will happily descend that slippery slope between news and acting.
This is of course not nearly as bad as the fauxtography and staged photos we are so used to seeing coming out of the Middle East. Even so, one would hope that the White House would not be acting like Hezbollah in even this small way.
(h/t PB)
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| This photo was not taken during the speech! |
As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent. Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.
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| Obama's re-enactment |
Poynter.org researched the history:
Doug Mills, New York Times photojournalist and former Associated Press staffer, says it has been done this way “always, always … well, as long as I have covered the White House, going back to the Reagan administration. We [still photographers] have never, never, never, ever been allowed to cover a live presidential address to the nation!”That article concludes:
Poynter’s Senior Faculty for Visual Journalism, Kenny Irby, explains, “The most obvious concern is noise. The 35mm cameras emit shutter noise, that would be multiplied by several photographers and increased by the echo which resonates off of the marble floors. The other visual distraction is the placement of the teleprompter that impedes the photographers’ line of sight to the president.”
It is time for this kind of re-enactment to end. The White House should value truth and authenticity. The technology clearly exists to document important moments without interrupting them. Photojournalists and their employers should insist on and press for access to document these historic moments.
In the meantime, anyone who uses these recreations should clearly disclose to the reader the circumstances under which they were captured.
Apparently, wire service photographers will happily descend that slippery slope between news and acting.
This is of course not nearly as bad as the fauxtography and staged photos we are so used to seeing coming out of the Middle East. Even so, one would hope that the White House would not be acting like Hezbollah in even this small way.
(h/t PB)
Area Man Can Prove Jews To Blame For Everything (PreOccupied Territory)
Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
Check out their Facebook page.
Mr. Hassan, 28, often regales his clients with feats of logic and analysis involving history, science, current events, politics, and various social issues, always adducing evidence to buttress his thesis that Jews control world affairs, but only in an evil way. The unmarried father of two typically holds forth for about fifteen customers per day at the Saara Salon, whose name involves a play on words that uses a Semitic root that means both "hair" and "storm," the latter a tribute to the sensibilities of Dearborn automotive hero Henry Ford and his dedication to exploring alleged Jewish conspiracies as often featured in the publication Der Stürmer.
"Malik is a master," says coworker Ayaan Faridi, 26. "Within three minutes of hearing about the earthquake in Nepal, he'd already put together the pieces and come up with a persuasive line of reasoning as to how the Jews caused the disaster, and how they stand to profit from it. I couldn't do his argument justice, but his basic point was that you can't trust those Jews."
Ms. Faridi recalled an earlier instance, several months ago, in which Hassan linked Jews to Bubonic plague, autism, chemtrails, and pollution from hydrofracking, doing so with a fluidity and facility that astounded her. "He was pulling information from I don't know where, but he had every last one of us convinced," she recounted, to nods from the other hairdressers.
Accusing Jews of nefarious conspiracies is nothing new. Hassan's uniqueness lies in his original application of them to everyday developments in a way that compellingly explains how there is no need to engage in self-examination or improve oneself, since all evil comes from the monstrous, all-encompassing Jewish conspiracy, says social scholar David Duke.
"Any cultured person will have encountered the eminently reasonable notion that the Jews orchestrated 9/11, faked the Holocaust, arranged for Kennedy and Lincoln to be assassinated, what have you. I think where Mr. Hassan excels is the smoothness with which he weaves his narrative, bringing in even the most innocent-sounding facts and showing how, in actuality, they point ever more convincingly to a comprehensive, worldwide, eternal Jewish plot to enslave the rest of humanity."
Hassan recently began to outdo himself, noted Duke, in showing how Jews were responsible for events that until now were thought to precede the advent of Jews entirely. "I heard him last week, and he blew my mind. I'd never before considered how Jews might be to blame for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs; for the decline of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE); and the mysterious cataclysmic event that violently tore a huge chunk off the Earth in its early period in order to form what became the moon."
