Carter's WaPo op-ed proves, again, he is an idiot

A couple of points in Jimmy Carter's op-ed in the Washington Post today calling on the world to embrace an illusory Palestinian Arab "unity" government that is filled with terrorists.

One is that Carter is almost certainly mixing up what he wanted to hear with what he did hear from Khaled Meshal:

In my talks with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, he said Hamas would accept a two-state agreement that is approved in a Palestinian referendum. Such an agreement could provide mutual recognition — Israel would recognize an independent Palestinian state and Palestine would recognize Israel. In other words, an agreement will include Hamas’s recognition of Israel.

Meshal is not generally a liar, but he is good at stretching the truth to gullible Westerners. He's pretty open about his anti-Israel positions. And what he has said publicly is not that Hamas would accept a two-state solution, but that Hamas would temporarily accept a Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza as a first stage towards the destruction of Israel.

There is a world of difference between the two.

In 2006:

[Meshal] promised, "Muslims will take over the world," and he explicitly said his organization's plan is to deceive Israel with semantics.

In his speech, the Hamas leader explained that his people are willing to continue fighting Israel even if it takes 1000 years for victory. Mr. Meshaal also said one aspect of Hamas's current strategy is to rely on such tools as using statements like "we love peace" or "we have given up the option of war," while still planning Israel's destruction.

Mr. Meshaal also promised: "Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. … We will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains."

I have documented plenty of times that Meshal has played these very semantic games to imply recognition of Israel but without actually indicating any desire to do so.

And just today, a Fatah spokesman dismissed any chance of Hamas recognizing Israel:

A Palestinian official close to President Mahmoud Abbas has called the demand that Hamas recognises Israel's right to exist "unfair".

Mr Abbas's government is set officially to sign a reconciliation agreement with Hamas later today in Cairo, despite the terrorist organisation's continued refusal to fulfil US and Middle East Quartet demands to renounce violence and recognise the principle of Israel's legitimacy.

Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Shaath told Israel Radio that the requirements were "unfair, unworkable and [did] not make sense"."

He said all that was necessary was for Hamas to "refrain from any violence ... and be interested in the peace process".

Nice how Fatah has redefined the Quartet's requirements to allow Hamas to maintain its belligerent, intransigent stance. Just like Jimmy!

One other part of Jimmy's op-ed is noteworthy:

If they [the international community] remain aloof or undermine the agreement, the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory may deteriorate with a new round of violence against Israel.

Even Jimmy Carter, who loves peace and loves "Palestine," admits that they will turn to violence if they don't get what they demand.

He's half right. They will turn to violence if they don't get what they want. But they will also turn to violence if they do get what they say they want - because their demands will never end.

Everyone knows what these demands are: releasing all prisoners including the worst terrorists, forcing Israel to allow millions of Arabs to "return", kicking all Jews out of the Old City of Jerusalem and much of the rest of the city as well, and uprooting hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in a massive exercise of ethnically cleansing Jews from their traditional, historic home in Judea and Samaria. These demands have not changed one tiny bit since 1988, over decades of Oslo through years of a terror war.

It is nice to see that Carter admits that Palestinian Arabs are inherently violent. Too bad that this fact is so self-evident that it is not considered a problem anymore for enlightened, peaceful people like Jimmy.

Egyptian professor of Judaism describes how Jews drank Christian blood

Dr. Sami Al-Emam, professor of Judaism and an "expert" of Zionist ideology at Egypt's Al Azhar University, spoke to Jordan's Dostor newspaper about - what else - how evil Jews are.

He says that Israel has secret maps showing their ambition to take over all Arab lands from the Nile to the Euphrates. The turmoil in Iraq, Syria and Yemen is, naturally, the Jews' fault and foretold in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Israel is "demonic."

One of the illustrations of the article shows the Rothschilds' evil tentacles.

This is all positively moderate compared to his personal blog.

There, this "expert" asserts that the blood libel is completely true, but that the Jews don't kill non-Jewish children for their blood any more after the Russians and Germans found out and retaliated by murdering millions.

(h/t Shawarma News)

Who ya going to believe - the caption or your lying eyes?

DayLife has a series of photos from Gaza, taken by Getty Images, each with the identical caption:

Christian Orthodox hold up candles lit from the 'Holy Fire' as thousands gather in the Church in Gaza City on April 24, 2011.

Most of the photos look like this:

A couple of dozen people at most in these photos, nto exactly "thousands."

