Anti-Israel poppenkast op Egyptische TV

 

Van dit soort dingen word je niet vrolijk. Onder het regime van Mubarak tierden complottheorieën welig, en in regeringsgezinde media werden de Joden regelmatig van de meest vreselijke dingen beschuldigd, en passent even de Holocaust ontkennend als zijnde een zionistisch complot. Na Mubarak gaat dit gewoon door. Mubarak was een realpolitiker die begreep dat een koude vrede met Israel in zijn beste belang was: hij kreeg er ruimhartige financiële en militaire steun van de VS voor terug, hij hoefde geen oorlogen meer tegen Israel te voeren en te verliezen, en hij kon zijn imago als trotse Arabier en nationalist behouden. Omdat Israelische politici vaak ook realpolitiker zijn, accepteerden ze dit dubbelspel, al werd er weleens wat gemord over al te kille zaken zoals de culturele boycot van Israel en anti-Israelische diplomatieke acties van Egypte.

 

RP

------------

 

Egyptian kiddie TV: Mubarak infected Egyptians with Zionist cancer

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/08/egyptian-kiddie-tv-mubarak-infected.html

From MEMRI:



Excerpts:

Following are excerpts from a TV puppet show, featuring children as the prosecutors in a mock trial for Hosni Mubarak, portrayed by a puppet. The show aired on Al-Hekma TV on August 14, 2011. 

Mubarak puppet: Brothers and sisters, I have spent my life serving this country. As I stand before you today, I tell you that I will not comply with these demands. I tell you... If anyone has a question, go ahead. 

Children (in unison): There is no god but Allah, the martyr is loved by Allah. 

There is no god but Allah, Hosni Mubarak is the enemy of Allah. 

...
Child prosecutor: The trial has begun. We are now in session. 

2nd child prosecutor: You fought against Islam and the Muslims. 

Mubarak puppet: If we leave the Islamists to their own devices, they will reach power. Everybody will have to wear the niqab, and there will be anarchy. 

[...] 

Child prosecutor: You made the West affront the Prophet Muhammad – Denmark and other countries... 

Child prosecutor: You are Israel's best friend. Israel was the country most saddened by your fall and your trial, because you were helping them to kill the Palestinians and to occupy their lands. 

Mubarak puppet: As long as the Israelis occupy Palestine, we must treat them well. These Jews have always been good people. In the Jewish quarter here, we have always known that they keep their word. 
...

2nd child prosecutor: You brought cancer upon the Egyptian people. 

Mubarak puppet: Brothers and sisters, I have spent my life serving this country. My fellow citizens, the population is huge, and I didn't know how to feed them, so I brought cancerous pesticides from Israel for them. You've seen grapes the size of watermelons, watermelons the size of buffaloes, and buffaloes the size of chicks. There are 80 million people, praise the Lord. How is one to feed them? 

[...] 

Child prosecutor: You treated the vegetables and fruits with all kinds of hormones coming from Israel, in order to inflict the Egyptians with cancer, but God was lying in wait for you, and He gave you a taste of your own medicine, inflicting you with cancer. 

Children in unison: Hosni Mubarak, you devil, you inflicted cancer upon your people.

 

Syriërs beschieten Palestijns vluchtelingenkamp

 

Toegegeven, het heeft ook Trouw en de Telegraaf gehaald. NRC hield het bij een algemeen artikel onder de kop:

“Syrische kustplaats opnieuw doelwit regeringsleger” waarin een zinnetje aan de Palestijnen werd gewijd. Ik wacht met smart op de verontwaardigde reacties van de bekende apologeten van de Palestijnen.

 

RP

---------

 

Syrians forcing Palestinian Arabs to flee camps

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/08/syrians-forcing-palestinian-arabs-to.html

Now Lebanon quotes Shaam News Network:

The Syrian army is calling on residents in Latakia’s refugee camps in and in the Raml and Saknatouri neighborhoods to evacuate the region. They are threatening to consider everyone that remains an opponent.

So the PalArabs are running for their lives:

Thousands of Palestinians fled their refugee camp in Latakia, AFP cited UNRWA as saying.

And some were killed:

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, is gravely concerned about reports of heavy gunfire from Syrian security forces into the Palestinian refugee camp situated in the El Ramel district and surrounding areas of Latakia, including heavy fire from gunboats. Reports from various sources indicate deaths and casualties among the Palestinian refugee population, although poor communications make it impossible to confirm the exact number of dead and injured.

