16-Jul-18: What do the Palestinian Arabs want? What do they believe? What do they think?

The last time we addressed the important matter of Palestinian Arab opinion polls ["04-Apr-18: Here's (one view of) what the Palestinian Arabs want"] we started this way:

Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion can be valuable tools for understanding what they think at any given time. And no less importantly, how accurate the assessments of what they want for the future are. And to be blunt about this, they're invariably more valuable by far than media guesses about what the Palestinian Arabs think and want. Claims are made freely and often about Palestinian Arab aspirations. Very often, though, the data tell a story that's at total variance from what's being claimed about them. That's why we have chosen from time to time to publicize here the results of opinion polls conducted by relatively respected organizations within Palestinian Arab society.

We stand by every word of that.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) has just posted the findings of its latest opinion poll conducted in "the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 25 June and 1 July 2018". PSR is headed by a respected professional, Dr. Khalil Shikaki. We know him only by his work and reputation; we have no personal connection. We have reported on his organization's past findings at intervals over the past four years - here are some of the posts we wrote:

Most of our previous poll-centered posts have been based on the published data of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), whose head is Dr. Khalil Shikaki. They include:

• 10-Dec-14: What else do Palestinian Arabs want, beyond the 80% who say killing of ordinary Israelis is a good thing?
• 22-Sep-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?
• 14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 16-May-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 15-Jun-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 26-Sep-17: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now

(Click here for the full list.)

The latest PSR Public Opinion Poll is Number 68 and was released yesterday. It's based on a survey sample of 2,150 adults interviewed face to face in 127 randomly selected locations. Margin of error is 2.5%. Some of the findings that caught our attention:

How rotten are their lives? Palestinian Arab society is highly dysfunctional on multiple plains, and strongly marked by very wide citizen fear of its own institutions. How strongly? 60% of them (maybe read that again - sixty percent!) say people cannot criticize the PA "without fear". This may be connected to the next finding - that "perception of corruption" is 80%. We interpret this to mean that eight out ten of them believe the people with whom they are forced to deal in the PA and Hamas regime offices are on the take or applying wrong and subjective criteria and will put personal benefit or other irrelevant interests ahead of doing an honest job. That's a nightmare world.

The downward spiraling of Gaza: The pollsters asked what they call an open-ended question: which party or which side is causing the worsening of conditions in the Gaza Strip? 34% say it's Israel - no great surprise given the full-blast hate messaging emanating from Hamas. But what of the other two thirds? So 26% blame Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority; and despite the thuggish grip they and their Islamist insiders have over Gaza, no fewer than 20% believe it's Hamas' fault. Conclusion: most of the anger about Gaza that Palestinian Arabs are willing to express is directed at two of the Palestinian Arab regimes. (They were not given the option of blaming the third Palestinian Arab entity, Jordan.)

Leadership: If Palestinian Arab elections were held now, and they took the form of a two-horse race, Fatah/PA/PLO president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas terrorist-in-chief Ismail Haniyeh would produce a near-dead-heat: 47% versus 46%. If the convicted, imprisoned and unrepentant ex-leader of the Fatah/Tanzim terrorist gunmen Marwan Barghouti were to run against the Hamas guy, Barghouti would walk it in: 58% versus 37%. This is not the only indication that Palestinian Arab public opinion respects men who know how to kill (meaning they know how to tell their underlings how to kill).

Abbas go home: From his standpoint, it's good that president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas doesn't have to actually face up to elections, but there is a tiny silver lining to the cloud of rejection that his leadership evokes among ordinary Palestinian Arabs. The latest measure of "satisfaction" with Abbas' leadership is a pathetic 37%; active dissatisfaction stands at 59%. Sounds bad, right? (According to the Gallup Polls website, satisfaction with how President Trump is doing his job is just a bit higher: 41% as of a week ago.) The silver part of this for Abbas is he was doing worse three months ago. Back then, PSR found a dismal 33% were satisfied with his leadership and 68% wanted him out of office immediately. Today 61% of all Palestinian Arabs want to see him leave office immediately. Which isn't entirely bad since 90 days ago it was 62%. (He's doing great by his own standards.)

Jerusalem: The recent relocation of part of the US embassy's functions from its beachside Tel Aviv location to the long-established US consulate in Jerusalem is seen as weakening the Palestinian Arab "position" (we're frankly not certain what that word means in this context - probably the "position" that Jerusalem which has never been the capital city of any Arab entity in history should become "Palestine"'s capital) by most Palestinian Arabs: 55% of them. We're frankly puzzled at the strength of this concern which, in practical terms, has not changed anything on the ground. But being a Palestinian Arab is nothing if not a matter of perceptions and watching over your own shoulder.

Israeli municipal elections: When eligible voters vote on October 30, 2018, most East Jerusalem Arab residents who can vote (holders of so-called Blue Israeli IDs - the vast bulk of the Arabs we see everyday commuting into downtown Jerusalem by car, bus or light rail) say they won't. A mere 22% say they will. We guess going to the election centers comes at a certain price in a community where most people see most officials as dishonest and dangerous. A pity for all of us. But especially for them - especially since other data show they demonstrate a solid, practical and growing connection to living under Israeli sovereignty compared with the past ["Jerusalem Palestinians still seek Israeli citizenship despite Trump declaration", USAtoday, December 18, 2017]

The "peace" process: Here's where it gets especially painful - if you believe the widespread and irresponsible media narrative of a desperate Palestinian Arab search for more and better peace with their Israeli neighbors. The most effective means of establishing a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel is, according to respondents to the poll:

Negotiation: 39% (West Bankers 41%; Gazans 35%)
Armed "resistance": 34%
"Non-violent resistance": 22%. We could write an essay about the gulf that separates that simple-seeming term and what the highly immoderate "moderate" Abbas and his cohort mean when they use it. In fact, we have written several - click for some. We especially recommend "18-Aug-17: On vehicle rammings, Mahmoud Abbas, moderate advocate for terror, is open-minded, sees both sides".

