When Palestinian Blood Isn’t Equal

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/palestinians-syria-killed/

A recently published report by the Action Group for Palestinians in Syria (AGPS), a human rights group, documented 3,840 cases of Palestinians who have been killed since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011 – nearly four times as many as those killed during the six years of the first intifada (December 1987-September 1993). The causes of death ranged from artillery shelling to shootings to torture in the regime’s infamous prisons across the country.

In addition to this report, the Syrian regime released for the first time a list of names that included 548 killed Palestinians. While the regime’s report did not note their causes of death, rights groups agree that those Palestinians died as a result of being tortured, starved, and deprived of adequate medical treatment.

The AGPS also said that 1,682 Palestinians are still missing, their fates unknown. According to some assessments, these Palestinians were either killed at some time during the bloody civil war or – “in the best case” – are still in prison. Therefore, at least 5,522 Palestinians have either been killed or have gone missing since 2011.

Along with those killed or missing, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Syria have lost their homes and employment. The Yarmouk refugee camp, which was home to tens of thousands, was utterly demolished over the course of the war. Before the camp was destroyed, the Assad regime laid siege to it.

Despite these horrors, not one official in the Palestinian Authority publicly condemned the Assad regime.

This is incredible. Where is the outcry from the PA, Arab and global news outlets, rights groups, Palestinian and Arab politicians? Where is their denunciation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s war crimes against the Palestinians? Why isn’t every single Arab lawmaker in Israel excoriating the Syrian dictator?

When a Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorist from Gaza is killed by IDF soldiers while trying to plant a roadside bomb or trying to breach the border fence, the Arab and Western worlds are apoplectic. The Arab League issues its familiar condemnation; the consistently hostile Kuwait denounces Israel at the UN and tries to convene the Security Council; Mahmoud Abbas requests international protection for the Palestinians; and all these reactions are covered round the clock by the Arab and Western press.

When Palestinians are killed by other Arabs, evidently no one cares – not in the Arab world, and not even among the Palestinians themselves, whether in the PA or Hamas. Everyone is silent. Palestinian blood in the West Bank and Gaza is far more valuable than Palestinian blood in other parts of the globe.

Palestinians who are killed by IDF fire can be used as a tool, whether by Arab countries or the Western world, to undermine and weaken Israel. Human rights groups in the West and in Israel to invest most of their energies and attention to the Palestinian issue in Israel. The equation is plain to see: When Israel or the Jews can’t be blamed for killing Arabs, it’s not interesting.

Throughout the war in Syria, Abbas’s silence on the plight of the Palestinians there has been deafening. He has never repudiated Assad or Iran for killing Palestinians.

Arab Muslim Woman Defends Israel

Mrs. Dema Taya, touring America with "Arabs

Breaking the Silence" contradicts anti-Israel antagonists: 'Muslim women's lives in Israel are

modern and good- and that's a reason why the Muslim world lies to destroy Israeli culture of freedom and self-determination.

Lebanese Journalist: Israel Excels and Arabs Failed a Century After Balfour

Feb 22, 2018

A Lebanese journalist has conceded that looking back at a century of history in the Middle East, the Arab world has failed where Israel has shined.

In a November 25, 2017 article marking the 100^th  anniversary of the Balfour Declaration published in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Lebanese journalist Karam Al-Hilu compared the meager accomplishments of the Arab world in the past century with those of the rest of the countries of the world, and particularly Israel.

The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that “His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Al-Hilu noted that Israel’s supremacy in the areas of science, economy, society, and politics is the source of its strength, as well as the source of the Arabs’ failure in confronting it.

“A century after the Balfour Declaration the Arabs have not managed to build a [a single] state that possesses knowledge, justice, and the economic, social, and human capability for confronting Zionism,” al-Hilu wrote, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) recently published,

Arab Lack of Achievements

“One hundred years have been squandered [by the Arabs], in all aspects; during them, the Arabs have been confronting Israel while their cultural infrastructure was in crisis – in the areas of knowledge, politics, economy, society and thought,” he charged.

According to a 2014 Arab Knowledge Report published by the United Nations (UN), despite the existence of 500 Arab universities, with an enrollment of nine million students and faculties of 220,000 lecturers, scientific achievements are meager in the Arab world, which has failed to adapt to digital culture and other basic aspects of human progress.

Expenditure on scientific research for its part is negligible.