 

 

All of this is happening among Syria's larger assault on Latakia and, today, Homs.

The irony of Arabs forcing their Palestinian brethren to flee their homes is being lost on the Arab people, apparently.

Some 42 civilians have been killed over the past day in Syria.

 

Palestina of Israel: wie heeft recht op het land? (IMO)

 

 

Palestina of Israel: wie heeft recht op het land?

http://www.zionism-israel.com/blog/archives/00000584.html

IMO Blog, 2011 / Ratna Pelle

 

Naast de historische en religieuze connectie van de Joden met het land Israel/Palestina, en het feit dat de Arabieren er eeuwenlang de (overgrote) meerderheid waren, gebruiken beide partijen vaak VN documenten en andere internationaal gerechtelijke documenten en uitspraken om hum claims te rechtvaardigen. De belangrijkste hiervan zijn de Balfour verklaring, het Britse mandaat, de San Remo conferentie, het delingsplan uit 1947, en resolutie 242 en 337. Deze documenten en gedane uitspraken zijn vaak op verschillende manieren te interpreteren en worden door beide partijen vaak misbruikt voor eigen doeleinden.


Zo ontkennen antizionisten dat het mandaat de Joden in feite zelfbeschikking gaf en de voorloper van een staat, en menen zij bovendien dat de Britten Palestina ook aan de Arabieren hadden beloofd, wat twijfelachtig is. Ze wijzen er ook op dat het mandaat stelt dat de rechten van andere gemeenschappen moeten worden gewaarborgd, maar vermelden niet dat het hier om burger- en religieuze rechten gaat, niet om politieke of nationale. Rechtse zionisten menen daarentegen dat het mandaat hun een staat gaf op het hele gebied en gebruiken dat als bewijs dat de nederzettingen legaal zijn (Joodse vestiging in het hele land, en aanvankelijk zelfs in wat nu Jordanië is). Het Britse Mandaat stelt:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

De Britten hebben de betekenis hiervan zelf overigens in de loop der jaren nogal 'aangepast', vooral onder druk van het Arabische verzet en geweld in Palestina. Zij hebben meerdere malen geprobeerd de Joodse immigratie te beperken, wat een schending van de provisies van het mandaat zou zijn, en in 1939 uiteindelijk strenge restricties ingevoerd.

In de MacMahon-Hussein correspondentie (1915, dus ruim voor het mandaat en voor de Balfour verklaring) heeft Sir Henry Mc Mahon namens de Britse regering alle Arabische op Turkije te veroveren gebieden beloofd aan Sherif Husayn (Hussein) uit Mekka, behalve een stuk ten Westen van Syrië:

"The two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded."

Ami Isseroff zegt daarover:

The area was only defined approximately.
No authoritative maps based on this promise were ever published. The origins of the boundary suggested are obscure, and may have had their origin in the instructions of Sir Edward Grey that Damascus, Homs, Hama and Allepo should be under Arab control. (see discussion by Elie Kedourie, Islam and the Modern World, Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1980, pp 297 ff).

Either interpretation could be supported by the vague boundary description in the letter, and partisans of the Zionists and Palestinians have produced maps that support their contentions. The Arab claim that Palestine was definitely part of the land assigned to the Arabs is not wholly consistent with the phrase in the letter, which says of the excluded areas "cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded. Palestine "could not be said to be purely Arab" in the same sense as the area of modern Lebanon certainly, because, especially in Jerusalem, the Turkish government had given a great many "concessions" to both foreign governments and to church groups. Moreover, there is a British undertaking to safeguard the holy places, which would hardly have been necessary if Palestine was not part of the area. The British later claimed that the Balfour declaration was consistent with the McMahon correspondence and the Sykes-Picot agreement, but the three documents seem to contradict each other.

