Pamela Geller is trying to make everyone aware of the role Qatar plays in financing and supporting terror. Here's an example. It's a letter sent to CNN President Jeffrey Zucker.
This letter is being sent to you on behalf of the Qatar Awareness Campaign Coalition.
The purpose is to inform you and the public of the activities of the
state of Qatar. CNN regularly solicits the opinion of policy experts and
fellows from Brookings Doha, which receives millions of dollars in
funding from Qatar. CNN.com also featured a prominent ad for the Qatar
Foundation.
We urge to you read the information below, which includes evidence that
Qatar is arguably the preeminent sponsor of terror in the world today.
It is a benefactor of the genocidal armies of ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko
Haram; it is involved in Taliban narcotics trafficking through a
relationship with the Pakistani National Logistics Cell; and profits
from operating a virtual slave state. Qatar is involved in terror operations from Nigeria to Gaza to India to Syria to Iraq.
So the public understands why this letter is addressed to you, the
president of CNN, here are some facts pertaining to CNN’s involvement
with Qatar.
Following the overthrow of the pro-Muslim Brotherhood government of
Mohamed Morsi, who simultaneously backed and supported Qatar, the CNN Global Public Square blog featured an interview with Gregory Gause III,
professor of political science at the University of Vermont and
non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. Prof. Gause
expressed disapproval of the ouster of the government of Morsi, a close ally of Qatar.
In August 2014, during the Israel-Gaza war, the CNN Global Public Square blog featured an op-ed by Sultan Barakat,
Director of Research at Brookings Doha. Barakat was especially critical
of Israel, which he accused of “disregard for basic civilian
infrastructure” in Gaza, and stated that Israel “clearly prefers an
underdeveloped ghetto to a viable foreign country [in Gaza].”
[CNN.]com featured a special advertising page
for the Qatar Foundation. This ad linked to “a 30-minute monthly
feature program … that seeks to capture the dynamism and broad range of
cultural diversity in … the Middle East.” The Qatar Foundation, with the
Emir of Qatar, established
the Al-Qaradawi Research Center. Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the spiritual
leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a vocal supporter of violent jihad.
In light of Qatar’s consistent and vocal support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, we ask that you consider the attached sourced report
on Qatar’s activities. The links cited are vetted and credible sources.
We hope you take the time to verify the truth of the statements for
yourself.
After doing so, the Coalition of the Qatar Awareness Campaign calls on you to exert
due influence on the Qatari government to cease any type of involvement
in all forms of Islamic terrorism, slavery, and drug trafficking!
In the New York Times, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, refers to Doha, Qatar as 'Club Med for terrorists.'
Since Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, Hamas has dragged us into
three rounds of major assaults, and more than 14,800 rockets have been
fired into Israel by the group or its proxies. The discovery of dozens
of tunnels packed with explosives, tranquilizers and handcuffs that end
at the doorsteps of Israeli communities should be enough to convince
anyone that Hamas has no interest in bringing quiet to Gaza or residing
alongside Israel in peace.
It says a great deal that Hamas’s
former Arab backers, which historically have included Egypt, Syria and
Saudi Arabia, long ago abandoned the terrorist group. Only a few nations
still stand by Hamas. Among the most prominent is the tiny Persian Gulf
emirate Qatar.
In recent years, the sheikhs of Doha, Qatar’s capital, have
funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza. Every one of Hamas’s
tunnels and rockets might as well have had a sign that read “Made
possible through a kind donation from the emir of Qatar.”
Mr.
Meshal’s uncompromising stance — he has vowed never to recognize Israel
— has long been an obstacle to reaching a peace deal. But behind Hamas,
Qatar is pulling the strings. According to a report last week in the
pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Hayat, Qatar even threatened to expel Mr.
Meshal if Hamas accepted Egyptian proposals for a long-term cease-fire
in Gaza. All because Doha wants a starring role in any cease-fire
agreement between Hamas and Israel.
It is time for the
world to wake up and smell the gas fumes. Qatar has spared no cost to
dress up its country as a liberal, progressive society, yet at its core,
the micro monarchy is aggressively financing radical Islamist
movements. In light of the emirate’s unabashed support for terrorism,
one has to question FIFA’s decision to reward Qatar with the 2022 World
Cup.
Qatar’s continued sponsorship of Hamas all but guarantees that, whatever
happens in this round of hostilities, the terrorist group will rearm
and renew hostilities with Israel. The only way forward is to isolate
Hamas’s last major backer. Given Qatar’s considerable affluence and
influence, this is an uncomfortable prospect for many Western nations,
yet they must recognize that Qatar is not a part of the solution but a
significant part of the problem. To bring about a sustained calm, the
message to Qatar should be clear: Stop financing Hamas.