What do the Israelis want? A large majority of Palestinian Arabs, 58% of them, say Israel’s "long-term aspiration" (undefined) is to expand Israel to stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and to expel the Palestinian Arabs. A more moderate view, held by 21% of Palestinian Arabs, is that Israel plans to annexe "the occupied territories" (undefined) and then "deny the Palestinian citizens their rights" (undefined). Fewer than one in five Palestinian Arabs think Israel’s intention is to withdraw from all or parts of those occupied territories after ensuring its security.

AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed

If there's a single take-away that we wish the Western media would absorb from this and all the previous poll results we have posted here, it's that among Palestinian Arabs there's far less belief in their own leaders than a difficult process like making peace needs. This trumps all the better-publicized problems like the endless rivalry between the Fatah people and the overtly-Islamist people, and the sense among the Arabs that the Israelis want to kill them all, expel them all or absorb them all while stealing their rights. 

There is literally no possibility of a deeply split society (which is what the Palestinian Arabs surely have) even starting the process of adjusting their expectations towards the compromise that peace necessarily demands. That will remain true so long as the leadership is steeped in personal and institutional corruption, a total unwilling to surrender power or even submit to elections and obsessively focused on the need for outsiders - the UN agencies in general and UNRWA in particular - to solve Palestinian Arabs' economic and development problems.

Though they never seem to be asked about this by pollsters, what will it take for ordinary Palestinian Arabs to see that their collective destiny depends on them and their own initiatives?

This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Czego chcą Arabowie? W co wierzą? Co myślą?") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.

15-Sep-17: What's rarely discussed about silencing Palestinian Arab voices

dealing with dissenting voices in the Palestinian Arab capital,
Ramallah [Image Source]

Over on the often-outstanding website of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), there's a fresh (posted yesterday) and well-written survey of some of the more Kafka-esque dimensions of Palestinian Arab life. It's entitled "The crackdown on Palestinian freedom of speech – and why you probably haven’t heard about it".

Some highlights (all bullet points are verbatim quotes):

• [T]he Palestinian Authority has introduced a new "ban on websites". Like all laws passed since 2007, the new Electronic Crimes Law was passed in July 2017 by presidential decree without consultations with Palestinian civil society or the public.
• According to a comprehensive report from Amnesty International, (an organisation that has been accused of anti-Israel bias in the past), the law imposes prison sentences and fines which "could seemingly be applied to anyone who shares, likes or retweets news deemed illegal, and could be used against journalists further infringing on their ability to work freely".
• [A]t least six individuals have been arrested and charged under the new laws. In addition, "at least ten journalists working in print, radio, TV and online media were summoned by Preventative Security Forces for interrogation in Ramallah...
• [Quoting a shameless senior editor at the Hamas-controlled Al-Quds, Mahmoud Abbas' PA is] "increasingly authoritarian. They want to control all media outlets to block any voices exposing their crimes and violations". 
• [A lawyer] "Muhannad Karajah, who represents many of the journalists, said the situation in the past months has been the worst in years. ‘There is no space for freedoms anymore, the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank are becoming a police state, and they are silencing the people,' he told Amnesty International."
• Amnesty International [says] the new West Bank law curtailing freedom of speech is being used as a tool to silence dissenting voices in the ongoing conflict between Fatah and Hamas. 
• [Last week, the Palestinian Authority] arrested Mohammed Saber Jabbar, after he hosted right-wing Israeli lawmaker Yehudah Glick for Eid al-Adha celebrations. According to Glick, he "went to wish [Jabbar] a happy holiday on eid al-Adha..."

The AIJAC article goes on to give several examples of how critical voices are being silenced by the Abbas regime:

• Jihad Barakat, a reporter for the Palestine Today satellite channel, was arrested for "taking a picture of the Palestinian Prime Minister's motorcade being stopped at an Israeli checkpoint". Absurdly, Barakat was charged "with a crime that is usually used to harass beggars" for the unlawful use of public spaces.
• Ayman Qawasmeh, the director of a private radio station in Hebron, was arrested "shortly after he criticized Abbas and called on him and his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, to resign". 
• Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist in Hebron, published a Facebook post criticising Qawasmeh's arrest... was taken into custody for speaking out...[and] also charged with "‘causing strife' and 'insulting the higher authorities' under the 1960 Jordanian Penal code which is still enforced in the West Bank".

Of course, Fatah/PA/PLO/Abbas are far from alone in their penchant for petty and not-so-minor thuggish tyranny:

• [The] Hamas leadership in Gaza has also been busy during the last few months. In June, Hamas "arrested at least two journalists,... blocked journalists from reporting in some areas, and restricted the work of a foreign journalist". 
• [In July] "twelve Palestinians were questioned and detained... for comments they made on Facebook", and at least three of the journalists reported ill-treatment and one alleged torture by the Hamas authorities.
• [Amnesty says two Palestinian Arab critics of Hamas claimed] "they were kidnapped, beaten and threatened by Hamas security forces with the use of violence against them and their families". Their crime? Criticising Hamas' handling of the ongoing electricity crisis...
• [Last month] Hamas released Palestine TV's correspondent Fouad Jaradeh after more than two months in detention - but only after the Palestinian Authority arrested five journalists working with Hamas-affiliated news outlets. The five Hamas journalist were then released in what was widely viewed as a tit-for-tat situation.

AIJAC's analysis ends with some on-the-money comments from Khaled Abu Toameh, a Palestinian Arab commentator whom we quote here fairly often. On these matters, he says with considerable justice 

that the mainstream press prefers to cover "the Palestinians whose stories are often linked, directly and indirectly, to Israel". But in cases like these, where the Palestinians are victims at the hands of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, "their tale remains buried - along with their freedom".

Now think of all the working reporters, photographers, commentators, analysts, editors and media representatives based in this specific corner of the world - perhaps the most intensively covered of any of the world's news hotspots - and ask yourself when any of these instances of gross muzzling of dissenting voices were last (or ever!) reported in any of the sources of news that provide you with what you know.

Is it possible to make sense of the failing search for peace in this part of the world without paying attention to the police billy-clubs and draconian laws over on the other side of the fence?

25-Jul-17: The scale of the PA's terror-funding scheme keeps growing

Abbas [Image Source: AP]

Someone has done some useful number-crunching to give up-to-date and stats-based proportion to the Palestinian Authority's blood-soaked Rewards for Terror scheme.