Dit soort ambiguïteit lijkt helaas kenmerkend voor veel wat er over Israel en het conflict wordt gezegd. Maar zelfs wanneer Palestina toen wel aan de Arabieren was beloofd, dan nog heeft die belofte geen enkele juridische waarde, zoals de Balfour verklaring ook pas waarde kreeg doordat die met het Britse mandaat is geïmplementeerd, dat door de Volkerenbond aan Groot-Brittannië is toegewezen. Erger is dat GB niet alleen een belofte maar een overeenkomst met internationale legitimiteit schond met het White Paper van 1939, waarin niet alleen de Joodse immigratie tot strenge quota werd beperkt, maar ook het kopen van grond door Joden ernstig werd bemoeilijkt en de mogelijkheden en voorwaarden waaronder zij mochten bouwen. Het mandaat spreekt immers van:

Lees verder

 

Zwarte studentenleiders VS wijzen Apartheidsvergelijking Israel af

 

Zo, horen ze het ook eens van een ander. Dat doet me denken aan een ander recent bericht:

Palestijnen hekelen huichelen mensenrechtenorganisaties

 

Wouter

______________

 

Black student leaders slam 'apartheid' characterization

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=215811

By JORDANA HORN, JPOST CORRESPONDENT 
04/09/2011 10:09 

Letter says "decency, justice and hope compel us to demand immediate cessation to deliberate misappropriation of words."

NEW YORK – African-American student leaders from a variety of historically black colleges and universities took out full page ads in numerous American college newspapers Thursday, displaying an “Open Letter to Students for Justice in Palestine(SJP),” to convey that they were offended by SJP’s use of the term “apartheid” at recent Israel Apartheid Week events at campuses across the country.

The 16 signatories to the letter are students and alumni from historically black collegesand universities who are members of the Vanguard Leadership Group, a leadership development academy and honor society for top students. The letter ran or is slated to run in student newspapers at Brown University, University of California- Los Angeles, University of Maryland and Columbia University over the next few days.

“The Students for Justice in Palestine’s labeling of Israel, an extremely diverse and vibrant country, as an apartheid state is not only false, but offensive,” Vanguard President Michael Hayes told The Jerusalem Post. “Additionally, this rhetoric does absolutely nothing to help Israel-Palestine negotiations or relations. We feel this type of action serves to hinder the peace process domestically and abroad, and have made it our priority to take a stand to shift the tide of understanding.”

In a statement released by the Vanguard Leadership Group as to why they authored the open letter to SJP, Vanguard described itself as “proudly involved in the pro-Israel movement in America.

“The use of the word ‘apartheid’ by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in itscharacterization of Israel is patently false and deeply offensive to all who feel a connection to the state of Israel,” the letter reads. “Your organization’s campaign against Israel is spreading misinformation about its policies, fostering bias in the media and jeopardizing prospects for a timely resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such irresponsibility is a blemish on your efforts.”

The letter continues to state that “[p]laying the ‘apartheid card’ is a calculated attempt to conjure up images associated with the racist South African regimes of the 20th century,” and calls the strategy “as transparent as it is base.”

“Beyond that, it is highly objectionable to those who know the truth about the Israelis’ record on human rights and how it so clearly contrasts with South Africa’s,” the letter reads, noting that under apartheid, black South Africans had no rights in a country in which they were the majority of the population.

Saying that the analogy manipulates rather than informs, the letter requests SJP to “immediately stop referring to Israel as an apartheid society and to acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.”

“Decency, justice, and the hope of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East compel us to demand an immediate cessation to the deliberate misappropriation of words and of the flagrant mischaracterizations of Israel,” the letter concludes. “Your compliance with this request will be viewed as a responsible and appropriate first step toward raising the level of discourse.”

 

 

PLO citeert alleen selectief uit VN resolutie 194 over vluchtelingen

 

Elder of Ziyon kan soms wat cynisch klinken, maar dat is niet geheel ten onrechte. In onderstaand stukje wijst hij er terecht op dat de Palestijnen en hun apologeten wel altijd VN resolutie 194 aanhalen waar het de Palestijnse vluchtelingen betreft, maar de rest van de resolutie negeren. Zoals het deel dat over Jeruzalem gaat, of waarin Israel wordt erkend. De Arabische staten hebben de resolutie indertijd unaniem verworpen, wat het al een beetje raar maakt dat de Palestijnen hem nu gebruiken voor hun doeleinden, temeer daar het een Algemene Vergadering resolutie is dus sowieso geen internationaal recht. En inderdaad, men vermeldt er ook nooit bij dat er niet van een inherent ‘recht op terugkeer’ wordt gesproken, maar slechts in algemene zin wordt gezegd dat vluchtelingen die in vrede met hun buren willen leven, moeten kunnen terugkeren. Het betrof toen bovendien geen nakomelingen zoals nu, maar zopas gevluchte mensen. Zie ook dit artikel van Ami Isseroff dat verder gehakt maakt van het zogenaamde ‘recht op terugkeer’ van de Palestijnse vluchtelingen en hun miljoenen nakomelingen. 