'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen may be taking reports of an attempted Hamas coup seriously, but that's not stopping him from going to Doha on Wednesday to pay homage to Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal and to Meshaal's patron, the Emir of Qatar.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will travel to Doha on Wednesday and hold talks the next day with the emir of Qatar and Hamas exiled leader Khaled Meshaal, the Palestinian ambassador in Qatar told AFP Tuesday.
Abbas's visit to Qatar was initially announced for Monday by Palestinian officials who are in Cairo for indirect talks with Israel on a lasting truce in Gaza.
Abbas will on Thursday discuss separately with Meshaal and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani latest developments in the negotiations in Cairo and "aid and reconstruction" in Gaza, Palestinian ambassador Monir Ghannam told AFP.
From Doha, Ghannam said Tuesday, Abbas will travel on to Cairo as part of contacts the Palestinian leadership is staging "with all the parties concerned" in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The meeting follows both the last-minute extension of a 5-day
ceasefire between Israel and Hamas - and rumors of Israel agreeing to
some of Hamas's unprecedented demands for a lasting truce - and the
revelation that Hamas recently staged a coup in Judea-Samaria.
This sounds like Abu Bluff's self-preservation instinct kicking in. Otherwise, it makes no sense for him to meet with these people. Abu Bluff was among those who was furious at John Kerry for bringing Qatar into the negotiations last month.
Or is Kerry perhaps responsible for the necessity for holding this meeting. Has Kerry made Qatar indispensable for the 'Palestinian Authority'? If yes, great job America! /sarc
This is likely former Hamas 'Prime Minister' and Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh's new dining room, after the IAF - finally - took care of his house on Monday night.
Israeli aircraft hit the home of Hamas's top leader in Gaza, Ismail
Haniyeh, inside the Shati region of Gaza on Monday night, his son said.
"The Israeli enemy struck our house twice," Abed Salam Haniyeh said in a statement quoted by AFP.
The Reuters news agency quoted Gaza’s interior ministry as having said that the airstrike caused damage but no casualties.
An IDF spokeswoman had no information on the report but was checking for details.
Maybe Haniyeh should just get a real job. I hear there's an Emir in the Gulf looking for a driver.
Qatar and Turkey have been vying to replace Egypt as the intermediary between Israel and the 'Palestinians.' Jonathan Schanzer explains why that's not a great idea.
But using the good offices of Qatar is a huge mistake. The same goes
for Turkey. In exchange for fleeting calm, the United States will have
effectively given approval to these allies-cum-frenemies to continue
their respective roles as sponsors of Hamas, which is a designated
terrorist group in the United States.
Since a visit to Turkey by Qatar's ruler Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani,
and amidst reports that Meshal has been shuttling between the two
countries, Doha and Ankara have been floating terms of a joint
cease-fire proposal that would reportedly grant Hamas significant benefits. Specifically, the deal would grant Hamas an open border in Gaza that would allow the group to continue to smuggle rockets and other advanced weaponry at an ever alarming pace.
The Israelis see this as a nonstarter. But the White House is
nevertheless working the phones with Qatar and Turkey to see if a deal
can be struck.
Since the war broke out in early July, Secretary of State John Kerry has reached out at least three times by phone to Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and six times to his Qatari counterpart, Khalid Al Attiyah (Kerry's Mideast chief boasted
last month that the secretary of state "is in very constant contact"
with FM Al-Attiyah and even "keeps his number on his own cell phone").
Kerry was also expected to visit Qatar before Egypt's aborted cease-fire proposal.
It is by now no secret that Qatar has emerged as Hamas' home away
from home and ATM. Shaikh Tamim's father, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani,
visited Gaza in 2012 when he was still the ruler of Qatar, pledging $400 million in economic aid. Most recently, Doha tried to transfer millions of dollars
via Jordan's Arab Bank to help pay the salaries of Hamas civil servants
in Gaza, but the transfer was apparently blocked at Washington's
request.
Since 2011, Qatar has been the home of the aforementioned Khaled Meshal, who runs Hamas's leadership. During a recent appearance on Qatar's media network Al Jazeera Arabic,
Meshal blessed the individuals who kidnapped and ultimately murdered
three Israeli teenagers. He boasted that Hamas was a unified movement
and that its military wing reports to him and his associates in the
political bureau. American officials have revealed that Qatar also hosts several other Hamas leaders. Israeli authorities reportedly intercepted
an individual in April on his way back from meeting a member of Hamas's
military wing in Qatar who gave him money and directives intended for
Hamas cells in the West Bank.