A paper published online yesterday, ["Palestinian Payments to Incarcerated Terrorists and Martyrs’ Families Rise in 2017", Yossi Kuperwasser - JCPA Institute for Contemporary Affairs, July 24, 2017] analyzes the PA's detailed budget for 2017.

Naturally, the "usual allocations for salaries to imprisoned and released terrorists" are there. So are the so-called "martyr" payments. They get transferred to the families of Palestinian Arabs killed or injured in what the PA disingenuously calls the “struggle against Zionism” - in reality, the decades-long Palestinian Arab terror campaign against Israelis and Jews.

How does the Palestinian Authority's economics management track record look when compared with say Israel's. Catastrophically might not be overstating it. Just three indicators point to the direction of things:

• In terms of GDP per capita (most recent published data, in US dollars), Israel produces $33,783 [2016 numbers]. The number for the PA is $1,997 [source]. Half a century ago, tiny Israel with almost zero natural resources, already had a GBP per capita about two and a half times what the PA has today.
• GDP growth: The PA's most recent data shows growth of 0.7 per cent. Israel's was 3.8 per cent. Inevitably the chasm is going to keep widening.
• According to the useful Nationmaster website, in 2012 terms (the latest comparison they offer). Israel's economy produced exports of $90.2 billion. That was 54 times larger than the PA's most recent exports. 

UNRWA school girl in Jerusalem explains why she and her friends
have to prepare for war. Your taxes at work. [Video source]

What are the PA's goals when they're not talking overt propaganda? How they spend their cash gives it away:

• The PA budget shows that salary payments to "incarcerated and released terrorists" this year will cost their economy $153.4 million. That's 13% more than it spent for the same thing in 2016.
• This will be somewhat hidden (hiding is a core PA regime skill) by being channeled to recipients via the Palestinian National Fund, the financial arm of the PLO. Israel designates the PNF as a terrorist organization. A cursory look at what it says about its own activities makes that sound pretty accurate. This recent analysis says the PNF, a by-word for massive Palestinian Arab corruption, is now controlled by Mahmoud Abbas. It's one of the key sources of his political power.
• Those payments via the PNF used to be made directly by the PA until that provided to be too much of a political liability. The switch to the PNF was made overnight is mainly cosmetic.
• Payments to "families of those killed or wounded in the struggle against Zionism" are going to rise this fiscal year to about US$ 193 million. 
• Taken together, those two expenditure categories (living terrorists, families of dead terrorists) amount to an outlay of US$ 344 million just for 2017. The Kuperwasser paper says that's 7% of the total PA budget.
• It's also just under half of all the foreign aid the PA expects to get this year. You don't need to be an economist to understand how much more could done - in the positive, life-affirming sense - with foreign aid than what the Palestinian Arabs do.
• Then there's this: "The amount of welfare support per family under the poverty-line is much smaller than salaries provided to terrorists and their families..." So being poor - which is a result of pretty much everything the Abbas regime does for its people - is less of a challenge than fighting more and killing more. 

That the PA stands squarely behind its terrorists and their terrorism is beyond doubt. Palestinian law calls them - the people who break into kitchens of pizzerias and murder by knives and exploding guitar cases - the “fighting sector” of Palestinian Arab society.

UNRWA education: Return on investment [Video source]

Kuperwasser points out:

This ongoing pattern stands in sharp contrast to the Palestinian commitments in the Oslo Accords and to international law and conventions. It also reflects the fact that until now, no real pressure has been put on the Palestinians to stop the payments.

This might change soon if the US legislates into law the Taylor Force Act which is currently before Congress.

But the US is not the only country providing aid to the Abbas regime (one-half of every dollar, euro and or shekel of which goes into the appalling Rewards for Terror pot. Here are some others [via this source]:

• During the 2006–2007 period, main bilateral donors to the PA were the US, Japan, Canada, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Spain and France
• In addition, the two major non-bilateral donors were UNRWA and the EU (through the European Commission). 
• "From 2000 the European Union had provided over €1.6 billion to UNRWA... In 2013 UNRWA received $294m from the US, $216.4 million from the EU, $151.6 million from Saudi Arabia, $93.7 million from Sweden, $54.4 million from Germany, $53 million from Norway, $34.6 million from Japan, $28.8 million from Switzerland, $23.3 million from Australia, $22.4 million from the Netherlands, $20 million from Denmark, $18.6 million from Kuwait, $17 million from France, $12.3 million from Italy, $10.7 million from Belgium as well as $10.3 million from all other countries, totaling just over $1 billion in 2013.

Unlike most other aspects of the thuggish violence practiced by Fatah, the PLO and their cohort, the evil done via the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme [click here for more of our posts about it] is enabled - funded and perpetuated - by ordinary tax-payers in (mainly) Europe and North America and the faceless government bureaucrats who silently sign the wire transfers behind closed doors.

There are efforts to slow it down or defeat it - see "08-Jul-16: Violence, terror, cash and the PA Rewards for Terror Scheme: Congress takes a look" and "27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad". But as the current PA budget shows, neither the cashflow nor the enthusiasm of its stewards show signs of diminished ardour.

18-Apr-17: In Gaza, a decade of darkness and a never-ending blame-game

Image Source

Times must be getting really tough down there in the Gaza Strip now that one of the most highly publicized of the plagues traditionally blamed on the "Zionist entity" has become (not for the first time) the subject of bitter mutual accusations between the two rival Palestinian Arab statelets - the PLO-controlled PA, and the Islamist thugocracy of Hamas.

Below is an extract from an Albawaba news report ["Gaza thrown into darkness as Hamas-Fatah spat worsens"] datelined April 16, 2017. (Albawaba is based in Jordan, with offices in Dubai, and calls itself "the largest independent producer and distributor of content in the Middle East... providing first-rate coverage of the Middle East from a local perspective.")

