Surprise? While real refugees starve, @UNRWA produces professional cooking shows - by Elder of Ziyon

...The UN clearly knows its priorities. People of Palestinian descent must learn how to correctly create avocado onion rings, because they are so horribly oppressed without that knowledge.

Elder of Ziyon..
15 February '17..

UNRWA has been trying to use the worldwide refugee crisis as a means to raise money as if most of the people under its program are real refugees. Refugees who don't know where their next meal is coming from.

But when people send money to UNRWA, not all of it goes to providing food and shelter.

Some of it goes towards producing professional cooking shows.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Refugees and the travesty that the “human rights community” has become - by Evelyn Gordon

...If Israel can’t be blamed, Amnesty isn’t much interested. That’s also why Israeli organizations helping Syrian refugees in Greece discovered that while no Syrian ever refused their help, members of international “human rights” organizations did, even though the Israelis were among the few volunteers who spoke Arabic: These international “humanitarians” viewed boycotting Israel as more important than communicating with the refugees they ostensibly came to help. Such politicization of human rights never bothered most Westerners as long as Israel was the only victim. But now that it’s being turned against Europe, perhaps the West will finally recognize the travesty that the “human rights community” has become.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
04 April '16..

Israel and its supporters have argued for years that many “human rights” organizations are far less concerned with human rights than with pushing a political agenda. But as long as that political agenda consisted mainly of attacking Israel, most Westerners remained convinced that these groups still deserved their credibility and moral haloes. Even initial forays into political issues unconnected with Israel – like Amnesty International’s controversial assertion last year that upholding human rights requires decriminalizing prostitution – didn’t destroy the halo. But by demanding that the European Union accept millions of Middle Eastern migrants rather than returning them to Turkey, these organizations have picked a political fight that millions of Europeans actually care about. And in so doing, they may be dealing their own credibility a long-deserved death blow.

The “human rights community” is outraged by the EU’s recent deal with Ankara, under which all migrants entering Europe via Turkey will be promptly returned there. The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Nils Muiznieks, declared that such “automatic forced return” is “illegal,” and the only acceptable solution is for EU countries to “ramp up the relocation of asylum seekers” into their own borders. Human rights groups similarly asserted that the deal violates international humanitarian law, inter alia, because they claim Turkey is unsafe for refugees. Amnesty, for instance, termed the deal “abhorrent.”

Then, angry over the EU’s refusal to accept their view, the organizations halted assistance to tens of thousands of migrants already in Greece. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Medecins Sans Frontieres, the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Save the Children all suspended operations in Greek refugee centers to protest the deal.

There are numerous problems with the “human rights community’s” response to this deal, but let’s start with the biggest: the claim that it somehow violates international law, in the form of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

This convention was intended to ensure that anyone with a “well-founded fear” of persecution could find refuge somewhere, so as to prevent a repeat of the situation in which six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis because no country would let them in. But it never guaranteed anyone, much less tens of millions of people, access to the country of their choice.

Turkey, understandably, isn’t most refugees’ first choice. It’s an authoritarian country where basic rights like freedom of the press are ruthlessly suppressed; it has suffered numerous terror attacks in recent years; and it’s less wealthy than Europe. But all this makes it no worse than much of the rest of the world.

The one thing Turkey isn’t is unsafe for most refugees. It has hosted millions of Syrian refugees for years; the current tally exceeds 2.7 million. And unlike Syrians in Syria – where a brutal civil war has killed some 470,000 people since 2011 – the refugees in Turkey have survived. Turkey also grants full access to UN officials, so UNHCR could process refugee applications just as well in Turkey as it could in Greece.

Change the Name, Change the Game - End The West Bank Refugee Gravy Train - by David Singer

...Claiming the trappings of Statehood – whilst segregating its citizens into two different classes -– is a recipe for continuing tension and future conflict. Change the name – change the game – but be prepared to accept the consequences.

David Singer..
J-Wire.com..
28 February '16..

With more than three million Syrians fleeing war-torn Syria seeking safe havens in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Europe – scarce United Nations resources continue to be used supporting and maintaining about 760,000 Palestinian Arabs currently living in the West Bank and registered as “refugees” with the United Nations Relief And Works Agency (UNRWA).Their refugee categorisation and status were changed on 3 January 2013 when PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas replaced the “Palestinian Authority” with the “State of Palestine” by this decree:

“Official documents, seals, signs and letterheads of the Palestinian National Authority official and national institutions shall be amended by replacing the name ‘Palestinian National Authority’ whenever it appears by the name ‘State of Palestine’ and by adopting the emblem of the State of Palestine.”

John Whitbeck – a legal advisor to the Palestinian team in negotiations with Israel – has written on the significance of this name change:

“In his correspondence, Yasser Arafat used to list all three of his titles under his signature — President of the State of Palestine, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the Palestinian Authority (in that order of precedence). It is both legally and politically noteworthy that, in signing this decree, Mahmoud Abbas has listed only the first two titles. The Trojan horse called the “Palestinian Authority” in accordance with the Oslo interim agreements and the “Palestinian National Authority” by Palestinians has served its purpose by introducing the institutions of the State of Palestine on the soil of Palestine and has now ceased to exist.”

Abbas’s semantic ploy had left Israel without its designated negotiating partner under the Oslo Accords and had effectively ended negotiations for the creation a Palestinian State under the Bush Roadmap.

