Daily Archives: June 20, 2017

World Council of Churches Starts Seven Weeks of Brainwashing General Secretary Tveit Recycles Dirty Old Water Lies by Malcolm Lowe

June 20, 2017   International, Prophecy   No comments
  • Palestinian propagandists constantly disseminate false accusations that Israel steals Palestinian water. Those allegations have been thoroughly refuted many times and are to be catalogued under the rubric of typical Palestinian propaganda lies.
  • If General Secretary Tveit seriously wants to help Palestinians, he should explain why Israelis enjoy so much more water per capita — to contrast the brilliance of Israel’s elimination of its former water problems with the utter incompetence of the Palestinian Authority to deal with its own problems. And to exhort the Palestinians to learn from Israel instead of vainly slandering Israel.
  • Israel now recycles 80% of waste water. Desalination plants have been erected along the Mediterranean coast, so that now Israel has an abundance of water. All this costs money, so Israelis pay more for their water and there is a punitive water price for anything above a legally defined level of domestic per capita water. Under the Palestinian Authority, it is the opposite. Up to 30% of their water has been estimated to go lost in their water delivery systems. Waste water is released to pollute the PA’s land, and some flows downhill to pollute Israel as well. Large numbers of Palestinians either do not pay water bills or simply steal water by illegal connections.

February 12, 2016, was a day of fresh hope for the suffering Christians of the Middle East. Pope Francis of Rome and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow met in Havana, Cuba, to issue a joint message to the world. After pledging themselves to change the history of schism between Eastern and Western Christianity, they placed the contemporary merciless persecution of Christians at the top of their agenda:

“Our gaze must firstly turn to those regions of the world where Christians are victims of persecution. In many countries of the Middle East and North Africa whole families, villages and cities of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being completely exterminated. Their churches are being barbarously ravaged and looted, their sacred objects profaned, their monuments destroyed…”

These were not empty words. The Moscow Patriarchate has collected large sums of money from its faithful to help the persecuted Christians of Syria. Likewise, the Roman Catholic Church, and specifically the Franciscan Order, is working at its own peril on the ground in Syria to relieve the suffering.

By coincidence, the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Olav Fyske Tveit (pronounced to rhyme with “state,” not “twit”), was on the ground in the Middle East. Only he was not there to show any concern for the Christians victims of Islamic militias in Syria and Iraq. Nor had he time for the persecution of Copts in Egypt, which continues despite the efforts of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to suppress attacks by Muslims upon Christian churches.

As many will have guessed, Tveit came to Jerusalem to pursue the decades-old obsession of the WCC with Palestine, Palestine and Palestine, to the detriment of Middle East Christians elsewhere, as an earlier article detailed. At a service in a Jerusalem church, hosted by Lutheran Arab Bishop Munib Younan and accompanied by the Archbishop of Sweden, Tveit was there to launch “Seven Weeks of Water 2016.”

We can let others describe the solemnly nonsensical ceremony and concentrate on the “sermon” (or rather pseudo-Christian political harangue) delivered by Tveit. It is available for download from the relevant webpage of the WCC. But first, consider some basic definitions.

Palestinian propagandists constantly disseminate false accusations that Israel steals Palestinian water. Those allegations have been thoroughly refuted many times and are to be catalogued under the rubric of typical Palestinian propaganda lies. This does not worry the propagandists themselves, who continue to repeat the same lies to every newcomer.

A person who hears such lies for the first time, maybe from a Palestinian cleric, and naively believes them is to be defined as an innocent dupe. Someone who repeats such lies year in and year out, despite being given every opportunity to know the truth, and who even sets up a long-term mechanism to perpetuate them, is a shameless liar.

To the former category, in a moment of uncharacteristic hasty judgment, belonged Martin Shulz, the otherwise prudent President of the European Parliament. When he visited Israel in February 2014, he was confronted in Ramallah with such a false statement by a Palestinian youngster, himself a victim of the Palestinian education system. This is the same education system, in place for two decades, that currently produces wave after wave of deluded teenage terrorists.