 

RP

------------ 

 

PLO reiterates "right of return" has nothing to do with statehood

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/08/plo-reiterates-right-of-return-has.html

Zakaria Agha, member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, again stated what the PLO has stated clearly for years and what the West pretends is inconsequential: that even after the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state the PLO will not relinquish its demand that Israel be overrun with millions of so-called "refugees."

He bases this on UNGA resolution 194, which the Arabs love to misinterpret as saying that any Arab whose ancestors came from Palestine has the right to move into Israel, forever. 

Notwithstanding the fact that General Assembly resolutions have no legal force, the constant reference to that resolution by the Palestinian Arabs is the height of hypocrisy. 

If they believe to strongly that UNGA 194 must be adhered to by Israel, then they must also believe:

1.           Jerusalem will never be the capital of "Palestine" because UNGA 194 says it is part of a separate territory that must be under UN control - including much more of "Palestine." than of Israel. Many Arab towns, and even all of Bethlehem, would not be part of "Palestine."

2.           Mount Scopus would be part of Israel proper.

3.           Descendants of Jews who were expelled from Gush Etzion. the Old City and other areas would be allowed to live in their ancestral homes. UNGA 194 just refers to "refugees," not "Arab refugees."

4.            Free access to Jewish holy places in Judea and Samaria would have to be enforced. 

 

For some reason, the PLO doesn't like to refer to those parts of UNGA 194. And, of course, they steadfastly refuse to remember that the resolution only refers to refugees who are willing to "live at peace with their neighbours." 

Keep in mind that no Palestinian Arab leader is anxious for millions of Arabs now living in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere to "return" to "Palestine." Unlike the Zionist in the 1940s and 1950s who happily took in hundreds of thousand of Jews from the Diaspora, Palestinian Arab leaders are in no rush to help out their brethren who have been rotting away in camps for decades. To them, the descendants of "refugees"  exist for only one purpose - to destroy Israel by "returning." Besides that, they couldn't care less about them.

Their hypocrisy - and their goal in erasing Israel - cannot be more transparent. And the world cannot be more blind as to their goals, even when they say it explicitly. 

 

 

 

Geschilde appeltjes: de Sudeten-Duitse ballingen

 

Een aardig stukje, dat aangeeft dat de geschiedenis niet altijd recht kan doen aan ieder individu. Lang niet alle Sudetenduitsers waren voor de nazi's, maar veel wel en veel waren blij met de annexatie, omdat ze nu geen minderheid meer zouden zijn die zich aan moet passen. Toen in 1947, twee jaar na het einde van WOII, de VN opriep tot het delen van Palestina in twee staten, vielen de Arabieren in Palestina de Joodse gemeenschap aan, en na de uitroeping van de staat Israel vielen vier Arabische legers binnen. Daar waren de Palestijnen natuurlijk wel blij mee (sterker nog, ze hadden erom gesmeekt), en die hadden ook geen probleem met de expliciete boodschap dat men de Joden wilden verdrijven of erger (sterker nog, dat riepen ze zelf ook steeds).  Ze verloren, zoals de nazi's verloren (waarmee veel Palestijnen overigens sympathiseerden), en werden in meerderheid verdreven, zoals de Sudetenduitsers werden verdreven. Met dit verschil dat de Palestijnen actief hadden gevochten tegen de Joden in Palestina, en bovendien een meerderheid niet werd verdreven maar zelf vluchtte en daar soms ook toe werd opgeroepen door de Arabieren. In beide gevallen echter hebben onschuldige mensen geleden onder de beslissingen van hun eigen leiders, onder de verkeerde keuzes die zij hebben gemaakt of die namens hen zijn gemaakt. Er zijn overigens nog meer voorbeelden van grote groepen vluchtelingen n.a.v. een conflict, die nooit hebben kunnen terugkeren, zoals de ik meen negen miljoen moslims en hindoes toen Pakistan werd gesticht. Het zogenaamde Palestijnse recht op terugkeer zou 1948 ofwel de stichting van Israel ongedaan maken, en daarmee nog drastischer zijn dan wanneer Duitsland Sudetenland er opnieuw bij zou krijgen.

