Human Rights Watch: 'Palestine' is a Police State

Video of the week -Authorities Crush Dissent in Palestine -  https://tinyurl.com/ybgtarm8  

October 24, 2018 |  Israel Today Staff

More often than not, allegations of Israeli abuse take up all the headlines, leaving little room (or desire) to report on the verifiable abuses being perpetrated against the Palestinians by their own governments.

And, according to a scathing report produced by Human Rights Watch, those abuses are "systematic."

The report labeled both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas regime in Gaza as "police states," and wondered why Western governments that purport to oppose such things continue to send so much of their taxpayers' money to the Palestinians.

"Twenty five years after Oslo, Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states," wrote Human Rights Watch deputy director Tom Porteous, who urged the international community to halt all financial aid "until the authorities curb those practices and hold those responsible for abuse accountable."

Among the abuses Human Rights Watch uncovered after interviewing 147 Palestinians were "systematic arbitrary arrests and torture" which "violate major human rights treaties to which Palestine recently acceded" and "may amount to a crime against humanity prosecutable at the International Criminal Court."

Individual Palestinians cited in the report spoke of horrific mistreatment at the hands of their own police and security forces.

A journalist arrested in the West Bank for criticizing the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas said that police officers tied his hands to the ceiling and "slowly pulled the rope to apply pressure to his arms, which caused him to feel so much pain that he had to ask an officer to pull his pants up after he used the toilet because he could not do it himself."

A civil servant in Gaza who was arrested for daring to criticize Hamas on Facebook was subjected to "positional abuse… causing him to feel ‘severe pain in my kidneys and spine’ and as if his neck would ‘break’ and his ‘body is tearing up inside."

The report spent a great deal of time addressing the use of "positional abuse," whereby both PA and Hamas authorities force detainees into positions that cause excruciating pain, but leave little or no marks of physical harm.

One might wonder why the international community, which is in such an uproar over Saudi Arabia's alleged gruesome handling of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has turned a blind eye to decades of similar abuse by the Palestinian Authority.

The answer, as some have suggested, is that the world doesn't really care all that much about the Palestinian Arabs (as evidenced by the weak response to the slaughter of thousands of them in Syria's civil war), and only heeds them any attention at all because their conflict is with the widely despised Jews.

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The PLO-Hamas divorce is final

Video Of The Week - Hamas is destroying Gaza   https://tinyurl.com/yayd3obt

          

Arutz 7, by Dr. Mordechai Kedar, 17/10/18

This week the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot informed us that Jason Greenblatt, President Trump's special representative for international negotiations, said that the Americans intend to reconnect the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority. If Greenblatt actually did say that, it reveals an important component of the American Peace Plan whose preparation has been going on for over a year.

The Americans hearkened to the Palestinian consensus they observed on this issue and concluded that both the Palestinian leadership and public are all for it, leading them to make it part of their plan, in the hope that the Palestinians would then accept the plan which all – the PLO, Hamas, Fronts and organizations – have refused pointblank even to consider. So if all the Palestinians want reunification and the Americans agree, where does the problem lie? Why don't the Palestinians agree to this part of the peace plan, at the very least? The answer is found in a very important aspect of Middle Eastern culture, one which has no counterpart in Western culture – the varied nuances of speech.

Western culture takes what is said at face value, for example: If I say that I agree with the person I am talking to, it means that I have listened to what he says, thought about it and have decided to accept his opinion. The West has faith in the sincerity of the person talking, believes what he says and accepts it as is. After all, there is free speech and anyone can say what is on their mind, so that when someone says something, it is what he really thinks and feels.

In the Middle East, however, everything anyone say has three layers: The upper and visible layer is the content of what has been said, the middle one is what the person speaking really means and the lowest is what he is hiding. While hearing someone's words, a listener in the Middle East tries to penetrate to the hidden layers, understand the real intention of the speaker and reveal what is being hidden from him.

That is why when any Palestinian Arab politician, PLO or Hamas, declares: "We must reunite Gaza and the West Bank" he means " I understand that this is what the man in the street wants and I am saying what he wants to hear," hiding the fact that he is certain that it will never happen and that he intends to blame the other side for the continued split.

