http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144358
PA to Pay Terrorists in Israeli Prisons Salaries
Iyar 16, 5771, 20 May 11 02:27
by Gavriel Queenann
(Israelnationalnews.com)
The Palestinian Authority passed a law last month granting all PA residents and Israeli Arabs imprisoned by Israel for terror crimes a monthly salary, Palestinian Media Watch reports.
According to PMW, the PA has defined by law which residents and Israeli Arabs would be deemed "prisoners" as "Anyone imprisoned in the occupation's [Israel's] prisons as a result of his participation in the struggle against the occupation."
In other words, all PA residents in Israeli prisons for terror crimes are officially added to the PA payroll. According to the definition in the PA law, PA car thieves in Israeli prisons will not receive a salary, but Hamas and Fatah terrorist murderers will.
The PA also gives a salary to Israeli Arabs convicted of terror crimes against Israel - the country of which they are citizens. PA benefits to Israeli Arab terrorists, in fact, are greater than the ones extended to PA resident terrorists.
Additionally, those serving more than 20-year sentences will receive a greater PA salary than prisoners serving shorter sentences, the new PA law establishes. Salaries are to be paid from the day of arrest until release.
More than 6,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently serving time in Israeli prisons for terror-related offenses, PMW says.
Among those now eligible are Abdullah Barghouti, serving 67 life sentences; Hassan Salameh, serving 38 life sentences; and Jamal Abu Al-Hijja, serving nine life sentences, all of whom are imprisoned for planning suicide bombings - three terrorists PMW recently reported as being called "heroic" by the official PA daily.
Who's Paying?
PMW noted the new PA law stipulates that payment of salaries "will be implemented... on the basis of available sources of funding." When the PA is short of cash for salaries, the salaries to the prisoners will be cut.
The PA has reported that the US, the EU, France, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Japan, India and the World Bank have all given money to the PA for its general budget in 2010-2011.
Such direct funding could be part of the "available sources" for terrorist salaries, or could free money elsewhere in the PA budget that could be used for these salaries, PMW says.
The list provided by PMW is not exhaustive as it relies solely on reports in the official PA daily. The PA receives financial aid from many other donors as well.
Recently, the EU announced the transfer of 45 million euros to the PA for salaries: "Some EUR 45 million of the funds from today's decision will go towards salaries and pensions of vital workers, mainly doctors, nurses and teachers."
In November 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the transfer of an additional grant to the PA's general budget: "After the transfer of the $150 million, the sum which the American administration will have transferred as direct budgetary aid to the PA for 2010 totals $225 million."
Although the EU, US and other donors are not intentionally funding salaries for terrorists, PMW says, their funding of other PA salaries and the budget makes money available in the general budget to pay terrorist salaries.
This Palestinian Authority law was enacted before the recent Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement. It was published in the official PA Registry on April 13, 2011.
Founded in 1996, Palestinian Media Watch is an Israeli research institute that studies Palestinian society from a broad range of perspectives by monitoring and analyzing the Palestinian Authority through its media and schoolbooks.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144359
Obama Said "1967 lines" Not "Borders" - And It Matters
Iyar 16, 5771, 20 May 11 03:20
by Gavriel Queenann
(Israelnationalnews.com)
Media outlets who misquoted US President Barack Obama on Thursday as saying he expected a "full a phased withwrawal" by Israel to "1967 borders" are making a subtle but serious mistake, CAMERA said.
Citing an AP story filed shortly after President Obama's Middle East speech CAMERA said the article -- only three paragraphs -- packed the serious factual error a whopping four times ("Obama says Palestine must be based in 1967 borders.")
Three times the article incorrectly refers to the 1967 lines as borders, while President Obama himself did not use that inaccurate language.
The AP article began: "President Barack Obama is endorsing the Palestinians' demand for their future state to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war . . . "
CAMERA points out no border existed between Israel and the West Bank before the 1967 war. The lines, established April 3, 1949 by Article III of the Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement, are not borders but armistice lines, temporary boundaries to be replaced in the future by a negotiated, internationally recognized border.