Surprise? Jordan: We Do Not Want Palestinians

...Countries such as Lebanon and Syria would rather see Palestinians living as "animals in the jungle" than grant them basic rights such as employment, education and citizenship. It is no surprise that refugees fleeing Syria have no ambitions to settle in any Arab country. They know that their fate in the Arab world will be no better than that of the Palestinians living in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and other Arab countries.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
12 September '15..

A recent decision by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to cut back its services has left Jordan and other Arab countries extremely worried about the possibility that they may be forced to grant citizenship rights to millions of Palestinians.

During the last few weeks, many Jordanians have expressed deep concern that the UNRWA measures may be part of a "conspiracy" to force the kingdom to resettle Palestinian refugees.

According to UNRWA figures, more than two million registered Palestinian refugees live in Jordan. Most of the refugees, but not all, have full (Jordanian) citizenship, the figures show. The refugees live in 10 UNRWA-recognized camps in Jordan.

Jordan is the only Arab country that has granted citizenship to Palestinians. Still, many Jordanians see their presence in the kingdom as temporary.

Although there is no official census data for how many inhabitants are Palestinian, they are estimated to constitute half of Jordan's population, which is estimated at seven million. Some claim that the Palestinians actually make up two-thirds of the kingdom's population.

Over the past few decades, the Jordanians' biggest nightmare has been the talk about resettling the Palestinians in the kingdom by turning them into permanent citizens. The talk about turning Jordan into a Palestinian state has also created panic and anger among Jordanians.

Jordan's "demographic problem" resurfaced last week when a senior Jordanian politician warned against plans to resettle Palestinian refugees in the kingdom.

Taher al-Masri, a former Jordanian prime minister who is closely associated with the ruling Hashemite monarchy, sounded the alarm in an interview with a Turkish news agency.

Commenting on UNRWA's severe financial crisis, which has resulted in cutting back services to Palestinian refugees living in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, al-Masri said: "I believe this is part of a plan to turn the issue of the Palestinian refugees into an internal problem of Jordan. UNRWA is paving the way for liquidating the Palestinian cause."

Al-Masri, whose views often reflect those of the monarchy, expressed fear that the UNRWA cutbacks would prompt the world to consider the idea of turning the Palestinians in Jordan into permanent citizens, especially as most of them already carry Jordanian passports.

Al-Masri and other Jordanian officials maintain that Jordan is entitled to protect its "national identity" by refusing to absorb non-Jordanians.

Much more than solely a humanitarian problem

To quote from today's Jerusalem Post editorial "No sensitive human being can remain indifferent to the plight of hundreds of thousands of migrants forced to flee their homes in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.'. However, to move forward one needs to also give thought as to what has brought this about in the first place. Below, an excellent piece from former Israeli Amb. Zvi Mazel, which hopefully shed some light on the matter.

Amb. Zvi Mazel..
JPost..
06 September '15..

For much of world media the waves of refugees flooding the coasts of Europe are solely a humanitarian problem; countries refusing to welcome the newcomers and building walls to keep them away are harshly condemned.

While it is true that the plight of hundreds of thousands of suffering human beings must be approached with empathy and help must be extended to them, neither the media nor European leaders appear ready to tackle the issue. Yet it cannot have come as a surprise.

For years refugees have been trying to get into the old continent and the reasons are obvious. Nevertheless, Europe did nothing, in the mistaken belief that it would emerge unscathed and that some sort of solution would appear; the UN would help and somehow refugees would blend into the local populations. No attempt was made to solve the problem when it could have been solved and now the ever-growing numbers of so-called asylum- seekers threaten the peace of Europe and its traditional way of life. A courageous and far-reaching political answer must be found to deal with what has become an emergency, even at the risk of neglecting its humanitarian aspect.

Refugees have been coming from Africa and from the Middle East, two parts of the world where strife, natural disasters and hunger are rampant for lack of economic development, and extreme poverty, sickness and unemployment.

A rich and replete Europe, feeling slightly guilty because of its colonial past, chose not to see what was happening, and let in during the last 50 years millions of “asylum-seekers” who were for the most part people looking for work and a better life, and many of whom had entered illegally.

Death trucks on European highways and the recalling of the “original truck people”

...Of course, one mustn’t confuse botched human trafficking with planned genocide. But part of what is so shocking about the Austrian truck tragedy is the earlier precedent of men, women, and children packed into trucks and asphyxiated to death in the heart of Europe. If the horror on the Austrian motorway should evoke anyone’s fate, it is that of six million exterminated Jews, not five million living Palestinians. To anyone who knows history, death trucks on European highways recall why the “original truck people,” the Jews, needed the refuge finally secured by the creation of Israel

Dr. Martin Kramer..
Commentary Magazine..
31 August '15..

Austrian authorities on Thursday discovered an abandoned truck on a highway near the Hungarian border, packed with the decomposed bodies of 71 dead migrants, including four children. While migrants have perished at sea in the multitudes, this tragedy has put Europe on notice: The horrors from which the migrants flee, and that regularly play themselves out in the middle of the Mediterranean, will soon become commonplace in the heart of the continent unless something changes.

Now how addled and obsessed must one be to use this event as a stick to beat Israel? About as addled and obsessed as Juan Cole, professor at the University of Michigan and popular blogger on the edge of the left. See as evidence this post: “Austrian Truck Tragedy echoes Palestinian Story, reminding us of 7 million still stateless [Palestinians].”

