Mudar Zahran: I think Egypt must take responsibility for Gaza. Egypt must take responsibility for Gaza the same way Jordan must recognize its responsibilities towards the Palestinians. And I do see Egypt intervening to booth protect and save Gazans as well as provide to them.
BackChannels: To protect them from Hamas or from Israel? Our small world should not want to continue the Hamas-style Islamist enterprise and the anti-Semitic cant that forms a part of its character. That way of speaking — to demonize and slander the Jews (above all) — is in part everyone’s enemy.
From correspondence with Mudar Zahran, Jordanian Palestinian and peace activist, July 27, 2014
The HamaNazi part of the Islamic Botherhood goes.
Gazans — refugees proven unwanted by and not actively integrated into the rest of the Arab world — decidedly stay.
A new culture is born.
Occupation: yes — a real one, not a phony baloney political slogan.
Occupiers: Egyptian and Israeli military.
Transition: from God Mob mafia state to responsible and responsive local governance with foreign policy overseen by an Egyptian-Israeli-Gaza partnership.
Guaranteed: Gazan freedom and self-determination; real respect in the world.
On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.
We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called “defensive aggression”. In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity. We wish to report the facts as we see them and their implications on the lives of the people.
We are appalled by the military onslaught on civilians in Gaza under the guise of punishing terrorists.
Rightfully, the esteemed publication caught heat:
The Lancet, a top tier scientific journal by all accounts, did a great disservice to the medical community. The publication of an extremely biased one-sided analysis of such a complex situation is outrageous and full of lies.
And setting to rights, it brought also a long riposte by nearly a dozen esteemed medical professionals at the end of last week (8/15/2014). Excerpted:
For The Lancet and its editors to avoid any further embarrassment in associating this prestigious journal with such a vituperative betrayal of its scientific mission, we recommend The Lancet retract the authors’ letter on the basis of favouritism for anti-Israeli political positions, the victimisation of Israeli academia, and the competing interests of a lead author known to be a political activist with anti-Israeli stances . . . .
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We find abhorrent that academic authors would, without evidence or data, accuse an entire academic community of crimes against humanity by association of national identity or professional affiliation, an accusation that is not only a rank dehumanisation of an entire state, but explicitly seditious in propagating virulent anti-semitic sentiments to the detriment of whole academies. Although our feelings will undoubtedly recover, the authors, through their reckless words, have inflicted a deep wound to the body and soul of global scientific and medical academia at the very moment opportunities for apolitical engagement, collaboration, and bridge-building are most needed.
The Institute for Palestine Studies published a detailed report on Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon in the summer of 2012. It reported that tunnel construction in Gaza has resulted in a large number of child deaths.
“At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials”
The author, Nicolas Pelham, explains that Hamas uses child laborers to build their terror tunnels because, “much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies”.
Map depicting HamaNazi tunneling incursion into Israel.
Shocking stories being told by IDF soldiers who report that Hamas terrorists are using children as human shields – including running toward IDF positions with a gun in one hand and a baby tucked under the arm.
To sum up: Hamas is not only using child labor, but likely child slavery, in building its terror tunnel network. While the world worries obsessively over the child casualties of Israeli attacks on Hamas targets in Gaza, it has ignored Hamas’s deliberate killing of hundreds of Palestinian children, over the objections of the local populace.
“I have personally seen rockets fired at Israel from hospitals and schools, but we couldn’t strike back because of civilians nearby,” said Lt. Or. “In one instance, we acquired a target but we saw that there were children in the area. We waited around, and when they didn’t leave we were forced to abort a strike on an important target.”
“We know that Hamas uses human shields. But why would you report this when you are sitting in the middle of the Gaza Strip, surrounded by Hamas gunmen?” — Reporter covering the war, who asked not to be identified.
The school had served as a shelter for internally displaced Gazans.
Related: Terrorists fire anti-tank missile from Al-Wafa hospital in Gaza The IDF launched an investigation, and army sources said it was unclear whether the area was hit by an Israeli or Palestinian range projectile.
Later Thursday night, the IDF said an initial investigation found that terrorists had opened fire from the vicinity of the school, and that the army returned fire. At the same time, Hamas fired in the general direction of the school, the army said. Civilians in the school were asked to vacate the area, but refused, the army added.
