Samir Quntar: Was It Something I Said?
August 19, 2012 15:48 by Pesach BensonIsrael and the Palestinians
• The State Department’s Country Report on Terrorism 2011 (see Mideast overview) now treats settler price tag attacks as terror. Background at the JTA.
• Mecca’s out of the question for Gaza pilgrims as the Rafah crossing remains closed. Neither the NY Times nor Maan News blame Israel.
• AP: A pile-up of PA debts are a dire threat to the Palestinian private sector. Karin Laub writes:
Unlike in previous crises, the authority can no longer borrow to ease the pain: It already owes more than $2 billion to local banks, private companies and the public pension fund, said economist Samir Abdullah. In a further blow, it has received only half the needed foreign aid to close a 2012 budget deficit of $1.2 billion, the Finance Ministry says.
• Meet the Christian Zionists.
• Zakariya Zubeidi was released from a PA prison in Jericho after launching a hunger strike. This has nothing to do with Israel, but word up to The Guardian and Harriet Sherwood.
• Nice NY Times profile of settler leader Dani Dayan.
• United Church of Canada approves settlment boycott.
• IDF soldiers were caught on film beating Palestinian journalists with batons at Kafr Kadum’s weekly protest. Video and details at YNet.
• Toronto Star columnist Tony Burman frets over the possibility of a third intifada.
• Palestinian supporters and left-wing Jews are in a huff over Josh Trevino joining The Guardian’s US politics team. CiF Watch explains the reasons behind the outrage and who said what.
Arab Spring Winter
• Not all foreign jihadis in Syria are affiliated with Al-Qaeda. AFP introduces us to “free lance” jihadis like Abu Zeid al-Tunsi, a Tunisian sniper:
President “Bashar al-Assad and his people are Shiite and it is my duty to help in restoring true Islam, Sunni Islam,” he explains, gulping down a bottle of ice-cold mandarin crush.
“I leave my country when I have to, to wage jihad, then I go home. It’s my personal decision, I don’t need a flag for my struggle and I just hook up with whoever needs my expertise,” Abu Zeid says.
• The Israeli Druze village of Majdal Shams is badly split over Bashar Assad. According to the Times of Israel, sitting on the fence ain’t an option:
But the politics of survival, so characteristic of the Druze in Syria, Lebanon and Israel, may turn detrimental in the post-Assad era. Mayor Abu-Salah, an outspoken critic of the Assad regime (“both father and son”), says the Druze will soon have to take a clear stand against Assad. Otherwise, they may suffer reprisals by the Muslim majority following his downfall.
“The Druze in Syria are neutral, so they are less vulnerable today,” Abu-Salah says. “We don’t like this neutrality. After Assad falls, the Druze will have to answer to the other Syrians who rose up.”
Also picking up on the Druze divisions was AP.
• The Wall Street Journal (via Google News) reports that Bashar Assad rejected an Iranian “request to conduct or allow a raid to rescue Iranians captured by Syrian rebels.” Doesn’t your heart just bleed for those poor pilgrims Revolutionary Guards personnel?
The Assad regime told Tehran that rescuing the Iranians isn’t a top priority for Damascus, according to the officials familiar with the intelligence.
The officials were able only to speculate as to why Damascus would turn down the request. Some officials suggested Mr. Assad may be reluctant to allow a more-overt Iranian role for fear it could provoke Turkey or Persian Gulf states to deepen their support for the rebels.
• Where’s Assad’s vice president? Why, Farouk Shara’s under house arrest for trying to defect, reports AFP. Or maybe not, as the regime denies. Whatever the case, Shara hasn’t been seen publicly for awhile as Assad plays the Grinch who stole Ramadan.
• The Daily Mail picks up on claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is literally crucifying political opponents.
‘During a recent rampage, Muslim Brotherhood operatives crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others,’ reported WMD, quoting Middle East media.
Raymond Ibrahim, a fellow with the Middle East Forum and the Investigative Project on Terrorism, told the website ‘the crucifixions are the product of who the Middle Eastern media call partisans.’
The Algemeiner backed up the claims and said that several news outlets including Arab News, Al Khabar News, Dostor Watany, and Egypt Now reported that people were being ‘crucified.’
• For more Arab Spring commentary/analysis see Jim Hoagland (Washington Post).
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Jews still accused of using human blood for Passover matzos. Memri (video and transcript) flags Saudi cleric Slaman al-Odeh reviving the blood libel in its most classic form.
• Worth reading: Aaron David Miller’s Politically Incorrect Guide to US Interests in the Mideast.
• Leave it to Israeli bureaucrats come up with this “solution” allowing them to deport illegal Sudanese migrants: Give ‘em documents declaring them to be from South Sudan. According The Independent‘s Maeve McClenaghan:
Israel is unable to deport people to Sudan as it has no repatriation agreement with Khartoum. But a recent deportation order allows it to deport migrants to the country’s newest neighbour, South Sudan.
• Daily Star: Facebook removed Hezbollah and Al-Manar pages because they were more inciteful than insightful.
• Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued new guidelines to envoys active on Facebook and Twitter. Haaretz writes:
The Foreign Ministry’s message to Israeli diplomats: Surfers on the web take everything you post as Israel’s official position.
• Putting charges of plagiarism behind him, Fareed Zakaria was reinstated by Time and CNN.
• Thanks for your shout-out to HonestReporting, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld.
