The Last Exile

Does ‘refugee’ like the Palestinians. Yahoo News:

GAZA CITY (AFP) – High above the pot-holed streets, donkey carts and militant graffiti that have come to define the besieged Gaza Strip sits Rosy, the territory’s only spa and a refuge for its unlikely upper crust. The spa’s luxurious setting and its upscale clientele stand in stark contrast to the poverty gripping the war-battered Palestinian territory of 1.5 million people, the vast majority of whom rely on foreign aid.

“We have the highest quality services in the region,” says Mohammed Faris, who launched the spa with his British wife in 1999. “We had one customer, a woman who worked as an EU (European Union) advisor. She went to New York and called me from there and said she missed Rosy,” he says as he smokes in casual defiance of the daytime abstinence practised by the observant during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

The spa is a sign of how, despite a two-year blockade maintained by Israel and Egypt, a reasonably well-off minority has found a way to endure amid Gaza’s bleak landscape of toxic politics and economic paralysis. A handful of upscale restaurants and hotels still serve lavish meals and fragrant waterpipes to businessmen, landowners, aid workers, journalists and even the occasional senior Hamas official. Since the Islamist movement overran Gaza in June 2007, Israel and Egypt have sealed its borders, allowing in only basic goods in a bid to put pressure on the group, which is pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state.

A Spa and it’s a thriving business in the Gaza Strip. Words fail me.

There is a great gut-wrenching human tragedy occurring rather regularly now at the Israeli-Egyptian border which has to be one of the most under discussed issues from the Mid-east. If I was cynical, I would suggest the reason there is so little international awareness or concern is because the Jews have very little to do with creating this scenario (unless you ask Gaddafi). But hey wait – I am cynical – so I would also add the fact that Jews exist at all, and of all things, in a place called the Land of Israel which contributes more to the cause of freedom and human dignity than any of its neighbors. Reuters;

EL-ARISH, Egypt, Sept 9 (Reuters) – Egyptian police shot dead four African migrants as they tried to slip across the sensitive Sinai desert border into Israel on Wednesday, security sources said. The shootings were believed to be the deadliest single border incident involving primarily African migrants, and came days before Egyptian and Israeli leaders are due to hold political talks in Cairo.

Security sources said two more migrants, both Ethiopians, were shot and wounded, and one was in a critical condition. The nationalities of the dead were not immediately known, because they carried no identification papers. Egyptian police have killed at least 12 African migrants at the frontier since May, ending a six-month lull in known fatalities as police responded to what security sources have said was an increased flow of human traffic through Egypt.

Egypt, which for years tolerated tens of thousands of African migrants on its territory, fears the unfettered flow of migrants at its strategic Sinai border could pose a security threat in an area where it already fears inroads by Islamist militants who sometimes find refuge in remote craggy mountains. Its border with the Jewish state is a main transit route for generally unarmed migrants and refugees seeking work or asylum in Israel. Egypt has faced Israeli pressure to halt the flow.

While Israel has been putting pressure on the Egyptian authorities to control their side of the border for years; I defy anyone to find any Israeli government official which has sanctioned or suggested the Egyptian government use cold-blooded murder of these unarmed migrants seeking to find a place at the Eretz Yisrael.

But ask yourself this; why do these Africans, who have already made it safely out of their often war-torn home countries choose to continue to make the trek to the Land of Israel rather than remain in relative obscurity with their Muslim brethren in countries like Egypt? Obviously, the Israeli Apartheid branding campaign needs to go back to creative.

I had a post mostly finished, but unsaved, concerning the Canadian Ethnic Ghettos. What I had not counted on was a Toronto Hydro power outage. I could usually count on at least one or more outages a week come the spring. It never lasts long but it plays havoc with all the home electronics. This year has been remarkably different and it lured me into a sense of com pliancy. My bad. So instead of posting my two cents on Canadian ethnic ghettos (which I may get around to posting tonight or tomorrow morning) so instead I will quote from an Arutz Sheva article on the refugee bona fides of Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas;

Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas says the Arabs of the Galilee city of Tzfat left in 1948 not because they were driven out, but on their own volition. Many biographies of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas imply that his family became “refugees” because of the War of Independence in 1948. For instance, a BBC profile on Abbas when he succeeded Yasser Arafat as PLO chairman in 2005 writes, “In the light of his origins in Safed in Galilee – in what is now northern Israel – he is said to hold strong views about the right of return of Palestinian refugees.” Answers.com states, “As a result of the Arab-Israel War of 1948, he became a refugee.” Wikipedia articles on the topic say the same – all giving the impression that the Abbas family was driven out and became homeless.

