An adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, condemned the two incidents.

“The Israeli escalation in the West Bank and Gaza and the return to the policy of assassinations and random killings in virtual excuses shows that the the Israeli government decided to destroy the independence and security of the Palestinian people and is pulling our people into a bloody circle of violence,” Rudeineh told CNN.

“The Israeli government should bear the responsibility for the killings and also bear the responsibility for the dead end in moving the peace process forward because of Israel’s refusal to stop the policy of settlement and to commit to the references of the peace process,” he said.

Of course this raises the question what the Palestinian police were doing. Now we apparently know the answer: they were preparing for a bonfire. Yesterday was a big event, where the Palestinians burned products that were produced in Judea and Samaria. Everyone, seemingly, got into the act, even “moderate” Palestinian President Salam Fayyad. (h/t Israelly Cool)

I’m not sure how this helps build a Palestinian state, but apparently it’s more important than fighting terror.

Meanwhile the moderate PA is also promoting a music video starring Wafa Idris.

Wafa Idris, the first Palestinian female suicide terrorist, was honored as a “Shahida” – holy Martyr – in a new Fatah promotional music video broadcast this week on Palestinian Authority TV. Idris killed one Israeli and wounded 150 in her suicide bombing in 2002.

This picture of Wafa Idris with the text “The Shahida (Martyr) Wafa Ali Idris” appears in the new PA TV music video, which blends scenes and pictures paying tribute to the PLO, Fatah, Yasser Arafat and PA and Fatah Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. PA TV is under the control of Abbas’s office.

Nice to know that Israel’s peace partners have this state building and confidence building stuff down to a science.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

“Those who don’t know can talk,” Dan Meridor, Israel’s intelligence minister, said Monday on state radio. “Those who know should keep silent.”

Now the NY Times reports that PM Netanyahu is playing down talks of an imminent deal.

Seeking to lower expectations of an imminent deal with the Islamic group Hamas to exchange a captured Israeli soldier for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Tuesday that no agreement had yet been reached.

“There is still no deal, and I do not know if there will be one,” Mr. Netanyahu said as he toured the national police headquarters here.

What’s very interesting about this article though are the statements of Salam Fayyad, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority.

Reflecting the awkwardness that a deal for Sergeant Shalit might pose for the Abbas government, Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister and a political independent, made no direct mention of it in a speech on Tuesday at an international conference in the West Bank town of Jericho on the rights of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Yet he called for the “immediate release” of “pillars” of the prisoner population like Mr. Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat, a leader of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was convicted of ordering the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister in 2001. And repeating a point often made by Mr. Abbas, Mr. Fayyad said there would be no final agreement with Israel until all Palestinian prisoners were freed.

First of all the so-called sensitivity of the prisoner issue for the Palestinians (referenced elsewhere in the article) is bogus. Prisoner releases were part of Oslo as a way of acknowledging the changed nature of the PLO. People who were jailed for political activities in support of the PLO were to be released because since the PLO was presumed to have given up terrorism (not true, but the charade was maintained) Israel declared that it was no longer an illegal organization. How could Israel keep people working for a legal organization in jail?

But now most Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are there not merely for political activity, but terrorism or aiding and abetting terrorism. These are people who by their actions rejected the idea of coexistence with Israel. For the PA to make an issue of their release shows the official rejection of the basic elements of coexistence by even the “moderate” Palestinian leadership.

Fayyad made this worse in two ways. It’s one thing to tell his own constituents that all prisoners must be released, but he told this to an international conference. I doubt that anyone at the conference raised an objection.

Worse yet, is that he called Barghouti and Saadat “pillars.” These guys are murderers. And the moderate Western educated Prime Minister of the Palestinians lauds them. What a pillar of moderation.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

“Obviously, he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”

Time Magazine:

But that does not mean that Rahm Emanuel, or Barack Obama for that matter, can easily ignore the fact that Benjamin Emanuel recently said a nasty thing about Arabs in the Israeli press. This is from the Jerusalem Post’s account of an interview Benjamin gave after news of his son’s appointment to the Obama administration was announced:

Samir Kuntar’s friend, Dion Nissenbaum:

Emanuel’s appointment upset some in the Middle East who fear that Obama’s new gatekeeper and White House alter-ego will be unquestioning in his support for questionable Israeli policies.

And his dad’s comments only aggravated things.

Worst of all, Helena Cobban’s Just World News, used the opportunity to accuse Rep. Emanuel, not so subtly, of dual loyalty.

But what I as a US citizen want to be assured of at this point is two things:

1. At any point that the interests of the US and the current government of Israel might diverge, can we be assured that all members of our president’s staff are acting 100% in the interests of the United States? and

2. Can we be assured that the president is getting the widest range of excellent, relevant, and fact-based advice from all his advisers in the tricky and very sensitive realms of Mideast policy?

The ensuing firestorm ended when Rep. Emanuel apologized for his father’s remarks.

