Gary Burge's lies
Observations:
The New PA-Hamas Agreement: Opening the Gates to the Trojan Horse - Jonathan D. Halevi (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
- Although the words of the Doha Declaration on PA-Hamas reconciliation signed on Feb. 6 sound weighty, their practical significance is small since it does not express genuine Hamas recognition of Abbas' leadership or authority. Instead, it is merely verbal, expedient recognition for tactical reasons, intended to enable Hamas' official entry into the PLO in the framework of new elections for the Palestinian National Council and to pave the way for Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections.
- The Hamas leaders are trying to implement the strategy of the Arab Spring in the Palestinian arena. They assume they will win an overwhelming majority in the elections and, thereby, complete their historic takeover of the Palestinian national movement. In other words, they view Abbas as the doorman who opens the gates to the Trojan horse.
- From Abbas' perspective, his appointment as prime minister, in addition to president, will enable him to maintain the international recognition of the Palestinian government despite the agreement with Hamas, and give him room to maneuver in contacts with the international community, both politically and in terms of keeping the aid money flowing. Abbas thereby buys himself some quiet for an interim period. When it ends, though, he will likely find himself without assets and in a minority in the representative institutions of the Palestinian national movement.
- Abbas' cooperation with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, and his uncompromising refusal to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, illustrates the strategic choice he has made. He does not prefer the path of a political settlement but, rather, to link up with Hamas and the other regional forces emerging in the Arab Spring and thereby use them as a force multiplier against Israel without having to offer political concessions. The release of 64 "political" prisoners is not only a gesture to Hamas but also an implicit message that the security cooperation with Israel is secondary in Abbas' eyes to the old-new alliance with Hamas.
Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center, is a former advisor to the Policy Planning Division of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Palestinian Big Lie Revisited
By: Yedidya Atlas
As the US presidential elections draw closer, support for Israel becomes a mantra for every potential candidate. Republicans wave their pro-Israel flag to satisfy the significant majority of pro-Israel Republican voters (non-Jews). While President Obama renews efforts to prove to the left-liberal Jewish Democratic donors and Jewish voter blocs in key states that he too just loves Israel - despite his actual record while in office these past three years - including eating non-kosher pastrami on rye sandwiches in public.
So the Palestinians, in what appears to be a coordinated good cop/bad cop effort are redoubling promotion of their Big Lie about who their “deep roots in the Land” and that the “Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” is the big issue that requires a “just solution” - which is a euphemism for pressuring Israel to accept the Palestinian Arab position. Just one week after Dr. Ahmed Tibi attacked Majority Leader Eric Cantor in an op-ed in the local Richmond newspaper, PLO Mission head in Washington , DC ,Maen Rashid Areikat, blithely repeated many of the same lies in The Washington Post.
This unrelenting PR campaign continues to bear fruit. One hears many Republicans and nearly all Democrats talk about the “Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” and the dire need to solve it to stabilize the volatile Middle East . And here is the real problem: It assumes a false axiom which stipulates that the “Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” is the core of the conflict, and therefore solving it will solve everything else in the Middle East .
It seems that everyone under the age of 60 never heard the term “Arab-Israel Conflict” which was the only term used to describe the on-going war between the Arab States and the Jewish State of Israel up until after the 1967 Six Day War. And most people over 60 seem to have memory issues.
By assuming the “Palestinian Problem”, as it was first called, is at the core of the Arab-Israel Conflict, one can now understand how it became today’s politically correct term: the “Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”, and one is forced to also assume that Arab enmity towards Israel began either after 1967 when Israel either liberated or captured (depends on whom one asks, of course) the territories that comprise the Biblically named Judea and Samaria (AKA as “the West Bank”) and Gaza, or at least no further back than the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Yet even cursory examination of the historical facts belies these contentions because they are based on the false premise that the Arab-Israel Conflict has something to do with the so-called "Palestinian Problem."
Chronologically, Arab enmity preceded the “Palestinian Problem” before the State of Israel officially existed. The Arab countries declared war on Israel before the Palestinian Arabs fled. Logically, then, one can conclude that the Arabs had some other reason to attack the fledgling Israel other than Palestinian refugees that didn't yet exist.