What is that Palestinian story? It is a 1962 novella by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani entitled Men in the Sun. The allegorical storyline is about three Palestinians who flee the misery of Lebanon’s refugee camps to Iraq, in the hope of reaching the Xanadu of Kuwait. They are smuggled across the desert from Basra in the empty barrel of a water tanker truck. But because of a delay at the Kuwaiti border, the three suffocate to death. (The novella was made into a film in 1972.)

I won’t make an issue of the “seven million still stateless” Palestinians. (The upper-end estimate is closer to five million.) And far be it from me to quibble with anyone’s free associations. But Cole tops off his with this statement, which purports to be historical: the Palestinians’ “home has been stolen from them by the Israelis and they were unceremoniously dumped on the neighbors or in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip. They are stateless. They are the original truck people.” (My emphasis.)

This concluding dramatic flourish, identifying the Palestinians as “the original truck people,” jolted me. The first people made stateless, dispossessed, stripped of their humanity, and packed into sealed trucks where they died horribly, all in the very heart of Europe, were many thousands of Jewish victims of the Nazi extermination machine.

As anyone who has read even one history of the Holocaust knows, before there were gas chambers there were mobile gas vans. These were airtight trucks that could be packed with as many as sixty persons, who would be killed by cycling the carbon monoxide exhaust back into the cargo area. Himmler ordered the invention of the method to spare the Germans in SS killing squads the damaging psychological effects of shooting thousands of victims, one at a time. The trucks were deployed primarily to kill Jews, who were loaded into them without separation by gender or age. I will spare readers the horrific testimonies of the operators of these trucks, and the documentary evidence of how technicians worked to perfect them. I’ll only quote this argument, made by a technician, for keeping the cargo area lit:

Examining and Remembering Forced Expulsions in the Arab World

...Whether or not Algeria comes clean on its actions taken against the backdrop of Cold War animus, let us praise the Moroccans for doing the right thing. It’s time to recognize that Rabat and Jerusalem represent the best practices in refugee resettlement, and UNRWA the worst. Let’s replicate a model that works, and recognize UNRWA not only betrays Palestinians, but refugees around the world, many of whom desperately need aid not to build rockets but rather to get their lives restarted after suffering dislocation and tragedy.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
08 December '14..

There are two ironies concerning refugee flows in the Arab world. The first is how selective some Western advocates are when they focus exclusively on displaced Palestinians and Palestinian refugees, and the second is how they effectively punish those countries which do the right thing and absorb and settle refugees rather than using them as a political pawn.

Attending the concurrent NGO fair, I spent some time at the booth of the Association des Marocains Victimes d’Expulsion Arbitraire d’Algérie (AMVEAA). Basically, there story is this: On December 18, 1975, the Algerian government expelled 45,000 families—about 500,000 people—who were legally resident in Algeria, and many of whom had lived in Algeria for decades. Houari Boumediene, the chairman of Algeria’s Revolutionary Council, ordered the Moroccans detained and expelled in response to the Moroccan “Green March” into the Western Sahara.

The condition of the Moroccans’ expulsion was appalling, and it was done without prior notice. Algerian police hunted down Moroccans wherever they could be found and dumped them across the border. Many Moroccans died, and the humanitarian crisis caused by hundreds of thousands of individuals strained the Moroccan government. Meanwhile, the deportation split mixed families, and the expelled Moroccans lost pensions, and left behind bank accounts and personal property.

AMVEAA wants restitution for lost property and cites language from the UN’s Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families to support their claim.

Realistically, the chance they will collect is between zero and null. But, their case does illustrate just one more case—the mass expulsion of Jews from Arab lands following Israel’s independence being the other—of the hypocrisy of the refugee issue. The 500,000 persons expelled from Algeria are greater than the 472,000 Palestinians which the United Nations Mediator on Palestine concluded had left Israel in 1948.

Palestinian Corruption, Refugees and the "Death Boats" Scandal

...As the past few weeks have shown, hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians would rather risk their lives at sea than live under Palestinian governments and leaders whose only goal is to enrich their bank accounts.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
27 September '14..

Over the past few weeks, dozens of Palestinian immigrants from the Gaza Strip have been killed or injured while trying to reach Europe by sea.

At least 500 Palestinians have gone missing after the boats carrying them sank in the sea. Some reports have suggested that rival gangs deliberately sunk the boats. The gangs are fighting for the cash the Palestinians are prepared to pay to leave the Gaza Strip. Palestinians refer to the situation as their "Death Boats" scandal.

The Palestinian immigrants are said to have paid thousands of dollars to Hamas officials and Egyptian smugglers to facilitate the exodus from the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki claimed that each Palestinian paid $1,000 to Hamas personnel at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Others are believed to have paid $5,000 each to leave the Gaza Strip.

Malki said that preliminary investigations have revealed that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have fallen victim to Hamas and Egyptian gangsters who managed to lure them with false promises.

According to various reports, some 13,000 Palestinians have already fled the Gaza Strip to Europe with the help of the gangsters. Most left through Hamas's smuggling tunnels or by bribing its security officials at the Rafah terminal.

Another 25,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have applied to various European countries for immigration.

Although Hamas has denied any connection to the mass exodus, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip revealed that the Islamist movement had set up special offices to register those wishing to start a new life in Europe. They said that Hamas officials are providing the emigrants with forged visas and travel documents to enable them to enter Europe.