While I was originally jarred by what he said, I’m in agreement with Daled Amos and In Context, I don’t think that Dr. Emanuel’s comments were intended the way the AADC and its apologists alleged. He wasn’t suggesting that Arabs ought to be washing floors, but that his son had influence (he wouldn’t be washing floors) and that he’d be pro-Israel (he’s not an Arab.) The two statements were conflated by the anti-Israel crowd who were already suspicious of Rep.Emanuel because he was born in Israel.

But what to make of these following incidents.
Meryl notes that at least week’s Saudi sponsored Interfaith conference Western educated, liberal Palestinian PM, Salam Fayyad was guilty of an omission.

The Palestinian Prime Minister, yet another so-called moderate, managed to speak at the UN interfaith conference about how holy Jerusalem is to the world’s major religions—and utterly leave out Judaism.

In Context points out (not for the first time) that the Palestinians under the jurisdiction of “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas, sentenced one of their own to death for helping Israel fight terror attacks.

And finally there’s the moderate, Abbas himself who took to threatening Israel this past weekend. But as Elder of Ziyon points out, this ought not to be so casually dismissed:

Which goes to show that the PLO letter to Israel at Oslo that solemnly promised to abandon violence was not worth the paper it was written on. And brings up the question that people are afraid to ask: what is to say that any “peace agreement” will not be torn up as well?

I’ll admit, that I’m happy that the Washington Post and New York Times, as far as I can tell ignored Dr. Emanuel’s remarks. They were, at worst, clumsy. But even if they were meant as (mis)construed, Dr. Emanuel is not a person of influence in the new administration. Absent compelling evidence, It should have had no bearing on his son’s ability to do his job. The outpouring of outrage is more a reflection of the sentiments that only Helena Cobban was honest (and vile) enough to express openly: that somehow support of Israel is de facto proof of dual loyalties.

This is especially apparent when those in authority in the PA continually express their support for conflict with Israel and deny Israel’s basic right to exist. That doesn’t upset the likes of Helena Cobban, Jake Tapper, Michael Scherer or Dion Nissenbaum at all. Denial of the very premises of a peace settlement by the Palestinians is a matter of course, not worthy of comment, but the slightest hint – no matter how specious – of pro-Israel leanings is a matter of overblown concern. This isn’t simply a matter of being critical of Israel, but of anti-Israel, if not antisemitic feelings.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Jerusalem car ‘attack’ hurts 15

Here’s how the story starts:

At least 15 people have been injured in an apparent attack in Jerusalem, Israeli police say.

They say a man drove his car into a group of people at a busy intersection, before being shot and killed by an armed bystander.

Rescue services took the injured to local hospitals. Police described the incident as a “terror attack”.

Here’s how Batya remembers a similar attack:

I remember noticing a badly driven car approaching, but I didn’t think he’d mount the sidewalk and run over us. I turned my back on it and planned on telling a neighbor that “Even if he’s going to Shiloh, we’re not getting in.” She looked up and then saw him ram into me and I was knocked down. She was unharmed, as he had turned sharp left on my foot and mowed down people the length of the sidewalk. I was still on the ground when I suddenly heard shooting.

Even then news reports tried to play down the terror angle. But the people at the receiving end of the attack knew what it was.

Here’s another classic of the genre:

Four hurt in ‘acid attack’ at West Bank checkpoint

Look, if the reporters were unconvinced of the substance, put “acid” in quotes, but it was a clear attack. But this was serious in that the soldier attacked has lost sight in one eye.

An IDF soldier has lost sight in one of his eyes after a Palestinian woman attacked him with acid at the Hawara checkpoint on Monday afternoon. The checkpoint is located south of the West Bank city of Nablus.

It’s also worth pointing out to those who wish Israel to remove checkpoints, that the assailant took advantage of the humanitarian lanes for quick passage through the checkpoint.

However this story remarkably had absolutely no scare quotes:

The cash-strapped Palestinian government on Monday received pledges of nearly $300 million in new aid on top of more than $7 billion promised last year, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said.

So let me rewrite that paragraph with some appropriate scare quotes:

The “cash-strapped” Palestinian “government” on Monday received “pledges” of nearly $300 million in new aid on top of more than $7 billion promised last year, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said.

The Palestinians likely have more cash than they admit. They receive the highest amount of foreign aid per capita in the world. They’ve received plenty and they’ve squandered it.

They ought to first turn to the estate of Yasser Arafat instead of to the international community. Then they ought to start turning to their top official who have been embezzling foreign aid for years. And the PA ought to stop paying the salaries of the Hamas thugs in Gaza.

Except for some limited areas there is no effective Palestinian government. About the only thing Fayyad does well is ask for handouts.

And finally, most of those pledges (often from Arab countries who care so much for their Palestinians brothers) are not fulfilled. The article later on notes:

At a Paris conference last December, donors pledged $7.7 billion in aid over the next three years, but the Palestinians say only a fraction of that money has been paid.

It’s remarkable the way the media will use scare quotes when dealing with terror against Israel, but when it comes to the phony (or at least self-inflicted) Palestinian financial crisis, they solemnly in pronouncing a crisis without the least bit of skepticism.

When will the media get serious about covering the Middle East instead of covering up for the Palestinians?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.