But one of the photos looks like this:

Now, Gaza has maybe 3000 Christians altogether. The idea that "thousands" celebrated at this church seems more than a little far fetched. And from this last photograph, it looks like the church is far from full.

How many times do wire service captions shape the story more than the photos themselves?

Arab American welcomes Bin Laden death - because he was a Zionist!

"Killing Osama Bin Laden is the right thing. Period." is the title of a piece in Palestine Note written by PalArab American Sami Jamil Jadallah.

It starts off this way:

I celebrate and congratulate the American Special Operation unit that killed Osama Bin Laden. I congratulate both America and the Muslim world for this great success. No man and no organization in recent memory, perhaps in the last 500 years had done more damage to Islam and the Arabs than Osama and his Islamist Jihadists including Alqaeda, Taliban’s and other small fringe group of killers and murderers.

But don't be fooled into thinking that Jadallah, who says he is a US Army veteran, hated Bin Laden because he was against America. On the contrary:

To most people in the Arab and Muslim world, they tend to forget that Osama Bin Laden was the creation and invention of the American CIA and the American Zionist NeoCons, and he was their partner not only in Afghanistan when he was fighting the Soviet Union, but I believe he was their partner and ally during the September 11th attack on America. No one can convince me or hundreds of millions like me in the US and around the world that a group of 18 people can do what they did without key assistance from the inside.

Osama Bin Laden was a bonanza, a windfall for the world Zionists and NeoCons, and the September 11th attack was what was needed by these Zionist NeoCons to have their new world order and to take charge of both US domestic and foreign policy and to have their imprint on US “anti-terrorism” agenda. An agenda that has created animosity for America around the world not only in the Muslim world, and is driving America to the verge of bankruptcy while creating a windfall for Israel as the primary beneficiary of US war on terror. The war on terror has served Israel very well, it served it agenda in the American Knesset, and it served Israel well with its industry and intelligence services and the ability to have its Fifth Column in the US by invitation.

Another moderate Arab American that we hear so much about.

Terrorist fan Vittorio was in bed with Amnesty. Literally.

We've already blogged a bit about Vittori Arrigoni, the terrorist supporter who was killed on Friday.

Well, it turns out that he had a girlfriend, Claudia Milani:

Claudia Milani (R), girlfriend of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni, visits his mourning tent in Gaza City April 17, 2011.

And it turns out that she is the "coordinator of Israel/Occupied Territories section of Amnesty International/Italy," and as such she gave a talk at an "Israel Apartheid Week" event advertised by Amnesty last month.

Her Facebook page shows that she is "friends" with such illustrious Israel haters as Greta Berlin, Adam Shapiro, Max Ajl and Ken O'Keefe.

Isn't it interesting that Amnesty (and HRW's*) activists are so much more friendly with people who want to destroy Israel than they are with people who love Israel?

And, given that Amnesty is supposed to be concerned with human rights issues that are totally antithetical to the daily actions of Hamas, are there any Amnesty members who are bothered the least bit by this?

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*Before she closed off her Facebook page, I saw that Sarah Leah Whitson from HRW's "friends" were very similar. I regret never doing a screen capture.

Latest people to "storm al Aqsa" - secular university students!

QPress has another shocking video of secular Jewish university students "storming the al-Aqsa mosque":

A group of Jewish university students and dozens of settlers on Wednesday morning (29/4) stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Mughrabi Gate under heavy guard of occupation and units of a rapid intervention police force. They toured the mosque, during which they listened to the explanations about the history and features of the alleged Temple and its future site according to their claim.

They aren't thrilled with the thousands of non-Jewish tourists who visit, but they have a special hate for Jews.

The Gaza "siege" is over. Where are the celebrations?

From Ma'an:

Egypt will permanently open the Rafah border crossing as part of its plans to ease the blockade on Gaza, Foreign Minister Nabil Al-Arabi said in an interview with Al-Jazeera Friday.

Arabi said his country would take "important steps to help ease the blockade on Gaza in the few days to come," according to the Arabic-language satellite channel.

He said Egypt would no longer accept that the Rafah border -- Gaza's only crossing that bypasses Israel -- remain blocked, describing his country's decision to seal it off as "shameful."

Egypt has largely kept Rafah closed, opening it exceptionally for humanitarian cases from the besieged Gaza Strip.

The thing is, Rafah has been open since last June, allowing people and supplies through.

No matter. What's important is that the cruel Israeli blockade has been smashed once and for all, and now all those "humanitarian aid" organizations can easily coordinate with their Egyptian friends to send much needed supplies to Gaza and ease the humanitarian crisis there.

