Almodallal, a 23-year-old who speaks fluent British-accented English, has assumed a post normally held by tough-talking men who voice Hamas’ bitter opposition to Israel. She will be responsible for the Gaza government’s communications with the international media.
It looks like the main base of Palestinian Tamarod just got off on a technicality.
I kid a little bit, discretion having been perhaps the better part of valor on this day’s promised demonstration by Fatahnikki in Gaza.
As with much else associated with the middle east conflict, today’s news, however clear and accurate, may not be complete, the government marching ever a few steps ahead of its subjugated and subdued constituents:
“The campaign started with summons that were sent to the majority of the arrested persons to refer to the ISS head office each in his area and/or arrest them from their houses. … [It] targeted a number of Fatah leaders, including current and former province secretaries, area secretaries and other members. The arrested persons were questioned about giving money to families of Fatah members who were wounded or killed during the events of June 2007,” the PCHR stated in a media release issued on Aug. 13.
Although Gaza’s Interior Ministry is trying to downplay the importance of this movement, the security authorities on the ground seem to have a different opinion. They summoned and detained a large number of journalists, activists and politicians to question them about Tamarod.
” . . . just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90 . . . you died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice . . . .”
If in Gaza, one says, “You first” or “Just as soon as they let me go,” the world may take note and God will just have to understand with a weary acknowledgment the soul deadening character of the Hamafia-created atmosphere and its gruesome legacy and portent.
Tamarod Gaza’s main demands, as presented in different declarations, including a letter to the secretary-general of the Arab League, include requiring Hamas to immediately allow the formation of an elections committee, “without any delay or obstacle,” to pursue speedy general elections under international Arab and Islamic supervision. The expiration of Tamarod’s ultimatum of sorts has been set at sundown of November 8.
Being “caught between a rock and a hard place” might start looking pretty good to anyone who has long been caught between a rock and a rock.
Since 1948, Arabs abandoned in the field by Arab armies have with their generations been sequestered, more or less, in the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.
The same have been subject, differentially, to the diminishment of their human rights — notably, Mahmud Abbas received Jordanian citizenship around February 9, 2011, but even that story has been complicated by the middle east’s screwy loyalty x mafia flavored politics — from the preceding link: “The officials received citizenship at the same time they urged Jordan to stop giving Palestinian Jordanians citizenship, so they could consolidate their Palestinian identity, the Arab language newspaper said”; a little more than a year later, one reads (as if living in a very bad Orwell novel), “Jordan’s King Abdullah II is planning to revoke the Jordanian citizenship of Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) officials, The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday. It is unknown if PA President Mahmoud Abbas will also be stripped of his citizenship” — source: Jordan Continues to Strip Palestinians of Citizenship – Jewish Policy Center – 4/12/2012).
Others, who may have considered themselves lucky to have remained defiant of the State of Israel within its territories, admittedly contested, on the West Bank and Gaza (from which Jews were purged wholesale in 2005 in a faked out Arafat land-for-peace arrangement) have instead had to weather the abuses of Fatah-related cronyism and corruption and, in 2006, with soldiers of the same Fatah thrown from the rooftops of buildings in Gaza, the bizarre and deeply narcissistic Islamist control of Hamas.
To this day, the same have nurtured a surreal alternative narrative of the events of 1948, cultivated an absurd and ugly and wholly counterproductive anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist hate, treated childhood and adolescent educations as preparation for a war of conquest, and have complained incessantly and with great preoccupation of an “occupation” that has provided them with basic utilities, trade market exchange and throughput, educational services at the university level, and emergency medical services, trade partnerships, and jobs.
Around The Preoccupation has grown an immense online and print disinformation industry, including a “Pallywood” sector for the film propaganda buffs.
In association with the middle east conflict, who is really oppressing whom?
That question has been in the air a long time.
Lately, perhaps, with the Hamas’s six-year record of abuses in Gaza, it is finding some answers that may actually hold up to reason, not that it will hold up to Hamasfia’s intimidation backed by its history of paramilitary and military barbarism and brutality.