“For two days we were trying to move people out of that school in particular and the Beit Hanoun area in general,” said an IDF official who was involved in the interactions between the IDF, UNRWA, and International Red Cross (ICRC) leading up to the incident.
It appears that not only has Hamas been keeping Gazans in the line of IDF fire, it may have fired rounds itself at the school of interest. Following a forensic investigation — and in the west, such may be reviewed independently with time — the IDF found cause to deny firing the rounds that took more than a dozen noncombatant lives:
” . . .but we are yet to discover a peaceful one.”
No we haven’t.
Are Egyptians idolaters?
Are modern Germans Nazis?
Are all Somalians al-Shabbab? If so you better tell them so they can stop being slaughtered by the same.
What happens when warfare slips from the conventions of columns, flags, and uniforms? That is part of what has happened. Mafia have crept into the sub-basement of the field: no uniforms, no nationality, many languages, no problem “blending in” until they’re comfortable in some space, and then the signal visual affectations arrive. They don’t get everybody either: they make enemies with every inch of ground claimed (by their own authority backed by the threat of unpredictable violence). I think the constituencies fed up with them and those aligned but doubtful should be helped to separate from them in every way possible.
PakDef just rolled up into Waziristan in an attempt to prosecute a conventional war by evacuating the entire space and going into kill who was left to resist (or not — some innocents couldn’t leave). On top of that travesty, they let the barbers get between their assault and the men with red beards. (Head slap with an “oy vey!” right there).
Military address the outer shell of this challenge — that’s how the checkpoints, fences, and walls and a lot of intelligence save lives — but stronger medicine is needed to combat some thought processes (which I distill as “gonna be safe locally” or “gonna get somethin'”) and armor against the seduction of delusional promises and pandering speech.
French, German, and Italian governments through their leaders without prompting repudiated in the past day Gaza-based anti-Semitic riots in their own spheres. The fathers and grandfathers and uncles or other relations of the same could well have been fascists or collaborators with the Nazis, but they are not that today.
When the machinery of war stopped moving, what happened?
People die of contagious disease too, but I think it much more evil when they do so — when they get others to do so — for some evil that dwells in language, preoccupies the imagination, and spills out into a hateful and violent presence in the world surrounding their own.
But since Hamas plants its terror network beneath schools, hospitals and mosques, such a bombing mission would have involved high Palestinian casualties. So Israel decided not to level Gaza and send Sean in. He died so as to minimize Palestinian losses. I just came back from where his family is sitting Shiva, the Jewish custom of mourning. There were no anti-Arab speeches, no signs of militarism, just the tremendous grief of parents burying a child. As a journalist, I sat there and hung my head in shame, overwhelmed by the simple truth that while journalists feign concern for Palestinian kids, they are actually creating the environment for their deaths.
Why would sensible, British citizens put their lives at risk by joining an extremist terrorist organization? Why would they break with family and friends, donate a third of their income to the organization, and travel to Israel with bombs hidden inside their Qur’ans? In Radical Islam Rising (2005)Quintan Wiktorowicz, a prominent expert in Islamic social movements, interviews rank and file activists of Al-Muhajiroun to find out what makes them tick. Al-Muhajiroun is a UK-based terrorist movement that was founded by Omar Bakri Muhammad (1958- ) in 1983. Bakri led the movement until 2005, when he was expelled from the UK. Leaving behind his British wife and their seven children, Omar moved to Beruit. In 2008 he married a second wife and had two more children. He is now facing the death penalty in Lebanon while his…
Pulitzer Prize winner William Safire used to write for the New York Times “On Language.” His fascinating articles would describe the etymology of words; their usage and context. He spent years as a speechwriter for US President Nixon, followed by decades writing for the Times. He had a unique appreciation for words. Safire would not appreciate the New York Times abuse of language today.
Some words are seldom used in daily speech. When heard or seen, we understand that there is a particular purpose and nuance for their application. Even in comedy.
The old TV sitcom “Seinfeld” had a funny skit about George being set up on a blind date by his friend Jerry. George had a long list of questions to qualify his interest. When asking about her face he said: “Is there a pinkish hue?” The question puzzled his friend Jerry who was setting him up: “A pinkish…
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