Israeli and Egyptian
officials report that Qatar is so eager for a political win at Cairo's
expense that it actually urged Hamas to reject the Egyptian cease-fire
initiative last week. Doha is also using its vast petroleum wealth to
striking diplomatic effect: one UN official source suggests that UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon would not have made it to Doha for
cease-fire talks on Sunday if the Qataris hadn't chartered him a plane out of their own pocket.
Emir of Qatar to Hamas: 'If you want my support, cut off relations with Iran, recognize Israel, give up on Jerusalem'
According to a report in a French magazine, last month's meeting between Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa,wasn't quite as cordial as the 'Palestinians' have cracked it up to be. According to the report, Khalifa told Haniyeh that if he wants support from Qatar, he must give up his alliance with Iran, and recognize Israel with a united Jerusalem (including 'east' Jerusalem) as its capital (Hat Tip: David H). This is from an English Google translation of the French report.
According
to Palestinian sources, the meeting between Palestinian Prime Minister
in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, and the Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa, ended
with a disagreement about the conditions imposed by Qatar to support the
Palestinian cause. Cited yesterday by the Lebanese Hezbollah chain El-Manar, these sources have reported that the emir of Qatar has suggested: "If you want to obtain economic and financial aid, you must break your alliance with Iran, enemy of Islam and Muslims
"- According to these sources, the conditions set by Hamad bin Khalifa
Palestinian Prime Minister were also negotiate with the" Zionist entity
"without preconditions, to recognize Israel, to accept that Jerusalem
is the capital of Israel and abandon the recovery of the eastern part as
well as to announce the end of the armed resistance and begin
negotiations as the only option for resolving the Palestinian question.
The emir of Qatar on Tuesday became the first head of state to visit
the Gaza Strip since Hamas took full control of it in 2007, the latest
step in an ambitious campaign by the tiny Persian Gulf nation to
leverage its outsize pocketbook in support of Islamists across the
region — and one that threatened to widen the rift between rival
Palestinian factions.
This actually is a pretty good way to describe the visit, including a
mention of the Emir's support for Islamists. It's much better than Qatari emir makes historic first visit to Gaza, in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Further, the New York Times reports:
In the West Bank, allies of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the
Palestinian Authority, who has struggled to preserve his own legitimacy,
warned that the visit set a dangerous precedent of Arab leaders’
embracing Mr. Haniya as a head of state and thus cleaving the
Palestinian people and territory in two. “We call on the Qatari prince
or his representative to visit the West Bank too!” blared a headline on
an editorial in the leading newspaper Al Quds.
The visit signaled just how much the region had changed for Hamas since
the advent of the Arab Spring. Where Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak
once allied with Saudi Arabia to squeeze Hamas by keeping the border
largely closed, Egypt under a new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi,
opened the crossing to allow the Qatari ruler through. But the visit
also reflected the unique foreign policy that has allowed Qatar to
straddle competing worlds, bankrolling political movements like Hamas,
deemed a terrorist organization by the United States, while maintaining
strong links to Washington.
It’s fair to say that an underappreciated obstacle to a two-state
solution between Israel and the Palestinians is Hamas’s rule of Gaza.
For such an agreement to take shape, Hamas would have to either consent
or not be in charge of the strip. Though a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation is
unlikely, even if it were to happen, it might only bring about Hamas’s
conquest of the West Bank, thereby doubling, rather than solving, the
problem posed by Hamas. And since Hamas won’t abide a true peace with
Israel, it’s difficult to solve the conflict under current conditions.
With that in mind, those who seek to end the isolation of Hamas are
strengthening the terrorist group’s hand against Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah
and the Palestinian Authority’s main governing structure. In this
scenario, it isn’t Israel that loses nearly as much as Abbas and Salam
Fayyad, in whose corner the West claims to be. So while Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pleads with the international community to
help strengthen the PA’s balance sheet, the opponents of Palestinian
reconciliation are helping Hamas, at Fatah’s expense. The latest such
actor is the government of Qatar.
Will the same people who criticize Israel for not doing enough to help
the Palestinian Authority, now complain about the active efforts to
undermine it by much of the Arab world? Will the same people who
advocated allowing Hamas to participate in elections because it would
moderate them, now concede the disaster that has caused?