Shaken by what he heard, Shulz inserted that statement at the last moment into a speech that he was about to give to the Knesset. The Israeli legislators, who recognized the lie immediately as such, broke into a hubbub and some later walked out. Subsequently, Shulz added to the published version of his speech a disclaimer, to the effect that he was merely repeating what he had heard without having time to check the facts. Also the leader of the walkers-out, Naftali Bennett, went to Brussels to seek reconciliation with Mr. Shulz and even presented him with an ancient coin as a sign of friendship. Both men realized that they had made their respective mistakes and both made due amends.

Among others, this author then explained in a readily available article the truths and falsehoods of the matter. Moreover, the WCC has had for years a mechanism, its Ecumenical Water Network (EWN), to deal with water in general, but above all with Palestinian water. Such a mechanism, we may assume, must be aware of the refutation of all the Palestinian lies and irrelevant claims on the matter, at least since 2014. Nonetheless, Tveit’s so-called “sermon” merrily repeated them.

Leaving aside the window dressing of biblical quotations and theological platitudes, let us proceed to the heart of the “sermon,” Tveit’s allegations against Israel, which he takes unhesitantly as gospel truth from the “advocacy group of Palestine, EWASH.” Says he: “80% of the ground water from Palestine’s mountain aquifer is pumped underneath all the way to Israel; and, the Palestinians are left with only 20% of the available water.”

This is an incredible claim: that Israel steals 80% of the water of the Palestinians and pumps it all the way to Israel. Needless to say, no such apparatus of pumps and pipelines exists. The truth, here totally garbled, is quite different. Almost all the Palestinian population is concentrated in a series of cities and villages on the central mountain range running from north to south (Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron). It is also here that rainfall is concentrated, brought by prevalent winds from the west. Much of this water, however, passes through underground rock formations either to the east (mainly to Jericho) or to the west, where it emerges in springs in pre-1967 Israel. So the only person that Tveit can denounce for this “theft” is the Creator of the World.

Nor is the situation unique. Similar cases exist elsewhere on the planet. The standard answer is an agreement whereby the beneficiaries of the situation give a certain percentage of their water to those who live where the rain fell. Naturally, there is no standard formula to calculate the percentage, since it must depend on local factors. Moreover, Israel and the Palestinians made exactly such an agreement in 1995 as part of the Oslo II Accord. In recent years, the amount of rainfall has decreased, but Israel continues to transfer the agreed amount of water and even more.

In other words, the central accusation of Palestinians – that Israel steals water from them – has been refuted for more than twenty years. Nevertheless, Palestinian propagandists – since truth matters neither to them nor to their eager audiences of Israel haters – continue to propagate the lie.

Says Tveit further, also quoting EWASH: “on an average, Ramallah receives more rainfall than London. However, the average per capita water consumption in London is 150 litres/day compared to that of only 70 litres/day for an average Palestinian. On the other hand, the per capita consumption for Israel is 300 litres/day.”

It does not matter whether these figures are true or just more lies. The point here is that the figures are utterly irrelevant. Israel’s obligation to the Palestinians is based exclusively upon the volume of rain that falls in the mountains. How much this works out per capita depends upon something else: how many Palestinians there are to use it. The obligation is the same whether the areas of the Palestinian Authority contain just one hundred Palestinians or one hundred million Palestinians. If the Palestinians are engaged in a population explosion that doubles their population every twenty years, as they claim (whether truthfully or not), that is entirely their own responsibility and not Israel’s.

Consequently, any accusations against Israel that allege per capita figures of water usage are null and void and should be immediately rejected and ignored. Whenever Palestinians confront you with such per capita data, as they invariably do, you should know that they are attempting to blind you with irrelevant information. As does Tveit.

What Tveit should have thought and spoken about, if he seriously wanted to help Palestinians, was to explain why Israelis enjoy so much more water per capita – to contrast the brilliance of Israel’s elimination of its former water problems with the utter incompetence of the Palestinian Authority to deal with its own problems. And to exhort the Palestinians to learn from Israel instead of vainly slandering Israel. Indeed, his whole Ecumenical Water Network, if it is worth anything, should be recommending the Israeli model worldwide.