Scientists and research output are a rarity in the Arab world, and the research that is published there constitutes only 0.8 percent of the global average. The number of patents registered to the Arabs in the past 50 years does not exceed the number of those registered by Malaysia alone.

“Not a single Arab university ranks among the 500 best in the world, while Israel supersedes the Arabs at an astronomical rate, in inventions and in hi-tech export. Israel has completely wiped out illiteracy  [among its citizens], while among the Arabs, 23 percent remain illiterate,” he further noted.

Arab Law and Justice

The Arabs have also not succeeded in building a single state of law and justice, he pointed out.

Transparency.org’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2016, published January 2017, shows that six of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world are Arab. Countries such as Egypt and Tunisia are ranked 108^th in corruption, and Lebanon is 136^th, while Israel takes 33^rd place, which places it with the developed countries.

“[The Arabs] have not managed to establish a country [in which there is] economic justice; the class gaps [among the Arabs] are very great and unemployment, particularly among young people, tops out at 35.7 percent in Egypt, 32.1 percent in Iraq, and 45.3 percent in Mauritania,” he added.

For the Arabs to change the course of history and rectify this situation, as part of the “resistance to Israel,” they must start by “reading these numbers and these facts,” claimed al-Hilu.

While the Arab world has “spared no blood, martyrdom, or [self-]sacrifice” in its fight against Israel, “it has been negligent in the areas of science, economy, society, and politics that are the source of Israel’s strength – just as they are the source of our failure in confronting it,” he concluded.

Arab and Muslim journalists and commentators have previously expressed envy over Israel’s success in various realms, especially compared to the stagnation of the Arab and Muslim world.

Palestinians Enraged by Arab Journalists Visit to Israel

Israel’s hosting of Arab journalists is an “inexcusable and unjustified disgrace,” the Palestinians charged.  

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week hosted “special guests” from the Arab world in Jerusalem – a delegation of nine Moroccan, Lebanese, Syrian, Kurdish  and Yemeni journalists who came in order to “get to know Israel, its history and its society from up close,” the ministry said.

In response, the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Thursday denounced the journalists’ visit and called for their blacklisting.

The PA Ministry of Information called on the Arab Journalists Union to take “punitive and deterring measures” against the visitors and their media outlets, Times of Israel reported.

“Siding with Israel and its terrorism marks a departure from the Arab rank and the decisions of the Council of Arab Ministers of Information,” the PA ministry said, calling the visit an “inexcusable and unjustified disgrace.”

The visit, the statement added, “constitutes a departure from the official and popular Arab position that considers Israel a state of occupation, racism, ethnic cleansing, and extremism.”

Israeli MFA spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted in response: “Freedom of press Palestinian Authority style.”

“We will keep hosting journalists from all over the world and let them form their own impressions of Israel,” Nahshon pledged.

“We are proud to organize this visit of journalists from Arab countries to Israel, to help open a window on Israel and its people for readers across the Arab world,” MFA Director-General Yuval Rotem stated.

Seeking to expose the truth about the reality in Israel and the region, Israel periodically hosts journalists and opinion shapers from Arab and Muslim countries and enables them to experience the Jewish state in an unbiased and unfiltered fashion.

Abbas "Condemns" a $203,000 Murder

The headlines said that Palestinian President Abbas "condemned"

the multiple murder of Israelis at Har Adar. They left out

the part where he also pays for it. Why won't the media report

the whole story?

Israeli Clowns Cheer Up Syrian Refugees

In the video you’ll meet Israeli medical clowns - one Jewish and one Christian Arab - who bring relief and break down social barriers, one giant puffy red nose at a time.

Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 2016

The report Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 2016: Youth and the Prospects for Human Development in a Changing Reality was recently issued by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)

Never before has the region had such a large share of youth; youth of ages 15–29 make up around 30 percent of the popu­lation, or some 105 million people. In a region in which 60 percent of the population has not yet reached the age of 30, the report predicts that such youthful demographic momentum will be of critical importance for at least the two coming decades.

Unfavourable development backdrop ,

The report also indicates that the global financial and economic crisis in 2008–2009, coupled with political insta­bility since 2011, have had a negative impact on human development in the region. Average annual growth in the HDI dropped by more than half between 2010 and 2014 relative to the growth between 2000 and 2010.

Growing inequality: Further analysis of HDI data shows also that inequality is rising in Arab countries.