However, Abbas himself – co-founder of Fatah with Arafat, and known as Abu Mazen – now tells a different story. Speaking with Al-Palestinia TV on Monday, Abbas admitted that his family was not expelled or driven out, but rather left for fear that the Jews might take revenge for the slaughter of 20 Jews in the city during the Arab pogroms of 19 years earlier. In the words of Abbas:

“I am among those who were born in the city of Tzfat (Safed). We were a family of means. I studied in elementary school, and then came the naqba [calamity, namely, the founding of the State of Israel – ed.]. At night, we left by foot from Tzfat, to the Jordan River, where we remained for a month. Then we went to Damascus, and then to our relatives in Jordan, and then we settled in Damascus.

“My father had money, and he spent his money systematically, and after a year, the money ran out and we began to work. “The people’s basic motives brought them to run away for their lives and with their property. These [motives] were very important, for they feared the violence of the Zionist terrorist organizations – and especially those of us from Tzfat felt that there was an old desire for revenge from the rebellion of 1929, and this was in the memory of our families and parents.”

There are many ways I could describe the 1929 Arab slaughter of the Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine but rebellion wouldn’t necessarily top my first, second or even third choice of adjectives. Maybe its a failure of imagination on my part but using the slogan ‘The Jews are our dogs!” as a rallying cry for your rebellion against the British Crown doesn’t really establish your ‘rebel’ creeds. Unless the point of the confrontation was for the British Authority to take a stand and fight back claiming the Jews were their dogs..

But what a truly remarkably statement and admission. What always strikes me is how often the Palestinians perceive the founding of the Jewish state as an act of revenge and a tool for Jews to settle past Arab scores rather than the logical outcome of a people resolute to reclaim their homeland for the purpose of independent self-determination and security of person.

According to the Jordan Times, Jordanian legislators have decided to pursue options to sue Israel for alleged ‘war crimes’ committed in Operation Cast Lead.

AMMAN – Lawmakers on Wednesday approved recommendations submitted by the House Legal Committee on several options to sue Israeli “war criminals”, following the three-week devastating attack on Gaza that killed more than 1,300 people.

Let us backtrack to September 1970 in Jordan’s own rather colourful history with ‘militant’ Palestinians.

Estimates of the number of the people killed in the ten days of Black September range from three thousand to more than five thousand, although exact numbers are unknown. The Palestinian death toll in 11 days of fighting was estimated by Jordan at 3,400, though Arafat claimed that 20,000 had been killed.[12] The Western reporters were concentrated at the Intercontinental Hotel, away from the action. Nasser’s state-controlled Voice of the Arabs from Cairo reported genocide.

Let me guess it’s a case of – no genocide for me but of course for thee.

Gadhafi… to say the most outrageous things possible. Ha’aretz:

Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said on Wednesday that U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s expressed support for Israel stems from his fear that the Mossad would assassinate him, just as it did President John F. Kennedy.

“We suspect he may fear being killed by Israeli agents and meet the same fate as Kennedy when he promised to look into Israel’s nuclear program,” Gadhafi said.

While the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is widely assumed, Israeli officials have never admitted their existence and U.S. officials have stuck to that line in public. Gadhafi saw a dark motive behind a recent speech by Obama in support of Israel. “Obama offered $300 billion in aid to Israel and more military support. He avoided talking about Israel’s nuclear weapons,” he said.

Okay, I am just having a little trouble getting my mind wrapped around Lee Harvey Oswald as Mossad agent but once I get over all the obvious deficiencies in my imagination I marvel at the ingenuity of the Elders. If you think suggesting the Mossad killed J.F.K and will probably take out Obama should he become president of the United States isn’t outrageous enough there is always this:

Gadhafi said Obama would have an “inferiority complex” because he is black and if elected he might “behave worse than whites.”

“We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the whites,” Gadhafi told a rally at a former U.S. military base on the outskirts of the Libyan capital Tripoli.

“This will be a tragedy,” Gadhafi said. “We tell him to be proud of himself as a black and feel that all Africa is behind him because if he sticks to this inferiority complex he will have a worse foreign policy than the whites had in the past.”

Okkkaay – Fine.

What do the Israeli Defense Minister, the Chief of the Mossad and the head of military intelligence for the IDF all have in common? There is a price on their heads put there by an Iranian group calling themselves the ‘Islamic Student Justice Seekers’ reports Ynet News:

According to the organization’s announcement, the financial prizes are to be given to those who take out the three most senior members of the Israeli security establishment: Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Mossad Chief Meir Dagan and Head of Military Intelligence Amos Yaron.

“The prizes will be given to those who succeed in killing these three international terrorists in any place in the world,” the statement read. According to the claims made by the Iranian student organization, Dagan, Barak and Yadlin are responsible for much more than merely Palestinian suffering. The group blamed the trio for the killing of senior Hizbullah military commander Mugniyah, who was killed in a car bomb in Damascus last month.

And just how does the Iranian student group propose to finance the pay-out?

The Justice Seekers also called for volunteers to donate a kidney in order to offer the money acquired via the act to increase the financial prize. The organizers claim that a number of civil groups agreed to take part in the ceremony in order to contribute to the amount of money offered for the heads of the Israeli threesome. The students in the extremist group are connected to another radical organization in Tehran called The Martyrs’ Commemoration Headquarters, which organized the establishment of a monument for Imad Mugniyah in the Iranian capital.