Until a few years ago, Israel was highly susceptible to sharp variations in annual rainfall. It has now solved the problem by a combination of legislation and technical initiatives. Recycling now reclaims some 80% of waste water. New desalination plants have been erected along the Mediterranean coast, so that now Israel has an abundance of water to start with. All this costs money, so Israelis do pay more for their water and there is a punitive water price for anything above a legally defined level of domestic per capita water.

Under the Palestinian Authority, it is all the opposite. Up to 30% of their water has been estimated to go lost in the systems that deliver their water. Waste water is released to pollute the Palestinian Authority’s land and some of it flows downhill to pollute Israel as well. What is recycled, as in Tveit’s case, are just dirty old water lies. While the Palestinian Authority (PA) lacks a coast, Oslo II did permit it to exploit the eastern mountain aquifer, which it barely does. In addition, very large numbers of Palestinians either do not pay water bills or simply steal water by illegal connections to the water grid. It is the same with Palestinian electricity: bills are not paid and illegal connections are made with impunity.

Rather than enforce whatever laws it has, the Palestinian Authority simply orders more water and electricity from the Israeli grids. Yet it, too, does not pay its bills: it is typically hundreds of millions of shekels in arrears.

Israel spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last few years to build water desalination plants on its Mediterranean coast, so that now Israel has an abundance of water. At the same time, Palestinian propagandists constantly disseminate false accusations that Israel steals Palestinian water. Pictured above, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro tours the Hadera Desalination Plant on July 26, 2012. (Image source: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv)

And do not let anyone deceive you with claims that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are stealing Palestinian water. The major settlement blocks have been connected to the Israeli water grid, so they are receiving and paying for Israeli water.

The third claim taken by Tveit from EWASH is that “only 1.5% of the applications by the Palestinians for digging wells and other water facilities in Area C have been approved by Israeli authorities over the past 4 years.” Anyone with an understanding of hydrology should applaud this fact, if fact it be. Area C (the Palestinian population of which has always been small) comprises arid or semi-arid regions, where the sinking of wells has to be strictly controlled.

This situation can be seen in Gaza. Here the natural rock formations are the reverse: rainwater falling in Israel is funnelled underground to Gaza. That is why Gaza was a fruitful oasis throughout millennia of human history. Since the Palestinian Authority was set up in Gaza in 1993 (under the Oslo I Accord), and since Hamas seized power in 2007, the proliferation of uncontrolled well-drilling by Palestinians has led to a drop in ground water level and an encroachment of sea water. It has made the ground water undrinkable. The Gazans have destroyed God’s gift, taken from Israel and given to them. So they now only import drinkable water from water-thrifty Israel.

The WCC’s Seven Weeks of Water will be in effect Seven Weeks of Brainwashing. As the WCC’s dirty water pours into member churches, it will pollute the minds of naïve ignorant Christians and it will be lapped up by pretend-Christian Israel haters, as if they were giving themselves shots of a Class A drug. As for the miseries of Middle East Christians, the WCC will succeed, as usual, in removing them from the agenda for the sake of “Palestine.”

Regarding Tveit himself, he no longer has any excuse for repeating lies. If he truly was utterly ignorant of the truth, he can show it by admitting ignorance hitherto, expressing remorse and cancelling his seven wet weeks. We have no confidence, however, that any such thing as a true evaluation of the matter is of any interest to him and his like.

One of Tveit’s predecessors, Konrad Raiser, did once admit that the WCC had wrongly disregarded the truth. It had done so, he said, in its attitude to Soviet dissidents. But his was merely a sin of omission, easier to regret. In any case, he admitted it only after he had left office and the Soviet Union had disappeared.