Gaza was plunged into darkness late Friday as the territory's Hamas-run power authority cut electricity across the besieged enclave in protest against the Palestinian Authority. Hamas, who control Gaza, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, have for years blamed each other for an electricity crisis in the besieged coastal enclave.
Gaza's power alternates on eight-hour cycles, with those who can afford it using generators in the down times.
On Friday, Gaza's power authority cut electricity in the coastal territory from 7 pm until 11 pm in protest against the PA's recent decision to cut public sector salaries for Gaza employees and tax disputes over the import of fuel. The PA responded by saying Hamas was attempting to create a "new crisis" in Gaza, according to Ma’an News Agency.
Earlier in April, a decision by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to impose pay cuts on its civil servants in Gaza sparked widespread anger. Tens of thousands took to the streets in Gaza to protest the 30-percent pay cut, with demonstrators calling on PA president Mahmoud Abbas to sack his government. The PA says it was forced into the move because its budget has been hit by falling foreign aid. PA salaries in the West Bank, however, remained untouched.
Gaza's sole power plant is on the verge of shutting down as Qatari and Turkish fuel supplies run out. Gazan authorities have no other choice than to buy additional fuel from the PA, but say recent tax hikes make it unaffordable.
In January, thousands of Gazans took the streets to protest chronic power shortages in one of the largest unauthorised protests in Gaza since Hamas took power in 2007. Hamas security forces quickly suppressed the demonstration and blocked journalists from filming. A day earlier, a local comedian was arrested for making a satirical video criticising power cuts. "There is no work, no (border) crossing points, no food, no water and also no electricity," Adel al-Mashwakhi said in the video clip, which amassed over 250,000 views.

But with that explanation, be assured dear readers that there is no Palestinian Arab that cannot - by hook, crook or outright fabrication - be blamed on the Zionists. Here's how the Albawaba piece ends:

In 2015, the United Nations warned that Gaza could become uninhabitable by 2020 if current political and economic trends caused by Israeli policies continue.

From our 2008 post: We wondered then whether the Reuters
photographer, depicting Gazan legislators working
by candle-light as clearly-visible daylight is shut out
by curtains, had a moron for an editor. [Image Source] 

To put that last claim into some perspective, please take a look at some relevant earlier posts of ours: "05-Mar-17: What Gaza's Pal Arabs think about the electricity problems in Gaza"; "30-Apr-15: What Gaza's oppressed know that reporters don't, and why it matters"; "28-Oct-12: What lies behind ongoing efforts to paint Gaza as a region under Israeli siege?"; and from nearly a decade ago when Hamas' silly games were not so different from today's: "10-Feb-08: The lies that pictures can tell".

That 2008 post, replete with some very revealing news photographs that tried to pin serious malfeasance on Israelis for "cheating" the Gazans of electric power, is worth going back to review.

Whatever has changed in the world of the Palestinian Arabs, one aspect has not: they continue to live in the dark, shutting out the light by whatever means and relying on the great news factories of the world to magnify and spread their baseless fury at Israel.

UPDATE Thursday April 20, 2017: The capacity of the two Palestinian Arab statelets - PLO/Fatah/PA and Hamas - to ride roughshod over the welfare of the people whose lives they dominate is a reality that gets almost no serious media attention. A report today by Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, updating the dire situation in Gaza ["Gaza hospitals on verge of blackout amid energy crisis"] says:

Hospitals in the Gaza Strip could face blackouts within days as an energy crisis continues to throttle power supplies in the Palestinian enclave. Israel and Palestinian officials estimated Thursday that hospitals would finish their reserve fuel for generators within 48-72 hours. On Sunday Gaza’s only functioning power station stopped working after running out of fuel. The crisis was compounded by a technical fault shutting down a power line between Egypt and Gaza that had provided over six hours of electricity a day. Gazans now have just four hours of electricity, followed by 12-hour blackouts, down from two eight-hour periods of electricity a day when the plant is operating normally and supplies are coming in from outside the enclave... On Wednesday, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov called on Palestinian leaders to put aside their internal squabbles and solve the energy crisis.

And who cares? Certainly not the people who control the people.

17-Sep-16: In a Saturday morning Hebron stabbing attack, another assailant is thwarted

Scrutinizing papers at an IDF security checkpoint in
Hebron [Image Source: UPI]

We're seeing a marked increase in Arab-on-Israeli violence in the past two days.

During the just-ended Shabbat, a Palestinian Arab resident of Hebron aged about 25 approached IDF personnel manning the Tamar security checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida quarter, a Jewish neighbourhood of Hebron. Israel National News reports that on being asked to show identification,

he pulled out a knife and began stabbing the soldier... Reportedly, one of the soldiers initially succeeded in subduing the terrorist without killing him, but when the terrorist tried to continue stabbing, he was shot dead.

The injured soldier, who serves in the IDF Nahal Brigade's 50th Battalion, was treated locally by Magen David Adom teams and then taken by ambulance to Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center hospital for emergency treatment.

The Palestinian Arab news service Ma'an in customary fashion reports this as "an alleged stabbing attack". It quotes the knife-man's brother saying the assailant

was headed to work in the morning like every morning, but when he passed near a checkpoint "Israeli soldiers executed him in cold blood." He said that his brother worked at a factory in Hebron and was shot walking the only way that residents of the neighborhood are allowed to enter Hebron's city center. [Ma'an, September 17, 2016]

(We noticed that the same Ma'an report refers to another stabbing attack, this one from last night - Friday - in which it says "15-year-old Muhammad Thalji Kayid Thalji al-Rajabi was also shot and killed in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron’s Old City after reportedly stabbing and lightly injuring an Israeli soldier." The Friday night stabbing attack by yet another weaponized Palestinian Arab child seems not to have gotten much attention in the Israeli media and would have slipped past us but for the Ma'an mention and this brief Times of Israel report.)

Over at Times of Israel, they identify the dead assailant as Hatem Abdel-Hafiz al-Shaloudi. A video captured by a security camera shows him approaching the soldiers at the checkpoint during this morning, presenting a piece of paper which is presumed to be ID:

The moment the soldier accepts the paper and glances down at it, Shaloudi is seen pulling out a knife and lunging at him. The soldier manages to duck away in time, and Shaloudi then turns his attention to another soldier. He chases him with the knife and the two are seen scuffling. The soldier wrestles Shaloudi to the ground as three more troops rush to his aid, weapons drawn. It is not clear exactly when the assailant is shot. At the end of the clip the soldiers are seen moving away from the now motionless Shaloudi as he lies on the ground... Some time after Saturday’s attack security forces surrounded Shaloudi’s Hebron home. There was no word on whether they made any arrests or confiscated materials... [Times of Israel, September 17, 2016]

That surveillance camera video is below:

We're no experts at interpreting scene-of-crime evidence but it's apparent the Arab had mayhem on his mind, and a lethal weapon in his pocket, as he drew near to the Israelis. See for yourselves.

