Just one percent more Palestinians worked in settlements in 2010 than the year before, making almost double the wage of their peers in the public and service sectors, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in a new report released Wednesday.Kudos to Ma'an for actually seeking out a Jewish leader in Judea and Samaria to comment.
Average daily wages for settlement workers were 150 shekels ($44) per day, compared to 76.9 ($22) in the West Bank and 46.2 ($13.50) in Gaza, the latest research showed.
The figures for settlement workers are likely to concern leaders of the Palestinian Authority, who have said they will outlaw all work in Israeli factories across the Green Line by 2012.
But settlement leader Yaakov David Ha'ivri called on the Palestinian leadership to admit that the settlements benefit workers, saying workers likely made even more than double the average wage.
"Palestinian workers in our factories are making closer to three times the wages they would be making in the PA. I guess that is the reason that Salam Fayyad's threats to impose a workers boycott never materialized.
"It would be very interesting to see the results of a true open and democratic referendum of the local Arab population" to learn if they would prefer the ban on settlements or continue working in them, he added.
"(Arab) settlement workers paid double average wage"
From Ma'an:
The Palestinian Arab terror convention in Cairo
Right now, in Cairo, pretty much every Palestinian Arab terror group is meeting to sign the short unification document between Hamas and Fatah.
There are lots of Hamas leaders from both Gaza and elsewhere, including Khaled Meshaa, Mahmoud Zahar, Khalil al-Hayya, Izzat al-Rishq, Mohamed Nasr, Osama Hamdan, and Abu Marzook.
But also leaders of Islamic Jihad (Ramadan Shallah), the PFLP-GC (Ahmad Jibril), the DFLP (Khaled Atta), the Popular Front (Khaled Atta,) the Palestine People's Party, the Palestine Popular Struggle Front, and several more.
In addition, other political leaders like Mustafa Barghouti and Munib al-Masri are there.
And the Fatah delegation just arrived as well, including Mahmoud Abbas.
Every group listed here has a history of involvement with terror. Some 13 groups signed the reconciliation letter, I cannot find a comprehensive list.
Many people in the room mourned the death of Bin Laden.
Early reports are saying that Catherine Ashton and Ban Ki Moon might attend the ceremony tomorrow.
These observers are apparently celebrating the biggest gathering of Palestinian Arab terrorists in years.
There is one person who is notably absent, however. The only semi-moderate Palestinian Arab leader in history, the only one who has had no involvement in terrorism, Salam Fayyad is in Ramallah.
The terrorist crowd, however, intends to gain recognition for their fake state from France, the UK, the rest of the EU and the entire world. Their refusal to negotiate with Israel and their refusal to compromise is being rewarded in spades.
And the world seems to be buying into the idea that such a state is a good thing.
The state that these people support would have a single purpose: to eliminate the Jewish state. It will not accept millions of "refugees." It will not negotiate with Israel over water or Gilad Shalit. It will throw away every agreement ever made.
How can such a state make the world a better place? What problems will it solve? Who will be better off after it is created? Why, in any universe, is a state run by these people the least bit desirable?
And why is there zero criticism of this insane, hateful, terrorist initiative from any Western countries?
But also leaders of Islamic Jihad (Ramadan Shallah), the PFLP-GC (Ahmad Jibril), the DFLP (Khaled Atta), the Popular Front (Khaled Atta,) the Palestine People's Party, the Palestine Popular Struggle Front, and several more.
In addition, other political leaders like Mustafa Barghouti and Munib al-Masri are there.
And the Fatah delegation just arrived as well, including Mahmoud Abbas.
Every group listed here has a history of involvement with terror. Some 13 groups signed the reconciliation letter, I cannot find a comprehensive list.
Many people in the room mourned the death of Bin Laden.
Early reports are saying that Catherine Ashton and Ban Ki Moon might attend the ceremony tomorrow.
These observers are apparently celebrating the biggest gathering of Palestinian Arab terrorists in years.
There is one person who is notably absent, however. The only semi-moderate Palestinian Arab leader in history, the only one who has had no involvement in terrorism, Salam Fayyad is in Ramallah.
The terrorist crowd, however, intends to gain recognition for their fake state from France, the UK, the rest of the EU and the entire world. Their refusal to negotiate with Israel and their refusal to compromise is being rewarded in spades.
And the world seems to be buying into the idea that such a state is a good thing.
The state that these people support would have a single purpose: to eliminate the Jewish state. It will not accept millions of "refugees." It will not negotiate with Israel over water or Gilad Shalit. It will throw away every agreement ever made.
How can such a state make the world a better place? What problems will it solve? Who will be better off after it is created? Why, in any universe, is a state run by these people the least bit desirable?
And why is there zero criticism of this insane, hateful, terrorist initiative from any Western countries?
Holland cuts pension of Holocaust survivor who lives across Green Line
From Israel's News1:
After labeling settlement products and boycotting Israeli companies, Europe exacerbated its anti-Israeli policy-and this time the decision is particularly problematic.This is sickening - and discriminatory..
The Netherlands decided to cut pensions of survivors living beyond the Green Line. Channel 2 news reporter, Lee Na'im, reported that "D.", a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands, had recently decided to immigrate to Israel and be with her family. She moved to a neighborhood in the Modi'in area, just beyond the Green Line.
The son of D. says: "Mother immigrated to Israel a few months ago. After seeing what is happening in Europe, she decided she did not want to continue to live there and instead go to Israel."
D. was receiving legal assistance from the Justice Ministry to realize her rights as a Holocaust survivor in Israel. In addition, she receives from the government of Netherlands a 1,100 euro old-age pension and an additional pension she is entitled to because she was a Holocaust survivor.
She updated the Dutch government with her new address and received a surprising response.
The letter sent to her said: "Madam, due to living in the West Bank, an area that we do not have any agreement with, we are obliged to deduct a large percentage of your old age pension."
"It gave my mother such a shock that she just burst into tears," said her son. "She has not slept since. She lost her trust and want to go back out of Israel."
Within a few days D.'s allowance was cut to 740 euros, 35% less than she had received to date.
The official explanation of the Dutch authorities is that any settlement in Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to be a separate political entity from Israel, with which no Dutch government has political agreements.
The family of D. is trying to fight and change the decision, and in particular find it difficult to understand the directive following a law passed The Dutch government.
Even if you believe that the West Bank is occupied by Israel, this woman's decision to live there was voluntary - which means she wasn't "transferred" in the language of the Geneva Conventions. The intent of the Geneva Conventions was to stop the forced transfer of citizens. It is perfectly legal for an individual to move wherever they want to under international law.
Except nowadays, when international law is twisted against Jews in Israel and only Jews in Israel.
Furthermore, if D. would have moved to towns occupied by Turkey or Morocco or Russia, there is no law on their books that would reduce the pension.
A pension agreement is between a country and its citizens, not between a country and the place that they live.
This law is only meant to punish Jews who don't have the right to live wherever they want, as opposed to everyone else.
(h/t Yenta)
UPDATE: English story here.
Arabs notice Arabs treat Arabs worse than Israel does
An interesting article by a Syrian journalist in Gulf News:
Funnily enough, comparing the number of Arab people killed during the wars between Israel and Arab countries with the number of Arabs killed locally, one will notice that Arab dictatorships have killed more people.
Sadly enough, some Arab armies and security services have proved to be much more brutal than the Israeli army.
When we compare the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza with the number of Arabs being killed these days by Arab dictators, we will be horribly surprised.
In fact, the Sudanese regime killed hundreds of thousands of its own people in Darfur. The so-called Janjaweed gangs in Sudan used to annihilate the people of Darfur like flies simply because the latter clamoured for their basic rights. An Arab satirist once commented that an Arab dictator would not accept the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza even as an appetiser!
Recently there were reports that deposed Tunisian president Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali ordered his air force to bombard a civilian area in the Al Qasrain region because the people there demonstrated against his regime. Thankfully, the army refused to carry out his order.
Take Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. WikiLeaks has revealed that his ‘chairmanship' gave the green light to American aircraft to bombard civilian areas to quell a local revolt. Add to this, of course, his brutal handling of the Yemeni revolution.
Other Arab despots are reported to have asked their security forces to aim their guns at protesters' heads. Have you ever seen an Israeli officer torturing a Palestinian civilian to death in the street for everybody to see? Definitely not. Many of us have seen that in some Arab towns lately.
It is true that Israel is forcing an embargo on Gaza, but I do not think that the Israelis are preventing the Palestinians from getting their daily bread, whereas the security services in some Arab countries stopped cars carrying food from entering certain areas. Nor are the Israelis cutting off electricity, telephone and other communication services from houses, hospitals and schools.
It has been reported that the security services stopped nurses and doctors from treating the injured during certain Arab demonstrations as a punishment for rising against the ruling regime. The thugs contracted by the police to help quell protests went even further. They shot at ambulances.
Unlike in some Arab countries, Arabs living inside Israel can organise sit-ins very comfortably. And when the Israeli police intervenes, they never beat demonstrators to death. And if we compare how Israel treats Shaikh Raed Salah with the way some Arab dictators treat their opponents, we will be horribly surprised, as the Israelis are very much less brutal.