The current WCC has multiplied sins of commission by founding an alphabet soup of subsidiaries that militate against Israel: EAPPI, KP, EWN, PJP… (never mind the inventive titles that they stand for). EAPPI, for instance, recruits volunteers from churches all over the world to have their heads stuffed for three months with Palestinian allegations. (Three months – because that is the longest visa that Israel grants to visitors who claim to be tourists.) The well-intentioned volunteers are afforded no opportunity of verifying those accusations against Israel. They are then obliged to spend another three months touring their own churches and repeating the allegations. Truth is not merely ignored, it is of systemic insignificance.

Malcolm Lowe is a Welsh scholar specialized in Greek philosophy, the New Testament and interfaith relations.

Read More

Women of Courage Betrayed by U.S. and the Media by George Phillips

June 20, 2017   International, Politics, Top News   No comments
  • Berta Soler and the other “Ladies in White” have been ignored by the Obama Administration — bypassed year after year. These and countless other brave women who are also human rights leaders — often falsely accused of crimes, and who are currently suffering in Iranian prisons — should be recognized as Women of Courage, but remain sidelined by the U.S. government, the media, and most notably by women’s groups.
  • Why are we not only failing to help them, but instead washing our hands of them?
  • Disingenuously, Obama keeps repeating that his deal will “prevent” Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — when the deal clearly empowers Iran to get them.

Pope Francis, on his recent trip to Cuba, failed to embrace publicly the world famous “Ladies in White” (“Damas de Blanco”) — the wives and relatives of Cuba’s jailed dissidents.

“Ladies in White” was formed by Berta Soler in 2003 after 75 human rights activists and journalists were sent to prison by the Cuban government. The men in their family had been jailed for being activists. The “Ladies in White” were peacefully calling for their release.

This year, for twenty straight Sundays between April and August, members of the “Ladies in White” were arrested as well — for leading protests against the Castro regime for having imprisoned their family members and for suppressing human rights.

These women have also been routinely harassed and beaten during their peaceful efforts to stand for freedom.

After 75 human rights activists and journalists were sent to prison by the Cuban government in 2003, Berta Soler (left) formed “Ladies in White” with the female relatives of the political prisoners. At right: Cuban dissident Digna Rodriquez Ibañez, a member of Ladies in White, was pelted with tar by agents of the Cuban regime, in February 2015.

On September 20, on their way to a special meeting with Pope Francis in Cuba, Berta Soler and her husband were arrested by police. An additional 20 members of the “Ladies in White” were also arrested to prevent them from attending the papal mass in Havana.

Berta Soler and the other “Lades in White” have been ignored by the Obama Administration – bypassed year after year as one of the ten women honored by the U.S. Department of State at its annual Women of Courage Award.

Iranian women have also largely been bypassed for this honor. As members of the Obama Administration move forward with the policy of engagement with the brutal regimes in Havana and Tehran, it is important not to forget the courageous people, including women, who oppose them.

Since the inception of the award in 2007, eleven Afghan women and four Pakistani women have been honored as Women of Courage.

Although there are plenty of deserving candidates among Iranian women for this award, only one has been selected, and that, in 2010: Shadi Sadr, a lawyer and journalist who started a website dedicated to women’s rights activists in Iran and has represented activists in court.

The Women of Courage Award, which in the past also has been given posthumously, should also be awarded to Neda Agha-Soltan, whose was brutal murder was recorded live during the “Green Movement” protests in Iran in 2009 and gained world-wide attention.

Neda, as she has become known, was hailed by protesters as an “Angel of Freedom.” After her murder, the Iranian regime banned prayers for her. Her grave has been desecrated, posters memorializing her have been torn down, and her family has been targeted.

Unfortunately, members of the Obama Administration failed to give any support whatsoever for the Green Movement in 2009 and certainly do not seem likely to do so now. The current U.S. Administration evidently prefers clinging to a quixotic “Iran deal,” supported by only 21% of the American public, and that, in any event, many believe will have catastrophic consequences. Disingenuously, President Obama keeps repeating — most recently on a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Steve Croft — that his deal will “prevent” Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, when the deal is quite clear that it empowers Iran to get one.

There are also countless brave women, also human rights leaders, often falsely accused of supposed crimes, who are currently suffering in Iranian prisons. They, too, should be recognized as Women of Courage, but remain sidelined by the U.S. government, the media, and most notably by women’s groups.