That's not how Dr Hanan Ashrawi sees it. There has been a small flurry of interest following a statement she issued today in the wake of the violent Arab-on-Israeli attacks of Friday and today [see "16-Sep-16: Vehicle ramming attack on Israelis near Kiryat Arba" and "16-Sep-16: Arab-on-Israeli stabber thwarted at one of Jerusalem's Old City gates"]. 

Speaking via Palestine News Network [here], this noted scholar of Medieval and Comparative Literature was, as she always is, sharply critical of Israeli actions. She termed the prompt defensive actions of the Israeli service personnel "extra-judicial killings":

Israel is flagrantly employing a systematic and willful policy of summary executions against the Palestinian people. Such provocative acts are in direct violation of international law and conventions... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing extremist government are creating a culture of violence, intimidation and lawlessness that is destroying the chances for peace; their volatile actions threaten to plunge the entire region into further instability, extremism and chaos. [Ashrawi via PNN, today]

She wrapped it up with a call to "the international community" to "hold Israel accountable with punitive measures before it is too late".

Oddly she entirely overlooked making any mention of the role played by Arab men and women with concealed knives or driving their vehicles at Israelis standing at bus stops. It's not clear at this stage what the "international community" thinks about the ongoing acts of Arab-on-Israeli terror or the recent uptick in their frequency. What is clear, and has been for a long time, is that Ashrawi - for all her peace-maker pretensions - is a skilled apologist and propagandist for Arab thuggery and the sort of violent, death-cult values that have produced lemming-like waves of badly-educated young Palestinian Arabs, heads filled with bogus visions of glory and heroism.

"Peace-maker" Ashrawi [Image Source]

By way of context: Ashrawi is a veteran PLO insider, a member of the PLO's Executive Committee (which Wikipedia calls "the highest executive body... of the government of the State of Palestine") and which, like the rest of the Fatah/PA inner circle of insiders, continues to conduct itself as if it were an elected leadership while pretending to ignore the reality that Palestinian elections have only happened once in the dozen or so years since the Palestinian Authority was brought into existence under the leadership of her close associate, Yasser Arafat - and that was eleven years ago.

Ashrawi herself is on that PLO Executive Committee because she was not elected but appointed to it in 2009 by the Palestinian National Council which is headquartered in the Kingdom of Jordan.

To the chagrin of ordinary Palestinian Arabs, democracy in their world is, for the most part, whatever the clique of Fatah/PA/PLO insiders declare it to be.

Meanwhile it's been announced tonight [Times of Israel] that the Israel Defence Forces has deployed an additional infantry battalion to Hebron to provide additional protection and to preserve the tense peace in this most historic of Jewish communities.

15-May-16: Putting their "nakba" in perspective

Image Source

Israelis joyously and thankfully marked 68 years of renewed independence, massive economic advancement and attainment on all fronts this past Thursday. The Palestinian Arabs call the same process "catastrophe".

Much of the economic fuel for both of the two Palestinian Arab statelets - the one ruled by the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas from Ramallah; the other by Hamas in Gaza - comes not from industrial growth, not from economic progress, not from anything self-generated by them in the past 68 years. It comes, tragically, from a two-edged sword: massive gifts via foreign aid and cradle-to-grave support from a UN-created refugee agency, UNRWA.

Many billions of dollars/euros are represented by that last sentence - more money is spent on this particular cluster of self-proclaimed, humiliation-averse refugees per capita than on any other refugee group in history - by far.

Among the numerous aspects of UNRWA's odd and highly problematic existence that make it exceptional and peculiar is that it serves only the people called the Palestinian Arabs.

Many otherwise well-informed people fail to notice that every other refugee on earth has to turn to a different UN agency, UNHCR, operating according to a completely different set of rules and principles. Only the people who say they are the Palestinian Arabs are served by UNRWA. (Why this is so, and what it means in practice, is part of an astonishing narrative that needs a separate post.)

Comprehending this is often the first step to putting a meaningful framework around the lethal fury that propels much of the Arab world, and those who advocate for a Palestinian Arab outlook on life, today and for the past seven decades. And long before it as well. Occupation has almost nothing to do with it.

Today, as the friends of the Palestinian Arabs prepare to mark their Nakba, there is a (truly) simple question worth asking: How do they decide whom to call a Palestinian Arab refugee?

The best place we know for the answer is the UNRWA's own website:

UNRWA is unique in terms of its long-standing commitment to one group of refugees. It has contributed to the welfare and human development of four generations of Palestine refugees, defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” The descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, are also eligible for registration.
UNRWA services are available to all those living in its areas of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. When the Agency began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, some 5 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services.

You might want to read that a second time. The UNRWA definition, which for practical purposes is what everyone means today when they refer to "Palestinian refugees", is -

• Someone who lived in the area of the British Mandate for Palestine during a window of time that (a) lasted for less than two years during a period of massive Arab immigration into the towns, cities and regions being built up by the Jews, and (b) ended nearly seventy years ago
• And anyone who today can point to an ancestor who fits into that window - for ever and ever into the future, down through the coming generations of new "refugees".

It's unique, inexplicable and self-defeating on so many levels.

There is much else that is catastrophically wrong with how Palestinian refugee-ism is defined. For instance, does anyone at UNRWA record when a "refugee" dies and his or her meal ticket ought to expire? The figure of 5 million beneficiaries of UNRWA services is suspect, unchecked, misleading and essentially meaningless. And can we really speak of 5 million refugees when two million of them have full citizenship in other Arab countries [source], and an unknown but large number are citizens of Europe, Canada, Chile, the US and other non-Arab countries?

As news coverage focuses today on the Palestinian day of catastrophe, spend a moment pondering how large that catastrophe truly is, how little chance there is of it being reversed by the Arabs (among the resource-richest states on earth), how small is the incentive for them to stop this endless cash-fest, how often all of this is used to justify acts of savagery and bigotry, and - finally - who, in reality, brought them into the morass in which they find themselves today.