Israel can always claim it is facing an enemy, whereas Arab dictators are facing their own people. Let us end with a succinct verse from the late poet Omar Abu Risha: ‘‘No one can blame a wolf when it preys on a sheep if the shepherd himself is the enemy of the cattle''.
“Winning the War by Hiding the Jewish Share”: More on the Palestine Censor (Daphne Anson)
In last Tuesday’s column I quoted part of Baron Davies of Llandinam’s speech in the House of Lords on 10 March 1942 condemning, inter alia, the Palestine Censor’s ludicrous savage cuts to an eminent Jerusalem-based Church of Scotland minister’s Christmas message intended for the Palestine Post in 1940. Also speaking in that debate was a firm friend to Jewry and the Yishuv, the recently ennobled Baron Wedgwood of Barlaston (1872-1943), better known to history as Colonel Josiah Wedgwood MP. This member of the famous pottery family was a genuine philosemite – I won’t belabour that point here, since I hope to address the issue of philosemitism in a subsequent column or columns and to discuss him as an exemplar. Suffice it to say, for our purposes here, that in his book The Seventh Dominion (1928) he advocated an independent Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan as an integral part of the British Commonwealth, and that he supported the Zionist cause through thick and thin. On 9 June 1942, during the course of a pro-Jewish speech laden – to quote the Jewish Chronicle of 12 June – with “deep emotion,” he told the House of Lords that it had been “years” since any speech of his had been reported in Palestine. He added that a recent broadcast he made to America had been censored despite British assurances to the contrary. Furthermore, an official Mandate Administration radio program for the Arabs had advised that he and Baron Davies were not genuine bluebloods but social upstarts who had been created peers for party reasons.
Also deeply troubled by the behaviour of the Palestine Censor was Lewis Bernstein Namier (1888-1960), the distinguished Polish-born Professor of Modern History at Manchester University, who was a convinced Zionist. In a letter to the staunchly pro-Zionist Manchester Guardian early in April 1942, he complained that the Censor had deleted the following concluding paragraph from a leading article in the Palestine Post (27 February 1942) about the Strumatragedy:
“It is yet too early and the shock too fresh for responsibility to be allotted and the guilt to be established. But that there must be an inquiry goes without saying. That is one of the most established traditions of the Empire under whose protection we live. Catastrophes such as these have led more than once in British history to far-reaching decisions. But whatever investigation is conducted, whatever action taken, one thing is certain: This must never happen again.”
Namier wondered whether the similar sentiments regarding the Struma expressed by British Colonial Secretary Viscount Cranborne (1893-1973; later the 5thMarquess of Salisbury) had been cut by the Censor, and wrote of the excised passage:
“Surely this is legitimate comment and, indeed, remarkably restrained in the circumstances.”
Meanwhile, the Manchester Guardian, in a leader about the same incident, observed that the Palestine Censor appeared to be encroaching on new territory in his evident desire not to offend the Arabs:
“This particular exercise, if it is confirmed, would mean that the censorship was protecting the Administration not only from criticism but even from possible or implied criticism, for the passage does not impute responsibility from anyone.”
In another leader quoted in the Jewish Chronicle (10 April 1942), the Manchester Guardianstated that the Palestine Censor had obfuscated the political situation in the Middle East. That leader went on:
“Presumably we have been suffered to hear so little because there is so little good we could have heard. Except in one point there is no enthusiasm for the Allied cause anywhere in the Middle East.... Only in Palestine is there a compact, resolute, tough people anxious to place all its resources of men and talent at the disposal of the Allies because their cause is the cause of the Allies. But we have discouraged the Jews and chosen to believe, against all the facts, that we can win the phantasmal cooperation of the Arabs by sacrificing the real cooperation of the Jews. We may reasonably hope to have a space of time ahead of us to review our policy and correct our errors. Shall we be resolute and imaginative enough to do it in that vital region?”
When angry letters from Palestine-based subscribers asking where their copies were began to mount up, the Jewish Chronicle realised that it too had fallen foul of the Censor. In March 1943 the paper contacted the British Colonial Office seeking an explanation. In its issue of 20 August that year it reported the resultant response, which had awaited enquiries by the Colonial Office to the High Commission for Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael:
“The general policy of the Palestine Censorship in dealing with periodicals is to ban only those issues which contain articles deemed likely to excite public opinion in a way which might lead to disturbance. Latent ill-feelings between the two main communities in the country are apt to be aroused, and indeed exacerbated, when claims are made over-emphatically by or on behalf of the other community. The policy of the censorship is based on the consideration that articles likely to arouse such feelings might cause disturbance and therefore prejudice the war effort. Certain issues of the Jewish Chronicle included articles containing allusions to such matters as the establishment of a Jewish State and the formation of a Jewish Army, which appeared to the competent authorities to be of a tendentious nature, and it was on this account that it was found necessary to stop these issues.”
Possessing no illusions as to the Administration’s practice of appeasing Arab opinion at the expense of Jewish interests, the Jewish Chronicle’s Jerusalem Correspondent noted (23 April 1943):
“Apart from the absurd and damaging antics of censorship in [Palestine] – responsibility for which is passed from one to another à la Spenlow and Jorkins [business partners in Dickens’s David Copperfield] – there have been other priceless examples of how not to run an administration. At least one of the wartime orange crops was allowed to rot on the ground because the available outlet to Egypt was blocked – not by the enemy but by the internal enemy, Messrs. Dilly, Dally, Prejudice, and Red-Tape. The British Embassy authorities in Cairo and the Palestine Government between them were so busy running round finding out everybody – except Jews, of course, who might have corns that might be trodden on, that while thousands of British troops in Egypt and Libya yearned for oranges, millions of oranges rotted in the Palestine orchards.”
On 15 October 1943 the Jewish Chroniclecarried a long editorial headed “More Light!” regarding the Palestine Censor. It deplored
“the kind of censorship practised in Palestine, where, on the flimsiest and most artificial pretexts, papers and periodicals are eviscerated or barred, reputable British newspapers from outside are confiscated – often merely for referring to a particular point of view which the Palestine Government officials do not like – news going into the country is ruthlessly controlled in the interests of the Administration’s policy of the moment, and a heavy hand clamps down on correspondents’ outgoing messages if they should venture to deviate from the opinions of, or reveal facts inconvenient for, the officials at Government House.”
“The maintenance of the censorship in Palestine during the period of the war produced many curiosities in the way of prohibited material,” the paper’s Jerusalem Correspondent observed two years later (JC, 19 October 1945). He recalled that it was only in the Spring of 1943 that the system of sending – with indicated excisions – copies of his and other press correspondents’ cables began; up to that time, they had no idea that their material had been expurgated.
The file he had kept from then onwards of material he had sent to his London paper for publication but which the Censor had mutilated “makes amazing reading,” he informed readers:
“It shows the lengths to which local bureaucracy was prepared to go, not in protecting the interests of local security, but in justifying the White Paper policy, in white-washing the blunders of meddling departments, in concealing official incompetence, and in pursuing that course which a friend of mine here aptly described as trying to keep the dilapidated old ship of state afloat by taking the patch off one leak and putting it over another.”
With a readily discernible touch of bitterness he continued:
‘The weekly issues of the Jewish Chronicle arrived in Palestine as regularly as the dislocated wartime mails permitted, but only occasional, presumably innocuous copies trickled through to subscribers. The others were piled up and burnt: a waste of postage to the newspaper publishers, a waste of shipping to the war effort. But then, why should the bureaucrats in Palestine worry overmuch about waste? Had they not wasted so much Jewish manpower in Europe by keeping the gates of the country locked, bolted, and barred, and what did a few thousand copies of overseas Jewish newspapers matter? ....
Early in the war, when the British military authorities announced recruiting of Palestinians, the Palestine Government did its best to play down the Jewish effort. The Arabs were then reaching the top of their bent in disloyalty, the pro-Axis elements in Iraq and Syria were simmering (with what results we know), the British thought they were caught in the cleft stick of the Middle East between the powerful Axis forces to the west and north and the Arabs all around them. The Arabs of Palestine were scornful of the attempts to raise a local force of Palestinians to defend the country. Only the Jews cooperated.
So the publicity given abroad for a Jewish Army was put under a censorship ban. Obviously the Arabs would be peevish if they knew that the Jews wanted to raise a fighting force to help Britain in her predicament and stress, and the appeasement wallahs in Cairo would have nothing of that. Oh, no! Better that the Jews do their enlisting and their fighting and their effort for the Empire anonymously, secretly, without fuss or [b]other, than that the noble son of the desert be enraged at this challenge to his own lagging loyalty.’
He proceeded to give further examples of the Palestine Censor’s shenanigans:
‘A Jewish news agency sent a cabled account abroad of a wartime exhibition in Tel-Aviv, around the summer of 1943... [T]he exhibition was a Palestinian Jewish tribute to the Soviet war effort. The cable stated: “Zionist, British and Russian flags flew over the entrance to the exhibition.” The word “Zionist” was deleted by the Censor.