One of these women, Bahareh Hedayat, was arrested in Iran in 2009 for her work in a student organization and the “One Million Signatures Campaign for the Change of Discriminatory Laws Against Women.”

The official charges against her included “acting against national security and publishing falsehoods”, “insulting the Supreme Leader” and “insulting the President.”

Just as she was finishing her prison term and scheduled for release, she was given an additional two years for a previously suspended sentence in 2007 relating to peace activism. The extension was added by Iran’s Revolutionary Court on the ethereal-sounding grounds of “acting against national security”, “disturbing public order” and “propaganda against the state.”

Iran targeted another woman, Narges Mohammadi, after she met with the then European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in 2014. Doctors are requesting her be moved from prison to a hospital, to prevent a paralysis from which she is suffering from becoming worse.

Recent charges against Mohammadi from her arrest this May include “activities against national security and anti-government publicity” for participating in human rights campaigns and a campaign against the death penalty.

Also serving 14 years in prison is another opponent of the death penalty, Atena Daemi. The regime imprisoned her because of her Facebook posts and information on her mobile phone critical of the Supreme Leader, as well as her efforts against death penalty.

Daemi’s health is also poor. She is having increasing difficulty sleeping and seeing, and may have multiple sclerosis.

While frequent charges against these women include “insulting the Supreme Leader” and acting “against national security,” it seems as if their actual “crime” actual “crime” is freedom of speech.

The “Ladies and White” and so many other brave Cuban and Iranian women are merely asking for freedom and justice. Why are we not only failing to help them, but instead washing our hands of them?

George Phillips served as an aide to Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, working on human rights issues.

Read More

Will the West Please Stop Siding with Criminals? by Khadija Khan

June 20, 2017   International, Politics   No comments
  • What is agonizing is that people either enjoyed or criticized the joyful act of a teenager, but no one seems to be noticing that this public trial and her forced apologies only mean further isolation for the young Muslim women.
  • Most horrifying is that it seems that even the West has started to buy into the version of “modesty” that these extremists in the Middle East have been forcing on women.
  • Why has no one — especially politicized, self-absorbed women’s groups — come to help? Instead, as in the recent Women’s March, they have been advocating for more women’s imprisonment.
  • It is important for as many people as possible, both in Britain and world-wide, to say how much they love her beautiful spirit and that they totally stand by her right to dance, sing, play or have fun.

The growth in systematic abuse of women, especially by Islamists in the West, requires democratic governments to introduce strong measures to stop this abuse, before abusive mullahs start harassing women of all faiths, to force them to submit to their wishes.

The recent threats and harassment of a British “Hijabi girl” by Islamists in Birmingham, England, merely for a video showing her dance, have re-exposed the ugly face of this autocratic mindset that owes its existence to extremist states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Enslaving women in general and inflicting repressive agendas — such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, segregation, allowing no say in choosing a partner, education or profession, with abysmal living standards often part of the abuse — is just a small measure of the jihad that the Islamists have managed to unleash across the globe.

The video of “Hijabi girl” (her name is not known), happily dancing in public, was recorded and uploaded to the internet by bystanders.

The video led to aggressive shaming and harassment of the girl by the local Islamist “morality police”: men who ranted against her “impious” act and reportedly made her apologize publicly online.

Sobbing, she admitted how supposedly evil and shameless she was to have brought such dishonor to her family and religion.

It is important for as many people as possible, both in Great Britain and world-wide, to say how much they love her beautiful spirit and that they totally standby her right to dance, sing, play or have fun. These are very normal human activities.

Have things come to such a pass that now. even in Britain, only the most courageous can spontaneously express feelings of fun?

What is agonizing is that people either enjoyed or criticized the joyful act of a teenager, but no one seems to be noticing that this public trial and her forced apologies only mean further isolation for the young Muslim women.