Why won't the reunification happen? Because the two areas differ totally in their culture, language, behavior and thought patterns. Gaza Arabic is a Bedouin dialect, a derivative of Saudi spoken Arabic, while that of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria is a Palestinian dialect similar to the Arabic spoken in Syria.  The language gap is not just a technical factor in communication, it is the expression of cultural differences: Gaza's culture is Bedouin, while that of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is that of farmers and city dwellers.

Gaza's leadership is Hamas, an organization with a religious character that reflects its population's makeup, while the PLO rules the PA with a secular agenda that suits the Arab population of Judea and Samaria, except for the Hevron Hills whose residents are more traditional. The split between Gaza and Judea/Samaria is not only political, but based on cultural differences, with a cultural abyss separating two different populations who have never lived together except for the short period from the establishment of the PLO in 1994 to the split in 2007, fourteen years later, during which time there was no cultural blending between the two regions.  Even more significant is the bad blood flowing between the two ruling organizations, the PLO and Hamas. The expressions they use against one another are the worst in Arabic political language:  "Traitors", "Collaborators with Israel", "corrupt", "bloodsuckers", "Israeli border police" and many other much more malevolent accusations.

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The Palestinian Battle against a Plan that Does Not Exist

 Video Of The Week -Life on Gaza’s Side of the Fence - https://tinyurl.com/ya46wx43

For the full article by Khaled Abu Toameh go to - https://tinyurl.com/yatqu3l4

§  While Palestinian hatred for President Trump and his administration does not come as a surprise, what is strange is that the two Palestinians factions -- Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip -- are now using the US president's awaited plan to throw mud at one another.

§  Mahmoud Abbas evidently wants the world to believe that Hamas is working for Trump and Israel. Hamas, for its part, wants Palestinians to believe that if anyone is part of the Trump administration's "conspiracy," it is Abbas and his Fatah faction.

§  Guess who gets caught in the crossfire -- again. The Palestinians. It is they who continue to pay the price for the vicious strife between their "leaders" -- in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

No Palestinian -- or anyone else for that matter -- has been made privy to US President Donald J. Trump's long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East, which has also been referred to as the "deal of the century." This minor detail however, has not prevented the Palestinians from rejecting the rumored plan, on the pretext that it is aimed at "liquidating" the Palestinian cause and national rights.

Hardly a day passes without Palestinian leaders and officials across the political spectrum behaving as if they know every detail of the "deal of the century." The Palestinians are not even prepared to wait until the US administration actually presents a plan.

The Palestinian rejection of a yet-to-be-announced peace plan should not surprise anyone. The Palestinians will never accept any plan from a US administration they consider extremely "hostile" to the Palestinians and "biased" in favor of Israel.

Even before Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December 2017, the Palestinians had made up their minds: As Trump administration is on the side of Israel, and its policies seem mainly designed to appease and strengthen Israel, the Palestinians apparently decided that they should boycott the US administration. This boycott is unlikely to end in the foreseeable future, especially in light of continued Palestinian denunciations of the US administration and its policies towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Palestinians, it appears, have become hostage to their own vitriolic rhetoric. It is hard to see how after nearly a year of attacks on the Trump administration, any Palestinian leader would be able to accept the proposed "deal of the century," no matter what is in it, or to have any dealings with US officials. The massive anti-US campaign that the Palestinian leaders have been waging for the past few months in the media and every available platform has made it impossible, if not dangerous, for any Palestinian leader to do business with the Trump administration.

The two rival Palestinian parties have been at each other's throats for many years and are still engaged in a power struggle. Hamas and Fatah hate each other so much that they are even prepared to accuse each other of "collaborating with the enemies," America and Israel.

President Trump is most likely unaware that he has secret Palestinian "agents" working for him in Fatah and Hamas. This is only true, of course, if one is to take seriously the mutual accusations made by Fatah and Hamas.

Welcome to the Palestinians' Theater of the Absurd, where fabrication, lies and conspiracy theories have long been part of the fabric of Palestinian culture and society.