Increasing conflict: 

Home to only 5 percent of the world’s population, the Arab region has witnessed 17 percent of the world’s conflicts between 1948 and 2014, and 45 percent of the world’s terrorist attacks in 2014. In that same year, the region was home to 47 percent of the world’s internally displaced people and 57.5 percent of all world refugees including Palestinian refugees displaced by one of the longest lasting territorial occupations in modern his­tory.

Exclusion and inequality continue to frustrate youth.

Against this backdrop, the Report documents tremendous obstacles young peo­ple across the Arab world are facing in their personal development across the broadest range of institutions, resulting in multiple forms of cultural, social, economic and political exclusion.

High unemployment: Failure to translate gains in education into decent jobs for youth in pace with population growth, not only curtails benefits of a demographic dividend but may fuel greater social and economic tensions in the region as well. In 2014, unemployment among youth in the Arab region (29.73 percent) exceeded twice the global average (13.99 percent), and according to estimates, the situation is expected to worsen in the near future. The report warns that Arab economies may not be able to generate the 60 million new jobs required, by 2020 to absorb the number of workforce entrants in order to stabilize youth unemployment.

Pervasive discrimination against women: Echoing previous AHDRs, the report underlines how deep-seated discrimination, embedded in cul­tural beliefs and traditions in childrearing, educa­tion, religious structures, the media, and family re­lations, along with  many legal obstacles, continues to prevent women from acquiring and using their capabilities to the fullest.

Pathways from frustration to radicalization.

The factors above combine to create an overall sense of exclusion and lack of opportunity that pervades much of the region. The lives of many young people across the region are marked by frustration, marginalization and alienation from institutions and the transitions that are necessary to begin adult life in a fulfilling manner.

Citing recent opinion research, the report asserts that the overwhelming majority of young people in the Arab region have no desire to engage in violent extremist groups or activ­ities. They reject violence and regard extremist groups as terrorists.

However, it notes that the minority that is open to participating in violent groups that claim to struggle for change continue to be active, thus become radicalized and the radical­ized can become violent, violent radicalization and violent extremism grow and are accelerating the tremendous damage they wreak in Arab countries.

Arab States freaking out over claims for return of Jewish property in Arab lands

Elder of Zion blog writes this week, that Arab States are now freaking out over the actions of the Israeli government to obtain the return of Jewish property in Arab lands for the approximately 600,000 Jews who were forced to leave their homes and ultimately settled in Israel.

The local newspaper Haaretz reported last week:

 Israel is working secretly to obtain the return of Jewish property in Arab countries, Social Equality Ministry Director-General Avi Cohen said Wednesday, adding that millions of shekels have been allocated to the process.

Speaking to a Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee hearing on restitution, Cohen said, “There is classified activity in conjunction with the Foreign Ministry in which we will invest millions to restore property belonging to Arab and Iranian Jewry, which will come to fruition within a month to a month-and-half. I cannot elaborate further.” 

Though numbers aren't exact, it is believed that nearly a million Jews resided in Arab countries and in Iran on the eve of the War of Independence in 1948. After Israel was established, around 600,000 of them immigrated to Israel over the next three decades in waves that continued in 1956 and 1967 and after the Iranian revolution in 1979. A State Comptroller report published 2014 blasted the state for neglecting the issue, and put the combined value of the lost assets at “a few billion dollars.”

There has been great interest, and anger, in Arab media about this story.

Al-Ain says that Jewish refugees from Arab countries are a myth, just like the historic Land of Israel and the Jewish people altogether. One of his "proofs" is that UN resolution 181 does not mention Jewish refugees. They meant UN resolution 194, not 181, and it does not mention Arab refugees either - it just talks about "refugees."

Dr. Ahmed Hammad, Professor of Israel Studies at Ain Shams University, described the initiative as "a joke," saying that Israel knows very well that they have no rights to property in Egypt or the Arab states. He says that since the Jews who lived in Egypt were not Israeli citizens then Israel has no rights to claim any compensation on their behalf.

Hammad added that Egyptians can demand compensation from Israel because, he says, the Torah says that Jews "robbed the Egyptians of their gold" during the Exodus from Egypt. (It says no such thing.)

Another Traffic Accident

From a colleague living in the "infanous settler area of Shiloh", he reports on a traffic accident in his area. Just compare the hysterical reporting in an accident with a Jewish driver with the report of another accident involving an Arab driver.  http://tinyurl.com/ze35qah 

One of the constants in the public diplomacy campaign waged against Israel is the willingness, if not enthusiastic desire, to either lie outright or at the very least, assert unproven and wild accusations before any review is conducted by the Arab side.