To accept this coercion would be just a call on young Muslim girls to be quiet and submit, rather than ever even to think about showing their normal, lighter side. Most horrifying is that it seems that even the West has started to buy into the version of “modesty” that for centuries these extremists in the Middle East have been forcing on women.

The human rights groups seem to have become so apologetic towards the extremist abusers that they now turn their backs on the victims of these abuses — the people who need human rights groups the most. Perhaps they believe that supporting the poor girl would mean offending Muslims or the “symbol of Islam” (hijab) — which means they endorse the extremist version of Islam and the abuses that come with it.

The poor girl was shown no solidarity by any supposed champions of liberal causes. Instead, she was thrown to the hounds and left to face her torment alone.

It is also sad that the girl’s family has probably also given up, possibly due to the threats, and possibly out of fear of these extremists.

The massively destructive, wrong-headed political policies of Western governments — such as keeping silent on the abuses of women by Muslim extremists involving, for example, underage and forced marriages, female genital mutilation (FGM), sharia courts in the UK and accepting the existence of no-go zones where the extremists enjoy impunity and thrive — are also to be blamed for the increase in violations of women’s rights. Politicians and the policy-makers are apparently too scared of being accused of committing some fabricated “Islamophobia” or “infringing on the rights of Muslim citizens”, so they choose to keep their eyes shut to the plight of these women.

An image from the video “Right to choose: Spotting the signs of forced marriage – Nayana”, produced by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office. In 2013, 1,302 victims of forced marriage sought help from the British government’s Forced Marriage Unit.

This is not an isolated incident in which a young Muslim girl was victimized by the extremists just for innocently being herself. In Canada, famous video blogger named Froggy, of Pakistani origin, suffered similar harassment. She was also vilified by puritanical extremists for wearing a hijab but living a Western lifestyle by hanging out with young men and uploading videos of teenage fun.

In Darmstadt, Germany, 19-year-old Lareeb Khan was killed in 2015 by her parents when she decided to take off her hijab and pursue a normal life. Her father, Asadullah Khan, claimed that he had killed his daughter to save the honour of his family. He alleged — whether it is true or not we do not know — that the girl was having sexual relations with a boy of whom her family disapproved.

Her mother admitted to being present at the time of Lareeb’s murder, but claimed she could not rescue her due to both fear and illness. Lareeb’s sister, Nida, however, stated that her mother was an accomplice to the crime, and used to thrash her.

In a pathetic attempt at exculpation, Lareeb’s parents claimed that they were victims of the extremist Pakistani state and society. However, they chose, when they were given refuge and protection by a Western state, to impose similar abuses.

Extremists use shaming and harassment as punishment and deterrence for any woman in their communities who tries to break a barrier to regain her life.

This double edged-sword not only silences the victims of the abuse but also sends a message to the other women also not to try to escape their imprisonment.

Why has no one — especially politicized, self-absorbed women’s groups — come to help? Instead, as in the recent Women’s March, they have been advocating for more women’s imprisonment.

The notion that a hijab or a conservative lifestyle is a matter of choice for Muslim women might sound sympathetic to Westerners. It is not. In reality, there is no choice. The supposed choice is, in fact, a one-way street from which trying to exit can cost a woman her life.

These extremist Muslims need to be taught by society itself that they must respect individual freedoms and equality — by law.

Many liberal women, doubtlessly well-intended, seem love to wearing hijabs supposedly “in solidarity”; what they do not understand is that for millions and millions of Muslim women, who dare not say so, it is not a symbol of freedom and “protection” — like a slave-owner “protecting” his property — but of repression and imprisonment. It is forced upon women, now even in the West, and, worse, with the wholehearted complicity of the West.

It is also a time for governments purportedly in favour of human rights no longer to sweep these mafia tactics under the carpet.

It is time for politicians, governments, policy-makers, clerics, human rights groups and “liberals” to stop siding with criminals who commit assault, battery, and even murder, and to start protecting their citizens.

Khadija Khan is a Pakistan-based journalist and commentator.