When the Palestine Regiment was formed out of the three Jewish battalions of the Buffs (to which the Jewish infantry regiments were originally attached), it was necessary to take account of the three or four companies of Arab infantry. So the badge devised was the same emblem as appears on a Palestinian 100-mil (two-shilling) coin: the olive branch. The Jewish soldiers wanted a national design of their own and refused to wear these two-bob badges. Courts martial ensued.
The P.B.S. [Palestine Broadcasting Symphony] Orchestra, an ensemble composed wholly of Jewish musicians, although organised by the Broadcasting Service, gave a concert at an army camp in Palestine, but had been ordered not to play “Hatikvah” at its conclusion. When the orchestra was packing its instruments at the end of the recital, a young Jewish subaltern in the A.T.S. [Auxiliary Territorial Service, composed of women] rose and began singing the [Jewish] national anthem in a high clear voice. The audience joined in. So did the musicians. An emotional scene was witnessed at this remarkable demonstration of national pride.
When the Palestinian Regiment went out into the desert, and the Jewish transport companies of the R.A.S.C. [Royal Army Service Corps] did such yeoman work in servicing the Eighth Army from El Alamein to the Po, they had no flag of their own. At one place near Benghazi a Jewish company mounted its own blue and white colours and refused to strike them when ordered by the British Area Commander. “That is the flag we are fighting for,” they said. They were all charged with mutiny, and the matter would have ended disastrously for both officers and men, who had enlisted primarily as Jews, had not wiser counsels prevailed.’
Then, from the Jerusalem Correspondent, came this unpleasant revelation:
'Pro-Fascist elements in the Polish Army in the Middle East – about which a chapter of itself could be written – were protected by military censorship because it was an Allied Army. It is now no secret that Jews were put in gaol as “deserters,” that anti-semitism assumed a militant and active form among both the higher-ups and subordinate ranks in General Anders’ forces, and that there were numerous cases of the humiliation of Jews. I have it on good authority that a Polish colonel used to parade his battalion every morning, give the order “Jews to the front!” and when the Jewish soldiers stepped forward, he would say contemptuously, “You Jews cost us our country and are responsible for our exile. When we get you back to Poland we will murder you.” This, I am told, was part of the parade ritual and was not excepted even on the Sabbath. The story could not be printed – that Polish colonel was the ally of Britain.'
The Jerusalem Correspondent continued:
'Space would not permit the publication of the many incidents which occurred in the war years as part of the supreme contribution by the Palestine Government to winning the war by hiding the Jewish share. The Jewish Agency Executive’s files must contain more of the accounts of this debasing and shameful treatment than the memory of the ordinary mortal can encompass. It would be interesting in due course to read the history of the war against the Jews of Palestine which the protracted negotiations between the Jewish Agency and the Government and the archives of the Agency’s political Department would disclose. Perhaps that history will one day be written.’
In the Jewish Chronicle of 2 November 1945 the Jerusalem Correspondent returned to his theme, to complete it.
‘There is no doubt that the appeasement-minded circles in British officialdom in Palestine, who took their cue from the man at the top, Sir Harold MacMichael, were definitely hostile to the manifestations of Jewish loyalty in the early days of the war and subsequently. The Arabs, as everyone but these sanguine souls had expected, were not “playing the game”. They had no aversion to taking British money in the form of war contacts and purchase of farm produce for the Army commissariats, but they showed a pronounced opposition to being roped in to fight the Axis. After all, was not the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Hussein, an honoured guest of first the Italian Fascists and then the German Nazis? What was good enough for him was good enough for them.
Today there is no move to secure the custody of the Mufti, who, as a Palestinian citizen, and subject of His Majesty’s Mandatory rule, was as much a traitor as William Joyce to Britain and Vidkun Quisling to Norway.
Nor did those Arabs who joined the Palestinian units of the British Army behave any better. After a little while they began deserting in large numbers, with, of course, their rifles and ammunition. There were frequent outbreaks of mutiny; I can cite three which came to my knowledge:
One was at the Wadi Sarar ordnance depot, when Arab infantrymen attacked Jewish soldiers and had to be confined to barracks by force of arms, and subsequently transferred; another was during the troubles in the Lebanon this year, when Palestinian Arab troops joined a VE Day procession in Beirut without authority, carried a picture of the Mufti of Jerusalem at the head, and engaged in hooliganism and shop-window breaking, and, I am told, tried to attack a French convent because it showed only French flags and no Arab banners; again during this summer there was a similar outbreak.
As a result of the third demonstration, the Arab infantrymen were discharged out of their regular release groups on the ground that “their services were no longer required”. Today, few if any Arabs are left in the Palestinian units, but 15,000 Jewish men and women are still serving.’
A document in the Jerusalem Correspondent’s possession showed that, following a
‘long period of frustration of their effort, the Jewish Agency Executive was informed ... that its Liaison Officer at the Sarafand Recruiting Depot, who had been active in that capacity for over two years (... since the early part of 1941) was notified by the officer in charge to leave the Recruit Training Depot by May 1. On April 29, the premises of the Recruiting Office of the Jewish Agency in Tel-Aviv were entered by the police, a search was carried out, officials and members of the public who were present were interrogated, and the official in charge of the office was “detained for further examination”. The Jewish Agency was not advised of the action taken nor was it informed of any complaints or charges against the officials concerned.
The Jewish Agency Executive registered on April 29, in a letter to the Chief Secretary, its “most emphatic protest against the action.” It was added: “A police search in an institution of the Jewish Agency of the Mandate regime of which the Agency forms an integral part. The incident is all the more grave as the search and men and women for His Majesty’s Forces.”’
The letter continued:
“The Jewish Agency is driven to the conclusion that by the demonstrative action now taken the authorities have broken off their cooperation with the Jewish Agency in the organisation of Jewish recruiting. The Jewish Agency can obviously expect its officials and the numerous volunteers assisting them to engage in the tasks of recruiting under conditions which expose them to police searches, interrogations, and detention. It, therefore, begs to inform the Government that the procedure they have authorised has compelled the discontinuance of the activity of the Jewish Agency’s recruiting offices.”
“That,” went on the Jewish Chronicle’s man,
“was the position in April 1943. The letter from which I have quoted was sent to foreign press correspondents by the Jewish Agency, but the correspondents (myself among them) could not get it through censorship. Subsequent efforts succeeded in overcoming the formidable obstacles which this letter indicated, and the Jewish Brigade Group finally emerged as a fighting force. It was not for several months, however, that Jewish recruiting was resumed.”
Observed a report in the Jewish Chronicle (23 June 1944):
'The persistence with which the censorship in Palestine tries to obliterate that terrible word “Jewish” from references to the Palestinian Jewish volunteers in the British forces is amazing!
A friend has shown me a communication he recently received from Jerusalem, in which a friend of his wrote of some comrades who had given their lives in the United Nations’ [i.e. Allies’] cause, while serving in the British Army. A word in a certain phrase, however, has been thoroughly blacked out by the censor in Palestine. “Reasons of military security”, you may sapiently observe, but I should be willing to wager quite a large sum that the only reason for the censorship is political. The phrase in each case now reads: “He enlisted in a Palestinian ------ unit of the British Army”; my guess is that the “------ ” represents the obliteration of the word “Jewish”’. [In the original each gap has a thick continuous black line, not the six dashes I, D.A., have here.]
Moshe Braver, a correspondent for the religious Zionist newspaper Hatzofeh (“The Observer,” founded in Palestine in 1937) informed a London audience in 1945 that the suppression of news about Jewish achievements in Palestine and the contribution of the Yishuv to the war effort eased with the appointment as Censor in the Summer of 1944 of Edwin Samuel (who eventually succeeded his father, the former High Commissioner, as Viscount Samuel).
There was still plenty of interference, however, as when in 1945 the South African Jewish Times was banned from Palestine owing to its inclusion of a speech made by United Zionist Revisionist Organisation head Dr Aryeh Altman (1902-82) at a Revisionist meeting in Tel Aviv, under the headline “Revisionists’ Feelings towards Britain are the same as those of the Jews towards the Czar”.
An editorial in the affected paper commented:
“The Palestine censor allowed the report in the first place to be transmitted to the United States. The ban, therefore, is Gilbertian, with the censor rebuking himself. If the censor holds the view that insistence on just Jewish demands is anti-British, if the denunciation of the iniquitous White Paper and the sufferings of children are subversive – then he can go ahead and ban us.” (Quoted in JC, 27 July 1945).
In 1946 political notes (“Reshimot Mediniot”) in the Zionist Organisation’s official organ Haolam (“The World”), written by Aharon Reuveny (brother of future Israeli president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who headed the Vaad Leumi) demonstrated – said a writer in the Jewish Chronicle – “the aggressive clamp that the Palestine Censor seeks to impose on the press of that country ... the sorry lengths to which such censorship goes”. The expunged passage went (in English translation):
“The Arab Boycott and the Mandate for Palestine [heading]. Why does Great Britain not protect the Jewish population of Palestine against the boycott proclaimed by a number of foreign States? There seem to be only three possible explanations: (a) Great Britain wishes to protest but cannot; (b) She can protest but is unwilling to do so; (c) She neither can nor wishes to protest. Whichever of these is the true explanation there can be only one conclusion, to wit, that Great Britain is no longer fitted or entitled to retain the Mandate for Palestine.”
