Some things never change

[Toga]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...=1104643908869

Jan. 2, 2005 18:58
Media watchdog: Palestinian incitement continues
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

After a several week respite, Palestinian media
incitement against Israel has resumed in full force with calls for the destruction of the State of Israel again being broadcast on state run Palestinian Television, a Jerusalem-based Palestinian media watch-group said Sunday.

A Palestinian sermon broadcast Friday on Palestinian Television called for a return to the pre-state 1948 borders, and warned America against moving its embassy to Jerusalem in the future.

"We say no to a return to 1967 borders... we are
interested in returning to the true borders of out
country, we want to go back to the 1948 borders... and we shall yet return to them," went the Friday sermon read out by Ibrahim Mudayris, according to a translation of the Arabic released Sunday by the Jerusalem based 'Palestinian Media Watch.'

The weekly televised Palestinian sermon went on to
warn America against moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a move mandated by the US Congress, warning that it will be "the last nail in America's coffin."

"By the life of Allah, America will be buried on the day her embassy is moved to Jerusalem," the sermon continued.

The Palestinian preacher reading the sermon, who heads the Association of Learning the Koran, is on a salaried position at the Palestinian Ministry for Religious Affairs, said Itamar Marcus, the Israeli Director of Palestinian Media Watch.

Marcus added that the Palestinian preacher in question -- who has a long history of incitement including past calls for the extermination of the Jewish people -- had been off the air for several weeks after the death of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in November, only to be back on Palestinian TV for the past two weeks.

"Hatred on every level is out there in full force," Marcus said.

Last week, Palestinian television also rebroadcast a call to genocide from a Palestinian religious leader Dr. Hassan Khater, founder of the Al Quds Encyclopedia and a TV lecturer, the Palestinian Media Watch notes in a post-Arafat Palestinian media incitement report to be published this week.

"Mohammed said in his Hadith: 'The Hour [Day of
Resurrection] will not arrive until you fight the
Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or tree] and the rock and the tree will say: Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'" the December 27 broadcast went.

In November, the interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) met with the head of the Palestinian Broadcasting Authority and asked him to check all programs aired on state television to prevent the broadcast of inciting material.

But the move stopped short of an order to stop
incitement in the Palestinian media - a key Israeli demand - with Palestinians and Israelis differing over what constitutes incitement.

Israel has deemed an end to incitement as a sine qua non of its relationship with the new Palestinian leadership.

[Mediocrates]

Abbas was bolstered as the next leader of the PLO because they imagined they were living in another Oslo-world where 'moderates' rule the day. But who is Abbas and what is it he says?

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...=1104568242557

Abbas pledges to protect gunmen from Israel

KHALED ABU TOAMEH and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 1, 2005


PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) on Saturday pledged to protect Palestinian gunmen from Israel, stepping up his courtship of rejectionist groups in the run-up to elections. Israel has demanded that Abbas confront terror groups as a precondition for substantive negotiation with him.

Abbas took his election campaign over the weekend to the Gaza Strip, where he reiterated his pledge to follow in the footsteps of Yasser Arafat and received a hero's welcome from hundreds of Fatah gunmen.

Abbas defended a series of recent public appearances with gunmen, indicating he has no plans to crack down on them as demanded by Israel, and saying the Palestinian leadership has a responsibility to protect its people.

"When we see them, when we meet them, and when they welcome us, we owe them," Abbas said. "This debt always is to protect them from assassination, to protect them from killing, and all these things they are subject to by the Israelis."

Abbas and PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei on Saturday accused Israel of undermining the election campaign by launching a military operation in Khan Yunis. The two called on the US, the European Union and the United Nations to pressure Israel to halt its raid.

Abbas's visit to the Gaza Strip coincided with celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the launching of the first Fatah attack on Israel.

