The Palestinians want neither Partnership nor Peace

Israel has a partner for peace in the Palestinian Authority (PA).

That’s why a police officer belonging to the PA yesterday murdered an Israeli sitting in his vehicle at the traffic lights by stabbing him in the chest with a knife.

The PA terrorist, whose salary is paid by the EU, whose freedom of movement is protected by the UN, whose weapons are paid for by the Arab states and whose training is provided by the US, was quickly apprehended by a nearby civilian security guard who stopped the fleeing fugitive by bumping into him with his car, stunning the murderer sufficiently to give the guard time to hold him until security personnel arrived and arrested him. The terrorist suffered some bruising in his fall to the ground.
 
We’re waiting now for the UN Security Council to debate the issue of unlawful use of motorized vehicles by the Zionist State, and for the Arab world to propose a motion to boycott any company and country that sells motor vehicles to Israel.

Don’t laugh at the absurdity of such blatant one-sidedness – it’ll doubtless happen.

In fact, such one-sidedness is occurring right now. There is often serious discussion about the genocide in which 6 million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust just a few decades ago. The world promised solemnly “Never again”.

But as Professor Alan Dershowitz underscores in this persuasive video clip, at least another 6 million innocent civilians have been slaughtered in various genocides since that horrific period, almost exclusively in conflicts involving Muslim aggression, usually Muslim on Muslim aggression – and solely because the Arab world has succeeded in drawing our attention away from these horrors by focusing solely on demonizing Israel in the public arena.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_A9ILHvrI

The UN has been hijacked, the media have been hijacked, our minds have been hijacked, our aircraft have been hijacked.

And the slaughter continues.

Never again? It’s happening every day.

In the meantime, we turn a blind eye, focusing on how best to penalize the world’s automobile manufacturers for supplying family cars to Jews who might use them to apprehend murderers.

Meantime, here’s some more encouraging news, this time from Israel’s southern border with Gaza. Hamas, Israel’s third Palestinian Arab partners for peace in addition to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, are not content with engaging in human trafficking on a small scale. Kidnapping and illegally incarcerating Israeli teenager Gilad Schalit for more than three years is not enough, the Islamist regime wishes to replicate the success of this heroic mission by kidnapping more Jews for the honourable Islamist trade in human flesh.

This comes just a few days after the Egyptian Press Syndicate suspended an Egyptian journalist for the crime of speaking to Jews in Israel. The journalist, Mr Hussain Serag, felt that in order to write about Israel it would not be a bad idea to speak to a few Israelis by way of research so he would know what he was writing about. The Egyptian Press Syndicate, however, took a different view, preferring its members to write only about things of which they know nothing.

Makes perfect sense. In Egypt.

Jordan, meantime, is busy withdrawing Jordanian citizenship from thousands of Palestinian Arabs. 70 percent of Jordan’s population consists of Palestinian Arabs, making this country rightfully theirs. The Jordanian monarch’s grandfather ascended to the throne after being transplanted by the British from the sands of Arabia and installed as king over 80 percent of Mandate Palestine, in an artificially created country known as Transjordan, today Jordan.

Now Jordan wants to withdraw citizenship from the people who make up 70 percent of its population. Even the Palestinian Authority is critical of the move, which contradicts their fundamental human rights. However, seeing as the target of their criticism is Muslim, the Palestinian Arabs are very moderate in their choice of words. Just wonder what the wording would be like if Israel floated the idea of withdrawing citizenship from the 20 percent of its population that consists of Arab Muslims and Christians. An absurd idea in the Jewish state, of course, but apparently nothing is too absurd in the Arab world.
 
Still, don’t hold your breath waiting for this travesty of human rights abuse to be tabled for discussion at the UN, because that would require Arab acquiescence to such a debate. That won’t happen because the world’s 23 Arab states are way too busy vilifying the world’s sole Jewish state and are probably even now looking for ways to prevent the export of automobiles to the Zionist entity.
 
Israel is truly spoiled in its array of partners for peace.