The second and third paragraph of the AP article also refer incorrectly to the "1967 border." [Thus each paragraph of the brief story, plus the headline, uses the incorrect terminology. -Ed]
As for President Obama, CAMERA notes what he actually said was: "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."
The distinction is a critical one because armistice lines lines are immaterial in international law in terms of land rights and final status agreements, whereas borders often can be legally decisive.
While CAMERA used the AP article as an egregarious and illustrative example of the error - numerous media outlets made the same mistake.
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) is a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144361
Exclusive: What Would Abe Rosenthal Say About the NYT Today?
Iyar 16, 5771, 20 May 11 03:45
by Gavriel Queenann
(Israelnationalnews.com) Jack Engelhard, author of “The Bathsheba Deadline” and “Indecent Proposal”, as well as the award-winning memoir of his experiences as a Jewish refugee from Europe, has decided to make public a private exchange of letters he had with the world-famous and brilliant former New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal.
Rosenthal faced up to the mistake of New York Times' minimization during WWII of the slaughter of the Jews of Europe in an editorial in 1996. He admitted that the daily wrote about what was happening to Jews on inner pages. He regretted that error deeply and worried about the state of israel.
Engelhard's decision to release the letters to Israel National News for publication followed the recent op-ed by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas published by the New York Times.
"So what else is new when, upon reading the paper Tuesday, May 17, here’s Mahmoud Abbas getting himself published as an op-ed contributor," Engelhard wrote in an opinion published by INN. "This is like Al Capone getting to tell his side of the story, or Josef Mengele giving advice in the Journal of the American Medical Association."
Abbas NYT piece effectively buried the Oslo Accords, upon whose ratification Roshenthal famously said, "The signing of these accords proves the anti-semites wrong - Jews aren't smarter than other people."
The Gray Lady's decison to give Abbas a bully-pulpit, and its skewed reporting of Itamar massacre, Nakba, and Obama's Cairo speeches, makes one wonder what Rosenthal, a 56 year veteran of the New York times (1943-1999) and 1960 Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting, would say about her were he alive today.
It was this question that led Engelhard to release these never before letters. INN believes they speak for themselves. The then-editor of the New York Times saw Israel in a different light than the paper does today.
From Jack Engelhard to A.M Rosenthal, columnist and former executive editor, The New York Times – June 10, 1994
Dear Mr. Rosenthal:
My name is Jack Engelhard. I am the author of the novel INDECENT PROPOSAL, which later became the movie by the same name. I was born in Toulouse, France in 1940. My parents were quite wealthy. My father owned a great leather factory. He worked long hours and managed to own the land where he worked and where we lived. Then the Nazis came and told my father that he was standing on occupied territory. He was forced to leave and soon after we were forced to escape.
I tell you this at the start so that you will know the pain I feel when today, in the land of Israel itself, Jews are once again being told that the land on which they work and live, over which they spilled the blood of their sons, is occupied territory.
Only yesterday I heard Peter Jennings say, “Hebron is still in Israeli hands,” meaning that he assumed that soon it won’t be, just as he and so many others assume that sooner or later the entire land of Israel will be vacant of Jews. There is a momentum about all this and the great tragedy of it is that, through Rabin, Peres, Beilin et al, the Jews have brought it upon themselves.
I do not know exactly why I am writing you this. But I read your columns and I hear you screaming my agony between the lines. Is it possible that the current leaders of Israel do not know what they are doing? Is it possible that “Jewish guilt” is not a cute stereotype but rather the precursor of national suicide?
How strange, and sickening, to hear about Jews living with their bags packed, not knowing where they will live tomorrow. That’s how it was in the bad old days in Europe. That’s how it was for 2,000 years. Imagine this happening again, in the very land of Israel.
It is not all the fault of Israel’s leaders, who have been under enormous pressure simply by the language employed by the media, which always gives the Arab side the benefit of the doubt. Hence the West Bank is always but always referred to as Occupied Territory. Hence Biblical Jerusalem is now being referred to as “Arab East Jerusalem.”