Abbas arrived on Saturday at the Rafah refugee camp after receiving assurances from Israel that he would not be delayed at IDF checkpoints in the southern Gaza Strip. He had earlier threatened to call off the visit because of the IDF operation against Palestinians responsible for rocket attacks on Israel.

Abbas later dropped plans to visit Khan Yunis, the second biggest population center after Gaza City, because of the IDF's continuing operation there.

Dozens of gunmen from the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, received Abbas and his entourage at the entrance to Rafah and carried him on their shoulders 500 meters away to the Hamdan hall where thousands of people were waiting for him.

Addressing the crowd, Abbas said: "We seek a good and safe life for our people. We want a state of law for the sake of every Palestinian." Repeating campaign themes, he said he would work for the release of all the Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and the right of return for the refugees.

"Israeli repression and humiliation of the Palestinians in Rafah won't deter them from fulfilling their dream of achieving victory and establishing an independent Palestinian state," he added.

"We will remain loyal to Yasser Arafat's path and policy until the liberation of Jerusalem and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. We won't forget our heroes behind bars who fought for freedom and paid a price."

Abbas repeatedly praised Arafat. "Today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the revolution launched by Abu Amar [Arafat]," he said.

Echoing Arafat's famous pledge, Abbas declared: "We will continue the struggle until a Palestinian boy and girl place a Palestinian flag over the walls and minarets of Jerusalem."

On Friday, Abbas attended a major Fatah rally in Gaza City, where he paid tribute to the Palestinian "martyrs" killed in fighting with Israel.

"We won't forget the convoys of martyrs of Izzaddin Kassam (the armed wing of Hamas) and Khan Yunis," Abbas said as Fatah gunmen fired into the air from automatic rifles.

Abbas's encounter with the Fatah gunmen in the Gaza Strip was the second of its kind since last Thursday, when he was enthusiastically received in the Jenin refugee camp by members of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

Zakariya Zubeidi, the local commander of the group who is wanted by Israel for his role in orchestrating terror attacks, hoisted Abbas on his shoulders and expressed full support for his candidacy.

Zubeidi said on Saturday that Abbas did not ask him and his friends to stop their armed attacks on Israel. "Abu Mazen did not ask us to halt our attacks on Israel," he added. "We didn't even discuss the possibility of a hudna (temporary truce) because this issue requires lengthy meetings." Zubeidi said the meeting was initiated by Abbas and that they had agreed to continue their dialogue by phone.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pa...1&contrassID=2

Background/ The Abbas problem: Partner or Yasser Redux?



By Bradley Burston, Haaretz Correspondent

No one doubts the courage of Mahmoud Abbas.

In the blood-soaked course of the Intifada, the professorially unglamorous Abbas, 69, gained sudden world stature as a lone voice for moderation in Israeli-Palestinian relations, and as the most likely partner for peacemaking in a post-Arafat epoch.

Now, however, an abrupt re-invention has vaulted Abbas onto the shoulders of gunmen and into the smiling public embrace of Marwan Barghouti's wife, in a campaign swing that has him lauding the legacy of Yasser Arafat, and vowing to protect the very men who head Israel's hit lists of most-wanted terrorists.

The new Abbas caught the world by surprise. Israel, for its part, is anything but pleased. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's administration had hoped that Abbas could provide a bridge for a coordinated withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and scattered settlements in the northern West Bank.

For weeks, however, Israeli officials, gritting their teeth against saying too much, have wondered if Abbas is likely to be a partner to peacemaking or to the armed and dangerous. No matter what, they have said, once elected he will have little time to decide between them.

First to call for halt to terror attacks
Hours after Palestinians first used firearms on Israelis at the outset of the Intifada, Abbas was the only senior Palestinian official to argue against it, appealing in vain to Yasser Arafat to denounce an armed uprising.

Later, with the Intifada at its lethal height and Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades competing for the title of most civilians killed within Israeli cities, Abbas was the first Palestinian leader to openly call for a halt to suicide bombings, ambush slayings and assault rifle drive- by shootings.