As events in Syria force the mini-Jihad and majestic cabal in the region to turn up their cards, i.e., make their true values, language habits, and behavior irrevocably visible, one may expect the roles of archaic pan-Arab nationalism and barbaric Sunni and Shiite extremism to show their bones beneath the pools of blood in which they have been bathing for decades.
As part of that process, the refugees of Israel’s 1948 successful struggle for survival may soon get an honest reappraisal of their legitimate identity and needs and that in terms accessible to the greater collection of humanity that inclines to regard itself as less special but altogether more dignified.
The 43-page report, “Abusive System: Criminal Justice in Gaza,” documents extensive violations by Hamas security services, including warrantless arrests, failure to inform families promptly of detainees’ whereabouts, and subjecting detainees to torture. It also documents violations of detainees’ rights by prosecutors and courts. Military courts frequently try civilians, in violation of international law. Prosecutors often deny detainees access to a lawyer, and courts have failed to uphold detainees’ due process rights in cases of warrantless arrest and abusive interrogations, Human Rights Watch found.
The UN, which has run the camps for all those years, is tired of the job. Balata’s alleys are caked in filth, a cash-for-work programme has all but collapsed, almost half the working-age adults have no jobs, and the UN’s once-prized classrooms are as overcrowded as the rooms where families live. Children sometimes leave school unable to write their names.
Even before this refugee crisis, Palestinians in Lebanon were not legally allowed to work in most professions. They continue to live in cramped spaces in 12 refugee camps or rented apartments. Half of the Palestinians from Syria are concentrated in two areas, Tyre and Saida, which includes the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Ein el Hilweh, established in 1948. They’re living with 13 individuals per residence, on average.
. . . As an ex-Gaza refugee without a national ID number, Abu Sulayman has long lived without access to healthcare, full education, representation or any jobs aside from blue-collar labor. Now he also lives without teeth.
Abu Sulayman is one of 16 Gaza Camp refugees who were detained for two weeks in October following a weekend-long clash between the Palestinian camp, neighboring village al-Haddad and Jordan’s public security forces.
The PA was less than totally honest when it tried to justify the raid; it was, it claimed, to round-up corrupt individuals and outlaws. While some of the camp’s residents may well be so described, it is wrong to say that all of them are, and to treat them as if they are. The collective nature of the raid was actually intended to terrorise all of the residents. It is odd that such a show of force has never been attempt against the illegal Jewish settlers across the occupied West Bank.
“All of Palestine from the (Mediterranean) sea to the river (Jordan) belongs to us, to us Muslims,” it states, in accordance with the beliefs of the militant Islamic group, which refuses to recognize Israel.
For the first time ever, the New York Times had a front page story about how Hamas is brainwashing its high school students into hating Israel by having them read textbooks with false, defamatory, and one-sided narratives.
According to Fares Akram and Jodi Rudoren, “The books used by 55,000 (Palestinian) children in eighth to tenth grade do not recognize modern Israel or mention the Oslo Peace Accords.”
Asked the lesson of the uprising, one of the 40 boys in class promptly answered, “Al Buraq Wall is an Islamic property,” using the Muslim name for the site, one of the holiest in Judaism. Pleased, the teacher then inquired whether the students would boycott Israeli products, as Arabs had boycotted Jewish businesses in 1929. A resounding chorus of “Yes!” came back from the class.
I am telling you the truth: unless they are my targets, those I quote here as authorities tell the truth.
As regards the Palestinian students involved, if they’re in high school, they’re not children: they’re tall and strong enough to kill and dumb enough to swallow the bait fed them by their elders.
Of all the crimes possible against humanity, the misdirecting of the young — let me be clear: the theft of a real education from the very young — would rank highest among them.
