Palestinians Spit on Saudi Journalist on Temple Mount

We are used to seeing the Muslims on the Temple Mount attack Jews and Christians, but it is unusual to see them attack a fellow Muslim. Why? A Saudi journalist is attacked with chairs and sticks thrown at him, repeatedly young "Palestinians" spit on his clothes and face and he is verbally abused.

Paying for Slaying

No longer will the US Taxpayers fund the PA - 

Europe should follow the US example

Time For UNRWA To Face The Truth About Its Textbooks

by Marcus Sheff  February 17, 2018

According to the textbooks being read by half a million Palestinian children, the only solution available is victory via resistance, jihad, radical Islamism and defeating Israel once and for all.

Last week, immediately after a motion in support of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) was approved by the European Parliament in Strasbourg, UNRWA jubilantly tweeted, “Second largest democratic parliament in the world reaffirms commitment to UNRWA. The European Parliament unanimously stands with Palestine refugees.”

UNRWA’s triumphalism was jarring. It exposed not only a self-serving oversimplification of the situation, but also a wholesale disregard for the concerns rightfully raised about its work. In particular the promotion of hatred, extremism, violence and conflict in UNRWA schools.

A recent world tour by UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krähenbühl to drum up financial support following a US freeze on funds to the organization relied heavily on an accompanying PR slogan, “#QualityEducation is key to a better future.”

No doubt it is. But Palestinian children are not receiving it.

The 500,000 children taught at UNRWA schools across the West Bank, Gaza and in east Jerusalem all study the new Palestinian Authority school curriculum, completed by the PA Education Ministry in August 2017.

Our report on the accompanying textbooks and examples demonstrates that radicalization is pervasive in this new curriculum, even more so than its predecessor. Quite simply, the new textbooks groom young Palestinians to sacrifice themselves as martyrs.

These are schoolbooks which promote hate, encourage a commitment to jihad and feature a radical Islamist, and occasionally Salafist, worldview. Young Palestinians are taught that martyrdom for boys and girls is a life goal, that dying is better than living and that jihad is the pinnacle of ambition. Those who risk their lives by taking up arms are praised and those who choose the path of non-violence are denigrated as cowards.

Science and math lessons are used to teach violence. Newtonian gravity is taught through the image of a boy with a slingshot targeting soldiers, to explain power, mass, and tensile strength, while math exercises instruct students to calculate number of martyrs in Palestinian uprisings and teach probability with examples of Israelis shooting at passing Palestinian cars.

UNRWA is firmly in denial about the curriculum it teaches. But those who finance UNRWA should not be. In 2017, the US gave $364 million, equivalent to a third of the UNRWA budget. The EU came in second at $143m. Germany followed at $76m. Then Sweden at $61m. and the UK at $60m. (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states combined represented just 7% of UNRWA’s budget). These countries are receiving a damaging return on their very significant investment.

After all, the benchmarks are clear. The UN has a roadmap for UNRWA. Through another of its bodies, UNESCO, several resolutions have set out clear standards on textbooks. They are expected to promote peace and tolerance. They are mandated to encourage respect for the “other” and peacemaking as the tool for resolving conflict and gender inequality. They are to include unbiased information and exclude hateful material.

The new PA curriculum fails miserably on every count. It fails to respect tolerance, nor is there any understanding toward the Israeli and Western “other.” Instead, there is demonization. The principle of “no hate” is thoroughly rejected – the curriculum is packed with wording, imagery and ideology likely to create prejudices, misconceptions, stereotypes, misunderstandings, mistrust, racial and national hatred, and religious bigotry.

And by no measure can the information presented in the curriculum be viewed as unbiased. In fact, students are indoctrinated, with the world divided into a Manichean paradigm, a simplistic binary choice between good and evil. There is little or no complexity, empathy or real understanding of historical development. As for gender equality, while some secular topics in the curriculum include respect for women’s choice, in the religious and jihadist elements, women are not equal in life, only in their value as martyrs in death.