 

RP

---------- 

 

Floris-Jan van Luyn: Geschilde appeltjes

http://www.nrcnext.nl/columnisten/2011/07/11/geschilde-appeltjes/

DOOR FLORIS-JAN VAN LUYN  OP 11 JULI 2011 

 

Er zijn van die plekken in Europa waar het drama van de moderne geschiedenis aan de aarde, het gras en de bomen kleeft. Zoals iedereen de schaduw van de oorlog nog terug kan vinden in akkers rond Ieper en Verdun. Het westen van Tsjechië is zo'n plek.  

 

 

Ik liep gisteren met m'n linkerbeen in Tsjechië en m'n rechter in Duitsland, precies daar waar ooit het IJzeren Gordijn hing. Dat generaties voor mij onder die grens hadden geleden wilde het bos niet meteen verraden. Maar even landinwaarts aan de Tsjechische kant liggen nog altijd de uitgeschoten boomgaarden en vervallen kavels van de Sudeten-Duitse bewoners die daar na de oorlog van werden verdreven. Als lieflijke oases van vervlogen leed. 

 

Want na 300.000 vermoordde en verdreven Joden en een kapotgeschoten land, bleken de Tsjechen weinig compassie te hebben voor de drie miljoen etnische Duitsers binnen hun landsgrenzen. Die hadden immers staan juichen toen Hitler in 1938 hun Sudetenland annexeerde. En dus konden ze na afloop van de oorlog allemaal vertrekken. 240.000 vonden tijdens wraakacties en de vlucht die daarop volgde de dood. 

 

De Nederlandse boer bij wie ik een stukje van mijn zomer doorbreng heeft er garen bij gesponnen. In de verwarrende nadagen na de val van het IJzeren Gordijn sprak Václac Havel nog over de mogelijkheid tot compensatie voor de berooide Sudeten-Duitse ballingen, in ruil voor aanname van het Tsjechisch staatsburgerschap. Hij was de eerste die het voor hen opnam. Maar het voornemen werd nooit uitgevoerd, en land dat niet alsnog werd opgeëist belandde in nieuwe handen. Zo ook in die van mijn Nederlandse gastgevers. 

 

De frustratie over dat alles is tot ver over de Tsjechische grens en die van de eeuwwisseling hoorbaar gebleven. De Sudeten-Duitse verenigingen in Duitsland en Oostenrijk eisen nog altijd gerechtigheid, maar de enigen die luisteren zijn hun eigen leden. 

 

En zo is een dramatisch stukje Europese geschiedenis onder Tsjechische zoden verdwenen. Met nog hier en daar de uitschieter van een ongesnoeide appelboom – toevallig op het verkeerde stukje grond tot wasdom gekomen.

 

 

Palestijnse desinformatie over de Westoever

Khalid’s replanted olive trees in Al Walaja

 

We lezen vaak over kolonisten die Palestijnse olijfbomen vernielen, Palestijnen die zomaar worden gearresteerd en Palestijnen die van hun land worden verdreven omdat een nederzetting wordt uitgebreid. Maar kloppen die verhalen wel? Lang niet altijd, zo blijkt uit onder andere dit onderzoekje van Missing Peace. Waarmee niet gezegd is dat kolonisten nooit Palestijnen treiteren en Israel nooit onterecht Palestijnen arresteert, maar wel dat we niet alles klakkeloos kunnen geloven wat van zogenaamde ‘mensenrechten- en vredesorganisaties komt en hier klakkeloos door de NRC, Trouw en de Volkskrant wordt overgenomen, om van de riooljournalistiek van Joop.nl wat betreft Israel nog te zwijgen. 

 

RP

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The West Bank distortions industry

http://missingpeace.eu/en/2011/08/the-west-bank-distortions-industry/

By Missing Peace

Monday, August 15, 2011 - 9:37 AM

A shocking tale about UNWRA’s involvement in the cognitive war against Israel.