Even more impressive, said a frequent client at the salon who declined to be named lest the Jews get to her, Hassan can even demonstrate how Jews can reach into fiction and folklore to manipulate events. "He just told me how there's no way to explain the Death Star's destruction of Alderaan unless the Jews were ultimately behind it," she said, still stunned.
"It's like there's no longer any boundary between fact and fantasy."
Zionist Occupied Government 2015
Today I am joining 1500 people - mostly religious Jews - for the annual NORPAC mission to Washington DC where we will be meeting with most members of Congress to push for a stronger relationship between the US and Israel.
The top agenda item, of course, is Iran.
It makes no sense to speak to members of Congress against the framework agreement, since that is already in place. So the goal is to ensure that the goals of the agreement, as stated by administration officials, to ensure that there is no way that Iran could get nuclear weapons, are strictly adhered to.
So, for example, Vice President Biden gave a speech a couple of weeks ago defending the deal. He said:
First, some have worried that the President and administration are willing -- even eager -— to settle for a deal so badly that we’ll sign a bad deal. The right deal is far better than no deal. But if what’s on the table doesn’t meet the President’s requirements, there will be no deal.The problem is that Iran interprets the deal much differently, and if Iran's statements are to be taken at face value - then Congress should block the bad deal.
And a final deal must effectively cut off Iran’s uranium, plutonium, and covert pathways to the bomb. If it doesn’t, there will be no deal.
The final deal must ensure a breakout timeline of at least one year for at least decade or more. If it doesn’t, no deal.
And a final deal must include phased sanction relief, calibrated against Iran taking meaningful steps to constrain their program. If they do not, no deal.
And a final deal must provide verifiable assurances the international community is demanding to ensure Iran’s program is exclusively peaceful going forward. If it doesn’t, no deal.
The second argument I hear is that no deal is worth the paper it’s written on, because Iran will simply cheat. And it’s true that Iran could try to cheat, whether there’s a deal or not. Now they didn’t cheat under the interim deal -— the Joint Plan of Action -— as many were certain they would. But they certainly have in the past and it would not surprise anyone if they tried again. However, if they did try to cheat, under a deal that we're talking about, they would be far more likely to be caught. Because as this deal goes forward, we’ll also put in place the toughest transparency and verification requirements, which represent the best possible check against a secret path to the bomb.
Iran will be required to implement the Additional Protocols, allowing IAEA inspectors to visit not only declared nuclear facilities, but undeclared sites where suspicious, clandestine work is suspected.
Folks, let me tell you what this deal would do in relation to intrusive inspections: Not only would Iran be required to allow 24/7 eyes on the nuclear sites you’ve heard of -— Fordow and Natantz and Arak -- and the ability to challenge suspect locations, every link in their nuclear supply chain will be under surveillance.
For the next 20 to 25 years, inspectors will have access to Iran’s uranium mines and uranium mills, centrifuge production sites, assembly and storage facilities; all purchases of sensitive equipment will be monitored.
And, as part of the transparency requirements under the final deal, Iran will have to address the IAEA concerns about the possible military dimensions of Iran’s past nuclear research.
We need to educate the lawmakers, even the ones that signed a letter supporting the President's negotiating stance, that the agreement must adhere to the standards that the administration has claimed to insist on.
We will be providing the members of Congress with scorecards on how to judge the agreement to see whether its points are consistent with the imperative to deny any chance for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.
It is an uphill battle.
The last time I went on this mission, in 2009, less than a thousand people attended. But that was enough that the halls of the congressional offices were filled with yarmulka-wearing Jewish men and their wives and daughters.
"Rabbis issue ruling allowing Jews to raise pigs to destroy Arab crops" - Arab media
It is difficult to raise wild boars, but all those hard years of effort are worth it when you release them that one time, hoping that they'll eat some Arab grain and terrorize some Arab kids!
In addition, Algerian newspaper Akhbar El Youm says that rabbis in Israel issued a ruling that Jews are allowed to raise wild pigs in order to be able to deliberately release them to damage Palestinian Arab crops.