Interesting link:
CAMERA writes about how Time Magazine dutifully plays its part in vilification of the Jewish state. In this article, the once-reputable publication does not float the idea of boycotting the export of automobiles to Israel - that will possibly come later - but instead demonises the Jewish state for its archaeological digs. Go figure.

The Aftonbladet non-story

Question:
When is organ trafficking involving Palestinian victims not a headline-grabbing story?

Answer 1:
When Swedish extreme-Left tabloid Aftonbladet realizes that the despicable practice cannot be blamed on Jews, Israelis, Zionists or democrats.

Answer 2:
When Swedish extreme-Left tabloid Aftonbladet realizes that the despicable practice is in fact taking place among Muslims in Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and Egypt.

The Aftonbladet Effect:
Total clampdown. The story does not exist.

Not in the totalitarian media empire run by Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest-circulation daily and largest stakeholder in TT, the Swedish news agency that dedicates itself to demonisation of the Jewish state while maintaining absolute silence on human rights abuses in such beacons of democracy and respectful coexistence as Sudan, Syria, Iran, the Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the Fatah-ruled West Bank, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

Is there a pattern in the above shortlist?

Scarcely surprisingly, Aftonbladet declined to publish a story about a massive organ-trafficking industry that continues to this day.

That’s because it discovered no Jews were involved. All the alleged perpetrators are Muslims. The victims are all Palestinian Arabs, exactly as in the original story published by Aftonbladet alleging systematic Israeli abuse (later retracted). All the other parameters are similar. It’s only the religion and ethnicity of the alleged perpetrators that are different.

Is a pattern beginning to emerge?

Immaterial really, since the story never made it into Aftonbladet.

CAMERA has published its exchange of correspondence with Aftonbladet on the issue of organised Muslim organ trafficking. “Exchange” is perhaps not the best word to use – Aftonbladet never replied. It’s a non-issue for the newspaper since no Jews were alleged to have been involved.

Is the pattern any clearer now?

No honest, principled or loyal Swedes were hurt in the publication of this article, but a whole lot of rabid publicly funded anti-Semites, virulent anti-Israeli fanatics and blatant pro-Islamists have undoubtedly been significantly aggrieved by its tone and content.

NGO Monitor - Dishonest Reporter Award
The Israel Project (TIP) - background to the organ trafficking allegations
Barry Rubin - The Blood Libel that Won't Die
Tundra Tabloids - Swedish Tabloid Aftonbladet Rejects Story of Organ Harvesting from Amman, Jordan
Mere Rhetoric - The Chinese Organ Harvesting Story that Also Doesn't Exist
Ilya Meyer on Swedish funding of anti-Israel radicalism: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
Ilya Meyer on Swedish news agency TT and its anti-Israel project: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

Swedish reporter's change of heart

Swedish photographer Donald Boström made waves in August this year when he abandoned his career as a photographer and instead tried his hand at journalism.

It was a mistake. He does not write coherently, he fails in the elementary ABC of checking on sources, he is subjective and unable to be objective, and his pro-Palestinian agenda shines through the few two-syllable words he succeeds in spelling correctly with the help of his trusty dictionary.

He wrote an article accusing the IDF of a systematic policy of killing Palestinian Arabs to supply a purported Israeli organ-trafficking industry, weaving his allegations together with a number of unrelated, overtly racist anti-Semitic accusations against Jews worldwide.

In early November, Boström travelled to Israel to defend his allegations. So certain was he of the treatment he would receive in the only democratic state in the Middle East that he hired a bodyguard to protect him 24 hours a day during his visit.

He needn't have bothered. This was, after all, Israel, not an Arab dictatorship. As is customary in any democracy, there were demonstrations against his racist views, but he was allowed to defend his views on TV and he left the country without incident. His bodyguard had the easiest assignment of his entire professional life.

Boström's civilised reception in Israel surprised him. Brought up on a decades-old Swedish diet of vilification of the Jewish state and of Jews in general, Boström today announced that he is reassessing his account of alleged official Israeli involvement in organ trafficking.