There is no shortage of claims about alleged Israeli human rights violations in the so called ’West Bank’. Most of these claims originate from Palestinian sources and NGO’s and are part of a disinformation campaign that aims to delegitimize Israel. This campaign of distortions, bias and, sometimes, outright lies is well documented by a host of bloggers and organizations – such as Honest Reporting and Camera.

One of the players in this campaign is UNWRA, an organization that is supposed to be impartial and to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees. UNWRA’s anti-Israel bias is not quite new but, until recently, has been limited to refugee related issues. Now UNWRA has apparently decided to interfere in the already explosive situation in the West Bank and joined the general disinformation campaign against Israel.  Here’s how that campaign works.                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Dutch orchestra attacked by IDF?

At the end of July the Palestinian News Network published an article about a Dutch orchestra that was supposedly attacked by the IDF during a performancein the Palestinian village Kfar Qadum. The PNN article was widely distributed among international media outlets. However, a member of the orchestra wrote a detailed account about the actual events.  The orchestra participated in the weekly peaceful demonstration against an IDF checkpoint in the vicinity of the village, he   said. 

According to another account on the Palsolidarity website a group of Palestinians approached the soldiers who responded by firing teargas grenades. The IDF, in response to our request for more information, said that the missing piece in the accounts was that the Palestinians started throwing stones at the soldiers

So there was no performance and no peaceful demonstration.

Olive trees destroyed by IDF?

Another claim that originated from a Palestinian source, involved the alleged destruction of 200 olive trees in the village Al Walaja near Bethlehem. JAI, the Joint Advocacy Initiative, published a report about Na’el Khalid, a Palestinian farmer who claimed that 200 olive trees were destroyed when Israeli authorities started building the security fence on part of his land.

JAI also reported that Khalid would lose his land to Givat Ya’el – a planned Jewish community adjacent to Al Walaja.

We asked the IDF to comment on this report and received the following answer:

“In accordance with Israeli Supreme Court rulings regarding the rerouting of Israel’s security fence, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) transplanted trees from Mr. Na’el Khalil’s property to an adjacent plot, ensuring that he was able to continue working his land.

The Israeli court authorities have previously denied several petitions seeking ownership of the land adjacent to the Palestinian village Al-Walajah by the Givat Ya’el community, a private building project in Judea”.

A field investigation in Al Walaja where we visited Na’el Whalid’s lands, proved the IDF right.

The photo [above] was taken on August 9^th and shows some of the Dutch funded olive trees on a plot adjacent to the fence which is still under construction.

 

Al Ahram and The Economist

Then there was an Economist article that was apparently based on a B’Tselem report and an article on the 972 website. According to the Economist, Israel routinely arrests Palestinian minors at night, some as young as eleven, and shows no mercy when they stand trial.

The Economist also quoted  Israeli Eran Segal from Halamish saying that

“Israeli soldiers don’t maim enough Palestinians”.

Asked to comment, Segal denied he ever said a thing like that. In fact he had told The Economist:                                                                                                                   

“If the IDF would have taken the incidents more seriously and had acted in a different way the stone throwing would have been a thing of the past”.

The Egyptian paper Al Ahram outdid the Economist when it charged  ‘Israel’s most aggressively racist government ever’ with ‘prosecuting and imprisoning Palestinian children at will on bogus charges such as throwing stones’.

In a reaction, the Israeli Military Prosecutor’s Office  stated that stone throwing is a criminal offense in Israel. Throwing stones can cause severe injuries and even – as has happened in the past – death.

Israeli law calls for the punishment of stone throwers, even if they are minors and regardless of their nationality or religion. However contrary to what was written in the Economist’s article, there are almost no cases where Palestinian minors under the age of 14 have been convicted for stone throwing.

The Military Prosecutor’s Office also stressed that a special court for minors has been established (Military Juvenile Court) which is meant to take care of the defense of the rights of minors.

In addition, almost all suspects in the Juvenile Court are represented by counsel, which is contrary to the state of affairs in Israeli civil courts. Most of the trials take place within a rather short amount of time and minors, whose case has not been heard in a reasonable amount of time, are often released.

The IDF tries to arrest the suspect as soon as possible after an incident has taken place. If this proves impossible the military, for security reasons only, carries out arrests during night time. Minors are held in special wings of three prisons and their needs are met on an individual, case by case, basis. So there is no prosecution and Imprisoning without due process but, rather, a legal procedure that takes in account the age of the suspect.

