Arab towns surrounded by Jewish communities have 0% unemployment

Mas-ha, Qarawat Bani Hassan and Biddya are three Arab towns that, according to the conventional wisdom, should be suffering more than most due to the suffocating presence of Jewish settlements surrounding them.

Here is a detail of B'Tselem's map showing the towns as islands of Arab brown among a sea of Jewish blue areas.

Yet today there is an Arabic article in Safa that says that the towns have a zero percent unemployment rate.

The article characterizes the issue as how the towns manage to thrive even though the evil Israelis built their evil apartheid wall (the dotted lines are for barriers that have not been built.)

The towns were commercial centers before the second intifada, and it appears that they used to get lots of Jewish customers to department stores lining their main street during the peaceful Oslo period when blowing up Jews only happened several times a year.

But when the suicide bombings became bad, they lost customers so the town leaders decided to re-orient their economy around manufacturing. Now they are filled with factories making glass, furniture and other goods.

This has caused their land prices to increase tenfold, from 10,000 Jordanian dinars per dunam to 100,000 dinars.

The new manufacturing sites are attracting Arabs from all over the West Bank, and factory owners cannot keep up with the demand for skilled workers. They claim that their wages are comparable to those of Arab workers in Jewish settlements, between 4000-7000 shekels a month.

Here's the kicker.

The business leaders of Qarawat Bani Hassan complain that the Palestinian Authority is doing nothing to help them. On the contrary, they say that they are taxed heavily by the PA  and that they get literally nothing in return.

In fact, they say that the PA looks at them suspiciously. One business owner says that the Ministry of Finance considers successful businessmen to be thieves, sometimes accuse him of tax evasion, and at other times of money laundering.

The only people who seem threatened by the towns' success are the kleptocrats of the Palestinian Authority, and perhaps the NGOs who have little power over using these towns as propaganda against Israel (although they try.)

The story of Mas-ha, Qarawat Bani Hassan and Biddya shows that it isn't settlements that are ruining the economy under PA rule. It is PA rule itself, where jobs are used as political favors and corruption is the norm, where innovation is punished and laziness rewarded.

It also shows that the entire PA strategy isn't for helping their people but instead to do everything they can to demonize and diminish Israel on the world stage.

The people don't matter. "Winning" their zero sum game with Israel is the obsession of the PA, and the people who are abandoned are forced to do what they can in spite of their corrupt leaders.

Great article: "There's Something About Winning"

From the Jewish Journal, by David Suissa:

I’ll never forget sitting with a group of intellectuals several years ago, at the height of the messy war in Iraq, and discussing why President Bush and America had fallen so low in the esteem of the world. One great mind after another offered sophisticated analyses. My head was spinning.

Finally, someone piped up: “Everything would be different if Bush were winning the war.”

At which point a distinguished professor from Israel said: “This is brilliant! Bush’s real problem is that he’s not winning!” I sat there, slightly stunned, thinking: How can something so complicated lend itself to such an easy insight?

I reflected on that insight the other night when President Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden after a nearly 10-year pursuit. Here was a president who had suffered relentless criticism for his handling of foreign affairs. And now, as Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on his blog: “Our President, in the blink of an eye, has gone from a hyper-criticized, seemingly-swamped possibly-one-term leader to an American hero, a commander-in-chief who calmly oversaw the killing of the greatest mass murderer in American history.”

And why did he become a hero? Not because he made one of his inspiring speeches or announced a brilliant new policy.

He became a hero because he got a win. It’s as simple — and as complicated — as that.

We love to teach our kids that life is not about winning and losing but “how you play the game.” That may be true when you’re dealing with people of good faith. But when you’re dealing with people who are out for blood, it’s a good idea to know how to win.

Naturally, Jews and Israel have always been juicy targets for people out for blood. So, how should one deal with such aggression?

I found a wonderful answer last week in a shoe store, of all places, on trendy St. Denis Street in downtown Montreal. The French Canadian owner of the store, who has been there for 25 years, decided last year to carry a woman’s shoe line from Israel called Beautifeel. Well, wouldn’t you know it, within a few months, a vicious boycott campaign was under way against the store, led by a popular local politician, Amir Khadir.

To give you an idea of the tone of their campaign, one of the boycotters’ leaflets had an oversize image of a woman’s shoe stomping on a pile of buried naked bodies — reminiscent of those horror shots of emaciated bodies you see in Holocaust documentaries. Written on the shoe was “Beautifeel. Made in Apartheid Israel.” On top was the headline, in French, “Boycottons la boutique Le Marcheur” (“Let’s boycott the boutique Le Marcheur”).