At last week’s European Parliament plenary session to discuss UNRWA, commissioner Johannes Hahn said that “The European Union is convinced that the two-state solution is the only possible answer if we want to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Absolutely. But with respect to that most important of UNESCO standards – peacemaking as the way to resolve conflict – the PA curriculum rejects negotiations with Israel to achieve Palestinian statehood. According to the textbooks being read by half a million Palestinian children, the only solution available is victory via resistance, jihad, radical Islamism and defeating Israel once and for all.

Outside the plenary session itself, in the flowery-carpeted bar where legislators, staff and lobbyists mingle, a ray of hope could be found. Some parliamentary members were openly challenging the work of UNRWA. Meanwhile, several legislators from the centrist and liberal factions were also quietly questioning the UNRWA approach. For many in the European mainstream, openly challenging UNRWA remains a step too far. But this must quickly change, for the sake of the very people UNRWA is mandated to help. UNRWA is a vital UN agency providing essential services to Palestinians. But right now, it is betraying itself, its donors and most importantly, the 500,000 Palestinian children it serves.

Yet More Success Against BDS

SodaStream, an Israeli company, hit the world headlines  when the boycott (BDS) campaigners attacked the company's products claimed they were produced in "Palestinian occupied lands".

The company at the time was employing over 1000 workers of whom 65% were Palestinian.

Fast forward a few years after the company moved its activities to a new factory near Beer Sheva and bingo:-

- Significant growth in new exiting markets
- A share price increase of 300% in the last 18 months
- A workforce offering employment to the Bedouin community

Some of the original Palestinian workforce  have received work permits to allow  them to work in the new facility and although the present numbers , 80 is likely to double shortly, it is a far cry from the numbers previously employed.

The bottom line is that the BDS campaign resulted in more suffering of the Palestinian community while SodaStream just goes on growing,

Economic Peace

This message speaks for itself

Guess what? The world needs Israel

 DAVID SUISSA   MAY 22, 2017| 

Since its inception, Israel has been a country under siege. When it’s not attacked by terrorist forces, it’s attacked by diplomatic ones. Over the past few decades, it has been condemned mainly for its failure to make peace with the Palestinians. This conflict has dominated global consciousness like no other. Throughout the Middle East, it has been used by dictators to divert attention away from the oppression of their people.

President Donald Trump’s eagerness to make the “ultimate deal,” which he reiterated during his visit to Israel, only continues the obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether we like it or not, it is the conflict, as much as anything, that has shaped Israel’s narrative throughout much of the world.

And yet, despite all that, something is changing. New winds are blowing. Slowly, quietly, a parallel narrative about Israel is beginning to emerge. And since the conflict with the Palestinians is so intractable, my sense is that this new narrative will play an increasingly greater role in shaping Israel’s future.

In essence, more and more countries are looking at Israel and saying: “Politics or no politics, these guys can help us. They’re doing things no one else is doing. They seem to have a pulse on this crazy and fast-changing new world we’re in.”

If your country, for example, has a problem with cybersecurity that can endanger your infrastructure, and you hear that Israel has unique technology that can fix the problem, are you going to pass on that solution because the Palestinian conflict is unresolved?

Similarly, if your people are running out of drinking water and you need Israel’s cutting-edge desalination technology, or if your country is under threat from Islamic terrorists and you know that Israelis have the most expertise in that area, will you let the Palestinian conflict get in the way of your core interests?

Giant nations like India and China, as well as emerging nations on the African continent, are not waiting for a peace breakthrough before engaging with Israel. Why should they? Doing business with Israel is in their interest. It boosts their economies. It strengthens their countries.

The same thing has been happening in Israel’s own backyard. In a 2012 report titled, “The Badly Kept Secret of Israel’s Trade Throughout the Muslim World,” Haaretz detailed Israel’s low-key but growing engagement with its Arab and Muslim neighbors, including the export of medical, agricultural and water technologies to the Gulf states.