The walls at the Max Rayne Hand in Hand school in Jerusalem, located along the Green Line in the city’s southwest, are draped with hand-painted murals, squiggly sketches, and paper cutouts around words like “dignity”—but, like everything else at the school, it’s written twice: once in Hebrew, kavod, and once in Arabic, karam. Each class is run by two teachers, one Jewish and one Arab, and the 600 students are split evenly between Israeli Jews and Arabs.
Perhaps Israel is keeping mum, neither claiming nor denying responsibility for the destruction of a Syrian air base between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning this week.
As suggested on this blog, there are so few (to none) of objective observers in the battle space that those following the war news in mainstream media and the more seasoned defense journals online needs must accept that the perception of events may be a part of the province of intelligence interests.
In the deeply paranoid and suspicious atmosphere attending the fighting in Syria, which has been overrun by spies and riven by the separate interests of small cabals, throwing a little more “not knowing” into the mix adds to the bloody mischief already in full swing.
—The Israeli government and military establishment have declined to comment on the reports, although one Israeli official told Reuters he thought Israel had carried out the strike, but wasn’t certain.—
It appears that not even general Israeli military staff know what happened.
Very hush hush.
I’m sure the spy novelists are having a field day with every facet of Syria’s continuing meltdown.
Channel 2 News reported that the attack’s target was a S-125 surface-to-air missiles battery.
Satellite images of the area obtained by Channel 2 show the Russian-made Neva missiles, as well as a SA-3 missile battery, that also includes a command center with a radar to track the missiles’ targets and broadcasting anthenas to track the missiles as they are launched. The missiles have a range of 35km. and a 70k. warhead.
The casual reader Syrian war news may be subject to many impressions from the media but can no longer “see” or sort the chaos involved in Syria’s agony.
RT and the alternative press of which it has become a part will probably get in its digs as it did back in July by accusing Turkey of enabling an Israeli-borne attack on a shipment of Russian Yakhont anti-ship missiles.
Syrian President Bashar al Assad has made no secret of his contempt for Israel or his intentions to target the Jewish state with the intent of deflecting attention from his own failings. A little more than a month again in the latest of rants, he had said, “We have weapons that could blindside Israel.” Indeed, it’s possible, but it’s possible too that he will find himself with fewer of them this afternoon, which is not to say Israel is the only party that could have or would have done it.
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In the murky period associated with Assad’s chemical weapons deployment, the British seem to have alternately prepared for a strike on Syria and reversed tracks on the same.
Did intelligence stand down? Were agents retrieved?
Back in July, MI6 seems to have been worried about Assad’s chemical weapons stocks finding their way to the Al Qaeda affiliates operating in Syria and with Chinese and Russian meddling on the high tech side of the stew.
I would think it doubtful that British military and security operations have backed off the theater at all but rather gone about their missions more quietly than during the potential run-up to a punitive strike in relation to the chemical weapons imbroglio.
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a dilemma. He is invested in a peace process at home with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. And Turkey has a flourishing relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, whose oil and natural gas it needs desperately. Yet the permissive attitude of the Turkish state toward the jihadists battling the Syrian Kurds has been a source of trouble for Erdogan. He has gone a long way toward keeping the jihadists at arm’s length.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had to navigate the slim channel between NATO’s interests and those of the Muslim Brotherhood, on whose behalf he appears to be struggling in the Egyptian quarter of the middle east mess, and outright affiliation with the Al Qaeda affiliates that have apparently slipped across his borders to badger Christians and Kurds in Syria’s northern regions.
Who is cooperating with whom in Syria?
Whatever the true state of affairs may be as regards each aspect of the fighting in Syria, one probably will not find it on the front pages of newspapers.
The desk analysts consigned to perusing clippings may have cause to believe they’ve been left with looking over the shell of a very rotten egg.
I’d rather turn “data” into “information” than turn out lists, but data for lists comes fast and quick and paints its own picture. This insert, another brief melange, might suggest how hot the spy games are getting around the mixed motivation fighting inside Syria.
For more than four decades, Syria’s ruling family — President Bashar Assad and his late father, Hafez — has depended on informants — or the fear of them — to help keep the population in line.
