25 Monday Aug 2014
Tags
Without reporters and cameras there to document the carnage, the blood that Hamas compels Gazans to shed on its behalf would be wasted. Hamas thus needs reporters in Gaza. But the last thing it wants is a press corps reporting both sides of the conflict—documenting not just the result of Israeli airstrikes but also the Hamas rockets and missiles that drew Israeli fire in the first place.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/hamas-s-media-strategy_803523.html – 9/1/2014
19 Tuesday Aug 2014
According to Marc Schulman writing for Newsweek, it was the ceasefire that wasn’t:
It turns out that last night the representatives of the Palestinian Authority were putting forth a patently untrue story as to what Israeli and Hamas had agreed, when neither had. Unfortunately, all of the press (both Israeli and worldwide) reported the story as true.
Israel has recalled its negotiating team.
Is the reader perhaps looking for the Hamas “off-button”?
Stop looking.
It doesn’t exist.
The Hamas program script plan vision has no curtain, no final act.
In fact, the doctrine is explicit:
. . . even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take.
Hear, oh Israel (and all others): with Hamas and what drives it — that deeply malignant narcissism that lends to each his own indulged and grandiose center of the universe — there is nothing to negotiate.
So Hamas does not negotiate in good faith, neither for peace and prosperity to be shared by Gazans nor for considerations having much to do, after all, with The All.
Know the character of the commanders: Ayatollah Khamenei, Khaled Mashaal, Ismail Haniyeh, and others.
Why should Hamas or any other Jihad Joe group come equipped with an “off button”?
The enterprise clearly cons the public, makes a lot of money (which with “terror tunnels” and all would seem not to reach intended deserving recipients), and harms the principles not at all (although, perhaps, after all, Allah knows what they do — and, for now, has them getting away with it).
http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/President-Peres-accuses-Qatar-for-financing-Hamas-terrorism-368579 – 7/23/2014.
http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/analysis/121018/hamass-biggest-backer-it-has-entire-westin-palm-its-hand – 7/31/2014.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/arab-bank-trial-allegedly-financing-hamas-article-1.1904694 – 8/15/2014.
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17 Sunday Aug 2014
Tags
anti-Semitism, Hamas, Israel, political, politics, propaganda, The Lancet
As ethical, apolitical, and professional members of the academic community, we find the open letter for the people in Gaza1 an outrageous diatribe lacking context and deliberate vilification of the sovereign state of Israel and, by extension, every Israeli. In publishing such invective, The Lancet has allowed itself to become a platform for distorted political activism, as has been previously noted by others.2,3 Because we are scientists and physicians who are accustomed to incorporating all data into the formation of educated opinions (even public commentary), we are obliged to redress the imbalance.
http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673614613143.pdf – 8/15/2014.
An updated reference to the same may be found here under the title, “True about The Lancet – And Shame on It for the Anti-Semitic Knuckleheads It Chose to Support With Its Platform” (July 28, 2014, updated August 17, 2014).
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13 Wednesday Aug 2014
Posted in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Middle East, Regions
As Hamas and ISIS and others of the Muslim Botherhood continue to ruin the “Religion of Peace” for its peaceful adherents, the promotion of Mahmoud Abbas has been adopted in some quarters as a make-do path for Gaza’s reconstruction.
Not so fast.
From The Awesome Conversation —
Abbas is a non-starter, a first-rate anti-Semite in his own right, and even though he comes out of the Soviet-post-Soviet pan-Arab Nationalist Era of Thuggery, he has still in mind the destruction of Jewry.
Nope.
The near answer for Gaza — and we are nowhere close to it today, but I believe it’s coming: I am just a little ahead of the story — is local Gazan rule within the confines of Israeli or Israeli-Egyptian suzerainty.
Hamas cannot be Hamas without having in mind the expansion of Islam and elimination of Israel and of world Jewry.
