Todah rabah!
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I'd like to make a suggestion to the Palestinian Authority:
Step 1 - Disarm the children.
A Palestinian boy holds a machinegun as militant members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades brandish their weapons during a rally at the Al-Ein refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus September 30, 2005.... REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini
So much for the PA's ban on public display of weapons.
Apparently, there was a rally against Zionism at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, CA, USA in July. One of the participants is seen in this photo:
via StandWithUs
Simon Wiesenthal passed away earlier this month.
UPDATE: According to the BBC,
A newspaper in Namibia is to publish an apology for an advertisement that attacked Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. The publisher of the German-language weekly Plus told the BBC News website the ad ought not to have been placed.Mr Wiesenthal, who died last week aged 96, was a Holocaust survivor who dedicated his life to bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.
The ad placed by a group thought to come from Germany, expressed "joy and satisfaction" over his death.
Publisher Hans Feddersen said that he had censored aspects of the advertisement, but admitted that the published version was "still very disgraceful"....
"I took the ad because of the money, and it was a lot of money," Mr Feddersen said. "I realised that under pressure I had not censored it enough. In the first place, I should not have taken it."
The quarter-page advertisement said:
"With joy and satisfaction, we take notice of the death of the big monster... On 20 September, the earth and its inhabitants were delivered from Simon... His biggest crime was to live 96 years."Mr Feddersen said he did not know anything about the group, calling itself International Action Against Forgetting, that had placed the advertisement, or where the organisation was based."But my feeling is they are in Germany - the money was from there," he said.
QUESTION: On another subject. The Palestinian Authority announced that they are forbidding the use of weapons in the streets. Do you have any comment on that? Do you think it will be enough?MR. MCCORMACK: I think it's a positive step. One of the most fundamental responsibilities of any government -- governing authority -- is to provide a safe, secure environment for its people. That's important so people can go about their daily lives, so they can do the normal things that people do around the world, you know, go to school, go shopping, you know, go to work.
QUESTION: Go to briefings.
MR. MCCORMACK: Go to press briefings.
QUESTION: But do you think it will be enough to ensure the security?
MR. MCCORMACK: Again, it's a first step. I think that the importance of this step is driven home by a recent example several days ago in which members of Hamas mishandled explosives in a open space and surrounded by people. The result was that, you know, many innocent people lost their lives. And so this is -- that, again, is a good reminder why there has to be one authority that maintains order and provides an atmosphere of calm, free from violence in any area. So it's a positive first step. The Palestinian Authority understands what its further obligations are with respect to security forces and terrorist networks.
How odd. I find no mention of the PA banning public use of weapons at their official news agency, WAFA. They do, however, cover the story of 21 women suffering miscarriages due to the Israeli air strikes.
UPDATE: According to the Billings Gazette,
Hamas spokesmanMushir al-Masrisaid the group would honor the ban on displays of weapons and parades, but ruled out surrendering weapons.
Another odd thing: If you click on this photo in thumbnail form at YahooNewsPhotos,
Masked Hamas militants brandish their weapons during a rally in Hebron. Palestinians were casting their ballots in more than 100 West Bank municipalities in the first popularity test for the radical Hamas movement since Israel's historic pullout from the Gaza Strip(AFP/Hazem Bader) AFP - Sep 29 1:11 AM
... you get this enlarged version:
Search YahooNewsPhotos for [Hamas + Hebron], and you'll see the same thumbnail several times, but when you click on any instance of it, you get some other shot. It's really weird.
And they all say "Sep. 25" whereas the one I first picked up was dated yesterday. Weirder and weirder.
You don't think the media's trying to cover up Hamas brandishing their weapons after the ban, do you?
For a clue, see Solomonia, July 21, 2004:
...Palestinian sources said Tuesday that allies of Mousa Arafat, named this past weekend to head most of the security groups in Gaza, convened the Palestinian press in Gaza and ordered them not to report on marches and other activities by Mousa Arafat's opponents, particularly supporters of his main opponent Mohammed Dahlan..
UK: Israeli offensive appropriate
By HERB KEINON / JPost
Israel's response to the recent Kassam rocket attacks on Sderot has been measured and appropriate, Kim Howells, Britain's Minister of State for the Middle East, told The Jerusalem Post, disregarding Palestinian appeals for the world to rein in the IDF.via LGFHowells, on a three-day visit to the region, hinted in an interview Wednesday night that financial aid to the Palestinian Authority might be withheld if the PA did not seriously begin tackling the terrorism in its midst.