Just weeks ago, in perhaps the most telling incident, Abbas, heir apparent to Yasser Arafat, was attending a mass gathering to mourn the death days before of the Palestinian Authority chairman when dozens of Fatah gunmen burst into the crowded Gaza City tent, denouncing the Abbas as an "agent for the Americans."

[Mediocrates]

The Fatah men then opened fire, killing an Abbas bodyguard and a Palestinian security officer.

Abbas, unfazed, dismissed the shooting as "random" and not in his direction.

President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and even Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - blamed by many for having done far too little to shore up Abbas in an abortive 2003 term as the first Palestinian prime minister - have all pointed to Abbas as the man who could restore the withering dream of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

With Arafat's death and the mainsteam Fatah movement's anointment of Abbas who, having talked the talk of moderation, could now walk the obstacle-fraught walk that could lead from disengagement to restoration of a peace process.

Enter Abbas the candidate.

Written off by Palestinian political analysts as devastatingly unpopular and out of step with the Palestinian street, Abbas took to the campaign trail with a vengeance, taking Israeli officials aback with a stream of tough talk anchored with adoring references to the legacy of Yasser Arafat, and unstintingly laudatory praise of militants.

On Friday, Abbas lit a large torch in the main square of Gaza City to mark Fatah's 40th anniversary, dated from, the January 1, 1965 date of the group's first attack on an Israeli target, the bombing of a water tower.

"The one who fired the first shot, the one who lit the first spark and the first torch 40 years ago, the martyr Yasser Arafat is alive and we will continue his path," said Abbas, over shots in the air and cheers.

Himself a refugee from the northern city of Safed, Abbas has always been known as having negotiating positions at least as tough as those put forth - or fallen back on - as Arafat himself.

However, it was the new style as much as the new substance that had Israeli officials believing that instead of a new partner, they might be confronting Yasser Redux.

Kicking off his campaign in a Ramallah speech last month, Abbas declared that peace will not come until Israel takes down all settlements, returns to the pre-1967 war borders, accepts a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, accepts the return of Palestinian refugees and releases all Palestinian prisoners including Marwan Barghouti.

Exchanging smiling embraces on a dais with the wife of Fatah firebrand Barghouti - serving five life terms in a Be'er Sheva prison for ties to deadly terror attacks - Abbas was only warming up.

In Jenin, which Abbas pointedly quoted Arafat as having hailed as "Jeningrad," Abbas found himself on the shoulders of one of Israel's most-wanted fugitives, local Al Aqsa Martyrs commander Zakaria Zubeidi, and the recipient of a live-fire endorsement by dozens of Zubeidi's men, firing into the air.

Press photos showed Abbas waving in front of a giant poster of Arafat, the hands of the late leader and his deputy in strikingly similar juxtaposition.

In Rafah at the weekend, members of the Fatah-born Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militia bore Abbas to a speech in which the PLO leader declared:

"We will not forget those wanted by Israel. These are the heroes that are fighting for freedom."

He picked up the theme at a mass Sunday rally in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. "We say to our fighting brothers that are wanted by Israel, we will not rest until you can enjoy a life of security, peace, and dignity, so you can live in your country with total freedom," he said.

Abbas vowed not to rest until a independent Palestinian state was established, settlements were dismantled and Palestinian refugees were given their rights.

"The principles of Yasser Arafat, and his sayings, are his will and it is our duty to implement it," Abbas said.

Shalom slams Abbas remarks
Israel's initial response to the Abbas campaign platform came last week. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was plainly unamused.

"At a time when there is perhaps a great atmosphere of hope here in the region and in the world as a whole, harsh statements such as these are not encouraging," Shalom told Israel Radio of the Abbas campaign launch in Ramallah. "This speech does not bode well."

According to Shalom, Israel could not write off Abbas's remarks as mere campaign rhetoric. "You cannot speak of 'continuing the struggle in all forms,' or to sell the illusion of the refugees, nor to speak of Jerusalem in that manner," Shalom said.