Abbas cannot be Abbas without perpetuating the myth of the benign dictator. The closest I’ve seen to that may be Pervez Musharraf, and it is to be noted that he handed in his stars, left office as a civilian president, and handed the military baton to a general who swore not to interfere with the politics of the state. Ever so slowly, Pakistan has been lurching into the present (while Musharraf has been arrested on trumped past deeds . . . dictatorship — and now his — seems a hard habit to break in some places. 🙂
So my two cents reduced to a half-penny: 1) Free Gaza From Hamas; 2) Occupy, disarm, and transform Gaza into a quasi independent city-state, and 3) assign to Gazans the responsibility of educating their children toward modern and peaceful lives, and 4) leave to the United States, Israel, and Egypt the matter of Gaza’s internal and external security.
Among top reasons for the taming of Abbas (ooh, he would not like that!) is that we (the people of the United States) largely write the paycheck for his own Israeli-training-in-Jordan security force. Beyond that, he hasn’t got a better program to offer anyone than Hamas.
Referring to the latest in plans bandied about, Alan Johnson has suggested in World Affairs (August 12, 2014), “Crucially, it also offers a framework to re-establish the authority of those Palestinians who oppose terror, recognize Israel, and want to negotiate a two-state solution—the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas.”
To actually want a sincere “two-state solution” would seem to require a great reduction in the leadership’s reserved (and not so hidden) animus for Jews.
Mahmoud Abbas has had a problem with that.
“Since Ahmadinejad left the political stage, Abu Mazen is the number one leader in injecting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel poison,” Yuval Steinitz told a Tel Aviv security conference Wednesday, using the name by which Abbas is popularly known in Arabic.
“Under Abu Mazen the level of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement in the (Palestinian) Authority has reached new highs, where the bottom line is the destruction of Israel,” said Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/18454 – 1/30/2014.
Feel welcome to web-search “Mahmoud Abbas, anti-Semite” and let me know know if you find “Abu Mazen’s” inner Martin Luther King.
Gazans, of course, may be expected to have an issue with Israelis for the military operations visited on their sorry heads courtesy of cynical human-shield producing Hamas.
Ask an American southerner about lingering resentments.
Blood has a long afterlife in the land but memory of conditions — of Hamas behaving in a manner ensuring the wasting of lives — proves generally more clarified, more powerful, and more persistent.
Navigational path out of this hell?
First in the heart: eject Hamas and with it the falsely advanced “Palestinian cause” — reference: Efraim Karsh’s Palestine Betrayed (Yale UP, 2010) and others on the industry that has become the “middle east conflict” (never mind all the other concurrent and breathtakingly bloody and cruel middle east conflicts) — and be born again: Gazans!
Then take a fresh look at the neighbor who has been ever ready for peaceful development, humanitarian service, and trade.
One day Gazans will look back at Hamas, which will require looking backward, for to have it otherwise would be like having tried driving somewhere without taking one’s eyes off the rear-view mirror.
Shift
Forward
Independent
Interdependent
Gaza
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13 Wednesday Aug 2014
Tell you what . . .
From now on, I will tell you what to do with your life (and
in addition to doing what I tell you to do,
you will pay me for the privilege of my leaving you alone).
*
I will tell you what to see and what to hear,
what to say and what to withhold.
When I tell you what is happening around you,
you are to believe me
and no one else.
I am your authority.
I am your only authority.
*
If you are in the news business, good — you can help me!
*
Every time out, you will make me look heroic (which, naturally, I am) and
not show anything to detract from that image.
*
Call me”Hamas”
Acknowledge that I am greater than you.
And I,
at any time, may
Arrest
Detain
Question
Torture
You
Without explanation.
*
If you so much as breath in Gaza,
I
am your world
I
am all the world
You
will know
______
In Spanish, Gutiérrez, who is writing for Melilla Hoy, tweeted, “On Saturday, 9th of August, Hamas launched a battery of rockets from the press hotel. What was their intent? To provoke Israel to kill us?#SaveGazaFromHamas.”