Daphne Anson is an Australian who under her real name has authored and co-authored several books and many articles on historical topics including Jewish ones. She blogs under an alias in order to separate her professional identity from her blogging one.
Abbas' newest threat: "PA will collapse!"
Mahmoud Abbas continues his long-standing strategy of making the world do what he wants: by threatening them.
His latest is reported in Palestine Today but seemingly based on this article in The Daily World Buzz, not sure where is was originally published:
Now, if Israel stays there, it will collapse?
I fully expect that an independent Palestinian Arab state, should it ever come about, would not last 40 years. Or even 20.
His latest is reported in Palestine Today but seemingly based on this article in The Daily World Buzz, not sure where is was originally published:
The Palestinian Authority "will collapse" if Israel persists in its need to maintain a military presence in the territory of a future Palestinian state, estimated the organization's president, Mahmoud Abbas, in an exclusive interview. Abbas explained that during the peace negotiations in September 2010, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told of his desire to hold "for 40 years," a military presence in the border zone along the Jordan Valley in the West Bank.The PA was built while Israeli troops were deployed throughout the West Bank. Its economy is thriving while Israeli troops are there. It is getting praise for its supposed state-building from the World Bank and the UN while Israel is there.
"If you stay 40 years, that means it is an occupation that he will maintain the occupation. I reply: 'If you insist on it, let your troops here and continue its occupation forever,'" said Abbas, pointing out that Netanyahu rejected the proposed deployment of international forces, especially NATO, on the border.
On the assumption that Israel will be realized, "there will be no Palestinian Authority," warned Abbas, who on many occasions expressed his opposition to the continuance of any Jewish soldier in a future Palestinian state. It is the first time that Abbas spoke out loud about the disappearance of the Palestinian Authority if Israel's permanence in Palestinian territory.
Now, if Israel stays there, it will collapse?
I fully expect that an independent Palestinian Arab state, should it ever come about, would not last 40 years. Or even 20.
Talking to senators and aides about Iran
We had a handout for all the members of Congress we met - which was probably about 90% of them in total. It was a scorecard that went through a number of issues about the Iranian nuclear agreement, saying that unless every single question is answered adequately, they should vote against it.
The questions (along with lots of supporting documentation for each one) were:
a. ‘ANYTIME, ANYWHERE’ inspections regime: The final agreement calls for inspectors to determine whether Iran is complying with the agreement. Will those inspectors have the right, with minimal/no notice and no veto right to visit any site they suspect may be involved in any aspect of nuclear weapons research or production?
b. Phased lifting of sanctions: Will economic sanctions previously imposed on Iran be lifted upon signing of a final agreement or, instead, only over a period of months and years, conditioned on Iran’s compliance with the agreement, and in a way that gives Iran a continued and strong economic incentive to comply?
c. Lifting of sanctions conditioned on fully disclosing PMD (possible military dimensions of past nuclear related work) Will Iran be required to disclose all research and substantive work that it has previously done on nuclear weapons before sanctions relief?
d. Severe limits on nuclear related research & development and on use of advanced centrifuges - Will the final agreement strictly limit Iran’s ability to research, develop and acquire (a) faster and more efficient centrifuges (the machines needed to enrich uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon) and (b) any other components of a nuclear weapon?
e. Shipping of enriched uranium out of Iran - Will the final agreement definitively cut off Iran’s ability to access its stock of enriched uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon, by requiring Iran to ship that uranium out of the country?
f. Effective ‘snapback’ mechanisms - Will the final agreement ensure that any Iranian violation will be (a) swiftly identified and (b) met with rapid reimposition of sanctions so that (c) Iran is deterred from violating the agreement in the first place?
g. Sunset provisions tied to changes in Iranian behavior - The final agreement will likely provide that many of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will lapse after 10 years, while others will lapse after 15. Will that lapse be automatic or will it be conditioned on Iran’s behavior – such as its support for terrorists and murderous regimes – having changed by the end of the given period?
h. Disposal of “extra” centrifuges - The April 2 framework agreement says that Iran will reduce its installed centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,104, with 5,060 enriching uranium for the first ten years. Will the 12,000+ centrifuges that will not be needed during the first ten years be dismantled (and, ideally, shipped out the country) or, alternatively, disabled in some other way?
i. Trade-off of permanent sanctions relief for temporary restraints - The fundamental premise of the April 2 framework, and almost certainly of any final agreement, is that Iran will get (what is very likely to be) permanent relief from the most crippling sanctions in exchange for temporary restraints in its nuclear behavior, while leaving all major elements of its nuclear infrastructure intact. Is that a sound trade-off?
My group's first meeting was with a Democrat who was very pro-Israel but also very pro-Obama. He had strongly supported Pillar of Defense, for example.
We spoke mostly to his aide (which is normally how these things go; actually speaking to the politicians does not happen as often) but he did come in and gave a monologue. He said that as long as the Iran deal will push off their nuclear weapons capability for ten years, he would sign on. He also said that he met with Bibi in 2012 and told him that he felt that he was injecting partisan politics in the US-Israel relationship; saying that he felt that Netanyahu was campaigning for Romney.
Whether it is true or not, the fact that this was his perception is something that the Israeli leadership must pay attention to.
It is easy to get people like this to support Iron Dome, for example. But to get them ti understand the problem with Iran is much harder.
The other meeting I had (our bus came late so there was only time for two meetings) was with another Southern senator's office, but he was a Republican freshman senator. The Iran issues were preaching to the choir.
In that meeting I spoke to points G, H and I to the aide, making particular note that there was only a 12 year window between President Clinton's announcement of a "good" deal with North Korea and their first atom bomb test. I said that if Iran doesn't change its behavior of supporting terror, increasing its ICBM capability and generally taking over the region, there should be no way that things should be considered perfectly OK after ten years.
I don't know how much of a difference this mission made for the Iran agreement, but it certainly didn't hurt. And when members of Congress see so many Jews coming to visit them they know that this is an issue that many people care passionately about - enough to take a day off of work to help advocate for what we feel is so important not only for Israel but for the US and the world as well.
How Israel helped the apartheid-era blacks of South Africa
One of the supreme ironies of those who claim Israel is "an apartheid state" can be seen from this 1997 article, by David Kaplan, recently rediscovered, which describes Israel's involvement in helping the blacks of South Africa during the apartheid era.
That it has been doing so without any fuss or fanfare may explain why so few Israelis or South Africans know about it. A closely kept secrete, the programme has been running since the dark days of Apartheid.On the day that a delegation of the South African Zionist Federation in Israel (Telfed) visited the campus, the atmosphere amongst the participants was jubilant. Met with traditional South African dance and music, the 28th group of participants was celebrating the near completion of their course with a farewell cocktail party.Among the veterans of the Beit Berl programme are over two dozen mayors of South African towns and cities including the present mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown. To that list, we can now add Port Alfred’s mayor, Eric Khuluwe. He tells us,
What seems routine today all began in the undercover world of the early 80s when clandestine contacts took place between progressive Israelis and the anti-apartheid forces in South Africa. The local powerhouse behind this project is Professor Shimshon Zelniker, who has masterfully manoeuvered between South Africans, Americans and Israelis, a fascinating amalgam of colourful characters including Hollywood stars, Jewish politicos, civil rights activists, freedom fighters and donors.Zeinicker, a professor of political science at Beit Berel and at UCLA, was a member of Shimon Peres’ advisory team in 1982.
CLANDESTINE RECRUITMENT
The early days saw us
The first group of twenty arrived in 1986 representing three constituencies – Soweto, the Cape Coloured community and Women’s groups.
It was only a year or so after Mandela’s release that the programme’s profile entered the public domain.
“In 1993 we introduced a rural community development programme in the former homelands, and it was then that we came out into the open,” reveals Zelniker.
Today the programme has wide appeal throughout South Africa. Another participant in the present programme is Thabisile Msezane from Boksburg, who runs a day care-centre. Thabasile explains, “In the Boksburg area there were no schools and children loitered aimlessly in the streets wasting away their lives. Each day I noticed a little boy roaming around the shopping centre where I bought milk. He would ask me for money to buy food. I thought,
“What kind of future does this child have?”As I was starting a day care centre, I wanted to enroll this kid and so went in search of his parents. I was directed to a shabby compound behind a farmhouse, where I found his them. While speaking to the boy’s father, the child spread the word amongst his friends telling them he was going to school. By the end of my conversation, I had enrolled another twelve children. Today I have 150 pupils, some of whom walk a distance of twelve kilometres to get to the school.”
Trevor Ngwame, a councillor from Johannesburg, was all praise for the Beit Berel programme.
“We are dealing with the legacy of apartheid – no jobs, lack of housing and poor education. My approach is to offer people hope, and motivate them to organize themselves. We have seen how successful Israelis have been in overcoming insurmountable odds.Like South Africa, this country has never been short of problems and yet it manages to advance amazingly. This is what we want to do. Of course, Israel’s problems are very different, and in the South African context we have to ensure that people see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not naïve to believe that matters are going to fall into place overnight. While the government must deliver the goods, the people also have to rise up to the challenge and they need the tools to it. This programme has been a tremendous help in this regard.