In terms of security, Sunni-dominated countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states need Israel’s military might to fend off their sworn enemy, the predatory Iranian Shia regime. There’s a reason the Gulf states compiled a proposal to take “unprecedented steps toward normalization with Israel,” as reported last week in the Wall Street Journal.

They need Israel.

Sure, they had to throw in the obligatory statements about Israel making gestures to the Palestinians. But don’t kid yourself– these requests have softened with the years. They’re a sign of the shifting tides. These Arab countries are feeling vulnerable and they need help, even from Israel. Drumming up hatred for the Jewish state because of the Palestinian problem is not as good for business as it used to be.

None of this means that Israel shouldn’t make every effort to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians, regardless of the odds. A solution is strongly in Israel’s interest. And in global diplomacy, optics matter and effort counts, even if it ends in failure.

To its credit, though, Israel has never let the failure of peace and the presence of war demoralize the nation. While much of the world condemned the country, and hostile neighbors launched attacks, Israel kept right on innovating to meet the challenges of the modern world. Instead of being paralyzed by a siege mentality, the little Jewish state pushed relentlessly to build a thriving nation, with all of its flaws and imperfections.

And now, suddenly it seems, this tiny nation is in big demand. From medical breakthroughs to green technology to cybersecurity to digital innovation to water conservation to food security, Israel is at the forefront of creating solutions for the new century.

This is not Start-Up Nation as a tool for better hasbara, or positive propaganda. This is Start-Up Nation as a tool to better the world.

It must make Palestinian leaders sick to see the hated Zionist state start to thrive on a global scale. Maybe they were hoping that by refusing all peace offers, glorifying terror and attacking Israel’s legitimacy, they would make Israel implode. The opposite happened.

We can only hope that, one day, they too will realize that building hatred for the Jewish state is bad for peace and bad for business.

ISRAEL FIRST IN WASTEWATER REUSE, PALESTINIANS ARE LAST

Clive Lipchin  February 19, 2017

At international water conferences, Israeli participants always make a point of claiming Israel is the world leader in wastewater treatment and reuse, and indeed this is true. Israel treats over 90% of its sewage and reclaims 80% of it for reuse in agriculture. Only Singapore and Spain come close to this achievement. I too make this claim when I attend such conferences, but I also point out that all of Israel’s water sources are transboundary. All of Israel’s rivers that drain into the Mediterranean Sea originate upstream in the West Bank and most of these rivers are heavily polluted.

The reason for the pollution is that unlike Israel, wastewater treatment and reuse in the West Bank is only a fraction of that in Israel. Lacking wastewater and sewage infrastructure Palestinian and Israeli settlement communities drain their sewage untreated into open cesspits or directly into the environment. The result is that the sewage flows into the regions’ rivers and streams, blighting the landscape, posing public health risks and most importantly contaminating the precious groundwater resources that Israelis and Palestinians both use for drinking. Indeed, the most serious environmental hazard in the West Bank is untreated wastewater, but sewage does not recognize borders and this untreated sewage is as much a problem for Israel as it is for the communities in the West Bank.

According to a recent report from Israel’s Civil Administration, the body responsible for environmental management in the West Bank, 82.5% of Palestinian sewage is disposed of into the environment, an amount of around 60 mcm/year. In Israeli settlements the amount of untreated sewage discharged into the environment is around 12% or around 2.5 mcm/year.

The reasons for this large disparity in wastewater management between Israel and the West Bank is a complex mix of politics, financing and capacity. Many plans for the implementation of centralized wastewater treatment facilities to service Palestinian towns and cities get mired in disagreements on whether or not to connect Israeli settlements to such infrastructure and an arduous process of permitting and approvals, according to the Joint Water Committee that was set up under the Oslo II accords to manage such projects. However, many Palestinian communities are off grid, meaning they do not have access to a sewer network and without a network they cannot connect to centralized wastewater treatment facilities. The result is that sewage is disposed of into cesspits or directly into the environment.