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/12/spanish-journalist-in-gaza-hamas-launched-rockets-from-press-hotel/ – 8/12/2014.
“Since the war started, one population group in Gaza has disappeared from the streets: people in uniform…They work for Hamas and are targets of Israel… Only at the Shifa Hospital, the big hospital in Gaza City, are a few sitting in uniform. There, they feel protected from the Israeli bombings. In addition, that is where they monitor the international press to prevent it from doing ‘wrong’ things. Local camera crews know this, but foreigners do not: Hamas does not want that killed or wounded fighters appear on camera footage.
Yes, there are many civilian casualties and most of the inhabitants of Gaza live in fear, but Hamas likes to exploit this for its PR. ‘He does not dare to talk to you,’ says the wife of someone who has been placed under house arrest because he is known for criticizing Hamas. She too does not dare to tell his story, because ‘we are being watched’.”
The media have turned the civilian death toll into the only measure of the justness of the Israeli warfare. The New York Times and Haaretz, for instance, published the Gaza death toll on their front pages every day. The message is clear: The higher the number of civilian casualties, the more “war crimes” Israel is committing.
This measure is groundless. According to its distorted logic, Nazi Germany – which had one million dead civilians in World War II – was the victim of the aggressiveness of the United States, which lost “only” 12,000 civilians, and Britain, which lost “only” 67,000 civilians. This is a logic and ethical failure.
International media failed professionally and ethically in Gaza – http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4557962,00.html – 8/13/2014
The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month,” the statement said. “The international media are not advocacy organizations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-press-group-condemns-hamas-intimidation-in-gaza/#ixzz3AIUmVbgW 8/11/2014.
An Italian reporter, after leaving Gaza, confirms that it was a Hamas rocket that hit a school playground, killing 10 kids, but Obama sent Hamas 50 million bucks anyway, while he cancelled tourist visa applications for Israelis.
1. The Gaza correspondent of Canada’s Globe and Mail, Patrick Martin, wrote in his article from 20 July: “The presence of militant fighters in Shejaia became clear Sunday afternoon when, under the cover of a humanitarian truce intended to allow both sides to remove the dead and wounded, several armed Palestinians scurried from the scene.Some bore their weapons openly, slung over their shoulder, but at least two, disguised as women, were seen walking off with weapons partly concealed under their robes. Another had his weapon wrapped in a baby blanket and held on his chest as if it were an infant.”
http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2014/07/22/hamas-human-shield-tactic-as-reported-by-foreign-journalists/ – 7/22/2014.
As The Guardian reported, the Hamas government in Gaza issued its ban on journalists co-operating or working with Israel’s media due to its “hostility.” It said “offenders will be prosecuted.”
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/jan/01/press-freedom-hamas – 1/1/2013.
Threats, physical violence and arbitrary arrest and detention by Hamas security forces are common. A score of journalists were arrested or roughed up during 2010 by the Hamas interior ministry’s security service. Such measures oblige Palestinian journalists to censor themselves. In mid-March last year, security forces harshly broke up meetings in the centre of Gaza City organised by the “March 15 Coalition” calling for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and arrested and beat journalists, including about 20 on 15 March 2011. Security forces raided many local and foreign media offices looking for photos of the crackdown.
http://en.rsf.org/predator-hamas-security-forces-in-gaza,42429.html – 2012.
After 15 days he was released. He then made a statement that it is clear that there is a systematic policy practiced by Hamas in the Gaza Strip with the aim of gagging the media by subjecting journalists to arrest, torture and detention in harsh conditions.
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/07/journalist-imprisoned-tortured-by-hamas.html#.U-uumuNdV8E – 7/16/2012.