Zelniker concludes, “As a Jew I have learnt that liberation is not simply about taking the people out of the ghetto. It means taking the ghetto out of the people. To say that I am proud of this programme would be an understatement.”
That it has been doing so without any fuss or fanfare may explain why so few Israelis or South Africans know about it. A closely kept secrete, the programme has been running since the dark days of Apartheid.On the day that a delegation of the South African Zionist Federation in Israel (Telfed) visited the campus, the atmosphere amongst the participants was jubilant. Met with traditional South African dance and music, the 28th group of participants was celebrating the near completion of their course with a farewell cocktail party.Among the veterans of the Beit Berl programme are over two dozen mayors of South African towns and cities including the present mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown. To that list, we can now add Port Alfred’s mayor, Eric Khuluwe. He tells us,
“Port Alfred is growing at an enormous pace as people are streaming in from the rural areas, seeking employment. The job situation is bleak and we are finding it an uphill battle to provide basic civic services. We have sixty-one local councils in my district and we need to involve as many people on the local level as possible in decision-making. This is the policy of the ANC government and is indicative of the nature of our democracy that empowers people to determine their own destiny. The Beit Berel three-week intensive course was excellent; it widened my horizons and provided practical guidance on team-management. I feel far better equipped to return to my city now and impact on its future. “Since 1986,over twenty South African Members of Parliament, as well as hundreds of local government officials and ministers of provincial councils have passed through Beit Berel. Patrick Adams, a Coloured man in charge of Emergency & Disaster Management for the Cape Metropolitan Council in Cape Town, says,
“The course was very professional. I am in charge of Reconstruction & Development programmes in the Western Cape region, and my team is currently immersed in running numerous housing and community projects. Not only have I learned a new dimension of problem solving, but I have also been exposed to the problems in Israel and enjoy a greater understanding of the issues here.”
What seems routine today all began in the undercover world of the early 80s when clandestine contacts took place between progressive Israelis and the anti-apartheid forces in South Africa. The local powerhouse behind this project is Professor Shimshon Zelniker, who has masterfully manoeuvered between South Africans, Americans and Israelis, a fascinating amalgam of colourful characters including Hollywood stars, Jewish politicos, civil rights activists, freedom fighters and donors.Zeinicker, a professor of political science at Beit Berel and at UCLA, was a member of Shimon Peres’ advisory team in 1982.
“I was given responsibility for third-world policies, and my first mission was making positive contact with leaders of the struggle in South Africa”The players in this unfolding theatre of clandestine operations spread across three continents. In South Africa, Clive Menell of Anglovaal paved the way by bringing on board Archbishop Benjamin Tutu. Soon other internationally renown personalities like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden joined the circle, as did Ethel Kennedy, who twisted Tutu’s arm into meeting with the Israelis.This was the turning point, for what followed was a secret meeting in South Africa between a delegation of Israelis representing anti-apartheid sentiment and prominent Blacks, such as Albertina Sisulu and Ntatho and Sally Motlana.
“We came out of the meeting with a clear mandate for action. Armed with an understanding that there would be no political manifestos and no pictures of politicians kissing each other, but a programme geared solely to assisting in the struggle, we approached Jews in the United States for support. In Israel, Yossi Beilin, Alon Liel, Ruth Baron and myself, among others, spearheaded the programme to be called the Israeli and South African Centres for International Cooperation” (ICIC) and would be based at Beit Berel."
CLANDESTINE RECRUITMENT
The early days saw us
“pounding the pavements in South Africa for some twenty months recruiting support and participants. The success of the operation was predicated on our ability to keep it under wraps.”Asked how that was possible, Zelniker replied, “You know how porcupines makes love? Very carefully”.
The first group of twenty arrived in 1986 representing three constituencies – Soweto, the Cape Coloured community and Women’s groups.
“We brought in the Histadrut to help in the initial training,” said Zelniker. “After the success of that first group, it was easier to obtain more funding. We approached very prominent, radically anti-Israel, Black leaders in the U.S. and received their blessing. Individual Jews donated large sums of money in the full knowledge that they would receive no recognition, and the American Government very quietly also assisted us in funding.”Zelniker’s shuttling to and fro between Israel and South Africa was not without risk.
“My associate Ruth Baron was also detained. There were many ways the South African Authorities could have derailed the programme and they made it crystal clear that physical intimidation could be escalated. We were worried about the graduates being whisked away on their return from Israel for interrogation and intimidation, which on occasion did happen.”Despite all the harassment, including infiltration by the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the programme flourished.At one point in the late 1980s, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times bumped into a group of Black trainees in Tel Aviv. He thought he had uncovered the scoop of the century – ANC and AZAPO forge secret ties with Apartheid’s ‘ally’!
“He telephoned me and said,‘this is sensational. What’s it all about?” When I explained to him the need for secrecy I thankfully managed to persuade him that the programme and South Africa’s future were far more important than his ego. He dropped the story.”
It was only a year or so after Mandela’s release that the programme’s profile entered the public domain.
“In 1993 we introduced a rural community development programme in the former homelands, and it was then that we came out into the open,” reveals Zelniker.
Today the programme has wide appeal throughout South Africa. Another participant in the present programme is Thabisile Msezane from Boksburg, who runs a day care-centre. Thabasile explains, “In the Boksburg area there were no schools and children loitered aimlessly in the streets wasting away their lives. Each day I noticed a little boy roaming around the shopping centre where I bought milk. He would ask me for money to buy food. I thought,
“What kind of future does this child have?”As I was starting a day care centre, I wanted to enroll this kid and so went in search of his parents. I was directed to a shabby compound behind a farmhouse, where I found his them. While speaking to the boy’s father, the child spread the word amongst his friends telling them he was going to school. By the end of my conversation, I had enrolled another twelve children. Today I have 150 pupils, some of whom walk a distance of twelve kilometres to get to the school.”
Trevor Ngwame, a councillor from Johannesburg, was all praise for the Beit Berel programme.
“We are dealing with the legacy of apartheid – no jobs, lack of housing and poor education. My approach is to offer people hope, and motivate them to organize themselves. We have seen how successful Israelis have been in overcoming insurmountable odds.Like South Africa, this country has never been short of problems and yet it manages to advance amazingly. This is what we want to do. Of course, Israel’s problems are very different, and in the South African context we have to ensure that people see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not naïve to believe that matters are going to fall into place overnight. While the government must deliver the goods, the people also have to rise up to the challenge and they need the tools to it. This programme has been a tremendous help in this regard.
Zelniker concludes, “As a Jew I have learnt that liberation is not simply about taking the people out of the ghetto. It means taking the ghetto out of the people. To say that I am proud of this programme would be an understatement.”
05/11 Links Pt1: PA honors terrorists who lynched Israelis; Venezuela: Israel trafficked babies in Nepal
From Ian:
PMW: PA honors 3 terrorists who lynched two Israeli reservists
UK Election Results: Another Term for Israel-Friendly Conservative Government
PMW: PA honors 3 terrorists who lynched two Israeli reservists
Last week, Palestinian Authority Member of Parliament and Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake visited the families of three of the terrorists who took part in the lynching and murder of two Israeli reservists in 2000. Karake honored these murderers by giving their families "plaques of honor." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 9, 2015]Israeli aid to Nepal covered for baby trafficking, Spanish-language TV claims
Karake has stated that Palestinians have an unequivocal right to "resistance" and "struggle" - PA euphemisms for violence against Israel. He calls the murderers of Israelis "heroes."
On Oct. 12, 2000, a Palestinian mob brutally murdered and mutilated the bodies of two Israeli reservists who had accidentally entered Ramallah. A well-known picture from the gruesome murder showed a Palestinian raising his bloodied hands heroically, showing the crowd his hands covered in the blood of his victims. The bodies of the two Israelis were thrown out of the window, and the mob dragged them through the streets of Ramallah. (Photo credit: Agence France Presse)
Israel used its humanitarian aid mission to Nepal as a cover for trafficking 25 Nepalese babies, two Spanish-language networks reported.Radical Offshoot of Human Rights Watch Sends Strike Team to Nepal to Assassinate Victims Saved by Israel (satire)
Iranian HispanTV and Venezuela’s Telesur networks broadcast the reports. Telesur is the national public television channel in Venezuela, which is rebroadcast throughout Latin America on other public television networks.
HispanTV broadcast the original report, which quotes an unnamed NGO as stating that “Israel uses humanitarian help as a cover for trafficking of 25 babies in Nepal.” Telesur picked up the report last week.
The report stated, correctly, that of the 25 babies that were taken to Israel, “15 of them were born through Tammuz, an Israeli surrogacy company which provides services to Israeli couples unable to bear children, particularly homosexual couples.” The other babies also reportedly were born to surrogate mothers for Israeli parents.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the report.
“The ‘Tehran-Caracas axis’ even perverts humanitarian aid to victims of natural disasters such as the Nepal earthquake, just as they had accused the Israeli medical mission of harvesting body parts in the Haiti catastrophe,” said Dr. Shimon Samuels, director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center. “Through these Spanish-language television satellites, Iran foments anti-Semitism across the Americas, just as it sponsors global terrorism, slanders the Holocaust and pursues its nuclear program.