Week after week, the boycotters recruited large and noisy crowds to hand out the leaflets and implore people not to enter Le Marcheur. Their mission was to pressure the owner, Yves Archambault, to stop carrying the Israeli shoe line so that the neighborhood would be “apartheid free.” But Archambault refused, out of principle. It didn’t seem right to him that he should be told how to run his business. His business suffered, but he held firm.

The story hardly ends there. The Jewish community in Montreal got wind of the boycott and went nuts. A “buycott” campaign was launched, and Jews from all over the city came to buy shoes at Le Marcheur. A woman bought a hundred pairs. Archambault became a local hero.

Meanwhile, creative minds went to work producing counter leaflets mocking the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement as “Boycott Derangement Syndrome,” explaining the discrimination and hypocrisy inherent in the movement. These leaflets gave people the Israeli side of the story. Archambault did his own research and found out that the Israeli shoe company (besides making great shoes!) hired women, minorities and Palestinians and treated their employees very well. The Quebec General Assembly drafted a unanimous resolution condemning the boycott and supporting the store.

And what happened to the initiator of the boycott, Amir Khadir? He went low-key and stopped coming to the demonstrations. Apparently, he concluded that the backlash might not be good for his political future.

I tell you this story not to remind you of the insidious global movement to demonize the Jewish state. That’s old hat by now. I’m telling you this story because it’s a tribute to the noble virtues of fighting back and winning.

Too often, we recoil at the idea of fighting. It leaves a bad taste in our mouth. We dread the thought of “lowering ourselves to the level of mudslinging.” We prefer notions like “engagement” and “bridge building.”

But the nasty boycotters of St. Denis Street who used Nazi imagery to malign an Israeli shoe company were not looking for engagement or bridge building. They were looking for blood — and a victory.

Faced with such aggression, how else to respond but to fight back?

Yes, in such cases, life is a zero sum game. One side wins, and the other side loses. The Jewish community of Montreal, with the support of a brave French Canadian shoe merchant, fought back ferociously and smartly against what it perceived as a grave injustice to the State of Israel. And, guess what — they won.

It’s not as dramatic as taking down bin Laden, but we’ll take it.

(h/t Max)

Seventh Fatah Congress planned for August

Arab media are reporting that Mahmoud Abbas plans to schedule the seventh Fatah Congress sometime this summer.

The sixth Fatah Congress was held in August, 2009. It was marred by public disagreements and insults, as factions that represented Mahmoud Dahlan, Mahmoud Abbas and the Al Aqsa Brigades all jostled for political gain. Abbas and the old Arafat loyalists did everything they could to marginalize the "new guard" who organized the first intifada in 1989.

When the Central Committee decided not to issue a written report but only to present it orally, chaos broke out and Mahmoud Abbas instructed his bodyguards to eject members of the Congress.

In the end, a new Fatah Platform was issued. In it, Fatah made very clear that it still supported terrorism despite the lies its members tell the media in English. Here is what I wrote about it last year:

The main strategic goals are "Liberating the homeland, ending its settler occupation and attaining the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people." Note that these are separate goals - the "homeland" is all of British Mandate Palestine while the "occupation" is the areas Israel gained in 1967 and the "inalienable rights" include the "right to return."

The platform makes it very clear that Fatah still subscribes to "armed resistance" as a "right":" "The Palestinian people’s right to practice armed resistance against the military occupation of their land remains a constant right confirmed by international law and international legality."

Unintentionally proving how tenuous Palestinian peoplehood is, the platform tries to shore it up by saying"The Palestinians are a genuine people with a clear identity and clear affiliation to their homeland. They maintained their attachment to this identity and to their homeland through their national struggle for almost a century."

Two of their tactics include:

Boycotting Israeli products at home and abroad through popular movement, particularly those goods for which there is local substitute. Performing new forms of civil disobedience against the occupation and launching an international campaign to boycott Israel, its products, and its institutions benefiting from the experience of South Africa against Apartheid....

Restoring our direct and strong relations with the Israeli peace camp, and revitalizing our joint action for a just peace, without mingling it with normalization with Israel, which is rejected while occupation continues.