============================================

Two years ago there was a tragic incident when  a Jewish driver struck two young Arab girls. I blogged it then.  It happened near where I live at the nearby Sinjil village.

Anyone who has driven that stretch of road knows that it is one-lane each way, no sidewalk or any proper or safe walkway along the road.  And it happened at dusk

Here's from what the Permanent Observer Mission of "Palestine" submitted at the time to the UN:

22 OCTOBER 2014 BY PALESTINE AT THE UN

Excellency,

Pursuant to my letter of 14 October 2014, I am compelled to place on record our absolute condemnation of the criminal, deadly actions being perpetrated by extremist terrorist settlers illegally transferred by Israel, the occupying Power, to the Palestinian land, as well as continued Israeli incitement and provocations against holy sites, in particular in East Jerusalem, in what appear to be a deliberate attempts to exacerbate already-volatile tensions and create further instability.

On a nearly daily basis, Israeli settlers continue with their terror rampages, persisting with attacks on Palestinian civilians, destruction of properties, and theft of land and natural resources.  The latest terrorist crime by a settler occurred yesterday, 20 October 2014, when a setter ran over two young girls who were walking home from school in the West Bank town of Sinjil  in a so-called “hit and run” accident.  Kindergarten student Inas Khalil, age 5, and Nilin Asfour, age 8, had just gotten off the school bus and were walking to their mothers who were waiting for them on the opposite side of the street when an Israeli settler’s car rammed directly at them and sped away.  Inas and Nilin were both rushed to the hospital.   Tragically, 5-year-old Inas was pronounced dead a couple of hours later, while Nilin still remains in critical condition.  We condemn this brutal act of Israeli settler terrorism, and we call on the international community to unequivocally condemn this and all other such attacks and terror against Palestinian children under Israeli occupation.

It should also be mentioned, that this so-called “hit and run” accident has become a reoccurring deadly practice by Israeli settlers against the Palestinian civilian population.

This morning, there was another accident there.  This time, an Arab person was struck (I do not as yet know their medical condition).

But there was a difference.

The driver was an Arab.

Let me know if it makes the news and how it will be reported.

_________________

UPDATE

It has been reported here as

وفاة مواطن في حادث دهس وقع قرب قرية سنجل شمال رام الله

The death of a citizen in an accident hit and felled near the village of Sinjil north of Ramallah

No "terrorism".  No purposeful killing.

Only Arabs involved.

Letter from Arab to Jew who supports BDS

Fred Maroun is a Canadian of Arab origin who lived in Lebanon until 1984, including during 10 years of civil – April 8^th 2016…

I have a question to ask you, but first I would like to establish my understanding of who you are. You are Jewish, probably young and probably American, but you may be European or even Israeli, and you may not be so young any more. You have embraced the Arab battle against Zionism and you support the BDS movement, which as I demonstrated previously, aims for a single binational state in place of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and aims for the “return” of millions of Palestinian refugees who would make Israel overnight an Arab state.

Your position interests me because I am the same as you and yet I am your opposite. I am the same as you in that I am in the countercurrent of my own community, but I am the opposite of you in my ethnicity and in my allegiances in the Israel-Arab conflict. I am an Arab who supports Jewish nationalism.

Your position is much less selfish than mine, I must admit. While I support Israel because I see huge benefits for my Arab compatriots in emulating Israel and in adopting its human rights and democratic values and its enterprising spirit, you support Arabs while knowing that you and your community will get less than nothing in return.

Since you are educated (I assume that you are educated since you took a bold stand that most people in your faith community disapprove of) then you know that Jews like you were ethnically cleansed from all Arab countries. You also know that when Jews like you faced the Holocaust, no country in the world provided them a safe haven.

Despite this knowledge, you selflessly want to give up Jewish sovereignty over the only part of the Middle East where Jews are still allowed to live, and the only safe haven for Jews who face discrimination and violence anywhere in the world. I have to admit that this level of selflessness is well beyond my capabilities.

You have assured your friends that your stand is genuine and not meant to appease the anti-Semites. You have insisted that your opposition to Israel is not conformism to the anti-Zionist orthodoxy of the radical left.

Yet, I have difficulty rejoicing because while you are willing to sacrifice your own people, I am not willing to sacrifice mine. The demise of Israel as a Jewish state would affect much more than your people. It would also extinguish the only hope remaining for progressive Arabs like me.