About time too, bearing in mind there is no story to pursue. He might, however, wish to pursue his enquiries on organ trafficking in Jordan, in Iran, among Palestinian Arabs, and in Egypt, where the practice is rife. In these Arab societies, the illegal trade in organs is a lively one indeed - pardon the pun.

Of course, Donald Boström may not survive any journalistic investigation into organ trafficking in the Arab and Muslim worlds, bodyguard or not. People asking awkward questions tend to be blown up, with some rather terminal side-effects. The unlucky ones tend to have their throats slit and the procedure televised and put on YouTube for other would-be surgeons in the Islamist world to emulate. So don't expect to see any articles on the subject bearing Donald Boström's signature any time soon.

It's good that Donald Boström has had a change of heart. Perhaps there has been some organ trafficking, after all.

Related articles from this site:
Swedish daily Aftonbladet: an ideology in search of a newspaper
Aftonbladet's defence begins to crumble
Swedish silence
Swedish Greens in fashionable brown shirts
Sweden: Open season on Jews
Freedom of the press in Sweden
Tensions in Swedish society
The view from Sweden

Exercise in democracy or plain old-fashioned treason?

Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch in Israel, is making increasingly strident calls for domestic unrest – drawn along ethnic and religious lines – in Israeli society.

The Jerusalem Post reported on 8 September that the cleric is now appealing directly to Israel’s enemies to extinguish the Jewish state (“I turn to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and to the Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and swear you in Allah's name … and in the name of the shaheeds …”)

Incitement
The cleric went on to say in the same interview that “Israel and its occupation will disappear”. On 17 August 2007 Jerusalem Post staff reported on Sheikh Salah’s incitement of the nation’s Muslim population to commit acts of ethnic-inspired violence against the state (“Islamic Movement chief praises Old City terrorist as 'shahid'”). In February this year, as reported in the Jerusalem Post, Sheikh Salah incited the nation’s Muslims to “save al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the occupation”. This is a tiny sampling of Sheikh Raed Salah’s most recent transgressions.

Sheikh Raed Salah is an Israeli citizen. Israel is in an enforced state of war with its Palestinian neighbours, in particular with the Hamas organisation that after more than a year still holds an illegally abducted soldier, Gilad Schalit, incarcerated without access to even the minimum humane standards stipulated by the International Red Cross and the UN. Schalit is a pawn in the Hamas strategy of human trafficking – a practice reviled and banned by every civilised organisation and nation the world over but still widely practised in the Islamic world. It is this same Hamas that fires daily rocket salvoes into southern Israel. And it is to this Hamas that Salah is making his appeal to crush the state of Israel.

A treasonable offence
The word for this is treason. Treason – in particular during a time of war – is a punishable offence.

At present the Muslim Waqf is being permitted, uncontested, to carve up ancient Jerusalem’s holiest Jewish sites using mass-destruction methods in the form of mechanical diggers. The Israeli government is doing as much about Sheikh Raed Salah as it is doing about the desecration of Judaism’s holiest site. Nothing. The terrorised residents of Sderot are being turned into refugees within their own country. The boundaries are being steadily rolled back – in religious, political and geographical terms. The State of Israel is being eroded at the same pace as the very foundations of Judaism’s Western Wall are being pulverised – and by the same people.

Leadership and legitimacy
Sheikh Salah puts his own position very neatly when he appeals to the leaders of the world’s fanatical Islamist fringe: “This is the time to test your leadership and its legitimacy,” he says, appealing to such beacons of spiritual enlightenment and bastions of democracy as Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi 9/11 planners and financiers, and Syria’s Hizbollah-backing Assad.

We could equally well direct the sheikh’s words to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. This is truly the time, Mr Olmert, to show your nation some sign of “leadership and legitimacy” by dealing with these open calls for treason solicited by a citizen of your own country.