It also calls to strengthen the culture of terror:

Continued commitment to the culture of struggle, and the permanent readiness to engage in resisting the occupation, and sacrifice for the homeland. Continuous education through regular organizational meetings and training courses. The issuing of Fatah circulars, to continue mobilizing the cadres of the movement and masses with the heritage of the Palestinian armed struggle. Celebrating our battles, and commemorating the history of our struggle and the permanent readiness to sacrifice.

Every single thing that is incompatible with true peace  is enshrined in this platform. These are not negotiable positions, according to this document.

I am certain that neither John Kerry nor President Obama, nor Thomas Friedman nor any supposed mainstream media "expert"  ever read this.

In fact, practically no one in the West has read this platform, although Mahmoud Abbas has been acting entirely consistently with it. I translated some of it when it was released, but this official English translation seems to have been released over a year later. I found it at the Palestinian Press Office of Denmark.

This is essential reading in order to understand the strategy of the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas.

  Fatah Political Platform by Eldad Tzioni

Hamas and Salafist groups continue to attack each other

Since the explosion that rocked Hamas' security HQ earlier this week, there have been a number of other explosions in Gaza, although no one has been killed.

El Badil reports on a number of explosions and other incidents in the last couple of days. A young man was injured when an object exploded. Hamas found and dismantled two bombs in cars on Monday night. Another explosion occurred near a school on Monday.

Last night, there was a large explosion near the Al Nour mosque in central Gaza.

It is widely believed that Salafist groups in Gaza are responsible for this. They threatened Hamas last Saturday. Hamas responded by cracking down on the group and even reportedly destroyed a mosque, something that the Western media didn't think was as newsworthy as someone drawing cartoons.

Shimon Peres not going to Clinton Foundation meeting in Marrakesh. Where's Bill?

From the World Bulletin (Turkey):

Morocco has backtracked an earlier invitation extended to the former Israeli president Shimon Peres to pop in the Kingdom to attend the Clinton Global Initiative's First Middle East and Africa Conference set to kick off on May 5 in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh.

Morocco rescinded the invitation it had dispatched earlier to the notorious former Israeli PM Shimon Peres after his projected stopover stirred up a hornet's nest among the Kingdom’s pro-Palestine activists and organizations.

Earlier, on Friday, a series of protest rallies staged in observance of the International May Day also voiced firm rebuff of Peres’s stopover.

Additionally, according to new360, Hamas government agencies in Gaza had written to Moroccan officials asking that the infamous Israeli politician be blocked from entering Morocco.

The Moroccan government has not responded to any of the calls to arrest or deport Peres. It was noted on Sunday that his invitation had been rescinded and he would not be attending the conference.

ANSAMed, however, reports that Peres is the one who decided not to go:

RABAT, MAY 4 - Former Israeli president Shimon Peres will not be going to Marrakesh despite an invitation from the Clinton Foundation to speak at a conference on the Middle East and Africa. The decision was made after polemics following the announcement that he was to have taken part tomorrow.

Since the nation of Morocco isn't who invited Peres to begin with, it seems that the Turkish version of the story is not correct.

Peres is not Avigdor Lieberman. He is passionately dedicated to peace, whether you agree with him or not. Yet no one in the Arab world is coming to his defense. On the contrary - the only voices one can find in Arabic media were those calling for him to be dis-invited at the very least, and arrested and jailed should he step foot in Morocco.

Interestingly, even though the Clinton Foundation issues press releases every day, it has not mentioned this story. No regrets, no gentle scolding that it is antithetical to peace - nothing. One would think that if the Clinton Foundation is as dedicated to peace as possible, it would have done everything possible to allow Peres to attend.

Could it be because the Clinton Foundation has accepted some $40 million from Arab countries since it started? Arab countries give far more to the Clinton Foundation than to other NGOs doing similar work.

There will be no peace as long as there is no pressure on Arab governments to act in a peaceful way. If they truly wanted to see a peaceful two state solution they would welcome Shimon Peres anywhere he wanted to go.

And a strong condemnation by Bill Clinton on how Shimon Peres is treated by the Arab world would do more for peace than any number of conferences.

Evil, Talmudic Jews desecrating Al Aqsa again

Palestine Times reports that Jews "desecrated" the Al Aqsa Mosque yet again, by...standing there.

They are "roaming in the courtyards" of Al Aqsa, attempting to establish "Talmudic rituals" in the area. These "Zionist extremists" are also doing "provocative tours."

As you can see, the photo shows how horrible they are acting.

Biden: Iran "paved its path" to a bomb

Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the Washington Institute last night, where he strongly defended the White House's negotiating posture with Iran.