The “Right of Return” Is Not About “Refugees”. Not Now, Not Ever.

...The half of the Palestinian polity that is not openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction is unwilling to recognize Israel as the Jewish state … For those of you who think that this has anything to do with the refugee issue — you’re wrong. In 1947, there wasn’t a single refugee, and the Palestinian and the Arab world was not willing to recognize a nation state for the Jewish people. That is a core issue, the core issue …

Rick Richman..
Commentary Magazine..
23 March '14..

In “A Jewish State,”the Wall Street Journal notes that “the right of return, with its implicit promise to eliminate Israel, is the centerpiece of the conflict” between Israelis and Arabs. The Journal observes that it is a “right” recognized “for no other refugee group in the world,” and that its acceptance by Israel would risk “a demographic time bomb that could turn the country into another Lebanon, sectarian and bloody.” The Journal explains the Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state as follows: “As to why Mr. Abbas won’t accept a Jewish state, it’s because doing so means relinquishing what Palestinians call the ‘right of return.’”

The Journal’s otherwise excellent editorial confuses a tactic and a goal. The reason the Palestinians won’t accept a Jewish state is not because it means relinquishing the “right of return.” It is the other way around: they won’t relinquish the “right of return” because it would mean accepting a Jewish state. Nor is this simply a matter of substituting the converse for the Journal’s formulation. Rather, it reflects a fundamental point that Ron Dermer (then one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest aides and currently Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.) made in a May 2009 AIPAC presentation. Dermer’s point was that the “core issue” in the conflict was not refugees, but recognition:

The half of the Palestinian polity that is not openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction is unwilling to recognize Israel as the Jewish state … For those of you who think that this has anything to do with the refugee issue — you’re wrong. In 1947, there wasn’t a single refugee, and the Palestinian and the Arab world was not willing to recognize a nation state for the Jewish people. That is a core issue, the core issue …

The Palestinians use a definition of “refugee” that makes their “refugeehood” hereditary. Other refugees get resettled; Palestinian refugees get born. They may have never lived in Israel, but they are classified as “refugees” at birth, on grounds that their grandparents (or great grandparents) were refugees 65 years ago. This is why each year the number of Palestinian refugees increases, while the number of other refugees in the world decreases. The Palestinians have been repeatedly offered a state to which their refugees could “return,” but they repeatedly reject it, clinging to a specious “right” of “return” to Israel not because it is necessary for the “refugees,” but because it is a tool in the fight against the Jewish state.

The PA’s Deafening and Revealing Silence on Syria

...The Syrian crisis remains absent from Palestinian talking points because Palestinians are still far more intent on destroying the Jewish state–inter alia by flooding it with millions of Palestinian refugees–than in making the compromises needed to get a state of their own and absorb those refugees themselves. And that’s also precisely why peace remains impossible.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
31 October '13..

Jonathan correctly pointed yesterday to Palestinian lionization of vicious killers as an indication of cultural attitudes that make peace impossible. But there’s another indicator that I find even more revealing–the Palestinian Authority’s deafening silence about the ongoing dispossession and slaughter of its countrymen in Syria.

As journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reported earlier this month, of the approximately 600,000 Palestinians in Syria, a whopping 250,000 have been displaced, according to no less a source than senior PA official Mohamed Shtayyeh. Additionally, over 1,600 have been killed and thousands more injured. Of the displaced, most remain in Syria, but some 93,000 have fled to neighboring countries, where they are uniquely unwelcome: Palestinians have been denied entry into both Jordan and Lebanon, and even when admitted, they face discriminatory treatment. In Jordan, for instance, they are strictly confined to camps, though other Syrian refugees are allowed to move about the country freely; in Lebanon, they are subject to numerous restrictions on employment, and often live in hiding for fear of being deported.

Ostensibly, this is an unbeatable argument for the urgency of creating a Palestinian state: Palestinians need a country to succor their refugees from Syria. Indeed, Jews used a similar argument to great effect in persuading the world of the need for a Jewish state after the Holocaust. Even today, Israelis routinely cite the world’s refusal to accept Jewish refugees, thereby abandoning them to the Nazi killing machine, as one of many arguments for why a Jewish state remains essential: There must be one country whose doors will always be open to persecuted Jews.

Yet rather than making this argument, the PA has gone to great lengths to ignore the Syrian crisis. As Abu Toameh noted, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s UN address in September devoted a mere two sentences to the subject, without ever even mentioning Syria by name (“This year and in the last few years, Palestine refugees continue to pay – despite their neutrality – the price of conflict and instability in our region. Tens of thousands are forced to abandon their camps and to flee in another exodus searching for new places of exile”). The rest of the speech was devoted to attacking Israel. Hence Abbas deplored the 27 Palestinians killed “by the bullets of the occupation,” but never mentioned the hundreds killed in Syria during this period; he excoriated the construction of new Jewish homes in Jerusalem, but never mentioned the wholesale destruction of Palestinian homes in Syria.

"The Right of Return" - "What 'Right' of Return?"

Janet Tassel..
American Thinker..
17 April '13..

On Sunday evening, April 14, Boston University hosted a forum titled "What 'Right' of Return?" Prompting this gathering was a conference held at B.U. the previous week, called unambiguously "The Right of Return," headlined by the infamous Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University. Not surprisingly, that conference "failed to create an open forum for peaceful dialogue, and excluded key historical facts, speakers, and information," according to the organizers of Sunday's rebuttal -- "faculty, staff and friends of Boston University."