For us Arabs, whether we are Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, or any other variety of Arabs, we know that there is only one place in the Middle East that respects our liberal values, and that is the Jewish state of Israel. We obsessively hold on to that hope.

Your stand against Israel, if it is successful, would help some Arabs, I admit. It would help terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbullah. It would help Arab despots who rely on anti-Zionist rhetoric to remain in power. It would help, and in fact it already helps, the Palestinian leadership avoid making peace with Israel, which keeps the Palestinians stateless and fully dependent on Israel and on Western charity. Your stand undeniably helps ultra-conservative and reactionary Arab forces.

You have heard many stories of Israeli abuse of Palestinian human rights, and that is what encouraged you to take the stand that you did. You also believe that Jews are imperialist invaders in the Middle East, and that they re-created the Jewish nation at the expense of the Arab residents.

When you learn that the vast majority of the accusations of human rights abuses against Israel consistently turn out to be false, you remain satisfied in the knowledge that some of them turn out to be true. When you are reminded that your own people, the Jews, have lived on the land of Israel for over 3000 years and that they had a long history all over the Middle East (until they were ethnically cleansed), you dismiss it because it contradicts your narrative.

When you are asked why you want to penalize the Jews of Israel while not penalizing Arabs for the much worse crimes that they commit against Jews and Arabs, you say that you are only concerned about improving the behavior of your own people and that it is up to Arabs to worry about improving the behavior of Arabs. Your response confirms the importance of my stand, which is to try to improve the behavior of Arabs. Unfortunately, while you seem to complement what I do, by demonizing Israel, the only real hope for the Arab world, you are also making my struggle much more difficult.

So here you are. A Jew who insists on an impossibly high moral standard for Israel even if it brings an end to the security or even existence of your own people, and even if it undermines the Arab struggle to achieve modest liberal values that Jews have achieved long ago. You take a left-wing, progressive, activist stand and yet your stand aids the anti-Semites and the most right-wing reactionary Arabs.

Which brings me to my question. Is there perhaps some other cause that you can support instead of the Arab/Palestinian cause? Preferably a cause that does not involve Arabs?

In Haifa, Liberal Palestinian Culture Blossoms

DIAA HADID JAN. 3, 2016

 At Elika, a bar in the Hadar neighborhood of this hilly port city, a 30-something psychodramatist rolled a cigarette and sipped coffee with her father, a well-known actor in Israel. The bartender poured tall beers for two women who wandered in for an afternoon pint. Nearby, a 22-year-old woman with a partly shaved head and colorful tattoos sat alone, working on her laptop.

They were among the many coifed, pierced and tattooed women and men who populate a slice of Haifa’s social scene that resembles that of the well-heeled hipsters of Tel Aviv. But here the cool kids are Palestinians, and they have unfurled a self-consciously Arab milieu that is secular, feminist and gay-friendly.

“Haifa is a center for Arabs, like Tel Aviv is a center for Jews,” said Asil Abu Wardeh, the Elika patron who practices a performance-based form of psychotherapy. “There is a cultural movement. There is a youth movement. There’s a kind of freedom here.”

“We have our own parties. Our own places. Our own discos. We dance. We drink. We do it all in Arabic,” she added. “This all began in Haifa.”

Arabs make up a fifth of Israel’s population of 8 million, and in recent years, Israeli Arabs have grown more assertive in expressing their Palestinian identity, allied with their brethren in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But their public life in Haifa is a striking secular counterpoint to the conservatism of many of Israel’s Arab communities, where sex before marriage is taboo, and single men and women rarely date and tend to marry at relatively young ages, in matches often arranged by their mothers.

Haifa’s relative liberalism is a product of its unique, cosmopolitan tradition. It is easy for young, single people to get out in this city, which is built on a steep coastal hill, with Jews tending to live on its heights and Arabs by the sea. The once working-class city of 280,000 has several universities and has embraced its diversity. The 30,000 Arab residents, around 10 percent of the population, include equal numbers of Muslims and Christians, and they are generally wealthier and better educated than Arabs elsewhere in Israel.

This makes Haifa a comfortable place for liberal Palestinians who want not only to escape the constraints of conservative Arab communities but also to be among their own people.