According to a statement issued by Fatah in Ramallah, the (unseen) "deal of the century" requires Palestinians to "give up Jerusalem and the right of return and the right for compensation for Palestinian refugees." Trump's plan, according to Fatah's imagination, also envisages separating the West Bank from the Gaza Strip "to prevent the establishment of an independent and sovereign state, on the pre-1967 armistice lines, with Jerusalem as its capital."

No one knows on what basis Fatah is making these claims about a plan that does not yet even exist. Perhaps these allegations can be traced to unconfirmed reports in various Arab and Western media outlets. Evidently, the Palestinians have taken these speculations as facts and have built entire arguments around them.

In the West Bank, the PLO Executive Committee, another Ramallah-based Palestinian body dominated by Abbas loyalists, echoed the same charge against Hamas. After a meeting on October 11, the committee "affirmed its rejection of the plan to separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank" as part of the "deal of the century." Again, this is an accusation by Abbas and his officials that is aimed at convincing Palestinians that Hamas is involved in a conspiracy against them and their rights. Abbas evidently wants the world to believe that Hamas is working for Trump and Israel.

Hamas, for its part, wants Palestinians to believe that if anyone is part of the Trump administration's "conspiracy," it is Abbas and his Fatah faction. Hamas's message to the Palestinians basically boils down to this: "We're not the traitors working with Israel and Trump. The real traitors are Abbas and his Fatah, who are imposing economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip and obstructing efforts to improve the living conditions of the Palestinians."

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Pro-Israel Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Video Of The Week - Yazidi Genocide - https://tinyurl.com/y73rasjt

Article from Arutz Sheva- https://tinyurl.com/yc2nyvxm

The Nobel Peace Prize has never been an institution considered friendly to Israel. Just think of the South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, Yasser Arafat, former American president Jimmy Carter, Finnish politician Martti Ahtisaari, to name only a few great opponents and critics of the Jewish State.

Now the Nobel has gone instead to a supporter and admirer of Israel, the former sex slave of ISIS, the Yazidi survivor Nadia Murad.

"The Jews and the Yazidis share a common history of genocide that has shaped the identity of our peoples," said Nadia a few months ago visiting Israel, where she was welcomed at the Knesset, at the University of Tel Aviv and at Yad Vashem, the national memorial for the Shoah. "The history of the Jewish people is a unique story, yet it echoes in the experiences of my own community. Like the Jews, the Yazidis have a thousand-year-old history. And despite the persecution, both our peoples have survived".

Nadia has been helped by the Israeli humanitarian organization IsraAID and the Israeli office of the International Development Society (Sid), which helps the Yazidis see what they have gone through in Iraq recognized as genocide.

It is thanks to Israeli NGO IsraAID, which Nadia called "more effective than many governments", that Nadia was able to tell her story to the Western public. It was through IsraAID's work with the Yazidi refugees in the now-evacuated Petra camp in Greece that director Yotam Polizer understood that Israel could play an important role in the Yazidi cause.

 "Unlike the Syrian refugees, who saw our logo with the Star of David and were confused, the Yazidis welcomed us with a huge smile. They said that for them it was a natural connection” said Polizer.

The Yazidis believe that the 1941 anti-Jewish pogrom in Baghdad, the "Farhud", was the forerunner of what would happen in Iraq to religious minorities, such as Christians and Yazidis.

In Israel, Nadia has held meetings with the Knesset legislators and met with the heads of the Tel Aviv University together with Polizer, in an effort to bring Yazidi students to study in Israel. "I always wanted to come here to Israel, so many victims wanted to come and get help from the government and the people of Israel," Nadia said. And again:

"Before this genocide, I had little information about the Jewish community because we do not have many Jews in Iraq. Then I saw that Jewish communities support us. Like the Jews, the Yazidis showed resilience in the face of oppression.

"Maintaining one's identity is a force of resistance. We refuse to allow the oppressors to be stronger than us”.

This is also the story of Israel's 70 years of existence. And Zionism has been the most powerful resistance to the religious-ethnic cleansing political Islam has spread in the Middle East against its minorities. 