They quote self-styled expert on Jewish affairs Dr. Saleh Naamy, who tweeted this "fact" without mentioning the name of the rabbis who supposedly made this ruling.
It turns out that Naamy made the same charge in an article published in Al Jazeera in 2009 - with an equal lack of sources.
Again showing how much that esteemed newspaper cares about facts.
I tweeted Dr. Naamy to ask who gave these rulings. His answer was
Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, Rabbi Zalman Melamed, "Yitzchok Levanon" as well as "others."
I asked him for links to these "fatwas" but he didn't respond.
If any rabbis would have ever said anything close to this, of course, Haaretz and +972 would be mentioning it every day. Their standards are slightly better than Al Jazeera.
(h/t Ibn Boutros)
A photo of the real Jerusalem
Matti Friedman has an excellent essay at Tablet about Jerusalem, with eye-catching photos.
This photo detail, of a Jewish saleswoman helping a Muslim woman apply eye makeup, says more about the real city of Jerusalem than thousands of Pulitzer-chasing wire-service photos.
Full photo here, click to enlarge:
This photo detail, of a Jewish saleswoman helping a Muslim woman apply eye makeup, says more about the real city of Jerusalem than thousands of Pulitzer-chasing wire-service photos.
Full photo here, click to enlarge:
Hamas, Fatah initial a fake agreement
From JPost:
Palestinian Arabs have long been able to put together temporary, paper agreements and truces to achieve larger political goals. Inevitably, Westerners are consistently fooled by these, stupidly believing that short-term absence of violence indicates a long-term shift in attitudes.
In 1947, in the months before the UN Partition vote, virtually all Arab terror against Jews stopped. Amazing! The Arabs were proving to th world that they could act responsibly and run an Arab-led Palestine where they would protect the Jews as Islam requires them to, and they were puching this as an alternate plan to partitioning Palestine.
But within hours of the UN vote to partition Palestine, the Arabs gave up their pretense of peacefulness and started attacking Jews (in those days, they didn't bother with calling them "Zionists.")
In the months before Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas managed miraculously to reduce rocket fire from Gaza, and the rocket count dropped dramatically from 1157 in 2004 to 417 in 2005 as Israel implemented the plan. The next year, the number of rocket attacks increased back up to nearly the pre-disengagement levels.
Now the Palestinian Arabs are faced with another deadline.
The PA is putting all of their eggs in the unilateral recognition basket, that they are hoping the world provides to them in September. The biggest obstacle to that recognition was the simple fact that the PA and Hamas are hopelessly split - ideologically, physically and politically. There is no way that sympathetic Europeans can overlook that problem and support the establishment of a state where there are two competing rulers.
Hamas also recognizes the immense political value that recognition would bring them - something that, like the disengagement, would happen once and would likely never be reversed.
So even though Fatah and Hamas have been negotiating for years over the exact same issues without being able to come to an agreement, they now are agreeing to paper over their differences with vague wording that is just enough to convince the credulous, wishful-thinking West that they major obstacle to Palestinian Arab independence has been removed.
Note the little we do know: "Hamas has agreed to hold elections within a year." You can bet that the elections will be scheduled after September, because the result of elections beforehand - either way - would torpedo any chance for a unity government.
Vagueness will be the hallmark of the agreement - just enough to fool the world into thinking that these two groups can work together. Hamas can play the unity game until September, and, if the world is sufficiently fooled, for a few months afterwards. Then the elections, or absence of elections, will start to rock this false alliance.
By then, they hope, Palestine will already be de facto recognized as a state, and Israel will be on the ropes politically anyway. The world will be cheerleading the PalArab insistence on ethically cleansing the heart of the Land of Israel of Jews, and Hamas-Fatahstan will blame all of their new problems on Israel. They will say things like they cannot accept Palestinian Arab "refugees" in their new state as long as Israel holds any of "their" land. The ever present threat of them exploding in a new terror war will cause the West to pressure Israel, as always, as they insist on Israeli concessions to solve their problems.
