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Looks like the ‘moderate’ wing of the PA is taking some heat:

Fatah’s armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, on Sunday called for the murder of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad for “collaboration” with Israel and the US…

Fayad has been under heavy criticism from some Fatah leaders and activists, who accuse him of denying them public funds and plotting to undermine Fatah’s grip on power. — Jerusalem Post

Fatah, of course, is the basket the US has been putting all of its eggs into. And Fayad is almost singlehandedly responsible for the recent international pledges to donate more than $7 billion to the Palestinian authority.

The so-called moderate PA has not been getting much support from the Arab states lately, either. Last month at the UN,

Riad Mansour, the PA’s [UN] observer, wanted to include a clause in a draft resolution condemning Israel at a Decolonization Committee meeting. It would have expressed “concern about the takeover by illegal militias of Palestinian Authority institutions in June 2007” and called for its reversal, but under Arab state pressure this was toned down to “concern about an illegal takeover.” Mansour himself was subjected to a barrage of insults, led by the representatives of Egypt, Syria and Libya, who claimed that his initiative would be interpreted as a UN condemnation of Hamas, thereby easing Israel’s cutting of electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza. —Daniel Pipes [my emphasis]

What seems to be true is that there is very little support for the Abbas/Fayad PA except in the US State Department.

If I thought it was prepared to struggle with extremists, reach a negotiated settlement with Israel, and create a peaceful Palestine, I might feel bad about this.

But since I think that compromise with Israel is not a popular point of view among Arabs (to say the least), that Abbas and Fayad have exactly as much real support as the US will pay for, and that the PA ‘government’ is a Potemkin village, I am not heartbroken. There’s no possibility of success anyway.

I think the government of Israel knows this and is doing the only possible thing right now: killing the Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorists. Why doesn’t the US understand the situation, stop wasting money on the corrupt Fatah organization, and let it fall of its own weight? Any services delivered to West Bank residents come from their local minor warlords anyway.

But, you say, “Hamas will take over!”

The only thing preventing a Hamas takeover in the West Bank today is the IDF. If the US policy continues — if we succeed in stage-managing a ‘peace’ agreement with those who, it has been said, “couldn’t deliver a pizza in Jerusalem”, and the IDF leaves the West Bank as a result — then Hamas will take over.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Fatah, Hamas, Salaam Fayed

The Orthodox Union Public Affairs blog has recently published a statement by presidential candidate Barack Obama on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:

“I start with the premise that Israel is a stalwart ally of ours and their security cannot be compromised. I also start with the premise that the status quo is unsustainable and that what would be good for Israeli security will be the kind of two-state solution that allows the Palestinians to live and prosper in their own state and allows Israel to maintain the security of its state.”

“I think everyone knows what the basic outlines of an agreement would look like. It would mean that the Palestinians would have to reinterpret the notion of right of return in a way that would preserve Israel as a Jewish state. It might involve compensation and other concessions from the Israelis but ultimately Israel is not going to give up its state.”

This is carefully worded and nuanced, and it’s worth thinking about what it means. The first paragraph represents the conventional wisdom on the two-state solution, and is true in a tautological way: obviously a solution that “allows Israel to maintain the security of its state” will be good for Israeli security.

However, the implication is that a two-state solution is necessary for Israeli security, because the status quo is unsustainable. What Obama does not deal with is the fact that the Palestinians do not want — in any way, shape or form — a state alongside Israel in which they can live and prosper. Forcing Israel to make concessions that are intended to lead to a two-state solution in this situation could certainly compromise Israel’s security.

The second paragraph is even more interesting. Shmuel Rosner, writing in Ha’aretz, suggests that it means that “Barack Obama backs Israel remaining a Jewish state“. Well, it means that he does not think that the Palestinians should be able to flood Israel with ‘refugees’, but it also does not mean that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

“Compensation and other concessions from the Israelis” implies that the Palestinian nakba story is legitimate, that Israel created the refugees, and is responsible for them. Otherwise, why should Israel owe them anything?

The war that ended in 1948 was a continuation of the struggle to throw the Jews out that the Palestinian Arabs began in the 1920’s and was taken up by the Arab nations when they invaded Israel. There would have been no Arab refugees if they had accepted the partition resolution, instead of choosing war. The fact that the refugees weren’t resettled, but kept in misery for 60 years was the fault of the Arab nations and the compliant West — not Israel.

Accepting the principle of compensation is accepting the principle that Palestine actually belonged to the Arabs, the Jews took it, and now they need to compensate the Arabs for their loss.

The right of return does not require reinterpretation. There is no such right. The refugees have a right to resettlement in the Palestinian state or perhaps their present host countries, and a right to compensation from the Arab nations for the way they have been treated.

Here is what I think Obama, or any presidential candidate, should say:

“I start with the premise that Israel is a stalwart ally of ours and their security cannot be compromised. I also start with the premise that the status quo is unsustainable and that Palestinians must accept Israel’s right to exist unmolested as a Jewish state in the Middle East.”

“Part of any two-state agreement must be that the Palestinians agree that there is no right of return to Israel, but only to the Palestinian state. Refugees may receive compensation or other benefits (from Arab nations or the West), but they are not in any way the responsibility of Israel.”