"The Palestinians are receiving more aid per capita than any other people on the face of the earth, and we want to see some proper response," Howells said, hinting at a decrease of economic aid if the Palestinians don't fight terror.
"I thought the retaliation this week was proportionate," said Howells about the IDF operations. "The [Palestinian] attack was a very serious one, it could have killed a lot of people. It's a miracle really there weren't more casualties."
"I think there is no excuse now," he added. "Gaza is now in the hands of the Palestinian Authority, and there are no Israeli troops there. One hopes that where tough decisions have to be made, Abu Mazen [PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas] and the PA will make them."
At the same time, Howells said, the world would carefully watch how "selective" the IDF's retaliation would be. "I don't think that any nation on earth relishes the prospect of world opinion if it retaliates by shelling indiscriminately. But it seems to me that the Israelis have targeted with great care those it believes responsible for firing those rockets."
GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- Twenty-nine people were reported killed in an unprecedented attack on a refugee camp in the northwest of the Sudan region of Darfur, the United Nations said on Thursday. According to initial reports, the Aro Sharow camp was attacked by 250 to 300 "armed Arab men on horses and camels" late on Wednesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.Another 10 people were reported to have been seriously wounded and the nearby village of Gosmeina was also believed to have been attacked and burned, the agency said. The death toll referred only to camp dwellers....
Refugee camp jihad. And make no mistake: a jihad is exactly what it is — waged by Arab Muslims against non-Arabs Muslims whom they do not consider sufficiently Islamic. Sudanese General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman put it this way: "The door of the jihad is still open and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in Darfur."... in response, the UN threatens to...cut and run:"
The U.N. has warned that it may have to suspend aid operations in Darfur because of a resurgence in violence.
Grand Jury Indicts Two N.Y. Mosque LeadersALBANY, N.Y. Sep 29, 2005 — A federal grand jury has handed up new indictments charging two leaders of an area mosque with conspiring to support terrorists, the U.S. Attorney said Thursday.
Two New York mosque leaders charged with conspiring to support terrorists. Amazing how they could have risen to the leadership of a Muslim religious center while so thoroughly misunderstanding Islam. Funny thing: the same thing happened in Lodi, California. And all over the world, as we document here every day, we see Islamic clerics -- people who have dedicated their lives to studying and living out the religion -- at the forefront of terrorist movements. And yet so many people refuse to see what is right in front of their faces: maybe they aren't misunderstanding Islam at all.
Did you ever see the official U.S. State Department map of Israel?
Judea and Samaria (so-called "West Bank") are not included. They are portrayed in the same color as Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Oh, and Gaza. Even the BBC does better (scroll down).
"Permanent status to be determined through future negotiation."
A 6th-grade boy of the Hevron Jewish Community was walking and leading one of his family's goats along King David St., the main road between the Avraham Avinu and Beit Hadassah neighborhoods. At one point, he encountered a group of Arab youths who had cut through barbed wire to get into the Jewish area. The Arabs hit the boy, threw rocks at him, and stole his goat.The Jewish boy and several of his friends then ran into the Casba open-air market in an attempt to retrieve the goat. They also called several adults, in response to which Arnon and a few mothers arrived on the scene.
The adults asked the Arabs in the market if they had seen the boys who stole the goat. Israeli security forces soon arrived, and the Jewish boys asked them to detain one of their attackers whom they had identified in the interim.
"The suspect was detained," Arnon said, "but unbelievably, after a few minutes, the Arab attacker simply left the place, in front of the officer and soldiers, and they did nothing to stop him. The children called out, 'He's getting away!' but the officer refused to arrest him and refused to explain why. Instead, he called for Yassam police officers, who started pushing the Jews out of the area."
Four Jews were arrested in the course of their being pushed away, including the boy who had been attacked, another boy, and two women.
The Shai District Police released a statement saying that "three settlers were arrested after they entered the Arab market, threw stones at Arabs, and held an illegal assembly."
New Phase of Conflict Takes Shape in Middle East
- Matthew Tostevin (Reuters)
For the Palestinians, waging war from the West Bank, where Israel has arrested hundreds of suspected militants in recent days, is tougher than from Gaza. The Israeli army has far more control and access in the West Bank....via Daily AlertMilitants acknowledge that Israel's West Bank barrier has made it harder to get suicide bombers into the Jewish state. Tunneling through the West Bank's rocky ground into well-guarded hilltop settlements is much more difficult than mining the sandy terrain of the Gaza Strip. "It is not as easy to attack these settlements," said Nasser Abu Aziz of the al-Aqsa Brigades in Nablus.