Shalom cited a speech that Arafat gave at the 1993 signing ceremony for the Oslo accords in Washington. "He gave a very extreme, very forceful speech, whereupon then-government spokesmen tried to say that this was Arafat's opening position.

"That opening position remained throughout, and perhaps became more extreme."

According to Shalom, past statements by Abbas had been more pragmatic and conciliatory. "Since he entered his post [as PLO chairman] he has spoken of preserving the legacy of Arafat, which for us is a legacy of terrorism."

An aide to Abbas, Ahmed Subah, has been widely quoted recently as saying that the real agenda of the PLO chief was "ending the Israeli occupation through peaceful negotiations, attaining security for Palestinian citizens and achieving reform and development."

In any event, Shalom said, the crucial test of Abbas's intentions would not be long in coming.

"These things cannot be ignored," he said of Abbas's campaign rhetoric. "They are very, very unpleasant. We will do everything that we can at this stage so that they can hold proper elections.

"However, we expect that the next day they will enter into real action against both incitement and terrorism. Otherwise, it will be more or less as it was under Arafat."




And what do the opinion leaders of the Palestinians say?

http://www.israelnn.com/news.php?id=74347

PA TV: Killing of Jews is Mandatory
Tuesday, December 28, 2004 / 16 Tevet 5765

Contrary to the anticipated decrease in the PA’s hate broadcasts since the demise of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Media Watch has issued a report claiming the PA media message has not changed.

PA religious leaders have long advocated the killing of Jews as a religious necessity. Monday, PA TV broadcast the same call, advocating genocide as a historical necessity – this time from a senior PA academic rather than from a religious leader.

Dr. Hassan Khater, founder of the Al Quds Encyclopedia and a PA TV lecturer, recently appeared on PA TV, citing the Islamic tradition (Hadith) demanding genocide in the name of Islam’s founder Mohammed. Khater quoted the same verse used repeatedly in sermons by terror-supporting religious leaders in the PA. He did so as part of a lecture focusing on what he described as the war of the Jews against Arabs’ trees.

"Mohammed said in his Hadith: ‘The Hour [Day of Resurrection] will not arrive until you fight the Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or tree] and the rock and the tree will say: Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'," Dr. Khater said, on prime time PA-run television.

The segment, broadcast originally on July 13, 2003 and rebroadcast Monday, Dec. 27, 2004 on PA TV can be viewed here.

“The continued teaching that this Hadith applies today could well be a dominant factor driving terror against Israeli civilians,” Said PMW Director Itamar Marcus. “By depicting redemption as dependent on Muslims' killing of Jews, the PA world view presents this genocide as a religious obligation and historical necessity - not related to the conflict over borders, but as something inherent to Allah's world.”

One example provided by PMA of the traditional call for genocide of the Jews, was broadcast earlier this year by a religious leader. It can be viewed here.

The Friday sermon, broadcast on PA TV September 10, 2004, depicts Sheik Ibrahim Madiras telling followers: "The Prophet said: the Resurrection will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them. The Muslims will kill the Jews, rejoice [in it], rejoice in Allah's Victory. The Muslims will kill the Jews, and he will hide. The Prophet said: the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him! Why is there this malice? Because there are none who love the Jews on the face of the earth: not man, not rock, and not tree. Everything hates them. They destroy everything, they destroy the trees and destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth, and the day of our victory, Allah willing, will come."

PMW claims that the PA has, in fact, not decreased its promotion of hatred and genocide at all. “World attention has brought pressure on the PA to change the content of the Friday sermons, in which religious leaders have repeatedly called for the genocide of Jews,” said PMW Director Itamar Marcus. “The PA has not eliminated the message, however, but has merely transferred it to another framework.”