No matter what you can make up, it is never as strange, as what your average anti-Semite can come up with. I suppose this can be considered progress as the group is not using student loan money.

I am having this internal debate with myself which revolves around how one has a humanitarian crisis without a financial crisis as well. Apparently, Hamas has not just finessed this situation but raised it to an art form. Taken from the New York Times:

Gaza’s population of 1.5 million depends on imports for most basic supplies. After the border wall fell, Egyptian merchants brought goods to the Egyptian side of Rafah to sell, and some Palestinians were bringing home televisions and computers.

This has to be the first “humanitarian crisis” I have ever witnessed where the purchase of televisions, computers, cement and cigarettes alleviate the suffering of humanity under crisis. We should try sending televisions & cigarettes the next time there is a famine somewhere in the world – hey it works for Gaza. I digress, but the paragraph which put this crisis in sharp focus in my mind was this bit:

Ahlan Ashour, 38, came with his wife to visit the Egyptian family, the Barhoums, who had put them up for 24 days during an earlier period when the Rafah crossing was shut. Mr. Ashour’s wife, Mohsin Elloulu, said she was struck by how much poorer the Egyptians of Rafah are. “At least our streets are paved,” she said of Gaza. The current lack of electricity and supplies is terrible, she said. “But materially, we’re so much more advanced in Gaza.” A driver here, she said, makes less than $1.50 a day, and in normal times in Gaza, $27. “But nothing is normal now,” she said.

No one does “refugee” or refugee camp quite like the Palestinians. No really, I mean that and I stand in awe. Since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip last June I have been hearing all sorts of international aid agencies presenting the dire financial plight of the Palestinians and the destruction of their economy. I can’t quite get a handle on how many Gazans are without work and presumably without income.

Figures run the gauntlet of 50% to over 80% unemployment depending on which aid agency is canvassing for money to help the Palestinians. (Check Google yourself.) There sure are a whole lot of Gazans with a whole lot of money in their pocket to buy a whole lot of goods in Egypt. I would dearly loved to know how one can be unemployed, destitute & suffering but still have plenty of money to spend. Economists should study this phenomenon. Workers of the world deserve to know.

And one more thing – why are there still refugee camps in the Gaza Strip? Doesn’t it strike anyone other than me as a trifle odd that at no time did either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas make arrangements for these people to acquire land in the Gaza Strip on which to build permanent homes? Or are they waiting to relocate these people to Tel Aviv?

Even in Lebanon, no one quite does refugee camp like the Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post reports:

The Lebanese government said Monday it would cost $382.5 million to rebuild a Palestinian refugee camp shattered by the summer’s fighting between the army and al-Qaida-inspired Islamic militants, and appealed to the international community to help.

The UN relief agency, meanwhile, appealed for $55 million in emergency funding. The appeal came at a donors’ conference in Beirut that Lebanon called to seek international help to rebuild the Nahr el-Bared camp in the country’s north, and allow over 30,000 of its residents to return.

(…)A government estimate said the $55 million was needed for emergency relief for the camp, and further $28.5 for nearby Lebanese communities affected by the fighting. It also said $249 million would be needed to rebuild the camp and $50 million for reconstruction in surrounding Lebanese towns.

The battles broke out May 20 between militants of the Fatah Islam group holed up in Nahr el-Bared camp, just outside the port city of Tripoli, and Lebanese troops surrounding it. It was the worst internal violence since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

The prolonged battles, which ended Sept. 2 with the collapse of Fatah Islam and the army’s takeover of the nearly totally destroyed camp, left 164 soldiers dead and dozens of militants killed. Abbas Zaki, the Palestinian representative to Lebanon, said at the gathering that Nahr el-Bared fighting also claimed the lives of 47 Palestinian civilians. About 310 others were injured. Groups such as “Fatah Islam should no longer find safe havens and fertile grounds in the refugee camps,” Saniora said.

Karen Koning AbuZayd, the UN agency’s commissioner-general, told the conference that the appeal includes the funding requirements for the critical needs of 5,449 affected families from Nahr el-Bared and areas adjacent to the camp in northern Lebanon. The UN agency will provide temporary shelter, assist in rent payments by refugees, provide prefabricated homes and support to host families, as well as health care and education for the coming year, AbuZayd said.

The United States promised $10 million in assistance, in addition to $3.5 million pledged in June, Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman told the conference. Germany said it had contributed the equivalent of $5.5 million recently and was willing to look into other contributions. Italy said it expects to contribute the equivalent of $2.74 million while Norway pledged US$1.7 million. The European Union, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Canada also said they would help but did not provide any figures.

$382. million to re-build a “refugee camp”. Well, I’d say that’s some tents. The UNWRA should be invoking the Pottery Barn rule on the Lebanese government. And if the Lebanese government baulks at paying the piper for their army’s bill of incompetence – they can always send the tab to Syria.