Monday, July 27, 2009

Land Reform and Land Politics

Steven Shamrak

1. Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin told a cabinet meeting recently that the Palestinian Authority is working secretly to prevent Jewish organisations from buying property in East Jerusalem.

2. An Egyptian sheikh living in Qatar has given Hamas $21 million to buy buildings in eastern Jerusalem where the outlawed terrorist organisation, as well as the Palestinian Authority, is trying to establish a power base Voting for the recent land reform bill had to be cancell ed in the Knesset on Wednesday as even seven government ministers refused to participate in the vote. Most of the Knesset felt this would hand the country over to private speculators and hostile-to-Israel elements. "Why do we want to sell the holy Land of Israel to become another piece of real estate?" said Zevulun Orlev, Jewish Home MK.

Jewish Land in Transjordan. The Israel Land Fund, which has bought land and dozens of houses for Jews in predominantly Arab parts of the Jerusalem area, is now eyeing property once owned by Jews in neighbouring Transjordan. Fund chairman Aryeh King told AFP, "There are thousands of Jewish properties in Jordan which were purchased during the Ottoman era and under the British mandate" adding, "We have records of the ownership." (Transjordan was a part of the Palestinian mandate, which was allocated for the Jewish state - Eretz Israel. After the British illegally ceded it to Bedouin refugees from the Saudi peninsula, Jews were forced out!)

Food for Thought. by Steven Shamrak

No news agency has reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy supported PM Netanyahu's call that Israel is a state for the Jewish people, but most of them wrote that the French President called on Israel to shut down construction on West Bank settlements.

Discriminated against in Jordan without International Condemnation. Jordan has begun revoking the Jordanian citizenship of those people defined by officials as Arabs with roots in Judea and Samaria. The new policy robs thousands of residents of the kingdom of civil services. (Maybe it is also time for Israel to revoke the citizenship of Arabs and let them move to Sinai to build their own independent country!)

Enemy Recognised the Value of Israeli Self-hating Media. The Prince of Bahrain, Sheik Salman bi n Hamad Al-Khalifa, has called on Arab leaders to talk to the Israeli media to facilitate Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Iron Dom Failed - Iran Must be Stopped. Israeli defence officials say three tests in the US of a missile defence system meant to shield Israel from Iranian attack have been aborted over the past week. An upgraded version of the already-deployed Arrow 2 was being tested off the coast of California when communication glitches between the missile and the radar led US defence officials to abort the tests. (The US has been undermining Israel's determination to stop the Iranian nuclear program by promoting a defensive program!)

Iran-PA Meeting - Fraternization of the Enemies. The Palestinian Authority' s top negotiator Saeb Erekat said he had met Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki a week ago in Egypt. He rejected reports that these were the first such talks, saying the two had been meeting since 2006.

Short-sighted Appeasement Does not Work. Israel is planning to remove 23 " illegal outposts" from the West Bank in the course of a single day in response to mounting US demands that it halt all settlement activity. Some 1,200 people will be evacuated. (No international outcry against atrocities, which are committed against Jews!)

No Crisis. There is no crisis in relations between Israel and the United States, despite a lingering dispute - which will be settled " soon" - over settlement construction in the West Bank, Israel's new ambassador to Washington announced. (Just damaging to Israel's fake PR campaign, but who cares about the feeling s of Jews or the sovereignty of their country! And every little international piglet feels free to dictate to Israel what to do, without any diplomatic sensitivity or restraint!)

Lebanon Violating 1701 - UN is Silent. Israel accused Lebanon of violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 on Tuesday after the explosion of a Hizbullah arms cache hidden inside a southern Lebanese town. The blast occurred inside the village of Hirbet Selm, some 20 kilometres north of the Israel-Lebanon border. The cache contained dozens of 122mm Katyusha rockets as well as high-powered machine guns." This is a major violation of resolution 1701," one official said. "The weaponry was stored inside a village and is proof of our long-standing claim that Iizbullah uses civilian infrastructure to hide its weaponry."

What Economic Crisis? The United States has promised $30 million to rebuild the Palestinian camp of Nahr el-Bared in the north of Lebanon. And the United States will transfer $200 million to the PA to help it cover its budget crisis . (The US has no funds to fix its own infrastructure and health system, but money is always available for sustaining the fake refugees. Why aren't the US tax-payers asking why?)

What Peace Process? Almost 50% of Palestinians believe that neither the Fatah nor Hamas is interested in signing a reconciliation accord, according to a study done by the university of Nablus, published by the PA.

Quote of the Week: "There is conclusive historical and archaeological evidence that there has been an unbroken Jewish presence in Jerusalem since 438 CE, 200 years before the Arab conquest in 638 C E. The Jewish claim, therefore, is not based on biblical and historical rights alone. Jews have always been permanent residents of the Old City, and since 1820, the Jews constituted the largest single community there." - Rev. Douglas Young, statement by Evangelical Christians in 1971 - Before the age of phony political correctness even the adversaries of Jews admitted the truth. Today they are all silent!

International Law and IDF's Military Practice.

Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told a conference in Jerusalem on June 18, 2009:

The battlefield - in any kind of war - is a place of confusion and chaos, of fast-moving action. In the type of conflict that the Israeli Defense Forces recently fought in Gaza and in Lebanon, and Britain and America are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, these age-old confusions and complexities are made one hundred times worse by the fighting policies and techniques of the enemy.

Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy 's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law.

Civilians and their property are routinely exploited by these groups, in deliberate and flagrant violation of international laws or reasonable norms of civilised behaviour . Protected buildings, mosques, schools, and hospitals are used as strongholds. Legal and proportional responses by a Western army will be deliberately exploited and manipulated in order to produce international outcry and condemnation.

Hamas' military capability was deliberately positioned behind the human shield of the civilian population. They also ordered, forced when necessary, men, women and children from their own population to stay put in places they knew were about to be attacked by the IDF. Israel was fighting an enemy that is deliberately trying to sacrifice their own people, deliberately trying to lure you into killing their own innocent civilians.

And Hamas, like Hizbullah, is also highly expert at driving the media agenda. They will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

When possible the IDF gave at least four hours' notice to civilians to leave areas targeted for attack. The IDF dropped over 900,000 leaflets warning the population of impending attacks to allow them to leave designated areas. The IDF phoned over 30,000 Palestinian households in Gaza, urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed weapons or be preparing to fight.

Many attack helicopter missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were cancelled if there was too great a risk of civilian casualties in the area. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, even though delivering aid virtually into your enemy 's hands is to the military tactician normally quite unthinkable.

By taking these actions the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

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