Technorati Tags: Obama, Israel

Sheik Khalid Salim a bin Mahfouz sleeps with goats and chickens. And he looks like a weasel, too. So sue me.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld made some perhaps better-researched statements in her 2003 book Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop It. In particular, she accused Saudi billionaire Sheik Khalid Salim a bin Mahfouz of financing terrorism in a big way:

Her book had reported that bin Mahfouz, the former chairman of Saudi Arabia’s largest bank, National Commercial Bank, had allegedly deposited “tens of millions of dollars in London and New York directly into terrorist accounts—the accounts of the same terrorists who were implicated in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 224 people were killed, including twelve Americans, and more than four thousand were injured.”

The book implicated bin Mahfouz in transferring from the bank’s Zakat (charity) Committee some $74 million to the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and to the Muwafaq “blessed relief” Foundation. Muwafaq in turn allegedly deposited funds directly with al Qaeda. Finally, Ehrenfeld also indicated that much of the funding for terrorism emanates from the Saudis, including the bin Mahfouz and al Rahji families, who allegedly funnel the monies through a host of “charitable” institutions. — Alyssa A. Lappen, ‘Libel Wars’, Frontpage Magazine (2005)

Ehrenfeld’s accusations were carefully documented, and under US law are protected as free speech. However, libel laws in the UK are much looser and put the burden of proof on the accused. Although only a handful of books were sold in the UK, Ehrenfeld describes what happened:

Bin Mahfouz sued me in London in January 2004, shortly after the U.S. publication of my book… I refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of a British court over a book published here; the court then ruled for bin Mahfouz by default, enjoined British publication of Funding Evil, awarded bin Mahfouz $225,900 in damages and expenses and ordered me to publicly apologize and destroy the book. I refuse to acknowledge the British Court or its ruling…

Since British libel law favors suits such as bin Mahfouz’s, and the First Amendment protects U.S. journalists reporting on public issues, I chose to fight his false claims in America. I sued in a New York federal court, for a declaration that bin Mahfouz’ English default judgment is unenforceable in the United States, because it violates my First Amendment rights…

On June 8, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously declared my case is “ripe” for hearing in a U.S. [state] court, noting that the case has implications for all U.S. authors and publishers, whose First Amendment rights are threatened by foreign libel rulings.

Unfortunately, the New York State Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) has just ruled that a New York court cannot hear Ehrenfeld’s case on the technical grounds that bin Mahfouz does little business in New York.

Although our sheik can’t collect his judgement in the US without going to court here (where he would probably lose, big time) Ehrenfeld is out a small fortune in legal expenses. And she can’t travel to the UK without risking arrest.

The practice of silencing writers and journalists by taking advantage of UK laws has come to be called “libel tourism” and is a favorite tactic of bin Mahfouz and other rich malefactors:

…bin Mahfouz sued Pluto Press in the U.K. over the suggestion in Michael Griffin’s 2003 Reaping the Whirlwind that he was related by marriage to Osama bin Laden and a supporter of terrorism. Bin Mahfouz “accepted” a substantial settlement and an apology, as he did earlier for a report in the Mail on Sunday. In another case, bin Mahfouz’ litigiousness was reportedly behind the halt in British publication by Secker & Warburg in early 2004 of Craig Unger’s House of Bush; House of Saud. — Lappen

…bin Mahfouz threatened to sue Cambridge University Press (CUP), the publisher of Alms of Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, but refrained from including the book’s two American writers, J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins.

Facing the mere threat of a lawsuit from Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz, Cambridge University Press — the world’s oldest publishing house — agreed in Britain’s High Court on July 30, to pulp all the unsold copies. When the American authors rightfully refused to join, CUP issued a public apology, which in fact defamed the authors. CUP also paid substantial undisclosed damages, a huge “contribution” to a charity of bin Mahfouz’ choice, and sent letters to more than 200 libraries worldwide, asking to pull the book off their shelves. CUP’s capitulation handed an important victory to the Saudis’ financial jihad against free speech. — Ehrenfeld

Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and Mohammed Jameel — another Saudi billionaire — have also sued foreign publications for libel in the UK and won (although Jameel’s case was later overthrown by the House of Lords).

The problem with all this is that publishers are beginning to get cold feet about printing anything that could make a possible libel tourist unhappy, no matter how untrue — or how important. Truth and justice are all very nice concepts, but when a publisher needs to spend half a million dollars in legal fees to publish a book that may not earn that much, this has what lawyers call a “chilling effect” on free speech:

Ehrenfeld was hardly his only target. Bin Mahfouz and other wealthy Saudis had previously attacked other reporters and news agencies, all of which chose to apologize publicly, or settle the cases—or in the cases of some book publishers, to back off publication all together. USA Today, for one, printed a lengthy retraction concerning a November 2004 article by Marc Umile that had implicated bin Mahfouz.

As a result of bin Mahfouz’ intimidation, Gerald Posner, in Secrets of the Kingdom, makes no reference to bin Mahfouz or Muwafaq. Loretta Napoleoni removed all references to bin Mahfouz from her U.S. paperback book, Terror Incorporated. — Lappen

And since the internet has world-wide reach, even I could be a target of such as bin Mahfouz.

Technorati Tags: libel tourism, bin Mahfouz, Ehrenfeld