The Arava Institute’s Center for Transboundary Water Management, together with Palestinian partners, is promoting a decentralized response to wastewater management in these off-grid communities where sewage (black water) is disposed of in sealed septic tanks and greywater from the kitchen and bathrooms is treated and then reused for localized agriculture. This onsite approach to wastewater management both reduces the flow of untreated sewage into the environment, helping to reduce the flow into the transboundary streams and rivers, and provides an additional source of water for irrigation for these agrarian communities.

The decentralized approach is just one way by which, working together, Israelis and Palestinians can help to reduce untreated wastewater discharges into our shared environment. However this kind of approach is not enough. Ultimately, agreements need to be forged between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on transboundary wastewater treatment that will replace the unilateral response undertaken so far by Israel, where it treats the sewage downstream as soon as it crosses the Green Line but charges the Palestinians for doing so. This creates tension between the parties as Israel claims the Palestinians are not doing enough to treat their sewage and the Palestinians charge Israel that they are paying for sewage treatment downstream but do not get any benefits of the treated sewage for use in agriculture upstream.

Journalistic Failure at NRP

Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank

Reporters Greg Myre and Larry Kaplow of NRP in the US begin a recent report by claiming:

“When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, no Israeli citizens lived in the territory.”

This stunning lack of context ignores that Jews had indeed lived in Hebron, Bethlehem and many other towns in the land historically called “Judea and Samaria,” until 19 years earlier – when Jordanian forces (with the help of local Palestinians) expelled or killed all of the indigenous Jews, and then re-named the entire area “The West Bank.”

The only reason the population of the West Bank was entirely Palestinian by 1967 was because they expelled the indigenous Jews in 1948.

Doesn’t the ethnic cleansing of an entire indigenous Jewish population deserve a mention from NPR?

Kaplow and Myre further distort history in the very same sentence by saying “Israel captured the West Bank…” yet covering up the reason why: Jordan had turned those lands into a launching point for a massive assault against Israel, with the intent to destroy the entire country.

Israel was forced to capture the West Bank in order to prevent Jordan’s advance, save Israel’s very existence, and save all the Jews in Israel from the same fate suffered by those Jews referenced above: total and complete ethnic cleansing.

Again, not even a mention?

Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem

In an encore of ignorance, Kaplow and Myre claim:

“Shortly after the 1967 war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank and had a population that was then entirely Palestinian.”

First of all, there was never any such entity as “East Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was one united city for several thousand years until Jordan invaded its eastern part in 1948. At that point, Jordan’s military (with the assistance of local Palestinians) expelled or killed all the Jews living in the areas it captured. Again: total and complete ethnic cleansing.

Kaplow and Myre also cover up from their readers that the area they call “East Jerusalem” includes the Temple Mount (the holiest site in Judaism) along with its famous Western Wall, the Old City, and Jerusalem’s ancient Jewish Quarter.

Yet all the authors have to say is “…a population that was then entirely Palestinian.”

Journalistic Failures

Kaplow and Myre indulge in a number of other misleading falsehoods, such as the claim:

“While the Israelis tend to speak of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as two separate entities, the Palestinians regard them as a single body — the occupied West Bank.”

In fact, Palestinians do not typically use the term “occupied West Bank,” but rather “occupied Palestine,” which they clearly define as being all of Israel.

When discussing Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza NPR selectively omitted the thousands of rockets fired at Israel from the Strip. Kaplow and Myre also criticize Israel’s military presence in the West Bank but fail to acknowledge that Palestinian terrorism forces Israel to maintain that military presence.

A journalist may explore complex topics and present varying viewpoints, but journalistic ethics do not allow the omission of critical context nor the distortion of objective historical facts, as Kaplow and Myre have done here.