The outline of what is coming is clear. Because we've seen this game before. Unfortunately, Western amnesia will help ensure that it plays out the way the PalArabs are planning it.
UPDATE: Barry Rubin concurs.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement hammered out an agreement with rival group Hamas on Wednesday, setting the stage for forming an interim government as well as fixing a date for a general election.Here is where it is useful to know a little history.
"The consultations resulted in full understandings over all points of discussions, including setting up an interim agreement with specific tasks and to set a date for election," Egyptian intelligence said in a statement.
Spokespeople for both Hamas and Fatah confirmed that "all differences" have been worked out between the long-feuding Palestinians political movements.
A spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Hamas has agreed to hold elections within a year, a part of the reconciliation deal it signed in Cairo.
A Hamas spokesperson said that "all points of differences" between the rival groups have been overcome. He added that officials in Cairo will soon invite top Hamas and Fatah officials for a signing ceremony in the Egyptian capital.
Palestinian Arabs have long been able to put together temporary, paper agreements and truces to achieve larger political goals. Inevitably, Westerners are consistently fooled by these, stupidly believing that short-term absence of violence indicates a long-term shift in attitudes.
In 1947, in the months before the UN Partition vote, virtually all Arab terror against Jews stopped. Amazing! The Arabs were proving to th world that they could act responsibly and run an Arab-led Palestine where they would protect the Jews as Islam requires them to, and they were puching this as an alternate plan to partitioning Palestine.
But within hours of the UN vote to partition Palestine, the Arabs gave up their pretense of peacefulness and started attacking Jews (in those days, they didn't bother with calling them "Zionists.")
Now the Palestinian Arabs are faced with another deadline.
The PA is putting all of their eggs in the unilateral recognition basket, that they are hoping the world provides to them in September. The biggest obstacle to that recognition was the simple fact that the PA and Hamas are hopelessly split - ideologically, physically and politically. There is no way that sympathetic Europeans can overlook that problem and support the establishment of a state where there are two competing rulers.
Hamas also recognizes the immense political value that recognition would bring them - something that, like the disengagement, would happen once and would likely never be reversed.
So even though Fatah and Hamas have been negotiating for years over the exact same issues without being able to come to an agreement, they now are agreeing to paper over their differences with vague wording that is just enough to convince the credulous, wishful-thinking West that they major obstacle to Palestinian Arab independence has been removed.
Note the little we do know: "Hamas has agreed to hold elections within a year." You can bet that the elections will be scheduled after September, because the result of elections beforehand - either way - would torpedo any chance for a unity government.
Vagueness will be the hallmark of the agreement - just enough to fool the world into thinking that these two groups can work together. Hamas can play the unity game until September, and, if the world is sufficiently fooled, for a few months afterwards. Then the elections, or absence of elections, will start to rock this false alliance.
By then, they hope, Palestine will already be de facto recognized as a state, and Israel will be on the ropes politically anyway. The world will be cheerleading the PalArab insistence on ethically cleansing the heart of the Land of Israel of Jews, and Hamas-Fatahstan will blame all of their new problems on Israel. They will say things like they cannot accept Palestinian Arab "refugees" in their new state as long as Israel holds any of "their" land. The ever present threat of them exploding in a new terror war will cause the West to pressure Israel, as always, as they insist on Israeli concessions to solve their problems.
The outline of what is coming is clear. Because we've seen this game before. Unfortunately, Western amnesia will help ensure that it plays out the way the PalArabs are planning it.
UPDATE: Barry Rubin concurs.
HRW's latest lies: WB Arabs live in "shanties", Jews in "spacious villas"
In the Huffington Post, the executive director of the Middle East and North African Division for Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, describes the West Bank this way:
Here is a photo I took of one of those "shanties". Click to see it in all its horror:
The Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria that I visited were clean, well-planned and overwhelmingly suburban in nature. I saw nothing that could be remotely described as ostentatious. Houses were attractive but uniform in design.