[Mediocrates]

And what does the UN say about the Peace Process?

http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=6940
A Top Kofi Annan Aide Insults Israeli Leader

BY BENNY AVNI - Special to the Sun
December 30, 2004
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/6940

UNITED NATIONS - Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, yesterday urged that Secretary-General Annan fire his top adviser, Lakhdar Brahimi, for his anti-Israel tirades.

Mr. Brahami recently likened Prime Minister Sharon to an assassin, adding to a series of statements that embarrassed the secretary-general, who is trying to position himself as a player in the peace process between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.

In a phone call to a top U.N. official this week, Mr. Gillerman said that the latest anti-Israeli screed by Mr. Brahimi in Europe should be grounds for firing him, the ambassador told The New York Sun yesterday.

Speaking on Belgian radio and to the Belgian senate last week, Mr. Brahimi compared Mr. Sharon to an assassin, urged Europeans to increase their pressure on Israel, and said that the world is too accepting of "cynical and ridiculous" Israeli positions on peace with the Palestinian Arabs, according to a report by Agence France-Presse that was translated from the French.

Because Mr. Annan and many other top officials were out on vacation this week, Mr. Gillerman said he spoke with the head of the Asia-Pacific division, Geir Pederson, a Norwegian who is increasingly involved in issues related to the Middle East. He has asked Mr. Pederson to relay his message to Mr. Annan. A U.N. official who asked not to be named confirmed that the conversation took place, but refused to comment on it.

For the second time this month, a U.N. spokesman yesterday distanced Mr. Annan from Mr. Brahimi's words, saying Mr. Brahimi spoke "in his personal capacity." He added that Mr. Annan's views on the Middle East "are well known."

The U.N. issued a similar statement two weeks ago after Mr. Brahimi told an Arab audience that America professes to promote human rights in the Arab world while at the same time ignoring Israeli human rights violations.

"We've had enough," Mr. Gillerman told the Sun. After the incident in Dubai two weeks ago, Mr. Annan promised him in a private conversation that Mr. Brahimi would not repeat such statements, the ambassador said. A week later a similar sentiment, which Mr. Gillerman described as "bigoted," was publicly expressed in Europe.

Mr. Brahimi has been a prominent player in Mr. Annan's diplomatic team in postwar Afghanistan, where he has served as the secretary-general's special representative, as well as in Iraq, where he helped shape the first sovereign government last summer.

After returning from Iraq, Mr. Annan announced that Mr. Brahimi has accepted a role as an undersecretary-general, one of the highest-paid positions at the U.N., serving "as a member of the secretary-general's senior staff" and advising Mr. Annan "on a wide range of issues, including situations in the areas of conflict prevention and conflict resolution."

As a former top official of the Arab League, Mr. Brahimi, an Algerian national, is considered by the U.N. to be an expert on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Mr. Annan is said to have relied heavily on many occasions on Mr. Brahimi's advice on Middle East issues.

In his latest visit to Washington, where he met Secretary of State Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who has been nominated by the president to replace Mr. Powell, Mr. Annan stressed the need for deeper U.N. involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, according to sources on both sides of that issue. America has urged the U.N. to be more even-handed in its approach to the Middle East; it is seen by Washington as heavily pro-Arab.

Whether related to the Washington visit or not, after Mr. Annan returned last week, his chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, announced he would retire. In conversations with the Sun, several diplomats and U.N. officials named Mr. Riza, as well as Mr. Brahimi, as the most anti-Israeli officials in Mr. Annan's inner circle.

According to AFP, Mr. Brahimi, in an interview conducted in French on Belgium's RTBP radio last Friday, said, "You must condemn Mr. Sharon when he assassinates people, but you keep quiet just like you keep quiet when he uproots more than a million trees in the orchards of Palestine."

He urged European listeners to be much more aggressive in pressuring Israel. "A return of peace will not happen all by itself," he said. "It will happen only with a totally different European attitude."

A day earlier, Mr. Brahimi addressed the Belgian senate, where he said that the root of international terrorism is related mostly to the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to AFP. "What is being done to solve this problem? Not enough," he said.