NPR has covered up the massive scale ethnic cleansing of Jews in their own historic homeland. The result is not only offensive to the Israeli victims of these attacks and misleading to NPR readers, but also an embarrassment to the very profession of journalism.

The Other Side of the West Bank Palestinian Story

There is more to this story, a side often overlooked. In communities throughout the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, a surprising degree of luxury exists alongside the poverty. After receiving billions of dollars in Western aid over many decades, major improvements are visible in the standard of living in the West Bank, as seen in newly-constructed buildings, late-model cars, and luxury items.

This study offers an often overlooked window into life in the Palestinian Authority. The empirical data provides a more complete picture of living standards in the West Bank.  The truth is that alongside the slums of the old refugee camps, which the Palestinian government has done little to rehabilitate, a parallel Palestinian society is emerging.

Marwan Asmar, a Jordan-based journalist with a PhD in political science from Leeds University in the UK, described this phenomenon upon returning to the West Bank after 30 years:

“There has been a total transformation since I was last in Howara in the West Bank in 1985. One can see a buzz of activity at the shops, restaurants, offices and cafes. This wasn’t the sleepy village I saw long ago. Buildings, villas, mosques and rest areas have been constructed everywhere. There is even a swimming pool.

This was certainly not the picture I had in mind. This was not the picture the media presents – of Palestinians surviving on daily wages of $2 as pointed out by the World Bank, of high unemployment and pockets of poverty. The people I spoke to here said many worked as laborers in Israel and were paid high daily wages. This is how they could build their houses, they told me.¹⁶

As speculation continues about renewing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, it is important to understand how the quality of life in the West Bank has improved and how a new Palestinian society is emerging – one that requires a changed perception of the reality of Palestinian life.

While the Arab world is in the throes of a major melt-down – with widespread violence and destruction in Syria and Iraq, together with serious instability in Lebanon and Egypt – daily life for Arabs in the West Bank offers a stark contrast to those scenes of violence and decline.

Foreign Aid

Since the establishment of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza in the mid-1990s, the U.S. government has committed approximately $5 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians, who are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid.¹⁷ Overall, Palestinians receive approximately $2 billion in aid each year.¹⁸ Palestinian economic analysts estimate that the PA has received a total of $25 billion in financial aid during the past two decades.¹⁹

Poverty

The CIA World Factbook reported the poverty rate in the West Bank as 18% in 2011,²⁰ in contrast to Israel’s poverty rate in 2012 of 21%.²¹

Life Expectancy

In 2015, life expectancy in the West Bank was 76 years.²²  This was notably higher than the life expectancy in Arab states of 71 years (in 2012), and the average life expectancy around the world of 70 years.²³

Infant Mortality

In 2015, the infant mortality rate in the West Bank and Gaza was 13 per 1,000 live births,²⁴ compared with 27 per 1,000 live births in the Arab states in 2013 and 36.58 per 1,000 live births in the world in 2014.²⁵

Literacy

In 2015 the literacy rate for people aged 15 and above in the West Bank and Gaza was 96.5%.²⁶

Education

In 2011, when Palestinians were asked “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the education system?” 63.5% answered “satisfied”, a higher percentage than the U.S. (62.8), Netherlands (60.3), Sweden (61.6) or Japan (54.6).²⁷  The overall percentage in Arab states was 50.0%.²⁸

Water Resources²⁹

Palestinians insist that they suffer from water shortages due to Israeli policies. However, data shows that Israel has fulfilled all of its obligations according to the signed water agreements with the PA. The development of water supply systems for Palestinian communities has been carried out on an extensive scale, much larger than that called for in the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement.

From 1967-1995 the number of towns and villages connected to running water through modern supply systems increased from four to 309 communities. In March 2010, 641 of 708 Palestinian communities, which include more than 96 percent of the Palestinian population, were found to be connected to a running water network. Water supply networks for an additional 16 villages (encompassing an additional 2.5 percent of the population) were under construction.