The tone of the speech was markedly different from previous communications from the administration. In the past, even when signing the Iran Sanctions Act, the White House has said things like "Iran can prove that its intentions are peaceful."

In this speech, Biden sais about as explicitly as can be that Iran's intentions are to build a nuclear weapon.

Iran, Biden argued, “has already paved its path” to a bomb and could build up to eight nuclear warheads in two to three months.

There is a big difference between the Cold War-style "trust but verify" model of negotiations and one where one side assumes, ab initio, that the other side is deceptive and is actively seeking to do the opposite of what the agreement is meant to accomplish.

If we are saying that we don't trust Iran at all, then any agreement that doesn't include comprehensive inspections anywhere in Iran that a secret facility may be built is useless. And Iran has a track record of building secret nuclear facilities. 

Iran's president has bragged that he broke previous nuclear agreements. Yet the current framework agreement still has gigantic loopholes on weaponization and verification.

Worse, the White House knew that Iran was that close to a nuclear weapon for a long time, but insisted publicly that it was over a year away. That piece of information changes everything as to how negotiations should be conducted.

But from what we can see, the US kept the "trust but verify" mentality when negotiating with a party that is known to lie and hide its nuclear weapons program.

Biden may have made a good speech, but he showed that we have been deceived by Washington as much as Washington has been deceived by Iran.

Wiesenthal Center complains about incitement to Jew-hatred on Goal.com Arabic site

A month ago, I reported that Goal.com's Arabic site included anti-Israel rhetoric.

Now the Simon Wiesenthal Center has noticed:

In a letter to the UEFA (Union of European Football Association) President, Michel Platini, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, drew attention to " the constant incitement  and offence against the State of Israel on the Arabic site of Goal.com, a web site that prides itself in having a global constituency of over 64 million fans". 

The letter listed: 

- "a classic example (see photo and caption, upper case for emphasis, reads in translation 'Saturday 28 March 2015, Sammy Ofer Stadium, Haifa, THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES Wales decided to enter the 2016 UEFA Cup Finals, for the first time ever, after defeating the ZIONIST ENTITY TEAM of the City of Haifa in the OCCUPIED TERRITORIES with three straight goals). This was the first ZIONIST loss in the play-offs...'" 

Samuels noted that: " 'Zionist entity' is deemed as denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the very right to sovereignty of the Jewish people".
See photo and Arabic caption:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2FCswRYn5xA_rTJUaBmjHRrr8MNFvaZeltP8hNaVYvJgFUZC_rKaKyg4I8LlG3-lJ6yEG7-uZi1dyyLpQWkMXj0gu3UXleggC9-R8anNxaPRC6q0ysfYj8XjuS5EeA-gyrhTrtvm__RR5/s1600/goal1.png- "Another article celebrated how the 'OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES ZIONIST TEAMS, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Tel Aviv and Hapoel Beersheba' were unable to play in the summer of 2014 due to 'Palestinian Hamas shelling'.” 

Samuels added "calling Haifa, Tel Aviv and Beersheba OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, in effect deletes all of Israel from the map".

- "Another recounts how Bosnian striker, Edin Dzeko, will not participate in the UEFA Euro 2016 qualifier against 'THE ZIONIST ENEMY' in 'THE ARAB CITY OF JERUSALEM'."

The Centre argued that "this language violates Goal.com's on-line Terms of Message and Content Use which forbids any expression that is:

- 5.7.2 is threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, offensive, pornographic, profane, sexually explicit or indecent
- 5.7.3 [that] promotes violence
- 5.7.4 [that] promotes discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age
- 5.7.10 [that] will be likely to harass, upset, embarrass or alarm any other person".

The letter pointed to "an example of how far such words can reach, occurring this Friday, 1 May, when Raja Casablanca F.C. President, Mohamed Boudrika protested violence on the pitch by the Algerian Wikaf Stef team, to epithets from their Club President, Hassan Hammar, calling the Moroccan team “Jews Jews!".
See:http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/05/157477/raja-president-terrorized-algeria-algerian-police/

Samuels claimed that "multiple appeals to Goal.com London headquarters have remained unanswered," continuing,  "a similar complaint to pan-European sports network, EUROSPORT, resulted in immediate action.

It will be interesting to see if Goal.com responds to this.