UNWRA

The most shocking example of the distortions industry came from UNWRA spokesman Chris Gunness during an interview with Ma’an News Agency.

Reacting to this interview, and a related UNWRA press release, we asked Gunness for additional data and information on demolitions issues.

UNWRA then sent us a report that only contained locations and dates of the West Bank demolitions.

When asked for additional information about the demolitions, such as court orders, Gunnes became extremely agitated, used crude language and demanded immediate publication of ‘the facts’. Facts? Let’s examine this claim in the Ma’an interview:

“Many displacements are taking place where settlements are expanding and with it we are seeing an upturn in vicious attacks by Jewish settlers. Palestinians are being thrown off their ancestral lands to make way for settlers”,Gunness told Ma’an.

 

This suggests two things.  First, that settlements are still expanding outside the municipal boundaries and second that Jews are replacing Palestinian Arabs. As Gunness knows very well, since 2005 settlement expansion has only taken place within the existing zoning lines of the municipal boundaries. No Palestinian Arabs have been kicked off their land to be replaced by Jews.

In fact Gunness was referring here to Bedouins who are illegally camping. A COGAT official told us that the Bedouin increasingly tend to camp in the vicinity of settlements and are often paid to do so by pro-Palestinian NGO’s. In the same Ma’an interview Gunness claimed the following:

 “There is growing evidence that it (demolitions in Area C of the West Bank) is destroying the very fabric of these communities and ultimately contributing to a demographic shift which is changing the ethnic make-up of the West Bank.”

 

This suggests a slow “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian population on the West Bank. Of course Gunness is well aware of the fact that only 3% of the Palestinian population lives in Area C – most of them Bedouins, who mostly live in tents and are used to moving from place to place. UNWRA’s own census from 2007 shows an average population growth of the Palestinian population on the West Bank of 2,5 % per year.

 But there was more. In an e-mail to Missing Peace Gunness wrote the following:

 “127 people expelled in maale nikhmas – displaced for settlement in the last few weeks. Is that enough?

Really? The 127 Palestinians expelled from Maaleh Michmas ‘displaced for settlement’were in fact  Bedouins who decided to leave, as his own UNWRA press release states. There is no evidence that Ma’aleh Michmas residents took their place.              

In fact, according to a report by the pro-Palestinian organization International Solidarity Movement, 16 Bedouin were evicted in the Maaleh Michnas area at the end of July. This happened after they illegally camped within a closed military zone and received eviction orders two years ago.

 

UNWRA’s mandate

This was not the first time Gunness was caught distorting the facts and engaging in an anti-Israel campaign. During the Gaza war he falsely accused Israel of firing at UNWRA convoys.

The new shocking aspect in this affair is that UNWRA now clearly interferes in politics and oversteps its current mandate, as defined by the UN:

UNRWA’s contemporary mandate is to provide relief, human development and protection services to Palestine refugees and persons displaced by the 1967 hostilities in its fields of operation: Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, West Bank and the Gaza Strip. UNRWA’s mandate has been repeatedly renewed by the UN General Assembly. The current mandate runs till 30 June 2014.

What do the UNWRA investigations into West Bank building issues and violence between Jews and Arabs have to do with providing humanitarian services to displaced persons.

Gunness told us that UNWRA has a team of 12 investigators conducting research on settlement and building issues on a daily base. Got that? A UN organization designed to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees is going after Israel’s building policies on the West Bank.

Instead of focusing on the plight of the refugees and their descendants in, for example, Lebanon, where the Palestinians living in refugee camps still are without basic human rights, UNWRA prefers to join the disinformation campaign against Israel.                                                                                                                                                              

Too late

It may be too late for Israel to repair the damage caused by this global disinformation campaign. That’s too bad because this is where many other campaigns like BDS, and delegitimization start.

The Israeli government does not seem to grasp the severity of the situation and still doesn’t respond decisively to the endless flurry of distortions and outright false claims. However, it is not too late to demand an immediate investigation into UNWRA’s participation in this cognitive war against the Jewish state.

This affair, on top of earlier scandals in which UNRWA’s ties to Hamas were exposed, should finally lead to a complete overhaul of the way the UN deals with the Arab Israeli conflict.