After Human Rights Watch’s head Kenneth Roth tweeted condemnation of Israel for constructing a 60 bed field hospital in Nepal, sources tell The Israeli Daily (TID) that a radical offshoot of the organization called ‘No Jewish Human Rights Watch’ has dispatched a strike team to hunt down those Nepalese who accepted Israel’s offer of life saving assistance.
“Defending human rights requires shedding blood,” wrote NJHRC’s leader, Sub Commander Fred. “Usually that’s Jewish blood, so nobody really cares, but this situation requires more direct action. We must make an example of those selfish Nepalese traitors who chose Zionist aid over death.”
While Roth did not defend NJHRC’s tactics, he understood their passion. “For some, it just isn’t enough that we focus so much of our attention on the tiny Jewish State, even while hundreds of thousands of Syrians are murdered and Iran jails reporters brave enough to criticize their regime. But could we focus even more on Israel? Probably. Fred’s methods may be wrong, but his heart is always in the right place.”
This is the first time NJHRC has threatened direction violent action. Israeli security officer, Major Chaim Shitz, however, voiced no concern. “Once those guys realize that they can’t get a soy latte in Nepal, we’re pretty sure they’ll scurry back to Berkeley.”
UK Election Results: Another Term for Israel-Friendly Conservative Government
Like the British electorate at large, British Jews likely overwhelmingly supported the Conservative Party, fulfilling the predictions of just one of many British election polls prior to May 7. The poll, conducted by London’s Jewish Chronicle newspaper last month, showed that 69 percent of Jewish voters planned to support the Conservative Party, compared to 22 percent for Labour.Ex-MP George Galloway to challenge election results
While Miliband’s Jewish background might have created a sense of affinity for some Jewish voters, Miliband has also been heavily criticized for Labour’s stances on Israel, including introducing non-binding legislation last year calling on the U.K. to recognize Palestinian statehood. The British parliament then voted symbolically, 274-12, in favor of requesting that the U.K. recognize a unilaterally established Palestinian state. Miliband also said he would support the recognition of a Palestinian state.
“Ed Miliband is not generally felt to be a reliable supporter of Israel by Jewish British voters we (the Anglo-Jewish Association) have spoken to. In contrast, the Conservatives have been solid supporters of Israel, though not blindly,” Jonathan Walker, president of the U.K.-based Anglo-Jewish Association, recently told JNS.org.
In addition, some Jewish voters have felt that Miliband has not expressed himself as forcefully as Cameron on the issue of rising antisemitism in Britain, nor acknowledged the connection between antisemitism and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel—which Cameron, by contrast, has done.
Former MP George Galloway, leader of Britain’s left-wing socialist Respect party, is to challenge his defeat in Thursday’s election, which saw him lose his seat in parliament.Iran is Lying, and We Know It
In a brief address on Sunday, Galloway claimed that there had been “widespread malpractice” in postal voting, which meant that the results must be “set aside.” Galloway lost to Labour’s candidate by the large margin of some 11,000 votes.
He also disputed a statement made on an Urdu-language television show that his opponent in the elections, Naz Shah, had been forcibly married to her cousin at the age of 15, claiming that he had obtained a marriage certificate from Pakistan showing that Shah had been married at 16.
“This is pathetic and without any foundation,” a Labour spokesman said of Galloway’s intent to challenge the election results. “George Galloway should accept he was booted out by the people of Bradford West. They saw through his divisive politics and made a positive choice, by a majority of well over 11,000, to elect a brilliant new MP, Naz Shah.”
The most frustrating part for a rational observer of the P5+1 negotiations with Iran is this: There is little doubt that Iran is lying, and will continue to lie, but that doesn’t seem to matter to those negotiating with it.What the Persian Gulf states want: Iran kept at bay
Rather than cause Tehran to capitulate by ratcheting up the pressure, the White House and its negotiating partners first eased the sanctions that had been compelling Tehran to negotiate and then effectively tabled the military option. Since then, they have made a seemingly unending catalog of tangible and irreversible concessions, to which the Iranians have responded with increased hostility. Yet, still the talks go on.
Last month, in just a week’s time, the P5+1 reportedly relented on three key demands: that Iran must come clean on its past nuclear-weapons work, that it must dismantle its plutonium-production plant, and that it must cease its uranium-enrichment activities. Not only has the White House folded on these important criteria, it is also employing an array of experts to cook up more schemes to keep the talks alive. The White House has signaled added flexibility by moving to offer sanctions relief immediately after a deal is signed, rather than waiting until Iran meets its obligations.
This week, President Obama will gather kings, emirs and sheiks from the oil-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf at Camp David for a summit aimed at bolstering the U.S. alliance with their Sunni Muslim government.Obama plans in tatters as Saudi king, most Gulf leaders to skip summit
It's an uncomfortable marriage of convenience, and both sides know it.
For decades, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim sheikdoms made a rough bargain with the United States: They provided a reliable supply of oil, and we provided weapons and troops to defend them. More recently, once the monarchs realized that Islamist terrorism was a threat to them as well as us, we also collaborated against Al Qaeda.
But these alliances have been fraying, mostly because of diverging views on Iran, the Arab states' historic rival, ruled by Shiite Muslims.
To Saudi Arabia and most of the other Sunni monarchies, Iran is the root of all evil. Saudi Arabia's late King Abdullah urged both President George W. Bush and Obama to launch a military attack on Iran to “cut off the head of the snake,” the king said.
It is not just the Saudi king who will be skipping this week’s Camp David summit of US and allied Arab leaders. Most Gulf heads of state won’t be there.Why the Snub? Saudis Know Obama’s Replaced Them With Iran
US President Barack Obama had invited six Gulf kings, emirs and sultans to the presidential retreat at Camp David, seeking to shore up wavering trust while Washington negotiates with regional power Tehran. Obama’s plans now lie in tatters, with only two heads of state slated to attend the Thursday meeting.
The absences will put a damper on talks that are designed to reassure key Arab allies, and almost certainly reflect dissatisfaction among leaders of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council with Washington’s handling of Iran and what they expect to get out of the meeting.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced late on Sunday that newly installed King Salman will not be attending. The ostensible reason was because the upcoming summit on Thursday coincides with a humanitarian ceasefire in the conflict in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting Shiite rebels known as Houthis.
If the Obama administration thought it’s half-hearted efforts to make up with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states outraged by its Iran policies, it’s got another thing coming. On Sunday, the Saudis told the White House that King Salman would not be attending meetings there or at Camp David this week. Later, Bahrain said its King Hamad would skip the same meeting. The snubs are as pointed as President Obama’s recent signals that he has no intention of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu anytime soon. But while the president has little interest in patching things up with America’s sole democratic ally in the Middle East, he was quite interested in making nice with the Saudi monarch. But the Saudis and Bahrain, like the Israelis, are deeply concerned by the U.S. effort to create a new détente with Iran. It’s not just that Salman apparently has better things to do than to schmooze with Obama. The president may have thought he could essentially replace the Saudis with Iran as the lynchpin of a new Middle East strategic vision without paying a price. But the Saudis understandably want no part of this. The result will be a region made even more dangerous by the Arabs, as well as the Israelis, coming to the realization that they can’t rely on Washington.Beinart Hosts ‘Future of US-Iran Relations’ Debate in NYC
The conceit of Obama’s strategy rests on more than a weak deal that he hopes will be enough to postpone the question of an Iranian bomb even as it essentially anoints Tehran as a threshold nuclear power. Rather it is predicated on the notion that once Iran is allowed to, in the president’s phrase, “get right with the world” and reintegrated into the global economy, it can be counted on to keep peace in a region from which Obama wants to withdraw.
On Tuesday, May 12, Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism, will facilitate a panel called “The Future of US-Iran Relations” at The Graduate Center at CUNY, where he’s an associate professor. Beinart will host “two experts with decidedly different perspectives:” Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian American Council.MEMRI: Lebanese Journalist: Arabs Must Confront Iran's Powerful Lobby In U.S.
Here are links to three recent articles that discuss the context of the proposed nuclear agreement between the U.S. and Iran, written by each speaker:
Beinart in The Atlantic: The Real Achievement of the Iran Nuclear Deal
I think the details [of the nuclear deal framework] are far, far better than the alternative—which was a collapse of the diplomatic process, a collapse of international sanctions as Russia and China went back to business as usual with Tehran, and a collapse of the world’s ability to send inspectors into Iran. But ultimately, the details aren’t what matters. What matters is the potential end of America’s 36-year-long cold war with Iran.
For the United States, ending that cold war could bring three enormous benefits. First, it could reduce American dependence on Saudi Arabia. First, it could reduce American dependence on Saudi Arabia… What George W. Bush failed to achieve militarily, Barack Obama may now be achieving diplomatically.