UNRWA's notorious spokesperson Chris Gunness is personally invited to offer some answers.

[This article is cross-posted as an op-ed on the Times of Israel site today.]

13-May-16: Ongoing gullibility: UK foreign aid and the Palestinian "Rewards for Terror" scheme

A written question, asked in the British parliament's House of Lords ten days ago on a subject that ought to be getting much more attention, has just been answered.

The subject: Overseas aid and the payments that the UK is making to the Palestinian Arabs. Yes, the very matter that is going to be debated in the parliament next month as we noted last month ["13-Apr-16: Parliament will debate UK funding of the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme"].

It's an important debate that is going to happen because of some good activist journalism ["27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in'] by the Daily Mail which has turned the matter into a talking point ["27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad"] in the UK, at least for now.

Here's the exchange of question and answer [from this official UK source; and thanks to the ever-watchful MH for pointing us to this.]

Baroness Deech (asked on May 3, 2016): To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have given any consideration to suspending aid to the Palestinian Authority in the light of its decision to transfer over £85 million a year to the Palestine Liberation Organisation for the purpose of paying salaries to convicted terrorists imprisoned in Israel.
Baroness Verma (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development and Ministerial Champion for tackling Violence Against Women & Girls Overseas)  (answered yesterday, May 12, 2016): DFID is currently reviewing all its programmes following the publication of the updated Official Development Assistance strategy last year. DFID provides financial support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to help deliver peace and support progress towards a two state solution. DFID funding helps build Palestinian institutions and promotes economic growth so that any future Palestinian state will be a prosperous and effective partner for peace. UK funding to the PA is for vetted civil servants only. The PA has reaffirmed that prisoner payments are administered by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. We continue to lobby that the payments to prisoner’s families are more transparent and needs-based. 

Seems a reasonable answer, right? There's probably been a case of confused identity but HMG has gotten assurances from the terror-addicted Palestinian Authority and their actual reaffirmation. All cleared up. Nothing much to see here, folks. Move along.

If only.

What's on display here is (a) professional incompetence (which we think unlikely given the quality and quantity of staff people employed in the parliament to prepare ministerial written answers to questions posed by the Lords); (b) a factual mistake on a minor matter (but as we noted, there's going to be a full-scale parliamentary debate on this very issue in a few weeks, so at minimum the staffers are on top of the facts); or (c) cynical sand-in-your-eyes disinformation designed to confuse the gullible and paper over a deeply embarrassing UK policy failure (quite plausible, we think, in the absence of a better alibi).

Palestinian Arabs where they can do less harm [Image Source]

In formulating this deeply dishonest answer to a vitally important question, the back-room civil servants in the UK's Department for International Development have chosen to pretend not to be aware of relevant matters that should have brought them to a very different conclusion for their minister to deliver. We have wrestled with those issues here repeatedly. They are at the heart of the life-and-death issues which keep us blogging. And they are all about money - large servings of it.

For a representative overview of what we have written about them, you might want to see "25-Jan-16: Felons, funding, fooling, failing"; "09-Jul-15: When incitement to murder is financed by foreign aid, where will the accounting come from?" "02-Jun-15: The obvious, petty lies that keep European money flowing into the hands of the PA's terrorists"; "30-Dec-14: Killers, heroes, passions and (sadly) churches"; "10-Nov-13: Who finances those savage acts of terror? And why is this so poorly understood?"; "4-Sep-12: Where's the shame? How much of your tax dollars went to fund the pension of our child's murderer? More than you probably thought"; and from nearly a decade ago, "6-Oct-06: Crying poor: The terror-laden rise and rise of the Palestinian national payroll and the men who allow it to happen". 

Here's a selection of the truths which the UK government and its representatives and servants evidently find too uncomfortable to share with the hapless British citizens who pay for this disgrace:

• In August 2014, the Ministry of Prisoners Affairs of the Palestinian Authority was torn down overnight. It was replaced the following morning with a brand-spanking-new, purpose-built entity that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Palestinian Authority. 
• This is what's often called a switcheroo - a strategy carried out by frightened people (frightened of being exposed) made up of lies and bogus contentions. It's done solely to deceive.
• Why the need for deception? Because, as the Jerusalem Post reported at the time ["Palestinians duping world by denying it pays salaries to prisoners in Israeli jails", Jerusalem Post, May 27, 2015] the Abbas-ruled PA had been proudly and publicly funneling monthly salaries to Palestinian Arab terrorists inside Israeli prisons and released from them. Then it became aware of a certain degree of pressure from Western donors, the governments whose cash - in the form of foreign aid - made this doable and affordable. 
• What form did the deception take? The Jerusalem Post said: "Rather than a PA ministry, a PLO Commission of Prisoners Affairs – purportedly independent of the PA and its funding – was set up to pay the salaries. The international community... largely accepted these changes as assurance the PA was no longer paying salaries to terrorists... [But] the PLO commission was new only in name. The PLO body would have the same responsibilities and pay the exact same amounts of salaries to prisoners; the former PA minister of prisoners affairs, Issa Karake, became the director of the new PLO commission and PA President Mahmoud Abbas retained overall supervision of the PLO Commission." 
• Based on comments made by Palestinian officials, the perpetually financially strapped PA spent $144 million in 2014 paying salaries to incarcerated and release prisoners. It has continued to do so right up until this week.
• Issa Karake, whose hate-filled, terrorism-encouraging utterances we have quoted in this blog numerous times, is key to the flim-flammery. He's the former minister for prisoners who overnight was turned into commissioner for some PLO business unit which is a completely different and perfectly legitimate thing. It's hard to think of a more cynical public figure than he. His is a name to remember.
• All of the donor governments who have provided the funding from the outset continue to do so and to by-and-large ignore the criticism. 
• Outside of Israel, where the real price of the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme is paid, few governments care to know whether the Palestinian Arab political leadership is trustworthy, honest, credible - or (which we firmly believe to be the case) the exact opposite. What they want is simply for the problems to go away. Throwing money at it is, astoundingly, a widely-appreciated way to achieve that and at the same time curry favour with the Arab world.
• The criticism that has come is from non-government observers. For instance: "What Abu Mazen [meaning Mahmoud Abbas] will not tell donors is that their money is being sent to the PLO, who does use the money to fund terrorism. Abu Mazen hopes by having the money used indirectly instead of directly to fund terrorism, the criticism will die down among donor nations to the Palestinian Authority. [Foreign Policy Association, September 8, 2014]

We editors of this blog tend to have a more hard-eyed view of the outrageous Palestinian Arab tactics behind this scheme. Regular readers of our blog know this is because two of the biggest beneficiaries of this embezzlement of European money happen to be two of the jihadist savages convicted of murdering our daughter. Details here: "31-May-15: Lights, camera, action, terror".