"The international community has too easily accepted the cynical and ridiculous viewpoint of the Israeli prime minister, who considered the late president Yasser Arafat the only person responsible for insecurity in Israel and for the plight of his own people," Mr. Brahimi told legislators.

"In fact, the Arab states have essentially abandoned the Palestinians in recent years and Europe has not yet used the considerable political influence it enjoys to advance peace," he added. "European states and public opinion do not condemn loudly enough the grave violations of the most elementary human rights in Palestine."

[MGB8]

I was willing to allow Abbas' hugging of militants as necessary for him to win and even justified given the Pal Arab narrative, but not necessarily excluding the possibility of a legitimate 2 state agreement.

Its becoming more and more likely, however, that nothing has changed...that while Arafat was a liar and a terrorist, the problem was not his personality, it was his people and how he shaped them.

There may turn out to be no option other than war and expulsion.

[KettleWhistle]

Mr. Brahimi has been a prominent player in Mr. Annan's diplomatic team in postwar Afghanistan, where he has served as the secretary-general's special representative, as well as in Iraq, where he helped shape the first sovereign government last summer.

Just another good reason to do away with the UN. The third-world barbarians can't get their countries in order, and they shouldn't be allowed to run world affairs at the UN.

[Toga]

I was willing to allow Abbas' hugging of militants as necessary for him to win and even justified given the Pal Arab narrative, but not necessarily excluding the possibility of a legitimate 2 state agreement.

Its becoming more and more likely, however, that nothing has changed...that while Arafat was a liar and a terrorist, the problem was not his personality, it was his people and how he shaped them.

There may turn out to be no option other than war and expulsion.

By the time the government of Israel will come to your conclusion it may be too late.

[Xela]

Who is Abbas?

He obtained his doctorate from the Orientalism Institute in Moscow in 1982; the title of his thesis was "The Secret Liaisons between Nazi Germany and the Zionist Movement."

[Mediocrates]

I read that the EU will send 260 monitors to the PA elections

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...=1104722395463

And I'm stuck by a sense of "Well what good would that do?" I honestly can't imagine that the EU observers would dare to publically state that anything will be amiss with PA elections. I doubt even if they will send outsiders and instead do what they do with news services and that is to simply hire local stringers who are supplied by the PLO.

I would have to say that they only purpose their presence on the ground is not to monitor PA elections but instread to get ready claims of Israeli interference, true or not in order to muddy the waters and generally screw things up, which is what they are especially good at.

[Leon]

Israel doesnt need nor never had to negotiate with them. Ever more so since the Arab/Muslim world know, understand and appreciate only one language.

[MGB8]

By the time the government of Israel will come to your conclusion it may be too late.

What can be done? It is a terrible thing to expell a population from lands that they have a legitimate claim on, even if the land is subject to rival claims. There are also real political issues, not to mention "international law" . It is something that is the absolute last resort, and we are not their. Yet. But we may one day be. How many last chances to a people get?

[Leon]

"We will remain loyal to Yasser Arafat's path and policy until the liberation of Jerusalem and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

On Friday, Abbas attended a major Fatah rally in Gaza City, where he paid tribute to the Palestinian "martyrs" killed in fighting with Israel.


Zakariya Zubeidi, the local commander of the group who is wanted by Israel for his role in orchestrating terror attacks, hoisted Abbas on his shoulders and expressed full support for his candidacy.

No negotiating with terrorists full stop. Israel needs to stop acting like the loser and start acting like the victor

[RichardP]

Yup! Well said Leon, and they had better do so soon.

[Illuminatus]

Leon post #12 wrote, "and start acting like the victor"

[..Like Moshe Dayan, I climbed on Sharon's armored vehicle to watch the
attack in progress. The battle was not yet over, but the war was decided. ..]

Micha Bar Am
crossing the Suez, 1973

-- I wonder if "acting like the victor" is like, having faith?