Palestinians claim that the water consumption of the average Israeli is four times greater than that of the average Palestinian. However, this claim is not factually supported. In 1967, there was indeed a large gap in the per capita consumption of water. This gap, however, was reduced during the Israeli administration period and the difference is now negligible. The per capita consumption of natural, fresh water in Israel is 150 m³/c/y and in the PA 140 m³/c/y.

According to the PA, roughly 33.6 percent of their water leaks from internal pipelines, compared with 11 percent in Israel. Moreover, the Palestinians have violated their part of the water agreements by refusing to build sewage treatment plants (despite available international financing). Thus, raw sewage discharged from Palestinian communities flows freely in many streams in the West Bank.

Palestinian Employment in Israel ³⁰

In 2014, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, published an article lauding Israeli employers for their treatment of Palestinian workers in Israel. The article stated, “Whenever Palestinian workers have the opportunity to work for Israeli employers, they are quick to quit their jobs with their Palestinian employers – for reasons having to do with salaries and other rights….The salaries of workers employed by Palestinians amount to less than half the salaries of those who work for Israeli employers.”

“The [Israeli] work conditions are very good, and include transportation, medical insurance and pensions. These things do not exist with Palestinian employers….”

According to Bassem Eid, founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, 92,000 Arabs from the West Bank work in Israel each day.³¹

16. Marwan Asmar, “A Trip into the Heart of Palestine,” Gulf News (Dubai), June 17, 2015, http://gulfnews.com/culture/people/a-trip-into-the-heart-of-palestine-1.1536536 .

17. Jim Zanotti, “U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians,” Congressional Research Service, July 3, 2014 ,https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22967.pdf..

18. Global Humanitarian Assistance, “Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2015,” June 2015 ,http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/GHA-Report-2015_-Interactive_Online.pdf p – 141

19. Khaled Abu Toameh, “What Are Palestinians Doing with U.S. Money?,” Gatestone Institute, August 19, 2015 ,http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6353/palestinians-us-aid

20. CIA, “The World Factbook: West Bank,” Central Intelligence Agency, August 6, 2015, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html

21. CIA, “The World Factbook: Israel,” Central Intelligence Agency, August 10, 2015, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/is.html

22. CIA, “The World Factbook: West Bank,” Central Intelligence Agency, August 6, 2015, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html

23. UNDP, “Human Development Report 2013,” UNDP, 2013, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/14/hdr2013_en_complete.pdf p – 25

24. CIA, “The World Factbook: West Bank,” Central Intelligence Agency, August 6, 2015, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html

25. CIA, “The World Factbook: World,” Central Intelligence Agency, August 6, 2015, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html The World Bank, “Arab World,” Word Bank Group, Date Unknown, http://data.worldbank.org/region/ARB

26. CIA, “The World Factbook: West Bank,” Central Intelligence Agency, August 6, 2015, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html

27. UNDP, “Human Development Report 2013,” UNDP, 2013, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/14/hdr2013_en_complete.pdf p – 171

28. UNDP, “Human Development Report 2013,” UNDP, 2013, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/14/hdr2013_en_complete.pdf p – 40

29. Haim Gvirtzman, “The Israeli-Palestinian Water Conflict: An Israeli Perspective,” Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, January 2012, http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/MSPS94.pdf. The writer is a professor of hydrology at the Institute of Earth Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of the Israel Water Authority Council.

30. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik. “Official PA Daily Lauds Israel’s Treatment of Palestinian Workers – PMW Bulletins,”www.palwatch.org. Palestinian Media Watch, September 23, 2014. http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=12696, See also “Palestinian Workers Treated Better in Israel,” I24news.tv. September 24, 2014 http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/44941-140924-palestinian-workers-treated-better-in-israel

31. “Palestinian Human Rights Campaigner Excoriates Palestinian Leadership,” J-Wire, August 27, 2015, http://www.jwire.com.au/palestinian-human-rights-campaigner-excoriates-palestinian-leadership/