Those who showed up Sunday, besides the usual handful of Israel huggers and bloggers, probably came because of the rare opportunity to hear and see Professor Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University, the highly controversial historian who is currently (and conveniently), a visiting professor across the river at Harvard.

Morris was joined by Israeli journalist, lawyer, and government advisor on immigration Ben-Dror Yemini; and by Asaf Romirowsky, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Forum. Each had important things to say about the omissions, propaganda, and lies being fed to vulnerable students at colleges across the world; lies, as Yemini said, that are couched in the seductive language of human rights and social justice, terms every student wants to believe. These are stratagems, of course, poisonous fabrications with one goal: the ultimate destruction of the Jewish state. Of these revisionist falsehoods, the so-called right of return is among the most sinister -- destruction by demography.

The transfer of populations, as Yemini pointed out, is as old as history. In fact, the 1937 Peel Commission envisioned the transfer of population from the Jewish to the proposed Arab state. It is true that about 700,000 Arabs left Israel in 1948. (It is also true that some 120,000, 20% of the population, remained in their homes, and today the Arab population of Israel is on the order of 1.4 million.) The Arab "refugees" now number at least 5 million souls -- children, grandchildren, and great-children by patrilineal descent, three generations still dispossessed, still being refused citizenship in Arab lands, and still being indoctrinated to hate the naqba (the "disaster"), the state of Israel, and the Jews.

Meanwhile, some 900,000 Jews, many of whose families had lived in Arab lands for centuries, were expelled from their homes, stripped of their possessions, and forced into exile. By contrast with their Arab counterparts, all have been absorbed into Israel, the United States, and other western countries.

Not all refugees are created equal

In no time, the Arab propaganda machine hijacked the evocative image, falsely hyping it as that of a pint-sized Palestinian refugee crying her heart out. She became an instant poster child among self-professed humanitarians. Nobody cared that she was, in fact, a Jewish refugee crying her heart out. The corrected caption put the picture out of mind.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
22 February '13

Not all refugees are created equal. This is an incontestable fact – regardless of prevalent propaganda fronting as humanitarian indignation. Some refugees are the world’s darlings and have unremittingly been tugging hard at its heartstrings for decades. Others got a passing glance at most, accompanied – for a fleeting moment – by quasi-compassionate handwringing.

Selected unpopular refugees were altogether treated as perennial pariahs, whose agony plainly disturbs global peace. It’s not the objective distress and misery which count but the identity of the refugees in question – to say nothing of the identity of their alleged persecutors. When given factors converge, given refugees are considered more deserving of support from the dysfunctional family of nations.

Occasionally, news headlines serve up unpleasant reminders of the hypocrisy, not that most news consumers are inclined to pay attention and focus on the double standards. Take the plight of the refugees from Syria. Some 285,000 of them wallow in Lebanese tent cities. Another 250,000 crowd under rudimentary conditions in Jordan. Turkey has allowed about 180,000 into a narrow border security zone. Even troubled Iraq plays unwilling host to about 85,000. Beyond that there are countless uprooted Syrians still within the borders of their own country, though homeless and on the move. In all, it’s conservatively estimated that well over a million-and-half Syrians have been dislodged. They aren’t of one mold. Some were victimized by Bashar Assad and his Hezbollah collaborators. Others are Alawite and Christian – predisposed to side with Assad – who are terrorized by the largely Sunni rebels, among whom are fanatical al-Qaeda cohorts. When the Alawites or Christians flee to a neighboring territory that’s largely Sunni, they aren’t well-treated (to resort to understatement). When Sunnis find themselves across the border among Shiites, they too are ill-treated. It’s a complex ugly mosaic that confoundedly defies shallow 20-second media clips.

These refugees make piteous TV fare and offer talking heads the opportunity to pontificate pompously. But so what? These refugees’ destitution isn’t unavoidable. Their Arab brethren are the wealthiest on earth and wouldn’t feel the pinch if they loosened their purse strings a tiny tad and helped out. But this isn’t happening. It’s not that Saudi and Gulf States potentates don’t care. If anything, they are far from apathetic about the Syrian upheaval. They avidly bankroll it. They unstintingly pour in oil revenue to finance ostensible grassroots uprisings. However, they’re notoriously miserly when it comes to aiding the victims of the fight they finance.

The UN Wants to Return Golan Residents to Where?

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary/Contentions..
21 December '12..

The UN General Assembly, as Elliott Abrams noted (last week) yesterday, just passed nine resolutions in a single day condemning Israel, mainly for its treatment of the Palestinians, while completely ignoring the real disaster that befell the Palestinians this week: the Assad regime’s bombing of the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, which reportedly killed dozens of Palestinians and caused about 100,000 to flee. But the situation becomes even more surreal when one examines the actual content of the resolutions–because it turns out that while the UN is voting to condemn Israel, its alleged victims are voting the opposite with their feet.

One resolution, for instance, slams Israel’s 1981 annexation of the “occupied Syrian Golan” and demands that Israel “rescind forthwith its decision.” Given what’s happening across the border in Syria, where the ongoing civil war has killed over 44,000 people and created over 500,000 refugees, I suspect most of the 20,000 Syrian Druze on the Golan are thanking their lucky stars to be living safely under Israel’s “occupation.” But you needn’t take my word for it: According to the Hebrew daily Maariv, whose report was subsequently picked up the Winnipeg Jewish Review, Israeli government statistics show that the number of Golan Druze applying for Israeli citizenship (for which the annexation made them eligible) has risen by hundreds of percent since the Syrian civil war erupted, after 30 years in which very few did so.