From the highway, many of the Arab towns showed literal mansions, orders of magnitude larger than any Jewish house in the area. And many more were under construction.
Similarly, Whitson is pushing the similar slander that Palestinian Arabs are not allowed on "Jewish" roads, a complete lie that Yisrael Medad documented last week as such:
More photos of Palestinian Arab mansions are at Shiloh Musings.
(h/t Anne)
And security concerns do not justify systematically separating Palestinians from Jews, with shanties and dirt roads provided for the one, and spacious villas with swimming pools and paved highways provided for the other.
Here is a photo I took of one of those "shanties". Click to see it in all its horror:
And here's a photo of those spacious villas:
The Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria that I visited were clean, well-planned and overwhelmingly suburban in nature. I saw nothing that could be remotely described as ostentatious. Houses were attractive but uniform in design.
From the highway, many of the Arab towns showed literal mansions, orders of magnitude larger than any Jewish house in the area. And many more were under construction.
Similarly, Whitson is pushing the similar slander that Palestinian Arabs are not allowed on "Jewish" roads, a complete lie that Yisrael Medad documented last week as such:
More photos of Palestinian Arab mansions are at Shiloh Musings.
(h/t Anne)
Key question: will the PA take over the Rafah crossing?
The agreement signed by Hamas and Fatah to so much fanfare has very little in terms of details.
Here is everything it says about security forces:
Does this mean that the Hamas security forces will be subsumed by a joint security force? It doesn't look like it. It looks more like the days of Arafat where there were as many as seven competing security forces, each one playing against the other.
If there is to be a joint security force, then the PA will have to become involved in the Rafah crossing again. According to a 2005 agreement between the PA, EU and Israel, the EU would act as a third party to monitor all people and items that cross at Rafah.
Now that Egypt has indicated that it will open Rafah permanently, this means that it is more important than ever to have a third party presence there.
EUBAM issued a mild statement seemingly in the wake of Hamas/Fatah unity news:
Rafah is the key test as to whether the Fatah/Hamas deal is anything more than a scam meant to fool the world ahead of the UN initiative for statehood in September. If they are serious, then the PA must adhere to its commitment with the EU to monitor Rafah in cooperation with Israel.
So far, the indications are quite the opposite. From the Guardian on Friday:
If Hamas maintains its own separate security control of Gaza, this is just more proof that the "unity" agreement is a sham.
Here is everything it says about security forces:
[The two parties] emphasized the formation of the Higher Security Committee, which will report to the Palestinian President and be composed of professional officers to be determined by consensus.
Does this mean that the Hamas security forces will be subsumed by a joint security force? It doesn't look like it. It looks more like the days of Arafat where there were as many as seven competing security forces, each one playing against the other.
If there is to be a joint security force, then the PA will have to become involved in the Rafah crossing again. According to a 2005 agreement between the PA, EU and Israel, the EU would act as a third party to monitor all people and items that cross at Rafah.
Now that Egypt has indicated that it will open Rafah permanently, this means that it is more important than ever to have a third party presence there.
EUBAM issued a mild statement seemingly in the wake of Hamas/Fatah unity news:
On 26 April 2010, the Council reaffirmed the political importance of EUBAM Rafah and its continued support for the mission. It welcomed in particular the maintenance of the mission's operational capability as well as its reactivation plan, which would ensure a rapid resumption of its full activities in case of re-opening of the Rafah Crossing Point.
Rafah is the key test as to whether the Fatah/Hamas deal is anything more than a scam meant to fool the world ahead of the UN initiative for statehood in September. If they are serious, then the PA must adhere to its commitment with the EU to monitor Rafah in cooperation with Israel.
So far, the indications are quite the opposite. From the Guardian on Friday:
The Islamist organisation [Hamas] also said it would keep control of the Gaza Strip under the accord, which is expected to be formally signed by leaders of the two factions in Cairo next week.
If Hamas maintains its own separate security control of Gaza, this is just more proof that the "unity" agreement is a sham.