The rocket attacks against Israel occurred soon after the Emir's visit,
suggesting that his support emboldened Hamas. Khaled Abu Toameh makes
this point in Why Hamas is confident enough:
Tuesday’s high-profile visit, the first of its kind by the leader of
an Arab country, is seen as a huge political and moral victory for
Hamas. The emir’s visit marks the beginning of the end of years of
isolation for Hamas, particularly in the international arena.
But now that Hamas has the backing – and financial support – of a
wealthy and influential country like Qatar, it can afford to do almost
anything it wants.
Hamas knows that in addition to the backing of Qatar, it also enjoys the
support of many Arabs and Muslims thanks to the Arab Spring, which has
resulted in the rise to power of Islamist groups, most significantly in
Egypt.
(Egypt's role until now and possibly in the future was also mentioned by Barry Rubin.)
The New York Times reported on the attacks in Four Palestinian Militants
Killed in Israeli Airstrikes. (No I can't blame the reporter, but
shouldn't the headline have been "Israel's south under missile attack by
Hamas?")
Palestinian militants fired more than 60 rockets from Gaza into
southern Israel overnight and early Wednesday, hitting several houses
and wounding three Thai workers, two critically, in an Israeli border
community, according to the Israeli military. Israel carried out several
airstrikes against rocket-launching squads, killing four militants,
Palestinian officials said. Three of the four belonged to Hamas, the
Islamic militant group that controls Gaza.
The rocket fire began hours after a landmark visit to Gaza by the emir
of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the first head of state to
visit Gaza since Hamas took full control there in 2007. It also came as a
major American-Israeli joint military exercise was under way in Israel,
underlining the volatility in the area at a delicate time before the
American elections, in less than two weeks, and Israeli elections,
scheduled for January.
The Israeli government has come under increasing criticism from
residents of southern Israel who have been forced into protected spaces
and bomb shelters during repeated bouts of cross-border violence.
I don't think that the joint military exercise is relevant here. As
noted above, the emir's visit was likely one of the causes of the Hamas
escalation.
Ever since it forced the Israelis’ panicky retreat from Lebanon in 2000,
Hezbollah has been building up an immense military force, with
firepower that 90 percent of the world’s countries don’t possess,
according to Meir Dagan, the former director of the Mossad, Israel’s
intelligence agency.
The militia’s war doctrine is based on the assumption that Israel is
hypersensitive to civilian casualties, that it cannot wage a protracted
war and that it will always aim for the quickest possible clear-cut
victory. With this in mind, Hezbollah has constructed a complex network
of underground bunkers with the goal of assuring survivability,
redundancy and an ability to maintain a prolonged missile barrage
against Israeli cities.
...
The doctrine proved itself in the war between the two sides in 2006,
when Israel failed in its attempt to liquidate Hezbollah and was once
again forced to withdraw from Lebanon, bruised and bleeding.
Despite the Republican Party’s shrill campaign rhetoric on Israel, no
Democratic president has ever strong-armed Israel on any key national
security issue. In the 1956 Suez Crisis, it was a Republican, Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who joined the Soviet Union in forcing Israel’s founding
father, David Ben-Gurion, to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula after a
joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt.
In 1991, when Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on Tel Aviv, the
administration of the first President Bush urged Israel not to strike
back so as to preserve the coalition of Arab states fighting Iraq. Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir resisted his security chiefs’ recommendation to
retaliate and bowed to American demands as his citizens reached for
their gas masks.
After the war, Mr. Shamir agreed to go to Madrid for a Middle East peace
conference set up by Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Fearful
that Mr. Shamir would be intransigent at the negotiating table, the
White House pressured him by withholding $10 billion in loan guarantees
to Israel, causing us serious economic problems. The eventual result was
Mr. Shamir’s political downfall. The man who had saved Mr. Bush’s grand
coalition against Saddam Hussein in 1991 was “thrown under the bus.”
I don't think that a single one of Halevy's examples is wrong. I do think that his examples are highly selective.
The fallacy here is that Halevy cites this in order to refute Mitt
Romney’s charge that President Obama has repeatedly thrown Israel “under
the bus.” In doing so he chooses to ignore the many instances of
pressure from Democrats. Indeed, just as every Republican occupant of
the White House has some blots on his ledger with regard to Israel, the
same is true of almost every Democrat dating back to Harry Truman. Yet
what’s truly odd about the piece, and causes me to question the judgment
not only of the Times editors that chose to publish it but those
liberals circulating the article around the Internet today as if it was a
damning refutation of Romney’s allegations, is that none of this stuff
about past Republicans or Democrats has anything to do with Obama. Based
on the tone of the last debate, the president seems quite anxious to
demonstrate his pro-Israel bona fides to wavering Jewish voters in
Florida and Ohio. Those who care about Israel will judge him on his
record, but it mystifies me as to why anyone’s vote would be influenced
by unhappy memories of Ike or the Bushes.