Hamas instructs its media not to report on Syria

Firas Press and other Arabic news sources are claiming that Hamas is putting a news blackout on events in Syria:

Reliable sources close to media officials in Hamas that they have issued strict instructions to all departments, editors of all news sites, forums, and radio TV that belongs to them not to cover or publish any news about events taking place in Syria and massacres there against unarmed citizens.

The sources said that instructions have been issued from the leadership of the Hamas political bureau living on Syrian territory to pursue all of its networks and not to offend any news of the Syrian regime and affect the feelings of the Syrian government.

The sources said the Hamas political bureau wanted to maintain its position with the Syrian regime, which embraced it many years ago.

And a Hamas Palestine network yesterday blocked news about the split within the Syrian army.

This may be a Damascus Hamas directive; the Gaza Hamas sites have some Syrian news and indeed they are sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood portion of the uprising.

Book review: "The Road to Fatima Gate", Michael Totten

Lebanon is a very complicated place.

You literally need a scorecard to keep track of all the different groups that make up Lebanon's political scene and their shifting loyalties. The three main groups are,of course, the Christians, the Shiites and the Sunnis, but each of those groups have splinter groups that may or may not be aligned with their co-religionists at any time. There are also the Druze and smaller groups, whose very survival depends on being able to anticipate which way the wind is about to blow and jump on the side of the winning team.

Add to this that these are not just political groups but they all generally were parts of militia in the 1970s and 1980s. Sometimes they have to take out their weapons to defend their towns and villages.

And add to this the entire recent history of civil war. Plus the collective memory of being effectively controlled by Syria, by Israel or (more recently) by Iran. Not to mention the French influence on Lebanese culture and the fact that it is a favorite vacation spot for decadent, rich Saudis. More ingredients in Lebanon's ratatouille is the generally liberal and Western-style of downtown Beirut compared with the poverty of the south and the traditionalism in other areas.

The resulting dish is dizzying in its complexity.

Michael Totten, in his great book "The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel ," explains it all (or at least a lot of it) in a wonderful first-person journalistic style.

We learn about Lebanon as Totten does. We follow him as he interviews Shi'ite, Maronite and Sunni leaders and ordinary people as well. We tag along as he gets threatened by people with guns and eventually finds that he is somehow safer with armed people around.

Unlike many journalists who speak as if they are omniscient, Totten lets us see his mistakes and how he learns from them.

He takes us on his journey during the Israel/Hezbollah war of 2006 and mini-civil wars precipitated by Hezbollah in afterwards. He speaks to many people on most sides, and lets us know when he doesn't believe what they say. He and his friends get into dangerous situations that are inconceivable to Western eyes - but he knows that and explains it so the audience gets it.

Totten often uses that skill to great effect. For example, he mentions that he asks Eli Khoury, a leader of the March 14th movement, "What is the solution?" Totten then goes on to tell his readers that this is a very American question, one that he soon learned not to ask, because the Lebanese know that there isn't one. However, Americans are solution-oriented and cannot grasp that basic concept that is so integral to survival in the Middle East.

We cannot solve the problems. We can only manage them as best we can, today.

One other talent that Michael Totten has is the ability to see the entire picture and relate to it. It is easy to get lost in the minutiae, especially in Lebanon where there are so many groups competing with each other and none of them are in the majority. But Totten is always there to remind us what the real danger is. It is Iran, using Hezbollah as its proxy. All of the desire to be pacifist or pan-Lebanese is doomed as long as Hezbollah, effectively an arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, has effective veto power over the Lebanese government and controls its own state within a state. No one can confront Hezbollah militarily nor politically, and as a result Iran is extending its hegemony over the region.

Totten's journalistic style is especially appreciated in the Lebanese arena. While most other journalists will meekly follow whatever restrictions their interview subjects impose on them, Totten reports on the entire context of his interviews, letting us know that if he cannot find out a piece of information it is not because he didn't try. He also lets us know when his subjects are not being entirely truthful.

Totten was not in Lebanon for all the events he covers so he relies on his friends to fill in the personal stories. Also, he didn't talk much about the Palestinian Arab experience in Lebanon outside of broad historical strokes; there is no interview with the Arabs in refugee camps and the Nahr al-Bared fighting is glossed over as a "sideshow." While this is probably true, there are  about as many Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon as there are Druze, and demographics do matter. I would love to have seen him highlight Lebanese discrimination against them across the board as well as what they have done to help destroy Lebanon from inside.

These are minor points, though. The Road to Fatima Gate is a brilliant combination of memoir and journalism, and it is highly recommended.