“More and more people comprehend that this [Israel] is a well-managed country and it’s possible to live and raise children here,” one Druze who acquired Israeli citizenship explained. “In Syria there is mass murder, and if [the Druze are] under Syrian control they would likely be turned into the victims of these atrocities. People see murdered children and refugees fleeing to Jordan and Turkey, lacking everything, and ask themselves: Where do I want to raise my children. The answer is clear–in Israel and not Syria.”

But what the Golan’s own residents want, of course, is of no interest to the UN: It would rather Israel return the area, and its Druze, to the Syrian hellhole “forthwith.”

Here's what the Israeli soldiers were doing when they came under terrorist attack Friday

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
22 September '12..

On Friday afternoon, we reported ["21-Sep-12: Major mid-day attack on Israel from Sinai thwarted today, but no one thinks the problems are going away"] on an attack by heavily armed terrorist gunmen on Israel's Egyptian border.

Three terrorists, at least one of them wearing an explosive belt, were killed in the ensuing firefight and deaths and injuries on a much larger scale were averted. Unfortunately, a young IDF artillery corps soldier, 20-year-old Private Netanel Yahalomi from the Nof Ayalon community, serving the military portion of his Hesder service, was killed. (His rank was raised to corporal, posthumously.) Two terrorists escaped and it's reported that the Egyptians are searching for them.

Netanel Yahalomi z"l with mother in a family picture 

The terror attack began as the IDF soldiers were giving water to dehydrated Sudanese refugees at a border fence construction.

"Hurray for Us!"

Arlene Kushner
Arlene from Israel
16 January '11

The NY Times reported today that Israel, working with the US, tested the Stuxnet virus at the Dimona nuclear facility, using centrifuges similar to those found in Iran.

It was clear enough that we had to be involved -- and the speculation has been that it might have been Israel working in concert with the US -- so this report rings true. The Times says that President George W. Bush authorized this project as a way to forestall an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

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I want to begin to touch on a number of issues here that are both problematic and controversial -- issues that I've tabled until now because of focus on other pressing matters (such as our rights in eastern Jerusalem).

The very first of these is the serious matter of African immigrants/refugees -- primarily from Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea -- who have been entering our country illegally, crossing into the Negev from the Sinai. Thousands are here now, and they keep coming.