It was in this vein that the semi-official Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram , printed the following editorial on November 26, 1955: "Our war against the Jews is an old struggle that began with Muhammad and in which he achieved many victories ... it is our duty to fight the Jews for the sake of Allah and religion, and it is our duty to end the war that Muhammad began ..."
Al-Ahram makes no mention or reference to Palestinians or refugees because the highly touted “Palestinian Problem” of today was then considered, at best, nothing more than a secondary detail and, at worst, an artificially created political weapon (The PLO was only established in 1964). The Arab-Israel Conflict is based on Arab enmity towards the Jews, and therefore the Jewish state, and has nothing to do with either Palestinian Arab refugees or any specific Israeli policies.
Bearing that in mind, one wonders why the territories under discussion for the “Palestinian State” in the making, Judea and Samaria (AKA “the West Bank”, as in the west bank of the Jordan River), became holy soil in the eyes of Palestinian Arab nationalism only after Israel took possession of these territories following the clearly defensive war in 1967?
During the previous nineteen years, from 1948 to 1967, these areas were under Jordanian control/occupation after the Jordanian Legion captured it from the fledgling State of Israel in the 1948 War. Yet despite the alleged existence of a Palestinian Arab people, there was no public outcry for Jordan to return this region to anyone to establish a Palestinian Arab state. Nor were international protests made demanding that Jordan cease "creating facts" by building new Arab neighborhoods throughout these areas, thus creating "obstacles to peace". Arab leaders didn’t make pilgrimages to the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jordanian-occupied Jerusalem , and PLO chieftain Yasser Arafat never once visited the “ West Bank ” during those 19 years.
The Palestinian Problem was created and promoted, and the Big Lie prospers: "Without unilateral Israeli territorial concessions the Palestinian Problem which is the core of the Arab-Israel Conflict will never be resolved." Thus the “Arab-Israel Conflict” was smoothly turned into the “Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” – the pre-1967 Arab Goliath against the beleaguered little Israeli David was transitioned into the intransigent Israeli Goliath versus the poor Palestinian David.
The Big Lie has seeped in everywhere. The first internet site, for example, seen by today’s students googling the “Arab-Israel conflict is Wikipedia. Irrespective of how really accurate it is, it is the top of the list. Wikipedia describes the “Arab-Israel Conflict” thusly:
“The Arab–Israeli conflict refers to political tensions and open hostilities between the Arab peoples and the Jewish community of the Middle East . The modern Arab–Israeli conflict began with the rise of Zionism and Arab Nationalism towards the end of the nineteenth century, and intensified with the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948. Territory regarded by the Jewish People as their historical homeland is also regarded by the Pan-Arab movement as historically and presently belonging to the Palestinian Arabs(2) and in the Pan-Islamic context, in territory regarded as Muslim Lands.”
The line: “is also regarded by the Pan-Arab movement as historically and presently belonging to the Palestinian Arabs(2)” is footnoted as if seriously sourced. However, if one bothers to scroll down to the very bottom to see the source, Wikipedia (or the writer of said entry) accepts the “Palestinian National Charter [the PLO Charter written in 1964], as an unbiased reference source.
Further on Wikipedia’s version of history is not only in the so-called facts it includes, but those facts omitted. In the section on the conflict’s “History” it notes that “the area came under British rule as the British Mandate of Palestine”, but conveniently left out how and by whom the British received said “Mandate.”
In fact, in 1920, the San Remo Conference of the Allied Powers issued what is called the “Palestine Mandate of the League of Nations .” Hence, the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, assigned to Great Britain a mandate to establish the Jewish national home. The Preamble to the Mandate specifies that “recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine .”
The Palestine Mandate does not mention Arab national or political rights in the Land of Israel . It does not relate at all to the Arab residents of Palestine 1920, as a separate people or nationality. It merely states that the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine , irrespective of race and religion, must be safeguarded. The reason for that is clear. Only one nation was recognized, the Jews. Hence the object and purpose of the Mandate was to reconstitute the political ties of the Jewish people to their homeland.