(Image of Quntar via Wikimedia Commons/Mardetanha)
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Carole63
5:37 pm
Aug 19, 2012
Arabs lie with impunity about Jews! I`ve never heard such lies and deceit and this has been going on throughout history! It is clear to see that the devil is behind it and the false religion of Islam!
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Jan
11:59 pm
Aug 19, 2012
Rightly liars from the Ancient Greek are called ‘slanderers’ – Diabolos – Anglicised to devils. One might call the effect of the lies diabolical. There is much false religion, and if you look closely the push in Western countries against Israel and the lies are not all from Islam…. there are many shades to human reason, and when it seems that lies work, some use them…but only those who stick always to the truth prosper, because when the lies do not stop they forget things like how the truths of science have helped the world prosper. When people lie they often begin to accept lies, and truth cannot help them.
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RiverFred
5:51 pm
Aug 19, 2012
Muslims are instructed to lie and deceive their enemies according to Shari’a Law based on Muhammad the perfect man (lol.) The act of lying and deceiving is called Al-taqiyya.
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Salim Varese
6:18 pm
Aug 19, 2012
The former comments are very insightful and correct. This is an example of the danger of Shariah and the Wahabis. Would the US be bowing to them if they had no oil?
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Frank Adam
7:08 pm
Aug 19, 2012
What Odeh forgets in his haste to damn Israel and all Jews with medieval and Moslem libels is that the Holocaust has been made sacred to prevent it re-occurring. If he breaks down this astonishment then the great fear of Moslem columnists that the European Moslem Diaspora are next for the chop might well come about.
As for Foreign Policy and US interests I wrote as follows:
Never forget that one reason the US supports Israel is to keep its alleged N-bombs, “in the basement.”
If indeed Israel took out from their bunkers their N-bombs in 1973 so as to let the US and Soviet satellite cameras see them – but how this is real is a bit beyond me because a bomb of any sort looks like a bomb to camera – so that Nixon upped to “defcon 3” and so deterred the SU from direct interference, then we have a real reason.
However dodgy the 1973 story a SU landing in the Middle East or N-attack would have set the cats among the Cold War pigeons anyway – Israeli nukes or not.
If projecting from the Vanunu leaks – which only accelerated the arms race contrary to his admirers’ obtuse misunderstanding – Israel does have 200 + N-bombs there are enough to plaster not only Iran’s N-facilities but also their Shi’ite“holy cities” (Qom, the Jamkaran Mosque, Kerbala, Najaf, and in for a penny in for a pound: Sunni M & M, “Al Ahzar University”) besides Arab capitals and dams. Now the Arab pike against Israel and even more so the Iranian quarrel is purely ideological and if they are out to make a solely ideological point of destroying the Zionist Jewish state – and it is unlikely Israeli command and political echelon do not understand this – then it is quite certain that if they are to dropped like the Czechs at Munich, they will take down the Moslem World’s identity idols with them; which will send the World Moslem communities into hyperinflating riots against everybody – a very big handful to manage.
Somebody once noted a US President’s first job is to prevent nuclear wars of any sort – and to that intent Eisenhower was abrupt with France Britain and Israel in 1956 – more abrupt than necessary it turned out, whence 1967.
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perplexed
7:29 pm
Aug 19, 2012
Frank brings up new food for thought I’d not heard before. Maybe what he says about the US mainly concerned with stopping Israel from using nukes answers the question. But in much news of the past, most of which is probably not true, it was said that most Arab countries are against Iran having nukes, and most of the rest of the world felt the same. Everyone used to say it would destabilize the Middle East. If that’s the case, why is the problem considered now to be only Israel’s, such that Israel is not willing to ask Americans to die for us? If the nuke in Iran is the world’s problem, why shouldn’t US soldiers, as well as UN & Arab forces, not participate in knocking out the nukes in Iran?
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Samir Quntar: Was It Something I Said? | Blogs about Israel aggregation
8:09 pm
Aug 19, 2012
[...] Continued on Page 2 [...]
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Frank Adam
8:38 pm
Aug 19, 2012
A lot of Arab Sunni states are against the Iranian Shi’ite nuke capacity and possibly could obtain their own accelerated bomb by buying from Sunni Pakistan.
Meanwhille it is easy to blame Israel because she is refusing aloud to be pushed into the corner first.
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Henry Federman
9:21 pm
Aug 19, 2012
Basically what he is saying is he is accusing Jews of what is written in the Koran, which says that Muslims are allowed to kill non Muslims. Nice switcheroo on his part! As for the matzo part, we would have to kill thousand of children to make all the matzos that we eat, all over the world!
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Reuven
4:46 am
Aug 20, 2012
I usually don’t believe in capital punishment. But I’ve evolved to believe in it for murderous terrorists. And Quntar (aka Kuntar) is the worst of the rotten lot. Just look at the bum, wearing camouflage. I guess he’s afraid of four-year-old little girls, like the one whose head he bashed in, after he made her watch him murdering her father. Find him and KILL HIM! Israel could use a morale booster right now!
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Robert Shore
7:55 pm
Aug 20, 2012
I do find it Ironic that Isreal and Jews are acused by arabs as murdering for religion when the Jewish religion would and could never condon conversion by force, isnt this an Islamic tool. The leaders of Islam always critisize Jews and Iarael of doing things they themselves are doing daily, murdering innocent people, acting like Natzies, forced conversion etc…As for the blood libel, first of all it wouldnt be Kosher secoundly and most importantly it would go against every thing Jews stand for. It showes how the arab leadership thinks their people are ignorant enough to buy into this s..t. Then again ethnic hatred is best fertilized in stupid ground.
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