Bur the current Israeli leadership shares much of the blame for redefining Israel from a land certain of its destiny to a nation ready to displace its own people and turn itself into ghetto after ghetto. They have forgotten Jerusalem. Imagine a Jewish leader agreeing that Jerusalem is “on the table.” This is mind-boggling.
But then, what isn’t? Rabin’s handshake with the man responsible for the cold-blooded murder of Israeli athletes – what is that if not the embracing of evil, and what of the standing ovation this same Arafat received at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
We do indeed live in interesting times.
King David said, “Love the good, hate evil.” So simple and yet so profound. It is the love of evil, the sages say, that is behind all the chaos in the world. Here, then, is where we are. The leaders of Israel are RAISING MONEY to create and support an Arab state whose proclaimed mission is the destruction of Israel.
This is what I believe: the world is accustomed to the Jews as wanderers, refugees. This is a natural inclination derived from 2,000 years of exile. The Zionists resisted this impulse for a generation or two, but now those heroes are gone. Finally, the nations have foisted upon Israel a leadership that is to their liking, a leadership that agrees that, yes, Jews are meant to be refugees, even in the land of Jacob and David.
When I was born there was no Israel. There were only Jews on the run. Jews with their bags packed.
I pray that I have not come full cycle.
Thank you for letting me get this off my chest. There is no one else to talk to about this.
Please carry on.
Sincerely – Jack Engelhard
From A.M. Rosenthal, The New York Times, June 21, 1994
Dear Mr. Engelhard,
I am grateful to you for writing to me. I know what is in your heart because much of it is in mine. I have written about it and I do not now know whether I should continue to do so, whether it is of any use.
I probably will. No doubt about it – the Israelis can do as they wish with their security. Still I think the fact that they are not getting the story of the real risk from their leaders, that history is being so terribly distorted, compels people like us to speak out.
Did you see where Mr. Rabin said that Israel bleeds because it is an occupying power? And all these years I believed that Israel bleeds because, as her leaders used to understand, the Arab nations would give her no peace, no acceptance.
Sincerely, A.M. Rosenthal
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144346
GOP Slams Obama on Israel
Iyar 16, 5771, 20 May 11 04:15
by Elad Benari
(Israelnationalnews.com) Members of the U.S. Republican party, some of them presidential hopefuls, on Thursday sharply criticized President Barack Obama’s speech on the Middle East and accused him of betraying Israel.
“President Obama has thrown Israel under the bus,” Former Massachusetts governor and potential 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in a statement quoted on Politico.com. “He has disrespected Israel and undermined its ability to negotiate peace. He has also violated a first principle of American foreign policy, which is to stand firm by our friends.”
Romney, who is well acquainted with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, visited Israel in January.
Minnesota House member Michele Bachmann also responded to the presidential speech, saying on her Twitter account that Obama had “betrayed our friend and ally Israel. Obama’s call for 1967 borders will cause chaos, division & more aggression in Middle East and put Israel at further risk.”
Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, also a potential Republican candidate for the presidency, called Obama’s call for Israel return to the so-called ‘1967 borders’ – the 1949 Armistice Lines which are considered indefensible by defense experts – “a mistaken a very dangerous demand.”
In a statement quoted in Politico, Pawlenty said that “the city of Jerusalem must never be re-divided. To send a signal to the Palestinians that America will increase its demands on our ally Israel, on the heels of the Palestinian Authority’s agreement with the Hamas terrorist organization, is a disaster waiting to happen. At this time of upheaval in the Middle East, it's never been more important for America to stand strong for Israel and for a united Jerusalem.”
Florida Republican Allen West also blasted Obama’s speech in a statement he released and which was quoted by Newsmax:
“Today’s endorsement by President Barack Obama of the creation of a Hamas-led Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders, signals the most egregious foreign policy decision his administration has made to date, and could be the beginning of the end as we know it for the Jewish state,” said West.