Moreover, the Arab delegates to the San Remo Conference led by the Hashemite Prince Faisel ibn Hussein (who would be appointed first king of Syria, then after he was ousted by the French, king of Iraq) accepted said “Palestine Mandate” and even declared Zionist demands “moderate.”
Mr. Areikat, in his December 28th op-ed, would have readers of The Washington Post believe otherwise. “We lived under the rule of a plethora of empires,” he writes, “the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans and, finally, the British.” In other words, the Palestinian Arabs must have been hiding in the closet since throughout thousands of years of well documented history nobody mentions them. But it doesn’t matter. The spokesmen for the PLO/PA simply repeat lie after lie until their political fellow travelers and useful idiots (to borrow terminology of another period when venal and foolish people acted similarly) in the mainstream media and academia repeat the lies as if there was a scintilla of truth in them.
One of Mr. Areikat’s more ironic lines are “Many in the United States forget that Palestinians are Muslims and Christians. They ignore the fact that Palestinian Christians are the descendants of Jesus and guardians of the cradle of Christianity.” Aside from the historical fact that Jesus was Jewish, and therefore the Israelis are the actual relatives, not the Palestinian Arabs, consider the fact that the Palestinian Authority has systematically driven out the Christian Arabs from Bethlehem , the birthplace of Jesus, according to the New Testament. Specifically, more than 70% of Christian Arabs have fled the PA controlled areas to any country that will issue them a visa. In Bethlehem , for example, whereas in 1950, Christian Arabs comprised 80% of the population, today under Palestinian Arab rule, it is less than 15%. But why tell the truth when one’s lies are accepted so easily?
So today the situation is far different then the pre-1967 period and has been further exacerbated by the incessant presenting of the “Palestinian-Israel Conflict” in asymmetrical form. The Palestinian Arabs cry “the Jews stole our Land” and demand “inalienable national rights” predicated on a false history. And then “pro-Israeli” western politicians declare support for a Palestinian State while mumbling about Israel’s security needs and wanting peace (e.g. President Obama’s UN speeches), rather than challenge the false premise and deal with an existent problem in its true reality – including the possibility that the two sides are not equal and that there may not be an actual solution.
Given the rise of Pan-Islamism throughout the “new” Middle East, the continued inflexibility of the Palestinian Arab leadership and their refusal to abandon murderous violence as a strategic method of achieving their goals, the odds of having a Hollywood-style happy ending of the Arab-Israel Conflict or the so-called Palestinian-Israel Conflict is not slim to none, but just none.
When that harsh reality is absorbed by Republican and Democratic policy makers alike, perhaps then the issue of Middle East stability and its ramifications for the West can be dealt with in light of the true facts on the ground, and not merely as short term verbal electioneering points.
************************************
The author is a veteran journalist specializing in geo-political and geo-strategic affairs in the Middle East . His articles have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Insight Magazine, Nativ, The Jerusalem Post and Makor Rishon. His articles have been reprinted by Israel ’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the US Congressional Record.
www.rabbijonathanginsburg.info
www.converttojudaismonline.blogspot.com/
Did You Hear About The Horrific Torture Inflicted By The Terrorists In The Nairobi Mall?
Eyes, ears, and noses gouged out. Bodies hanging from hooks. Fingers torn out with pliers. Children found dead in freezers with knives sticking out of them. Men were castrated, then blinded and hanged. Hostages reportedly had their throats slashed from ear to ear and were thrown screaming from third-floor balconies.
Most of the defeated terrorists, meanwhile,were reportedly discovered ‘burnt to ashes’, set alight by the last extremist standing to try to protect their identities.
The horrifying details came yesterday as the first pictures emerged from within the wreckage of the building, showing piles of bodies left strewn across the floor. A third of the mall was destroyed in the battle between terrorists and Kenyan troops.
Lying in the rubble are feared to be the bodies of as many as 71 civilians who have been declared missing by the Kenyan Red Cross.