Read More

Will Obama Try to Blackmail Israel? by Shoshana Bryen

June 20, 2017   International, Politics, Top News   No comments
  • President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one “victory.”
  • Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And Obama’s abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world.
  • It is estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2014, four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces. This is a far cry from 2011, when Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.”
  • He needs to find a “success.” Cue the Middle East “peace process.”

As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another “peace plan” designed by the Obama administration. There isn’t much new in it. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. might support a UN Security Council resolution calling on “both sides to compromise on key issues,” and it might involve the Middle East Quartet. Israel would be told to stop building in the territories and recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian State. The Palestinians would be told to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and give up the “right of return” for the original 1948/49 refugees and their descendants.

Just do it and voila! Problem solved.

As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another “peace plan” designed by the Obama administration. (Image source: Israel Prime Minister’s Office)

Why and why now? Because President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office and needs another job. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one “victory.” Consider the list of Administration failures right now and the terrible destruction they have entailed:

In his first foreign visit, President Obama opened the door in Egypt to an uprising not only of “Google people” in Tahrir Square, but also to the Muslim Brotherhood. Brotherhood representatives were front and center at the President’s speech in Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, to the dismay of longtime ally Hosni Mubarak. After Mubarak’s overthrow, the White House pressed for the inclusion of the Brotherhood in Egyptian elections despite its history of terrorism. Since then, the U.S. and Egypt have been unable to find a way to communicate constructively, despite Egypt’s increasing closeness to Israel and their joint interest in controlling the terrorist Hamas and Iranian-sponsored jihadis in Sinai.

The Muslim Brotherhood was emboldened in Syria by its successes in Egypt.

The Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS — both in some measure precipitated by the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq – have killed upwards of 350,000 people (more than 55,000 in 2015) and displaced nearly 4 million more. Chemical weapons, starvation, beheadings and aerial bombing are weapons of choice by various sides. Russia is calling the shots (literally) in Syria, while Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to fund various jihadi groups, and Iran operates freely in both Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah, despite taking enormous casualties in Syria, continues to add to its missile arsenal in Lebanon.

This is a far cry from 2011, when President Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” An Iraqi non-governmental organization estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed there in 2014, double the number from the previous year and four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces.

Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have all been destabilized by an influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq. Lebanon, a fragile country of less than 4.5 million people divided into Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Druze, now has more than one million Syrian refugees.

Afghanistan was the “good war” in President Obama’s narrative. At West Point at the end of 2009, President Obama announced an additional deployment of 30,000 American soldiers to stabilize Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan. Six years later — 15 years after we got there — American military leaders told him the Afghan government still couldn’t survive without a continuing American military presence. Since the administration decided to leave a contingent of nearly 10,000 soldiers for an indefinite period of time, the Taliban has refused to continue peace talks with the Afghan government, and we’re looking at another bloody summer. Terrorist bombs in Pakistan are a daily occurrence.

Libya was supposed to be a test of our “responsibility to protect.” It also had, from the President’s point of view, the benefit of “leading from behind” and having “no boots on the ground.” After successfully ousting Moammar Gaddafi — who had turned his WMD program over to US and UK intelligence, kept al-Qaeda from moving from Egypt to Western North Africa, and paid reparations for terrorism — the U.S. acknowledged as many as 30,000 Libyan deaths in two months of war.

The war in Mali was a direct result of the demise of the Gaddafi government and the raiding of government weapons depots by al-Qaeda-supported Tuareg forces. Only the direct involvement of French troops saved the government there. The deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone S. Woods, and Glen Doherty are attributable to the rise of al-Qaeda there as well. Today, there are as many as 1700 armed gangs across Libya and ISIS controls Sirte, a city of more than 100,000. The Pentagon is drawing up plans for U.S. military action to force ISIS out, we are again bombing Libya and there are American Special Forces on the ground.

Meanwhile, the U.S. bombed an al-Shabaab training base in Somalia this week, killing more than 150 members of the group.

Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And President Obama’s abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world.

The widespread wreckage and carnage that accrues to President Obama’s policies and fantasies should disqualify him from further activity on the international stage when his term ends. But since retirement doesn’t appear in the offing, he needs to find a “success.”