“The pre-1967 borders endorsed by President Obama would deny millions of the world’s Jews access to their holiest site and force Israel to return the strategically important Golan Heights to Syria, a known state-sponsor of terrorism,” he added and emphasized that “there has always been a Nation of Israel and Jerusalem has been and must always be recognized as its rightful capital.”
West also said that “the Hamas-run Palestinian state envisioned by President Obama would be devastating to Israel and the world’s 13.3 million Jews. It would be a Pavlovian style reward to a declared Islamic terrorist organization, and an unacceptable policy initiative.” He called for the United States to “never negotiate with the Palestinian Authority- which has aligned itself with Hamas.”
West called on the American people “to stand by our strongest ally, the Jewish State of Israel, and reject this foreign policy blunder of epic proportions…The President should focus on the real obstacle to security- the Palestinian leadership and its ultimate goal to eliminate Israel and the Jewish people.”
In his speech at the State Department, Obama called for “two states for two peoples” with permanent borders based on the “1967 lines with agreed upon swaps,” basically accepting Abbas' preconditons. He said that the PA state should be contiguous and that Jerusalem and the refugees would be negotiated later..
“Our policy is two states for two peoples,” Obama said. “Israel as a Jewish state for the Jewish people. Palestine as a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people. A viable Palestine; a secure Israel.” The 1967 lines are indefensible, responded Netanyahu.
The president called on PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and maintained that the PA state be demilitarized. He rejected unilateral moves by Palestinian Authority leaders to achieve a declaration of statehood outside of negotiations in the United Nations in September, saying efforts to isolate Israel in the UN, and delegitimize Israel, won't achieve statehood.
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=221499
WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu acknowledged the differences that divide them even as they emphasized areas of agreement over the peace process, Iran and democratic changes in the Middle East after their White House meeting Friday.
Netanyahu flatly rejected any return to the 1967 borders, the basis – along with agreed land swaps – for a deal with the Palestinians as laid out in a speech by Obama the day before.
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“While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines,” Netanyahu said, sitting alongside Obama in the Oval Office. “These lines are indefensible, because they don’t take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground, demographic changes.”
Netanyahu also ruled out any return of Palestinian refugees to Israel proper or that Israel would negotiate with Hamas, branded a terrorist organization by both US and Israel.
Obama echoed Netanyahu’s last point, using stronger language to reject the prospect of Israel talking to Hamas than even a day earlier in his own Middle East address.
“It is not a partner for a significant, realistic peace process,” Obama stated Friday. “The Palestinians are going to have to explain how they can credibly engage in serious peace negotiations.”
But Obama did not accede publicly to Netanyahu’s demand, made in a statement following Thursday’s speech, that he endorse a letter written by George W. Bush that included an American rejection of Palestinian refugees settling in the Jewish state and acknowledged more clearly that Israel’s final borders would include settlements, the demographic changes on the ground alluded to by the prime minister.
Netanyahu seemed to push Obama to speak out on the refugee issue after the president in his speech the day before underscored the need to “tell the truth.”
“It’s not going to happen. Everybody knows it’s not going to happen,” Netanyahu said of Palestinian refugees being absorbed by Israel. “And I think it’s time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly that it’s not going to happen.”
Both leaders acknowledged that they didn’t see eye-to-eye on every issue, referring to “differences” on details as they sought to emphasize their larger shared interest in pursuing peace.
“We have may have differences here and there, but I think there’s an overall direction that we wish to work together to pursue a real, genuine peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors, and peace that is defensible,” Netanyahu said.
Obama, for his part, said that, “Obviously there are some differences between us in the precise formulations and language, and that’s going to happen between friends.”
In a nod to Netanyahu’s focus on Israel’s strategic concerns, the president added, “What we are in complete accord about is that a true peace can only occur if the ultimate resolution allows Israel to defend itself against threats.”
Following a meeting that ran more than an hour later than planned, and comes ahead of Obama’s own address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday, the American president stressed that “the extraordinarily close relationship between the United States and Israel is sound and will continue.”
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