The subject is far too complex for me to do it full justice in this posting, but I believe I would be remiss if I did not, finally, at least provide an overview of the situation.

~~~~~~~~~~

The supreme irony is that at the very same time that we are accused of genocide and apartheid and whatever else, the word has gone out in Africa that we in Israel treat Africans more humanely than other nations, and that this is the most promising place to come to. Well, we are the most humane. But we are a very small nation and cannot cope with this indefinitely.

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Several problems confront us. One is the expense and the logistical nightmare of providing for them. Many have settled in the south of Tel Aviv, alarming and angering the local residents who say they cannot recognize their neighborhoods any longer, as the immigrants, often at loose ends and struggling, hang out on the street until all hours, drinking, smoking, and making noise. Not to mention -- this is the simple fact of the matter -- that the crime rate has gone way up in that area.

We have children here, Israeli citizens, who struggle below the poverty line and should be provided for. As well, there are other segments of our society that require special attention and services, all of which means expenditure of funds. Where would the funds come from, to provide for this influx of foreigners as well? (Much that is done for them now, informally, is on a volunteer and NGO basis, with people helping them find a place to live and to learn Hebrew. Some infiltrators work without papers.)

But another issue of critical importance is the fact that we are, and must remain, the Jewish state. This is Israel's raison d'etre, without question. It's what we are about.

A considerable influx of mostly Muslim Africans -- there are already 15,000 to 20,000 here and 100 to 200 more are coming every week -- would have the troubling and unacceptable effect of shifting the demographics and the culture down the road. Our entire population is 7.7 million, with 20% of this number Arab.

Ultimately, the current situation is unacceptable for us and we need to be unapologetic about this. Yaakov Katz, head of National Union, gave voice to this when he asked, "Is this what we wanted when we built Tel Aviv [a quintessentially Jewish city]? That it should be an African City?"

Another Tack: Careful what you wish for

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
14 January '11

Some time back in the misty shadows of my Junior High days, I read W.W. Jacobs’ classic horror story “The Monkey’s Paw” – a pretty predictable spine-chiller of 1902 vintage. It opens when the White family’s cozy evening around the hearth is disrupted by a visitor who brings into the idyllic setting a mummified monkey’s paw from India, supernaturally empowered to grant its owner three wishes. The Whites are cautioned not to give in to temptation – but irresistibly they do, with ghastly consequences.

The narrative is preceded by an anonymous quotation: “Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it.”

Thus forewarned, I should have known better a number of years thereafter than to wish the area that at the time surrounded Tel-Aviv’s hectic Central Bus Station excised from the cityscape.

It was too Levantine for my youthful snobbery of yore. I used to joke that the only sliver of Eretz Yisrael which I’d cede – assuming Israel absolutely must make territorial concessions to attain peace – is the teeming Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood (whose name ironically means “placid oasis”).

SHOCKINGLY, MY wish came true. Tel-Aviv’s erstwhile hub has essentially been ripped out and commandeered (though, as was consistently proven true of all our territorial forfeitures, this one too bore no connection whatever to any semblance of peace). The entire quarter, once dominated by the old bus station, has become an expanding ex-territorial lawless sphere where few Israelis dare to tread.

Anyone who indeed inadvertently wanders there would be hard put to recognize it as even remotely Israeli. Squalid and foul, it’s packed with an exotic collection of denizens who infiltrated the country and most of whom originally hail from the southern hemisphere. The once-so-familiar streets are nothing short of an alien scene. This is Tel-Aviv’s seamy dark underside and to venture there is truly dangerous.

(Read full "Careful what you wish for")

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Terra Incognita: Should the victims now be the caretakers?

Seth Frantzman
JPost
25 October 09

Recent revelations regarding Hashomer, a pre-state Jewish defense organization founded in 1909, brought to light an interesting quote. Sammy Tolkovsky, a resident of Rehovot, wrote in 1913 that "it is my duty as a man... to protest... serious crimes against humanity [by Hashomer]. We Jews of all people, who suffered persecution and abuse for thousands of years... are duty bound to have a modicum of humanity." This line of thinking, appealing and quite common as it may be, leads not only to a double standard but punishes the Jews twice.

First it acknowledges that Jews were victims, but then it says because they were victims they must live up to a higher standard. Yet this does not apply to other peoples. From African-Americans, who were victims of racism and slavery, to Muslims and others who were victims of European colonialism, the victim narrative is used as an excuse rather than as a weapon against the victimized community. Thus any outburst of anger by former colonials or by Muslim extremists can be excused by them having been victims of slavery, forced labor, racism or things such as apartheid and the Crusades.

So why do the Jews get caught in the vice of this strange double-edged sword and why is it so often Jews who are the ones pointing the fingers at fellow Jews and saying, "You should know better?" or "The victims should exemplify morality in the extreme sense."

The tendency to have this reaction is not illogical and has its appeal. But it quickly degenerates into a myriad of distasteful comparisons. How often does one hear that Israelis treat each other or others "like the Nazis did the Jews."

One Israeli attorney once told me that "Israelis should not criticize the world for not taking in the Jews before the Holocaust unless Israel is ready to receive all the world's refugees from genocide. We Jews are just hypocrites."

Consider how this claim works. Jews are hypocrites for asking why the world didn't take in Jewish refugee ships such as the S.S. St. Louis or Struma because Israel doesn't take in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Sudan and Rwanda and other genocides? Once again it is easy to see how people think this way.

REMINDED OF the Jewish refugees stranded in Europe before the war, one asks why Israel doesn't immediately grant asylum to Sudanese who manage, with great hardship, to cross Egypt to get here. It is valid to ask this question. It is valid to acknowledge that Jews suffered greatly as unwanted refugees and to see in modern day refugees similar hardships. What is wrong is to condemn Israel and hold it to a higher standard for not taking in "all" the world's refugees from genocide.

Egypt owes as much to the refugees from Sudan as Israel. Just because Egyptians or Germans or the Swiss were never refugees from genocide doesn't release them from responsibility to humanity. Because Jews were once refugees from genocide doesn't mean Jews have a "special" responsibility.

Consider what Gerald Kaufmann, UK Labor Party member of Parliament, said in January before the House of Commons. In the midst of the Gaza war, he stated that "my grandmother [who was murdered by the Nazis] did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza." He went on to say that Israel was "ruthlessly and cynically exploiting the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

Thus for him Israel is like the Nazis, and Kaufmann feels that as a Jew he is perfectly placed to make this comparison and also to show that Israel should be held to a special standard because the Jews suffered the Holocaust. When Pakistan or Russia bombards Muslim extremists, no one says they use their past suffering to "provide cover" for their actions, instead their actions are seen as legitimate.

Lizzy Ratner, writing in her blog, notes that her grandfather "believed profoundly that the fate suffered by Europe's Jews meant that you did everything possible to prevent other people from suffering the same thing." Her trip to Poland, "far from freeing me to embrace Israel, I wondered, baffled, how a people that was forced to live - and die - behind walls could force another people [the Palestinians] to live - and die - behind walls?"