“If you are in an Arab neighborhood, you have a community. If you live in a Jewish neighborhood, you are a stranger, and that gives you freedom as an Arab woman,” said Fidaa Hammoud, 32. “There are many de facto couples, and older women living alone without having to hear gossip.”

Ms. Hammoud moved to Haifa in 2011 after studying speech therapy for four years in Barcelona, Spain. She and her partner live together in a Jewish neighborhood where they run a Palestinian cafe called Rai. “I couldn’t do this anywhere else,” she said.

Ayed Fadel runs Kabareet, a seaside bar off a four-lane industrial road, through an alley and down some stairs. He envisions his out-of-the-way speakeasy with its red painted walls and old Arab movie posters as a place where people can truly be themselves.

“We want a gay couple to go to the dance floor and kiss each other, and nobody to even look at them,” he said. “This is the new Palestinian society we are aiming for.”

That society was on display late last year, when some bars and cafes held screenings for Kooz Queer, the first Palestinian gay film festival. And Dar al-Raya, a cafe that doubles as a publishing house, recently published “The Book of Desire,” believed to be among the first volumes of modern erotica by Palestinian authors.

For some, the blossoming Palestinian scene in Haifa is reminiscent of the city during British rule, when a lively Arab cultural life flourished. Much of that ended in 1948 with the war in which Israel was established, when Arabs fled, or were forced to leave, their homes in many cities, including in Haifa, said Mustafa Kabha, a lecturer in Palestinian history at the Open University of Israel.

Haifa in the 1930s and ’40s, he said, “had clubs, cafes, hotels, theaters and newspapers” for Arabs, including the Sham Cafe, where Syrian and Lebanese workers met, and the Port Cafe, for workers from the city’s busy port.

“You feel that the place is returning to a very natural harmony; in an old Arabic house you hear Arabic,” said Bashar Murkus, who recently opened the Khashabi Theater in an old warehouse owned by an Arab merchant in an industrial seaside neighborhood.

The liberal Arab renaissance in Haifa began with the opening of Fattoush, a Palestinian restaurant, in 1998. The restaurant, which hosted cultural discussions and art exhibitions, was once a scandal to polite Arab society because men and women openly drank alcohol and flirted. Now, it is a tourist-friendly fixture on Ben Gurion Boulevard, Haifa’s main drag.

More Arab-owned businesses opened on that street in the years since, with signs welcoming all people in Arabic, English and sometimes Hebrew. Many of these bars, cafes and restaurants were crowded on a recent weeknight with couples strolling along teeming sidewalks decked with Christmas lights.

Back up the road at the Elika bar, Samer Asakleh was hanging out with a co-worker. A folksy Arab song about smoking marijuana played from the speakers, and posters tacked to the wall advertised a concert featuring an Arab ska band, Toot Ard.

“The people in Haifa, especially in these cafes, they are making revolutions,” said Mr. Asakleh, 23, his long hair tied in a messy bun. He moved here from his home village of Mughar, in Galilee, to study management and was initially surprised by the open, seemingly libertine attitudes and social mores of people he met. He said he had not encountered any openly gay people before moving here in 2011, and he used to excuse himself from parties when gay couples would show up because he did not approve of homosexuality.

Co Existence Through Music

 GREER FAY CASHMAN   12/24/2015

 MANY SINGERS and musicians claim that music paves the way to peace. When people sing together or make music together, they tend to harmonize rather than antagonize, and their differences are cast aside.

A prime example of this can be seen in the Galilee Orchestra founded in 1995 by composer Nabil Azzam, who was the first Arab student at the Rubin Academy of Music, and who subsequently went on to receive degrees in musicology and ethnomusicology from Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University and UCLA.

Jews and Arabs play together in the Galilee Orchestra, and last Saturday night they performed at a concert hosted by industrialist Stef Wertheimer at his Nazareth Industrial Park, in cooperation with the Polyphony Foundation, the Orpheus Group and the Nazareth Tourist Information Center.

Among the guests were head of the European Union Delegation Lars Faaborg-Andersen and his wife, Jean Murphy; Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar, head of the Polyphony Foundation and Conservatory; and some 370 other invitees.

In welcoming the guests Wertheimer said that inasmuch as he loves culture, everyone present should be aware that they were sitting in an industrial park whose main purpose is to provide work for the people of Nazareth and other parts of the Galilee and the Jezreel Valley, who can come here to create and produce, and with their earnings can enjoy cultural experiences such as the cinema and stage productions.