In a May 5, 2015 opinion piece in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat titled "The Threat of A Well-Oiled Iranian Lobby", the paper's managing editor, 'Eyad Abu Shakra, stated that today it is very important to build an effective Arab lobby in the U.S. This, because the Arabs are facing an increasingly ruthless media onslaught – not by the Israeli lobby but by the Iranian one.Iran, he says, has established a sophisticated lobby in the United States that can appeal to numerous segments of elite opinion – from business circles to those concerned with the suffering of the Iranian people under the sanctions regime – and is increasingly penetrating the mainstream media. He adds that this lobby paints itself as representing the Iranian people, though it is actually an arm of the regime. Having grown skillful and confident, it obscures Iran's expansionist ambitions and harmful interference in the region, and has even managed to plant the idea that terror is a purely Sunni phenomenon of which Iran is completely innocent.This is a challenge, he concludes, that the Arabs cannot afford to underestimate.Iran claims its warships ‘shooed’ US, French forces in Gulf of Aden
Iran claimed Sunday that its warships had “shooed away” American and French military forces in the Gulf of Aden.Israel and Germany sign deal for ships to guard gas rigs
US and French “reconnaissance planes, helicopters and warships approached the Iranian warships in a provocative move” on Saturday night, the semi-official FARS news agency reported. “The vessels and aircraft then received a warning from Iranian Destroyer ‘Alborz,’ apologized and rapidly changed direction.”
The agency said the same thing happened last Monday, when “a US warship and military planes changed their direction as they were patrolling in the Gulf of Aden after they came close to an Iranian naval fleet and were warned to move away.”
The report said the Iranian Navy’s 34th fleet, comprising the Alborz destroyer and Bushehr helicopter-carrier warship, is conducting three months of “anti-piracy patrols” in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. It quoted the flotilla’s commander, Mostafa Tajeddini, saying, “Checking foreign warships in the international waters and surveillance of potential threats to Iran’s national interests is our essential responsibility.”
Israel agreed Monday to purchase four warships from Germany to protect its offshore natural-gas drilling platforms, in a €430 million ($480 million) deal.Strong Israeli Presence at Oil and Gas Conference in Texas
The deal was signed by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who is in Israel to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between the countries.
Defense Ministry Director General Maj. Gen. (Res.) Dan Harel called the nearly $480 million deal “a dramatic leap upward in the navy’s ability to protect the State of Israel’s strategic natural gas sites.”
Under the contract, Germany will provide four advanced Sa’ar-class corvettes to the Israeli navy, to be delivered over the next five years, and will finance approximately one-third of the cost of the deal with a special grant of €115 million.
According to the Hebrew-language news site Ynet, once the vessels are delivered, they will be fitted with Israeli-made weapons systems in a process that will take about a year.
The largest oil and gas conference in the world, known as the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), was held in Texas last week – and 14 Israeli companies were present during the three-day event. Founded in 1969, the OTC serves as a major platform for the development of hydrocarbon resources in the area of drilling, environmental protection, exploration, production development, technology, and innovation.IDF Commander: Hamas Transformed the Gazan Civilian Sector Into War Zone
Israel’s Economic Mission to the Southern United States brought the Israeli companies to exhibit innovative technologies at the conference, including Amiad Water Systems Ltd., BERMAD, HARBO Technologies, Strauss & Co., PCT- Protective Cooling Technology, among others.
In addition to the Israeli companies, this year’s conference featured 2,682 companies from 37 countries. More than 90,000 visitors attended from across the world.
Speaking last week at the International Ground Forces Ceremony in Latrun, IDF Col. Uri Gordin — who commanded the Nahal Brigade during Operation Protective Edge last summer — discussed the differences between how Israel and Hamas treat their civilians.19-year-old stabbed in West Bank in suspected terrorist attack
He said Israel “aims to protect its civilian population. The Israeli fighter endangers himself to protect civilians.” By contrast, Hamas “was not trying to stop us, but wanted us to harm civilians… This way, it can negatively impact Israel’s legitimacy to act against it.”
Another of Hamas’ goals was to “obtain victory photos. One particular way was to kidnap soldiers. In such a situation, the fear of having a soldier kidnapped made us act differently.”
The asymmetry between Hamas and Israel was not only tactical, he said, but also moral.
Gordin said, “there is also a difference in values between us and Hamas. The commitment of the commanders is one aspect of it.” He said Hamas commanders would flee after the IDF inflicted casualties on their fighters.
A spokesman for Magen David Adom emergency medical services Monday said that a 19-year-old man was stabbed in Mishor Adumim, a neighborhood located near a West Bank settlement.IDF indicts 3 Palestinian minors for alleged attempted gassing of bus, stabbing of soldier
Paramedics arrived at the scene and provided medical treatment before evacuating the victim to nearby Shaare Zedek Medical Center, who was reported to be in moderate condition.
The attack was carried out by an Arab-Israeli resident of Jerusalem. Eyewitnesses claimed that the attacker ran towards bystanders at a hitchhiking spot and stabbed the 19-year-old in the back.
Police suspect the attack was motivated by nationalist sentiments. Israeli security forces have opened an investigation into the incident.
The IDF announced on Sunday that its West Bank Prosecutor’s arm has filed an indictment with the Samaria Military Court against three Palestinians minors, all 17-years-old, for the attempted gassing of a bus and crimes related to the alleged stabbing of a soldier on April 2.Soon: Armed IDF Soldier on Every Judea and Samaria Bus
The three Palestinians initially planned to illegally cross the border into Israel and perpetrate a terrorist attack against a bus of civilians, said the IDF statement.
They allegedly acquired four knives, each of which was 20 centimeters long, two gas masks and Strychnine poison to try to gas passengers on a bus.
Further, they intended to stab the passengers while they were being gassed, and would then be “martyred” themselves, according to the statement.
All three participated in various preparatory and surveillance activities, but one of the three at the last moment, reneged on the terrorist attack, noted the statement, which led to him being charged merely for conspiracy to commit murder.
Local authority heads in Judea and Samaria met Sunday with IDF Central Command head Roni Numa. The authority heads discussed a number of security issues that have been plaguing their communities.Rearrested Terrorist to Serve 20 Years in Prison
Among the biggest problems is a lack of control at checkpoints in Judea and Samaria. Because of the laxity of enforcement at some checkpoints, Arabs who are not authorized to enter Area C are not prevented from driving on roads under Israeli civilian and military control. While the majority of these Arabs are simply trying to get to work or home, the officials fear that terrorists will take advantage of the situation to attack Israelis.
In addition, the officials said, there was a major problem with bus transportation with Arabs who have work permits to enter Israeli cities. Many Jewish passengers complain of harassment and intimidation on buses, with a large proportion of the passengers – many of them women and children – afraid to complain, and unable to get assistance from bus drivers.
Numah told the local authority heads that he planned to place a soldier on each bus traveling in Judea and Samaria in order to prevent such intimidation.
A military committee dealing with terrorists who were freed in the Gilad Shalit deal and later re-arrested determined on Sunday that Samer Issawi, a terrorist prisoner who went on a hunger strike in order to pressure Israel to release him, will be sent to 20 years in prison.Analysis: As Abbas Era Hits 10 Years, Palestinians Mired in Political and Economic Muck
Issawi was first arrested in 2002 on terror charges and sentenced to 26 years for terrorist activity. He was released in the Shalit deal in October 2011, but rearrested in July of 2012 for violating the terms of the release agreement.
Once in jail, Issawi began an on and off hunger strike which lasted for more than eight months before he signed a deal with Israel which saw him released in December of 2013.
However, last June Issawi was rearrested and on Sunday, the military prosecutor told the committee that since his release, Issawi had resumed “full terrorist activities”.
May 8 marks what many consider an unceremonious 10-year anniversary of Mahmoud Abbas becoming the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), though his official term has been expired for more than six of those years. Since Abbas took over for Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, the political and economic situation in the West Bank has become as untenable as ever. With no clear successor to Abbas in the fold and reports of rampant corruption, nepotism, and cronyism, the PA faces an uncertain future.PreOccupied Territory: Abbas Issues Peace Terms: Heads We Win, Tails You Lose (satire)
“The state of affairs in the PA right now is paralysis,” Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank, told JNS.org. “Abbas has a stranglehold on political power, and he appears to be intent on remaining in office for the foreseeable future. There is no vice president. There is no succession plan, and there is no oxygen for political challengers to articulate their vision for the future.”
Established by the Oslo Accords peace treaty in 1993 as an interim Palestinian government, the PA—which has been dominated by the Fatah political party and its parent organization, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), throughout its existence—has languished in political and economic limbo for the last several years under Abbas. Peace talks with Israel from 2013-14 crashed, and the Hamas terrorist group continues to grow its popularity among Palestinians.
Under Abbas, the PA has not held formal elections since 2006 and only maintains control in the West Bank after being ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007. Abbas has had a tenuous relationship with Israel, maintaining close security ties with the Jewish state out of a shared fear of Hamas, but also seeing Israel repeatedly cut off tax transfers to the PA, mostly recently due to Abbas’s moves to gain unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state in international agencies.