Is it possible that all of this was unknown to the nameless, faceless insiders who composed Baroness Verma's parliamentary reply? Readers who know the Lords quoted in the parliamentary report above might consider sharing this post with them. And perhaps asking her if the revelations about this ongoing Palestinian shell-game are news to her or to her staff.

As an afterthought: Whatever derision people might think they detect in our observations about the UK government and its parliament on this heavy issue, we do have a healthy appreciation for the British sense of humour. That's why we are not surprised to see what's on the home page of the ministry headed by Baroness Verma at this very moment:

Signs of a British sense of homour: The home page of the UK office responsible for the ongoing funding, by British tax-payers, of' the Palestinian Authority's Rewards for Terror scheme.

See the featured article? The UK's Department for International Development proudly beats its chest, trumpeting its role in helping people beat "corrupt practices around the world". Given the flagrant blind-eye treatment they have extended to the chronically corrupt, kleptocratic Palestinian Arabs since Arafat's day, you have to be just a tiny little bit amused by the chutzpah of these public servants.

04-May-16: The PA's Rewards for Terror scheme: Abbas, fobbing off Norwegian criticism, incriminates self

Abbas meets with Norwegian Foreign Minister
Borge Brende in Ramallah, on May 3, 2016 [Image Source: Getty]

Earlier this week, we wrote here ["02-May-16: Norway's polite and cautious funding of Palestinian Arab terror"] about how the Norwegians were in the midst of a very welcome bout of self-criticism, looking critically at the morality and legality of their funding the PA whose appalling Rewards for Terror scheme we have discussed here often.  

There have been developments. 

Here's an update, re-published from Elder of Ziyon's post ["Norway FM tells Abbas to stop paying convicted terrorists"] that went up earlier today. In it, he quotes an article appearing in Dagen, a Norwegian daily:

Foreign Minister Brende is on a new tour of the Middle East. Tuesday afternoon and evening he had talks first with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and then Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. The agenda for the meeting with Abbas included the extensive support programs for imprisoned Palestinians. For years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) paid wages to convicted Palestinian terrorists, and the worse their act, the more money they get. Hans Olav Syversen took up this issue in last week's oral question time, and Brende promised then to put further pressure on Abbas at the next opportunity. Brende now confirms that the issue was discussed during the meeting in Ramallah. "In the meeting I emphasized that this funding, where financial payments increased by how long prisoners were sentenced, is unacceptable and should be abolished. I emphasized that with the political and economic challenges that Palestinians now face, it pays to abolish this scheme," said Brende. Abbas responded by repeating assurances that Norwegian funds are not going to finance the scheme.  Last week, Israeli Arnold Roth (whose daughter was murdered in a major terror attack) told Dagen that Norwegian authorities must understand that they indirectly contribute to how the PA gives salaries to imprisoned terrorists, and they are helping to maintain a Palestinian culture that supports terror as a political tool.

Elder of Ziyon adds that, 

if Norwegian funds aren't paying the terrorists, then whose funds are? The PA is dependent on foreign aid and its budget mostly comes from the nations of the world, so any way you slice it, the world is paying for the salaries of terrorists.

(As it usually does, the excellent Palestinian Media Watch has produced excellent, authoritative, quote- and fact-filled backgrounders here and here that cover these issues comprehensively.)

We add this: Abbas and the PA have been engaged in an open fraud for the past two years [overviewed in our recent post "27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in"] by which they have been pretending that the cash paid to their imprisoned and freed terrorists on an ongoing, continuing basis isn't PA money at all but rather PLO cash received from donors. The PA, they modestly claim, is not involved in any way. This line of reasoning is patent nonsense, of course, and the evidence is not hard to find. Nonetheless it's what Abbas' band of crooks has been saying whenever the issue came up. 

But not yesterday. 

The Dagen report shows that this time round, Abbas dropped the patent lie that the funds for his Rewards for Terror scheme were being paid by the PLO (from donor funds). Instead he offered just one defence to the Norwegians: it's not your Norwegian krone, Mr Norwegian Foreign Minister; it's some other foreign-aid-giving donor country's. As for your Norwegian gifts, rest assured they are being spent on only the purest of purposes.

Sickening as this duplicity is, it amounts to Abbas incriminating himself. 

He could have denied that this was a PA program (which it certainly is) but did not. Sadly the Norwegians appear not to have understood this. We hope they soon will. 

We also hope other donor countries will soon realize how they are being used as dupes. And how their taxpayers' money, in the form of irresponsibly-supervised foreign aid, is in fact financing a murderous campaign of terror. If it's a passion for peace that is driving their willingness to hand over cash to the Palestinian Authority, let them ask themselves whether there is the smallest sign that they are getting a return on their investment. Because if there is not (and we are utterly convinced there is not), then they are investing in something very different from peace. The lives and futures of our children and of the Arabs demand that they, the taxpayers and politicians in those donor countries, understand that.

20-Apr-16: After Monday's Jerusalem bus bombing, questions (again) about education, children and money

Handing out candies on an Arab street hours after a Jerusalem bus bombing
[Image Source]

The debris and wreckage has barely been cleared from southern Jerusalem's Moshe Baram Street in the aftermath of Monday's Egged Line 12 bus bombing and it's already possible to identify several clear lines of reaction.

Among Israelis, there's concern for the victims, several of whom are still hospitalized and wondering at what hit them and their loved ones: "11 still hospitalized, 1 critical, after Jerusalem bombing", Times of Israel, April 19, 2016; "Bus bomb survivor: I looked for my daughter, found her ‘all burned’", JTA, April 19, 2016; "Bus attack victim survived 2001 Sbarro's bombing", Israel National News, April 19, 2016. The current speculation, but not backed any official statements, is that the most severely injured of the victims now being treated intensively in a Jerusalem hospital, is the person who carried the bomb.