She says she "would like to see trips that go from the Warsaw ghetto to the Jabalya refugee camp... I would at least like to see the true lessons of 'never again' enshrined in a single, consummately-inclusive Israeli-Palestinian state - a state that serves, through its unparalleled openness and respect for the rights of all its residents, as a true rebuke to the forces of hatred and genocide."

Thus the one Jewish state in the world, because of the Holocaust, should be a binational non-Jewish Palestinian state. Because of the Holocaust the Jews do not deserve a state, lest they be nationalistic, because they must be held to a higher standard.

THE ARGUMENT that Jews must have a special respect for human rights because of the Holocaust punishes the Jews for having been victims. It is countries that have a history of committing genocides that should have a special respect for human rights and be held to a higher standard. Victims at the very least should be like everyone else. Furthermore the insinuation that Jews, such as those from Ethiopia or Yemen, whose communities did not suffer the Holocaust deserve to be held to a higher standard is more ludicrous and forces them to live up to special standards for crimes committed far away by Europeans.

One Croatian journalist told me, when explaining why she would dress modestly and visit religious Muslims in Gaza but not religious Jews in Mea She'arim: "I expect more from the Jews."

Some think expecting more from people shows respect for them, but in this case it also means excusing violence against them, being unnecessarily critical of them, disrespecting their diversity and holding them to a double-standard.

The writer is a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Israelis, Palestinians and History

Published: August 12, 2009 NYT

To the Editor:

Enlarge This Image

Igor Kopelnitsky

In discussing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute (“The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything,” Op-Ed, Aug. 11), Hussein Agha and Robert Malley stress dislocation and subsequent refugee status as core Palestinian grievances.

Every people is defined by its own historical narrative. But the Palestinians became refugees, in large measure, because of bad choices they made, especially rejecting the 1947 United Nations partition plan and joining a war to destroy the new state of Israel. Has any war not produced refugees?

Since then, the United Nations has protected the Palestinians by creating a separate agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, while all other refugees worldwide are under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

A separate definition of refugee eligibility has been created for Palestinians, allowing their descendants, without limitation, to fall under the purview of Unrwa, thus perpetuating a culture of victimization.

Being an actual refugee is not easy. I have seen it up close. My parents were both refugees. So was my wife. And I worked in refugee resettlement long enough to understand the trauma caused by dislocation — and the capacity for renewal.

Isn’t it high time for the Palestinians to confront current realities and historical failures, and move on to embrace a pragmatic peace accord that promises a better future for all, Israelis and Palestinians alike?

David Harris

Executive Director

American Jewish Committee

New York, Aug. 11, 2009

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Al-Arabiya TV Deputy Secretary-General Calls for Resettlement of Palestinian Refugees

August 11, 2009	Special Dispatch - No. 2483
Daoud Al-Shiryan, Al-Hayat columnist and deputy secretary-general of Al-Arabiya TV, recently published several articles criticizing how the Palestinian refugees have been treated by the Arab countries in which they live. He called on these countries to integrate the refugees into their societies and to resettle them before they are forced to do so by the international community. Objecting to Refugee Resettlement Is Objecting to Peace In the first of his articles, published July 15, 2009, Al-Shiryan wrote: "The issue of [refugee] resettlement has begun to preoccupy the Arab countries, which are keeping the Palestinians in depressing prison camps known as Palestinian refugee camps. Although so far no one in the Arab world has called for their resettlement, the refugee problem has now [gained prominence] in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, both on the political arena and in the media. It has [even] become an issue in forming the next Lebanese government. This means that, in its next stage, the peace process is expected to encounter obstacles [on the part of] the Arabs. "Objecting to [refugee] resettlement is no different than objecting to peace. It is nothing but an unrealistic slogan. The Arabs have agreed to peace, although they realize that there cannot be peace without [refugee] resettlement. But they disregard this fact, viewing the refugee issue as a point of controversy, when it is [actually] a central and key issue in the peace process. The fear [of being accused of renouncing the nationalist] slogans [calling for] struggle, resistance, and casting Israel into the sea - slogans which emerged at the outset of the peace process with Israel - and the link that has been established between the issue [of resettlement] and ethnic and political problems in some [Arab] countries - have [all] become an obstacle to a realistic and honest approach to the issue. "Arabs who object to the [refugee] resettlement plan contend that they are motivated by their zealous devotion to the Right of Return. But they have not lifted a finger to keep this right alive in the consciousness of the Palestinian 'detainees' in the camps of abasement. As a result, this spurious devotion has evoked the opposite reaction: a Palestinian [refugee] now hopes to emigrate to America, Europe, Canada, or Australia in order to escape the hell of the Palestinian refugee camps, which have played a part in killing his will to live. "It follows that [refugee] resettlement is [already] underway, despite [all the] slogans promoting the Right of Return that have become an [integral] part of the speeches of these countries' politicians. "There is no doubt that our next campaign [should be aimed at] defending the [refugee] resettlement program and demanding that it be implemented… [The host countries] must open up the refugee camps, which are not fit for human [habitation]. [They must] prohibit the trading in the lives of these people, whether this trading was in the name of security and or in the name of terrorism, and they must make it possible for Palestinians to work, to send their children to [public] schools, and to make a living without conditions or limitations. Without real change in the conduct of the countries 'detaining' the Palestinian [refugees], the number of those demanding resettlement will [only] increase. Opposition to [refugee] resettlement is specious; it is tantamount to the slow murder of the Palestinians…" [1] Stop Treating the Palestinians Like A Plague In another article, published July 20, 2009, Al-Shiryan wrote: "[Refugee] resettlement will undoubtedly happen; let us hope that it happens soon. We are not asking the countries with the refugee camps to grant the Palestinians citizenship out of their own goodwill. But [even] before the refugees are resettled, these countries must tear down the refugee camps' fences, open their gates to let in light and fresh air, [allow] freedom of movement, protect the Palestinians from the humiliation of poverty, destitution and having to beg from UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency], and enable them to work. "These countries must stop treating the Palestinians like a plague, using slogans which, as we all know, have become nothing but empty utterances in a loathsome struggle. We must break the isolation of the Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. A Palestinian should be made to feel like a welcome and dear guest - before some external intervention comes along and grants him the right to live in dignity, to everyone's consternation. "We must support the Palestinians like the West supported the Jews. We must reassess the whole idea of refugee camps, before they collapse on top of us. Be God-fearing [in handling the issue of] the refugee camp dwellers. Stop fighting at the expense of the Palestinian people's dignity." [2] The Arabs Have Turned the Palestinians Into a People Defeated Both Morally and Materially (Continue)