In an attempt to break an impasse of more than a year in Israeli-Palestinian final status talks, Palestinian Authority President and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas departed from precedent and proposed his own settlement, under which the two sides would flip a coin to determine who must make concessions on a given point of contention. Under the terms, if the coin comes up heads, the Palestinian side wins, and Israel must make a concession, whereas if it comes up tails, the Israeli side loses, and the Palestinians may extract a concession from them.Palestinians seek ban on Israel at world soccer body
Israel and the PLO remain far apart on such troublesome issues as a right of return for the descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 conflict; the status of Jerusalem, especially the eastern section; the fate of existing Jewish settlements in what would eventually become the State of Palestine; borders; territorial contiguity; and the extent to which the emerging Palestinian state would have a military.
Under Abbas’s proposed negotiation framework, each of the aforementioned sticking points would be subject to a coin-toss, instead of the protracted, inconclusive, and acrimonious negotiations that have characterized Israeli-Palestinian talks for the last several years – when they have taken place at all. Negotiators for the two sides have not met in more than a year, with each blaming the other for the breakdown and continued intransigence.
The advantage of the coin-toss format, says expert Nathan Detroit, is that it offers a shortcut and a way to save face. “Once negotiators have staked out a position on something, softening or abandoning that position is basically an invitation to the opponent to make further demands, since it smacks of weakness. Abbas’s heads-we-win-tails-you-lose format has an element of genius in it, in that it allows the negotiators to blame the coin and not come off as having given away too much in an attempt to reach agreement.”
The Palestinian Soccer Association vowed Sunday to push ahead with efforts to have Israel suspended from FIFA following joint talks with the world soccer body’s president Sepp Blatter in Zurich.Hamas Jails Gaza Man for 'Spying for Israel'
But both sides agreed to continue talking with Blatter, who announced plans to visit the region for top-level talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the issue ahead of the upcoming FIFA Congress in Zurich on May 28-29.
News of the visit was announced by Blatter on Sunday as he met with Israel Soccer Association chief Ofer Eini and his Palestinian counterpart, Jibril Rajoub.
FIFA said the main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the Palestinian FA’s request to suspend their Israeli counterparts at the upcoming FIFA congress.
But the Palestinians said there had been no progress at the meeting, adding they would not be deterred from efforts to have Israel suspended.
A military court in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Monday jailed a Palestinian convicted of "spying" for Israel to 15 years, judicial sources said.Hamas Denies ISIS Has Presence in Gaza
In March two other men were given the same sentence for the same offence.
Under Hamas and Palestinian Authority law, those convicted of "collaboration" with Israel, murder and drug trafficking face the death penalty.
Execution orders must be approved by the Palestinian Authority president before they can be carried out, but Hamas no longer recognizes the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas whose four-year term ended in 2009.
Khalil al-Haya, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, on Sunday denied reports of the presence of a branch of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Gaza.Egyptian youths face trial for 'insulting Islam' by making fun of ISIS
His denial comes despite threats by a Salafist group in Gaza that is affiliated with ISIS to kill Hamas members “one by one” in retaliation for the arrests of its members.
Last Friday, those threats appeared to be edging to fruition, after an ISIS-affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula claimed it launched two "bombs" at Hamas posts in Gaza.
Speaking with the Palestine newspaper on Sunday, al-Haya claimed that the Hamas-controlled authorities in Gaza will not allow any entity to harm the security of the region and that anyone who violates the law will be severely punished.
"Hamas is not deterred by threats of any kind by ISIS or Israel," said al-Haya, who accused the Fatah organization and the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, of deliberately inflating reports of ISIS presence in Gaza.
Four Egyptian kids who dared make fun of ISIS in a harmless video are headed for trial along with their teacher on charges of "insulting Islam," after their Muslim neighbors got hold of the footage and went to police.Denying Reports of Heavy Losses, Hezbollah Claims Seizure of Syria Border Zone
Aged between 15 and 16, the youths could face up to five years in a youth detention center – while the teacher would serve any sentence he receives in prison – if the court finds them guilty of violating Egypt’s blasphemy law, Egypt-focused activists say.
Egyptian Christian and civil rights groups are leading calls for their release, but the five – members of the Coptic community that descends from the non-Arab people whose Pharaohs ruled ancient Egypt – have already spent weeks in police holding cells.
“They are some kids who decided to have fun in a private place,” Mina Thabet, a Coptic activist and researcher at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, told FoxNews.com from Cairo.
Hezbollah’s media arm claimed on Saturday that the group along with Syrian troops had pushed out rebel fighters from a critical buffer near the Syrian-Lebanese border, but the reported repulse appears to have come at a high cost for the Lebanese terror group.'Assad puts intelligence chief under house arrest for planning coup'
Opposition fighters in Syria said that Marwan Mughniyeh, a senior commander whose cousin Imad Mughniyeh was reportedly killed by Israel in 2008, was killed in fierce clashes between Hezbollah and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Syrian opposition groups.
While Hezbollah neither confirmed nor denied Mughniyeh’s death, the group refuted rebel claims that it had sustained major losses — some reports said up to 60 fighters. It said only three of its fighters had been killed.
Reports of Mughniyeh’s death came amid an extended campaign in the Qalamoun mountain region, just northeast of Lebanon in Syria, by Hezbollah and Assad’s troops to drive opposition forces from the area.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has placed his top intelligence official under house arrest for allegedly conspiring with the regime’s enemies to carry out a coup, the British daily Telegraph reported on Monday.Rape and Torture: Iran's Political Weapons
Ali Mamlouk, who heads the National Security Bureau, was reportedly detained after he was suspected of maintaining contact with governments backing the Syrian rebels as well as oppositionists from abroad.
According to the Telegraph report, key associates of the president, including those with access to him, “are increasingly turning on each other.”
The newspaper cites sources within the presidential palace as saying that there is great dissension within the various intelligence arms, some of whose commanders are growing wary of Iran’s burgeoning influence in Damascus.
Factions within Assad's "inner circle" are weary of the role the Islamic Republic is playing in Syria's domestic conflict and how much influence their officials are amassing in Damascus, while others are in support of Iranian patronage.
The rape and torture of Kurdish and dissidents in Iran -- both women and men -- is now widespread and systematic.
Most recently, on May 4, Farinaz Khosrawani, 25, a Kurdish woman employed at the Hotel Tara in Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan, plunged from a fourth-floor window of the Tara Hotel, Kurdish news media reported.
Khosrawani allegedly jumped to her death to avoid being raped by an Iranian government security agent; the circumstances surrounding her death have not yet been confirmed.
Apparently furious over Khosrawani's unexplained death, thousands of Kurds took to the streets, torching the hotel where she had worked. Police officers, according to news accounts, used tear gas to disperse the crowds.
"When Farina's body was found in front of the hotel and crowds started to gather; the government security employee involved was arrested and taken for questioning," according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN). "The news then reached social media and information regarding this issue was widespread. This has caused increased tensions and sensitivity around any news regarding confirmation of Farinaz's cause of death."
ISIS jihadists tweeted about the Texas attack beforehand
Breaking news from Fox:
A pair of social media accounts possibly linked to the Islamic State terror group posted messages referencing Sunday evening's attack on a Texas free speech event moments before it happened.Breitbart adds:
The Los Angeles Times reported that a Twitter account bearing the name "Shariah is Light" posted a message with the hashtag "texasattack" at 6:35 p.m. Central Time. The account featured an image of Anwar Awlaki, an American-born cleric killed in 2011 by a drone strike in Yemen.
Moments later, authorities say two men pulled up in a car to the Curtis Culwell Center in the Dallas suburb of Garland, Texas and opened fire. A school security guard was injured in the ankle before police officers shot and killed both suspects. The gunmen had not been identified as of Monday morning and their bodies lay next to their car while police searched for a possible incendiary device.
Authorities have not officially determined whether the shooting was linked to an event, a contest hosted by the New York-based American Freedom Defense Initiative that would award $10,000 for the best cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
"Shariah is Light" also tweeted a command to follow a second account, titled "AbuHussainAlBritani". That second account posted several messages referencing the shooting in Texas and appearing to link it to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
"The knives have been sharpened, soon we will come to your streets with death and slaughter!" the first message from the account read.
A second message said "Allahu Akbar!!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire at the Prophet Muhammad art exhibition in texas!"
“Kill Those That Insult The Prophet,” a third message said.
A final message from the account read, "They Thought They Was Safe In Texas From The Soldiers of The Islamic State."
Both accounts have been suspended by Twitter.
Approximately twenty minutes before a shooting at an event to promote free speech in Garland, Texas, which resulted in an injured officer and two dead suspects, a radical jihadist account on Twitter posted that a person was with another individual and insinuated that he was planning to sacrifice his life to Islam’s “Allah,” using the hashtag #texasattack.The bro with me and myself have given bay’ah to Amirul Mu’mineen. May Allah accept us as mujahideen. Make dua #texasattackThe Twitter account of the individual in question, @atawaakul, sports the username, “Shariah Is Life,” and has expressed many pro-Islamic State sentiments on its timeline. A photo of Anwar Al Awlaki, the deceased Al Qaeda master recruiter, is displayed as the Twitter user’s profile picture. On April 23, the Twitter user linked to a Breitbart News article written by Pamela Geller, who organized the “Draw Muhammad Contest” in Garland. Texas.
— Shariah is Light (@atawaakul) May 3, 2015