In America’s entertainment culture, the statement “Trust no one” has developed a life all its own, but also one largely in jest; of course, with the post-9/11 domestic black operations elephant of a budget, that good humored acceptance of some potential invasive probing may change; however, for war torn Syria, there’s no humor or good natured winks to be found: the spies would seem to have swarmed one another’s offices and outposts.
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Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.
Seated at Mr. Erdogan’s side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.’s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In unusually blunt public remarks, Prince Turki al-Faisal called Obama’s policies in Syria “lamentable” and ridiculed a U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Assad’s chemical weapons. He suggested it was a ruse to let Obama avoid military action in Syria.
“The current charade of international control over Bashar’s chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious. And designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down (from military strikes), but also to help Assad to butcher his people,” said Prince Turki, a member of the Saudi royal family and former director of Saudi intelligence.
Today’s alternative and blithely anti-Semitic Far Gone and Leftward Press seems to be conflating today’s explosion 30 minutes south of Latakia with Israel and the old “Davy Crocket” tactical nuclear weapon.
I’m not waiting on the radiation reports.
The one thing certain about today’s blast is the real journalists are absent, the politically venal are present and active, and whatever pictures and news reports make into the still news vetting mainstream media tell very little about what has happened or what is happening in combat inside Syria.
Additional and Cited Reference In Loosely Reversed Chronological Order
INTERNATIONAL – Turkish FM denies Israel used Turkish base in Syria attack – 7/15/2013: ““Turkey will neither be a part nor a partner of such ‘attacks.’ The ones who claim this want to damage Turkey’s power and reputation,” he said. “It is out of the question that Turkey and Israel are part of a joint military operation.”
“The problem is not technical — the problems is about fear, mistrust, hatred and pain and dealing with past memories . . . .” Webcast, live at posting – 10/10/2013/1305EDT.
Mudar Zahran promoted the above via social networks about 50 minutes ago: whom he addressed, where, and when was not provided.
Addendum: Mudar Zahran speaking at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, “Two States for Two Peoples on Two Banks of the Jordan River,” Dr. Arieh Eldad, Chair, Jerusalem, August 25, 2013.
In reference, I’ve provided links to Zahrans writings and related material as well as items focusing on Jordanian stability.
In addition, Zahran has noted the landing of a shell in Ramtha, Jordan within the past three hours. Such mortar shell “spillover” (who knows with what intent it traveled?) has been a regular occurrence in Ramtha this past year.
The king was flying himself to Karak, which is one of the poorer cities in a distressingly poor country, to have lunch with the leaders of Jordan’s largest tribes, which form the spine of Jordan’s military and political elite. More than half of all Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, with roots on the West Bank of the Jordan River, but the tribal leaders are from the East Bank, and the Hashemite kings have depended on East Bankers to defend the throne since the Hashemites first came to what was then called Transjordan from Mecca almost 100 years ago.
Jordan shares the region’s troubles: a faltering economy; rampant unemployment, especially among the young; and a popular demand for a say in how the country is governed.
“Jordan is stable, but you feel what is so unstable,” says Labib Kamhawi, describing the contradictions. He is the head of the National Front for Reform, a coalition of political groups and civil society organizations. “The decision-making process is without any input from the people.”
Almost 2 million people have fled Syria since the civil war began in early 2011, according to U.N. numbers. By some estimates 800,000 of these poured into neighboring Jordan, a traditional safe haven for refugees from previously war-stricken regions such as Iraq and Palestine. This influx is taking a heavy toll on the Arab nation which by the end of the year may host as many as a million refugees.
Hassan Abu Hanieh, political analyst and expert on Islamic groups, said earlier this week that Jordanians are considered among the most prominent foreign nationalities fighting alongside Islamist forces in the anti-Assad rebellion, as hundreds have allegedly joined the radical and ultraconservative Salafist jihadist groups of Jabhat Al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, both Al Qaeda-affiliated, he said.
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