Assaults from inside and out
Alternatively you could do nothing, Mr Prime Minister. Just watch your nation crumble under assaults from within the same way it did under external assaults last summer courtesy of Iran, Syria and Hizbollah. Last summer Israel survived thanks to the determination and dedication of our sons and daughters on the front lines and even way beyond enemy front lines, not thanks to the quality of the nation’s leadership. Permit me to voice my opinion, Mr Prime Minister, because two of my children were in that war, one of them lost his best friend in the course of a month-long campaign about which even the top military brass are saying there was no cohesive goal and no overall direction. That’s code language for “leadership”.

Confront or cower?
We live in a neighbourhood of bullies. You don’t contain bullies by cowering in the face of their aggression – you confront them by standing up to them and demonstrating your strength, steadfastness, nerve and determination never to bow to their threats, cost what it may. Because if you don’t confront bullies today, you can be sure you’ll pay the price tomorrow. Taking a decision to confront a bully requires leadership, Mr Prime Minister. Sometimes leadership is an uncomfortable responsibility, and it seldom gives first prize in the popularity stakes, but it always goes hand in hand with responsibility.

It’s time to exercise responsibility by showing leadership now. Arrest Sheikh Raed Salah on grounds of treason or abdicate that responsibility to someone who’s willing to do the job. Because as the sheikh himself says, this really “is the time to test your leadership and its legitimacy”.

It would be a terrible shame if it were left to our enemies to formulate the slogan that defines your premiership.

Closed door in Jordan, free rein in Israel
To put matters into even sharper perspective, Sheikh Raed Salah was denied entry into Jordan when he attempted to travel to the Hashemite Kingdom last week. The Palestinian-majority country of Jordan apparently knows something about the Sheikh that Israel doesn’t. The sheikh is barred from entering Jordan and fomenting trouble among the Palestinians there, but is given a free rein to indulge in treason at home.

Read the signs, Mr Prime Minister. I don’t want my children to be drawn into another Jihadist war abroad while at the same time fighting an unchecked fifth-column danger at home. Confront the schoolyard bullies – or close the school. Perhaps the frequent closures of Sderot’s schools indicate how you are thinking.

School quiz is political propaganda

I am writing with regard to your quiz no. 9 (May 2003, Basic), which my 13-year old son enjoyed doing this morning.

I would like to congratulate you on putting together a well-expressed and highly topical quiz that trains the spotlight on current events in an interesting and easy to understand way, yet without talking down to youngsters.

I do, however, take serious issue with one of the questions in this quiz:
The first question asks: “Yassir Arafat is the President of Palestine. Now the country also has a Prime Minister. What is his name?”

While it is highly laudable to draw attention to such a topical event of great current interest and potentially far-reaching importance, I strongly object to what is at best perhaps an unintentional error, at worst an invidious departure from fact designed to indoctrinate impressionable young children: there is no country called Palestine.



The facts of the matter are that Arabs of former Jordanian and Egyptian colonies – people who never previously expressed a wish for independence while under Arab occupation – now express a wish to create an independent state on lands currently administrated by Israel, lands that were secured from the aforementioned two Arab countries by Israel following a series of wars aggressed against Israel by these and other Arab states. Before that, Palestine was a geographical area (not a politically defined entity) administrated by Britain, and before that by Turkey. This historical Palestine included all of what is today Israel, as well as parts of the Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, all of Jordan and Egypt.

It is an unequivocal fact that local Arabs on the West Bank and in Gaza identify themselves as Palestinian Arabs. Equally so, it is an unequivocal fact that the region as a whole stands to reap immense benefits from a solution to the conflict that would grant the Palestinian Arabs the right to determine their own future once they stop perpetrating suicide-bombing massacres and armed ambushes against Israeli civilians. There is a wide gap, however, between this highly desirable theoretical state of affairs, on the one hand, and the presentation of “Palestine” as an already existing fact, on the other – this simply smacks of the indoctrination of impressionable schoolchildren.


Until the current state of conflict is resolved, might I suggest the use in future of the internationally accepted definition for the area under advisement? It is referred to by all the foremost authorities, including the UN, as “the Palestinian Territories” or “the Palestinian Authority Area”. I feel sure you would not wish to put yourselves forward as a greater authority on the subject than even the UN – the very body under whose auspices the conflict erupted in the first place.