Cue the Middle East “peace process.”

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.

Read More

Will Mahmoud Abbas Pay Salaries to the Arsonists? by Itamar Marcus

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments

While Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas was accepting praise for sending Palestinian firefighters to help put out fires in Israel, the PA Finance Ministry was busy doing the paper work to start paying salaries to the Palestinian arsonists who were arrested for setting many of those same fires. So far Israel has arrested 23 suspected arsonists connected to the hundreds of fires that raged across Israel in the last week of November, burning more than 500 homes and 32,000 acres of forests and national parks. According to Palestinian law documented by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), anyone imprisoned for “resisting the occupation” receives a high monthly salary. Therefore, all of those convicted and imprisoned for arson will receive PA salaries “from the day of arrest until the day of release.”

 

A fire rages in central Haifa, November 24, 2015. (Image source: Haaretz video screenshot)

Of course, it is not only arson-terrorists who receive a PA salary. All Palestinian, Israeli Arab and Arab terrorists from any country who are imprisoned are rewarded with high salaries from the PA. (See PMW Special Report) According to PA law and practice, “resisting the occupation” includes any Arab imprisoned for attacking Israelis by any means, including throwing a stone at a car, driving a car into people at bus stops, building bombs for suicide bombers to blow up at cafes, or shooting and stabbing civilians to death in their sleep. Since the PA automatically includes anyone who attacked Israelis or their possessions as “fighters” who are “resisting the occupation,” there is no justification under Palestinian law and practice not to include last week’s arsonists among the Palestinian “heroes” who receive monthly salaries.

Significantly, these salaries for terrorists rise the longer terrorists are in jail. Terrorists convicted of murder and serving life sentences will reach a high salary of NIS 12,000 a month – more than four times the average Palestinian salary.

The PA has already paid the five Hamas terrorists who murdered Eitam and Naama Henkin in front of their four children last October in total NIS 91,000 as reward for their murders. And terrorist Abdallah Barghouti has already received NIS 645,000 for building the bombs that murdered 67 Israelis at the Sbarro pizza shop, Sheffield Club, Moment Café, the triple bombing at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, Hebrew University and No. 4 bus in Tel Aviv.

Today there are approximately 7,000 Palestinian prisoners on the PA payroll. The PA rewards them every month for terrorism, and this generous arrangement will cost the PA NIS 488 million in 2016 alone, according to the PA’s publicized budget.

If Abbas was ever serious about stopping the PA’s ongoing support for terrorism, he now has the perfect opportunity to make a difference. Instead of merely enjoying complimentary headlines and nice photo ops of Palestinian firemen with Israelis, Abbas should decree that the arsonists will not receive PA salaries.

Even though this is contrary to current Palestinian law and practice.

Should Abbas insist on adding the imprisoned arsonists to the PA payroll, his hypocrisy in sending a few fire engines to Israel will be exposed to the world.

Should Abbas decide to deny salaries to the arsonists this may indicate the beginning of a fundamental change in the PA attitude toward terrorism. However, if Abbas cancels salaries only to the arsonists, it will not be enough. If he says to the world that the PA will not pay salaries those who burned trees, rocks and homes while it continues to pay salaries to murderers of men, women and children, his values and behavior, which cause many to see him as a terrorist leader, will remain unchanged.

If Abbas’ act of sending fire trucks to help Israel was a sincere act indicating that he is no longer a terrorist leader, he now has a great opportunity to prove it.

Right now while he has the world’s attention, having made this small gesture in the direction of peace, let him take a serious step. Abbas should announce that not only will the arsonists not be rewarded with PA salaries, but he is changing Palestinian law and canceling the payments to all imprisoned terrorists altogether.

And what better opportunity than now to announce this, during Fatah’s Seventh General Conference.

If Abbas continues to pay salaries to murderers and arsonists, his gesture of sending fire trucks to Israel must be seen as an act of contemptuous hypocrisy.

Itamar Marcus is director of Palestinian Media Watch.

Read More
« Older posts
Newer posts »
Translate »
Skip to toolbar