With detectives, including the FBI and the Metropolitan Police, still unable to reach the wrecked part of the mall for fear of setting off explosives, it could take up to a week to determine exactly who is still inside.
Yesterday, soldiers and doctors who were among the first people into the mall after it was reclaimed on Tuesday, spoke of the horrifying scenes inside. ‘You find people with hooks hanging from the roof,’ said one Kenyan doctor, who asked not to be named.
‘They removed eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood. They drive knives inside a child’s body. ’Actually if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers. Here it was pain.’
A soldier, who took pictures at a bread counter and at the ArtCaffe, said he was so traumatised by what he saw he has had to seek counselling.
Bomb disposal experts with sniffer dogs were yesterday painstakingly combing the part of the building still standing for explosives before clearing forensic officers, police and troops to search for bodies. One soldier told the Daily Mirror: ‘I have seen many bad things, but this will haunt me for the rest of my days.’
Most of the defeated terrorists, meanwhile,were reportedly discovered ‘burnt to ashes’, set alight by the last extremist standing to try to protect their identities.
The horrifying details came yesterday as the first pictures emerged from within the wreckage of the building, showing piles of bodies left strewn across the floor. A third of the mall was destroyed in the battle between terrorists and Kenyan troops.
Lying in the rubble are feared to be the bodies of as many as 71 civilians who have been declared missing by the Kenyan Red Cross.
With detectives, including the FBI and the Metropolitan Police, still unable to reach the wrecked part of the mall for fear of setting off explosives, it could take up to a week to determine exactly who is still inside.
Yesterday, soldiers and doctors who were among the first people into the mall after it was reclaimed on Tuesday, spoke of the horrifying scenes inside. ‘You find people with hooks hanging from the roof,’ said one Kenyan doctor, who asked not to be named.
‘They removed eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood. They drive knives inside a child’s body. ’Actually if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers. Here it was pain.’
A soldier, who took pictures at a bread counter and at the ArtCaffe, said he was so traumatised by what he saw he has had to seek counselling.
Bomb disposal experts with sniffer dogs were yesterday painstakingly combing the part of the building still standing for explosives before clearing forensic officers, police and troops to search for bodies. One soldier told the Daily Mirror: ‘I have seen many bad things, but this will haunt me for the rest of my days.’
At least 50 killed in terror attack at Nigeria college
Remaining students flee agricultural school after suspected Islamists launch midnight assault; 30 more civilians killed over past week
September 29, 2013, 4:25 pm 3
Nigerian soldiers ride on an armored vehicle in Maiduguri, Nigeria, following a terrorist attack in August 2013. (photo credit: AP/Sunday Alamba)
OTISKUM, Nigeria (AP) — Suspected Islamic extremists attacked an agricultural college in the dead of night, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms in an ongoing Islamic uprising in northeast Nigeria, the school’s provost said.
As many as 50 students may have been killed in the attack that began at about 1 a.m. Sunday in rural Gujba, Provost Molima Idi Mato of the Yobe State College of Agriculture, told The Associated Press.
“They attacked our students while they were sleeping in their hostels, they opened fire at them,” he said.
He said he could not give an exact death toll as security forces still are recovering bodies.
The Nigerian military has collected 42 bodies and transported 18 injured students to Damaturu Specialist Hospital, said a military intelligence official, who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.
The school’s other 1,000 enrolled students have fled the college that is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the scene of similar school attacks around Damaturu town, said provost Mato.
He said there were no security forces stationed at the college despite government assurances that they would be deployed. The state commissioner for education, Mohammmed Lamin, called a news conference two weeks ago urging all schools to reopen and promising protection from soldiers and police.
Most schools in the area closed after militants on July 6 killed 29 pupils and a teacher, burning some alive in their hostels, at Mamudo outside Damaturu.
Northeastern Nigeria is under a military state of emergency to battle an Islamic uprising prosecuted by Boko Haram militants who have killed more than 1,700 people since 2010 in their quest for an Islamic state. Boko Haram means Western education is forbidden in the local Hausa language.
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