But for some unexplainable reason, this news is not on the Free Gaza website. They are not celebrating, nor can I find any plans to send flotillas to El Arish so the massive amounts of aid they like to bring can come to the Gazans unhindered.

One would think that an organization that says it cares about Gazans would be ecstatic at this news!

Could it be that they really don't care about Gazans, and want to destroy Israel instead?

Nah, that's crazy talk.

Turkey's foreign trade with Israel keeps growing as its trade with Arab countries shrinks

From Foreign Affairs:

Hardly a week goes by without some barb or insult traded between Turkey and Israel. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly slights Israel on an almost daily basis to drum up domestic political support, for example asserting that Israel’s treatment of Gaza surpasses the brutality of the Nazi regime. Things weren’t always this way. The 1990s and most of the 2000s saw warm diplomatic and political ties between Israel and Turkey. But these days there seems to be a diplomatic standstill.

Even so, despite harsh rhetoric and a suspension of top-level diplomatic engagement, Israeli-Turkish trade has grown by 19 percent since 2009, while Turkey’s overall foreign trade for the same period grew by 11 percent. Since few nations with strong trade ties escalate conflicts to the point of going to war with each other, Israeli-Turkish economic ties may signal the prospects of improved bilateral relations. With the economic and political outlook remaining bleak throughout the Middle East, the two nations have more reasons than ever to resolve their political differences—or to at least separate them from economic relations.

Better ties with Israel are especially appealing to Turkey now that it has burned its bridges with the Arab world. Ankara’s failed “zero problems with neighbors” policy has resulted in Turkey having no ambassadors in Cairo, Damascus, or Tripoli. It only appointed an ambassador in Baghdad after former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was replaced by Haider al-Abadi in September 2014. Syria suspended its free trade agreement with Turkey in December 2011, when Bashar al-Assad became Ankara’s main enemy. Since then, trade between Syria and Turkey has dropped to half a billion USD in 2014, from almost two billion USD in 2011.

In Egypt, Turkey’s refusal to recognize Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the President of Egypt has hurt Ankara’s economic interests as well. For instance, Turkish exports to Egypt have shrunk by 10 percent between 2012 and 2014. Furthermore, Egypt did not renew the roll-on/roll-off ferryboat agreement, a trade route that circumvents expensive passage through the Suez Canal, after it expired this April, hampering the transportation of goods between the Turkish ports and Alexandria. This move cuts off Turkish goods from arriving at lucrative markets in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. This agreement also allowed Turkish companies to circumvent Syrian territory controlled by the Islamic State (also called ISIS) while also bypassing the Suez Canal and therefore reducing transportation costs.

Turkish relations in Libya, too, are in a dire state. Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani has accused Turkey of arming the ISIS auxiliaries in Libya, driving Turkish companies and expats out of the country. On top of this, Ankara’s recognition of the Islamist-controlled National General Congress over the democratically elected al-Thani government has cast a shadow over Turkish business interests in large parts of the nation.

Rifts in "unity" - before the ceremony!

From YNet:

The news agency Maan reported that the signing of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement in Cairo is being delayed because of a seating arrangement issue.

According to the report, an argument has broken out over the spot where Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal will sit. According to another report, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to sit next to Mashaal, and demanded to be presented as the Palestinian president instead of the head of his political party.

From other Arabic news sources, it seems to me that Hamas is not accepting Abbas as president of the PA even under this agreement (this has long been their official position, since his official term in office ended.)

Which is just one more indication that this agreement is a sham. Hamas will retain its own security in Gaza and it will be part of the government as much as Hezbollah is part of Lebanon's - enough to veto whatever they don't like but not subservient to it or subject to the PA's laws.

(h/t Richie)

Abbas instructs newspapers to stop insulting Hamas

Palestinian Arabic media associated with Fatah is reporting:

The official spokesman for the Fatah movement, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, announced that President Mahmoud Abbas has issued instructions to stop all media campaigns against Hamas.

The spokesman added that the reason for this instruction was 'to create a positive atmosphere for the success of the initiative launched by the leadership to end the division and achieve unity, and strengthening efforts for the success of this goal...."

See how democratic the Palestinian Arabs are? Their president can tell the media what to do, and they follow his instructions without any complaint! No chaos, no doubt, no criticism! Not one newspaper pointing out that this is exactly how Mubarak acted. 

Sounds like a Palestinian Arab state would be a veritable utopia for freedom.