A couple of disturbing points from a post by Sultan Knish about France's Presidential race, which was won by Socialist Francois Hollande (Hat Tip: American Power).
During the debate, Hollande did take care to affirm his Republican credentials, there would be no tolerance for veils or gender segregation. But French Jewish leaders have been warning against voting for Hollande in a country in which such preferences are rarely openly expressed by Jewish leaders.
...
Months before Hollande began making his trip to the banlieues, ANELD, the National Association of Elected Local Diversity, a mainly Muslim group asked the Muslim tyrant family of Qatar for a bailout for the banlieues. Qatar, in addition to taking a bite of European towers of finance, including the venerable Barclays and Credit Suisse, will be pouring 50 million into the banlieues. The only candidate who seems concerned about this is Marine Le Pen.
The cash won't start flowing until after the elections are done, to avoid making them a partisan issue, but who can really object? The banlieues are a disaster and if the Al-Thanis want to blow some dough on them, that's money the Republic doesn't have to spend on them. Close observers might wonder if Qatar might not want to do to France, what it has already done to Egypt and Tunisia, not to mention Libya and Syria, but those observers are invariably dismissed as paranoids.
...
Hollande, the likely beneficiary of the French public's dissatisfaction with Sarkozy, is a placeholder for the long fall of the republic into night. The Qataris are buying up France and the banlieues are swelling because of the malaise leading to the fall. They are the phlegm and sputum that show the presence of the illness, but the illness is there in the body of the nation. The short term debates over economic growth will define the election, but the long term future will be defined not by elections, and not even by demographics alone, but by the soul of a nation.
France, like the rest of Europe, like America, is falling into its own dark night and only a revival of its national values can save it.
Meir Masri, another French national, said the Right's loss in the French election "puts the Jewish community there in an uncomfortable situation, because the vast majority of French Jews, including those who live in Israel, support the Right – and Sarkozy in particular.
"He was the first French leader to fully understand Israel's situation and supported it. France's Jews considered him a pro-Israel leader."
Sarkozy's loss also disappointed Cannes resident David Ben-Naim: "He always supported Israel and the Jews. His connections with the local Jewish community were well-known. Hollande is not as close to the Jewish community and Israel. Personally, I don’t expect anything from him."
Sickening video: Abu Mazen and Emir of Qatar shake hands with Neturei Karta's Hirsh
In earlier posts I mentioned the 'International Conference for the Defense of Jerusalem' which is taking place in Qatar. In this video, you will see Neturei Karta's Rabbi Meir Hirsh shaking hands with Abu Mazen and with the Emir of Qatar.
Iran elected Vice President of UN General Assembly
If you needed any more proof of the total moral decadence of the United Nations, here it is. Iran, which has called for the destruction of a fellow UN member state, has been elected Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly.
On Wednesday, the U.N. General Assembly elected Iran one of its vice presidents and Qatar as president, each for a year-long term starting in September. At one and the same time the Obama State Department has been blanketing the airwaves with speeches on this administration’s love affair with the UN under the title “principled engagement.” But with Wednesday’s U.N. elections, what kind of principles might the Obama administration be talking about?
...
In practice, though, the Qatari president of the General Assembly, and his new right-hand, Iran, have something else in mind. In their first couple of weeks on the job, they will have two contentious orders of business – the U.N.’s Durban III racist “anti-racism” conference scheduled for September 22, 2011 and the Palestinian effort to seek statehood without having to accept a Jewish state. There are now some very clear indications of their strategy.
Last week, the General Assembly adopted a resolution planning the Durban III conference, an event intended to “commemorate” the anti-Semitic event held in Durban, South Africa in September 2001. Durban II took place in Geneva in 2009, and it was headlined by the most famous advocate of genocide today, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Durban III plans entail an opening session with a select group of speakers – including none other than the president of the General Assembly.
It is instructive to recall what Qatari General Assembly president Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser will have to commemorate. At the first Durban conference on “combating intolerance and xenophobia” the head of Qatar’s delegation, Abdul-Rahman H. Al-Attiyah, declared: “all the Israeli heinous violations are justified as a means to bring back every Jew to a land that they raped from its legitimate owners and denied them their right to claim it back.”