At least eight journalists were beaten by the Hamas police officers during the rallies. Some had their cameras and laptops confiscated, while others were taken into custody and made to sign a document pledging to refrain from covering such events in the future.
http://www.barenakedislam.com/2011/03/29/gaza-palestinian-women-reporters-beaten-and-tortured-by-hamas/ – 3/29/2011.
Hamas Forces Arrest Two Reporters In Gaza –
http://www.imemc.org/article/62548 – 11/23/2011.
Hamas security services also arrested the journalists: Munir Al-Mawri, Ashraf Abu Khsewan and Mustafa Megdad without informing them of the reasons behind their arrest.
The Hamas’ Internal Security Agency summoned Sunday several Palestinian Journalists including Abdul Karim Haji and Hussein Abdul Jawad Karsou’, without revealing reasons for their arrest.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/national/3650-hamas-security-forces-in-gaza-arrest-several-journalists – 1/22/2013.
“The political struggle between Hamas and Fatah has inflicted a great deal of damage on the press in the Palestinian Territories,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Many media have been closed and dozens of journalists have been arrested. In the absence of the rule of law, they have no way of defending themselves. Mahmoud Abbas and Ismael Haniyeh cannot remain silent while this goes on. It is in their own interest to ensure there is room for free speech.”
http://en.rsf.org/palestinian-territories-arbitrary-detention-of-journalists-29-08-2008,28353 – 8/29/2008.
Committee to Protect Journalists, search page on Hamas:
http://www.cpj.org/search.php?cx=002635367788333464843%3A1kfp8mbluhy&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=Hamas
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12 Tuesday Aug 2014
And still, as a Palestinian, I must admit: I am responsible for part of what has happened. We can no longer deny our responsibility for the death of our own people.
Most of the Palestinians were against the rocket fire on Israel. They realized that the rockets would not give us anything. They called on Hamas to stop firing, knowing that it had paved the way for the death of its own people.
We knew that Hamas was digging the tunnels which would to lead to our destruction. We knew that three people live on every square meter in Gaza. And Hamas knew that an attack on Israel would lead to mass death, but it’s leaders are more interested in their own victories than in the lives of their victims.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4557777,00.html – 8/12/2014.
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11 Monday Aug 2014
Tags
(8/10/2014)
Ethnic self-determination has been theme in conflict and general politics throughout the ages as no child is born without legacy, and it seems no legacy goes uncontested in the wilds of history.
The Declaration comprises four sections. The first section declares the Independent State of the United Tribes of New Zealand. The second proclaims all sovereign power to reside in the hereditary chiefs and heads of tribes and states that no other legislative power will be allowed to exist. The third section outlines the Chiefs’ intentions to meet every year to make laws for the peace and good order of the country. The final section requests the King of England to be the parent of their infant state and its protector from all attempts upon its independence.
http://archives.govt.nz/events/declaration-independence – New Zealand – “Declaration of Independence of the Northern Chiefs” – 1835
God bless the Queen, for the history of empire has not only its twists but its revelations too. The Crown System has turned out politically progressive, protective of minority interests, and able to accommodate and respond to contemporary indigenous and minority complaint.
Over coffee and on the other side of the global fence, the morning horror . . .
“Khaled Sharrouf reportedly posted the picture of his son with the decapitated head on Twitter with the comment: “That’s my boy!” The image was reportedly taken in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, which fell to the Islamist fighters earlier this year and shows Sharrouf’s seven-year old son, who was raised in Sydney, dressed in blue-checked trousers, a blue shirt and a baseball cap, while struggling to hold up the severed head of a slain Syrian soldier.”
http://www.ibtimes.com/australian-boy-poses-severed-head-country-joins-rescue-efforts-iraq-1654378 – 8/11/2014.
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10 Sunday Aug 2014
(7/24/2014)
(7/24/2014)
(8/5/2014)
” . . . a separate militant group to Hamas! They are also responsible for rocket fire into Israel . . .” (1:21)
(8/10/2014)
(6/18/2014)
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