Arab Street's Changing Attitudes

One of the most positive strategic developments for Israel of the past few years has been its marked improvement in relations with significant parts of the Arab world. Three years ago, for instance, the most cockeyed optimist wouldn’t have predicted a letter like Israel received recently from a senior official of the Free Syrian Army, who congratulated it on its 67th anniversary and voiced hope that next year, Israel’s Independence Day would be celebrated at an Israeli embassy in Damascus. Full report at http://tinyurl.com/owuut6n  

Yet many analysts have cautioned that anti-Israel hostility in the “Arab street” had not abated. However a new poll shows this, too, is changing.

The ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey, which has been conducted annually for the last seven years, polls 3,500 Arabs aged 18 to 24 from 16 Arab countries in face-to-face interviews. One of the standard questions is “What do you believe is the biggest obstacle facing the Middle East?”

This year, defying a long tradition of blaming all the Arab world’s problems on Israel,

a)  only 23 percent of respondents (27% in 2012) cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the region’s main obstacle., this in spite of last summer’s war in Gaza.

b)  In fact, the conflict came in fourth, trailing ISIS (37 percent), terrorism (32 percent) and unemployment (29 percent).

The poll also highlights another encouraging fact: The issues young Arabs do see as their top concerns  a) ISIS, b) terrorism, and c) unemployment–are all issues on which cooperation with Israel could be beneficial, and in some cases, it’s already taking place.

For instance, Israeli-Egyptian cooperation on counterterrorism is closer than it’s been in years–not only against Hamas, but also against the ISIS branch in Sinai, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.

Israel and Jordan cooperate closely on counterterrorism as well, and it’s a safe bet that quiet cooperation is also occurring with certain other Arab states that officially have no relations with Israel.

Egypt and Israel have also ramped up economic cooperation, even manning a joint booth at a major trade fair earlier this year.

In short, the issues currently of greatest concern to young Arabs are precisely the issues most conducive to a further thawing of Israeli-Arab relations.


What the poll shows, in a nutshell, is that young Arabs have reached the same conclusion Arab leaders made glaringly evident at the last year’s inaugural session of the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate: Israel simply isn’t one of the Arab world’s major problems anymore, if it ever was. Now all Israel needs is for the West to finally come to the same realization.

Rescued from Arab Villages: Six Weddings & a Circumcision

Only recently rescued from abusive relationships while trapped in Arab villages, 7 Jewish women finally find true happiness. 

 Hillel Fendel  1/20/2015

The Yad L'Achim anti-assimilation organization announced that six invitations to Jewish weddings have been received at its offices over the past few weeks – & all from women whom the organization helped rescue from Arab villages.

      In addition, a seventh woman announced that her son – born to an Arab father – will be circumcised in accordance with Jewish tradition – & Yad L'Achim was able to help there as well.

      The organization offers help to women who have become entangled in relationships with Arab men. The general pattern is that the man is kind & caring at first, & becomes hostile & violent after marriage – & the woman often finds herself unable to leave the Arab village to which she had been taken. If she is determined & lucky enough to make contact with Yad L'Achim, the organization often helps, via covert & dangerous means that it does not like to publicize, to extricate her – & her children. The organization then goes further & helps her find her way again in Israeli-Jewish society.

      Yad L'Achim's most recent success occurred just a few days ago, when a 25-year-old woman clandestinely rescued from an Arab village celebrated the ritual circumcision of her new-born son. However, her joy was marred by the absence of her family, which had cut off contact with her when she began her relationship with an Arab. The Yad L'Achim social worker responsible for her case took the initiative, & called the family herself. She explained the situation, including their daughter's suffering, regrets, rescue, longings for her family, & birth – & was successful: The family showed up in full, & the baby's grandfather filled the honored role of Sandak (holding the baby during the brit). Not an eye was left dry.

     In the weeks prior to that, six different women sent invitations to their upcoming weddings to the Yad L'Achim offices. The weddings took place, or will take place, all over Israel, from Haifa in the north to Ashdod in the southwest. The excitement among the organization's workers was palpable - & especially among the social workers who accompany "their" women & help them & their children readjust after their traumatic experiences. In some cases, the social worker was the one to "walk down the aisle" with the bride.

     Hundreds of cases of women who seek "escape" from abusive relationships with non-Jews are reported each year to Yad L'Achim. In most cases, a Muslim man (Arab or Bedouin) is involved, but there are also instances of such relationships with foreign workers or others