Al-Nasser will, undoubtedly, also reflect his emir’s current agenda. During the opening days of the General Assembly in September 2010, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, said: “the war on terror…has plunged us into a kind of war with no limits, nor end, nor logic, nor legal or moral conditions. ..[W]e believe that even as the phenomenon of terrorism exists, it should not be treated by waging wars…To the contrary, it has…undermined the efforts made in dialogue among cultures.”
As for his Iranian sidekick, he’ll have plenty to keep him busy. According to U.N. rules, vice presidents of the General Assembly fill in for the president with “the same powers and duties” on the many occasions when “the President finds it necessary to be absent during a meeting or any part thereof.” They also serve on the governing body of the Assembly, the so-called General Committee, which draws up proposed agenda items and the priority of items – like how to handle a Palestinian statehood resolution, for example.
Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Mohammad Khazaei, lost no time to make it clear what his country plans to do with its new status as a U.N. role model. “Membership in the General Committee is a good opportunity to assert fair positions in the world order…[and] be instrumental in planning the meetings of the Assembly and the arrangement of internationally significant issues for inclusion in the agenda of the Assembly,” Khazaei told Iranian PressTV. He then specifically cited the “important issue” of the “Durban Conference focusing on racial discrimination.”
Oh and by the way, you're not likely to see Hillel Neuer and UN Watch destroying Iranian speakers at the Durban III conference.
To ensure that the views of Ahmadinejad and company get full billing, the General Assembly will also be treated to “summaries of the discussions” (conducted during the day at roundtables), while the whole event will be webcast around the globe. A few non-governmental organizations will be allowed to speak – provided that they are included on a list drawn up by the president of the General Assembly and approved by U.N. member states “on a no-objection basis.”
In case you’re wondering, the resolution that hands Iran and its friends a veto over the selection of anti-racism advocates who will be permitted to speak at Durban III was adopted by the General Assembly without a peep from Obama administration delegates.
Principled engagement, U.N. style.
Your tax money at work. That's especially true if you're an American. Your government pays 22% of the UN budget, and will be paying millions of dollars (along with the City of New York, which has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel) to protect all these 'diplomats.'
Will they say it's not about Israel this time too?
A Facebook page calling for March 16 protests demanding the removal of Qatar's Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, because he is an 'agent of Israel,' has garnered more than 18,000 'likes' since being posted last week.
A Facebook page demanding the ouster of Qatar's moderate, pro-Western emir, accusing him of being an agent of Israel, had attracted 18,262 fans by Saturday in the latest web-driven push for change in the Arab world.
In what is apparently the first call for change in the gas-rich state since popular revolts began sweeping the Arab world, the page has a profile picture with an image of Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, crossed out in red.
Against a backdrop of Qatar's flag is the tagline: "For Qatar: try the traitor, an agent of Israel."
Entitled "Freedom Revolution, March 16, Qatar," the page calls on Qataris to hit the streets to demand change."
...
Among other demands are the exclusion from public affairs of the emir's wife, Sheikha Mouza, and an end to Qatari ties to Israel and the United States, which has a military base in the small Gulf state.
Qatar does not have diplomatic relations with Israel but did maintain informal ties with the Jewish state.
It broke off those ties and closed Israel's trade office in Doha in protest at Israel's offensive against the Gaza Strip over New Year 2009 in which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
The page features pictures of Hamad and others with Israeli officials accompanied by angry comments about the emir being a "traitor like Mubarak."
I did not find the Facebook page itself, but I did find this video, which shows some of the pictures.
Let's go to the videotape.
My Arabic is non-existent, but if someone wants to try translating the song, please put it in the comments.
We keep hearing how the uprisings in the Arab world are not about Israel. In fact, that's a point that Egypt's Mona Eltahaway made quite forcefully during her wildly applauded speech at the J Street confab over the weekend. Those claims ignore pictures like this one:
They also ignore the graffiti in Libya referring to Gadhafi the Jew, the demands by Egyptian protesters and potential Presidential candidates to abrogate the Camp David treaty, and the attacks on the Jewish community in Tunisia.
In the Arab Muslim world, it's always about the Jews. Maybe the blatant nature of the protests in Qatar will open the West's eyes to that reality. But don't bet on it.
There are some fascinating 'Palestinian' reactions to the Palileaks documents here. The bottom line is that they all deny the truth of the documents, and some of them even go after the Emir of Qatar for authorizing what they see as an attack on the 'Palestinian Authority.'
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