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The UN: Abbas’s Palestinian playground

Video Of The Week - Why is the US cutting aid to refugees? https://tinyurl.com/y8uq8snw

For full article by Yisrael Medad - https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-un-abbas-playground/  

(October 2, 2018 ) 

How important is the Temple Mount?  Ask Mahmoud Abbas. Elected leader in 2009, with no elections since then, of the Palestinian Authority that purports to be a state (but can’t even extend effectively its rule over Gaza).

According to the Haaretz version of his speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday last week, he said:

“And you might note, ladies and gentlemen, that the Israeli settlers and even the Israeli army on every single day; they are committing acts of blasphemy against our holy sites, especially Al-Aqsa mosque.”

The media supporting the P.A. regularly employs purposeful terminology so as to distort and demonize Jews. One recent headline published during the Sukkot holiday reads: “Over 500 Israeli settlers storm Al-Aqsa.” Indeed, “storm” is their preferred word-of-choice, intimating that Jews as Jews should not be there at all, and that they are somehow breaking in illegally. Another referred to “religious rituals” as if they were witches from Macbeth.

Interestingly, that section was not in the official WAFA version.

By the way, Jews do not, indeed cannot, enter the Temple Mount compound daily, unlike prior to 2000. Almost 160 days in the year the Temple Mount are off-limits to Jewish visitors for various reasons.

But that was but one part of Abbas’s litany of lies.

He also touched on the Law of Israel as a nation-state and declared:

“This racist law talks about what is called the ‘land of Israel.’ Can you ask the Israeli government what exactly constitutes the ‘land of Israel’? What are the ‘borders’ of the State of Israel? I challenge anyone to tell us what they are.”

If one reads the Basic Law of the Palestinian Authority, no exact borders of a proposed Palestinian state exist. Worse, all we are informed geographically is that “Palestine is part of the large Arab world.”

In another version, we read of another land mass undefined: “On the land of the fathers and forefathers, the land of heavenly Messages … ,” but then deeper into the document, we read, “Its territory is an indivisible whole with its boundaries, as they existed on the eve of 4 June 1967.” And yet, Judea and Samaria were part of Jordan, illegally occupied and annexed, and Gaza was under Egyptian military rule. We also need not forget that the U.N.’s Resolution 242 does not mention Palestine as a state or other political entity.

So, what is Abbas claiming?

Quite simply, he is engaged in national-identity negation.

A bit later on in his address, Abbas notes that the Arabs of Palestine are “an indigenous people and our roots are deep across 5,000 years.” Arab collective identity within the general area of historic Palestine is 1,380 years old. Arabs may have been engaged in commerce or pilgrimage before 638 C.E. (and prior to them assuming an Islamic ethos), but to claim a 5,000-year history, even as Canaanites or Jebusites or even Natufians are false, ridiculous and outlandish suggestions.

What does Abbas mean when he said peace must include “an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and not some place in East Jerusalem as its capital, and with all of its holy sites?” Do all holy sites refer to just Islamic sites? What about Christian or Jewish sites, and the claim that one cannot be Palestinian if one is Jewish? Of course, since Abbas and company promote a form of reconstructionism that suggests the Western Wall is actually the Al-Buraq tethering post, and outright denies of the 800-year existence of two Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount—despite their explicit mention in the Koran—perhaps Abbas really does disavow anything Jewish about Jerusalem.

One last excerpt of reveals Abbas’s strategy of self-denial, on the one hand, and his assumption that all will believe him no matter how pejorative he is on the other:

“We resist this colonial, settler Israeli occupation through the legitimate means created by this international organization. Foremost among these is peaceful, popular resistance as we witness today in the Great March of Return in Gaza.”

Incendiary kites, terror tunnels, sniper fire, tossing of grenades, IEDs, infiltration and more at the Gaza border occur almost daily, not to mention mortars, rockets and missiles.

But Abbas knows that the United Nations is his playground, his theater. He can be elected, as he was just now, to the Group of 77 with impunity despite his words and his actions. And his stage is becoming increasingly immoral, malevolent and extremely hazardous, revealed by the applause Abbas received from that seemingly august, peace-loving body.

It is that applause that assign to his appearances the tragicomic label.

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