There's also growing Israeli anxiety at the prospect that bombings, and the hideous things that generally accompany them, are going to be come a larger part of our lives in the coming days and months. The Arab-on-Israeli violence of the past seven months has been rich in shootings, vehicle-rammings and stabbings with multiple murders and many maimings as a result, It's been clear from the outset that things will get more serious when the Arab leaders want them to.

From a page full of similar photos capturing the celebrations, marked by candies,
of Arabs in Jerusalem this past Monday [Image Source: Alquds News]

So how have the Arabs responded?

From the Islamist savages of Hamas in Gaza, they don't claim to have been behind it (though no one on the counter-terror side thinks bombings of this sort are beyond Hamas' capabilities or agenda), but they are perfectly comfortable with sitting back and watching it unfold. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, quoted here by Hamas, portentously described the attempt at a massacre of Jews as a “natural response to the Israeli crimes and in particular the executions and defiling of the Al-Aqsa Mosque”. Near-identical language is attributed to a Palestinian Arab "human rights" figure, speaking [here via an Iranian news site] seven months ago. We strongly believe statements of this sort ought to be believed. Nothing, given their education and cultural and ethical values, is more natural to terror-addicted Palestinian Arab "militants" than killing Israeli civilians in public places.

Hamas "welcomes the Jerusalem operation", while warning that exploding the bus is “just the beginning”. But in reality, it's just another chapter. The beginning was generations ago, and the interruptions have been few and short.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad called the terror attack "a qualitative development in form and substance of the blessed intifada" [here, via Khaled Abu Toameh].  Fatah, headed by the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and the largest faction in today's PLO, called it [here in Arabic] a "Nabil Massoud martyrdom operation" though no one appears to have been martyred, and even though Fatah calls itself secular as opposed to the Islamists for whom martyrdom is a supreme religious value. But who are we to judge other people's theologies? Fatah called the bus bombing attack

"a new focal point in the history of the conflict with the occupation, and the beginning of a new phase of confrontation with him six months after the outbreak of the Jerusalem uprising... Martyrdom operations are the military option supported by all the Palestinian people and its different components... among our strategies to defend our people... It is a confirmation of the victory of the resistance option and the failure of the settlement project, a painful blow to (PA/Israel) security coordination,.." [Al Resalah (Arabic), April 19, 2016]

Video of the first dramatic minutes after the explosion were captured by Arik Abuloff, a firefighter of the Israel Fire and Rescue Service, via his helmet-mounted wearable video camera

Towards the end, we see Abuloff entering the destroyed hulks of the two buses, searching for victims and to see if the cause of the explosion could be identified. The official count of injured people is 21 , two of them seriously, and that the conflagration was caused by a bomb detonating on board one of the two buses, setting the adjacent bus on fire. A third bus near by, and a car, also went up in flames.

We mentioned Khaled Abu Toameh a moment ago. He has an overview of the Arab reaction to Monday's barbarism ["Celebrating Terrorism, Palestinian Style"], Khaled Abu Toameh on Gatestone Institute website, April 19, 2016] which, like most of his published analysis, is among the most valuable things a person wanting to understand the Arab perspective from an Arab cultural standpoint - but free of any addiction to jihadist thinking.

The Palestinian jubilation over yesterday's terror bombing in Jerusalem, the first of its kind since the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada more than a decade ago, is yet another reminder of the growing radicalization among Palestinians... The public statements of the Palestinian leaders and groups after the Jerusalem terror attack are yet another sign of how they continue to incite their people against Israel. These are the type of statements that prompt Palestinian men and women to grab a knife (or in this case an explosive device) and set out to kill the first Jew they run into... The major obstacle to peace with Israel remains the absence of education for peace with Israel. In fact, it is safe to say that there never was a real attempt on the part of Palestinian leaders and factions to prepare their people for peace with Israel. On the contrary, the message they send to their people remains extremely anti-Israel. [Abu Toameh, yesterday]

Caption in Arabic informs that these happy campers living in
Nahr al-Bared, a Lebanese "refugee" camp are celebrating the news of
a bus filled with Jews being bombed in Jerusalem [Image Source]

In his customarily mild way, Abu Toameh notes that the public manifestations he mentioned call into doubt

the Palestinian leadership's and people's willingness to move toward peace and coexistence with Israel... Within hours of the attack, Palestinian factions seemed to be competing with each other over who would issue the most supportive statement of the terror explosion... Palestinian factions rushed to issue statements applauding the "heroic operation" and urging Palestinians to pursue the path of armed struggle against Israel. The Palestinian jubilation over the terror attack, the first of its kind since the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada more than a decade ago, is yet another reminder of the growing radicalization among Palestinians. This radicalization is mostly attributed to the ongoing anti-Israel incitement and indoctrination by various Palestinian factions and leaders... Hamas leader, Hussar Badran, also praised the terror attack. He said his movement was determined to pursue the resistance to "expel the occupation from our Palestinian lands." When Hamas leaders talk about "expelling the occupation from the Palestinian lands," they mean that Israel should be eliminated and replaced with an Islamist empire. [Abu Toameh, yesterday]

That last point is little appreciated or understood outside of the neighbourhood where we live. Occupation is a code word for these people.

Again: "The major obstacle to peace with Israel remains the absence of education for peace with Israel". Education means not only, but mainly, children. 

It's a constant wonder to us that the very-well-funded children's rights industry, a classification that includes multi-million dollar/euro global behemoths like UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development and others remain unmoved, and uncriticized, in the face of their complete failure to address what Abu Toameh has just mentioned. The news media look the other way, the funders keep giving without pausing to think what they are enabling, and the managements go merrily down the path of ignoring - and therefore de facto supporting - a process we have called the Palestinian Arab weaponization of their own children.

What will it take for this scandal to be addressed in a responsible and child-sensitive, education-focused way? Why does nothing constructive continue to get done about it for decade after decade? Anyone seriously suggesting these things are unknown is blowing smoke. They're known, and they're ignored.

Are you paying attention, UNICEF?