Greetings from Paris - Charles DeGaulle where once again Every Landing Always Late. They've admitted to two hours and fifteen minutes so far. And to think that I ran like crazy thinking I had only an hour and fifteen minutes to make a connection (American left more than two hours late from Charlotte last night, but made up much of that time on the way).
That's okay, because I will have some time to work after I finish this post (and maybe another one) and Paris may be one of the most appropriate places in the world to talk about Shimon Peres, who passed away this morning at the age of 93, because he was fluent in French and because in his later years he so emulated the French.
Israel owes a lot to Shimon Peres, especially our alleged nuclear capability, which was his doing in the early 1960's. I saw a Facebook post this morning that claimed that Peres 'saved' the country from hyperinflation in the 1980's, but the person who wrote it was a child at the time, and I was an adult. I don't believe that's accurate.
Palestinian Communications Minister Imad Al-Faluji, Al-Safir, 3 March 2001. (Translated by MEMRI):
Whoever thinks that the Intifada broke out
because of the despised Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is wrong..
. . This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President
Arafat’s return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the
table upside down on President Clinton.
Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha (pictured above) said the following (from Palestinian Media Watch):
On the personal level, I miss him very, very
much. [Our daughter] Zahwa also misses him, you can’t imagine. She
didn’t know him. She knows that Arafat sent us away before the [Israeli]
invasion of Ramallah. He said: ‘You have to leave Palestine, because I
want to carry out an Intifada, and I’m not prepared to shield myself
behind my wife and little girl.’ Everyone said: ‘Suha abandoned him,’
but I didn’t abandon him. He ordered me to leave him because he had
already decided to carry out an Intifada after the Oslo Accords and
after the failure of Camp David [July 2000].
Imad Faluji, PA Minister of Communications:
Whoever thinks that the Intifada started because
of the hated Sharon’s visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque is mistaken. That was only
the straw breaking the Palestinian people’s patience. This Intifada was
already planned since [Arafat] the President returned from the recent
talks at Camp David [July 2000].” [Private filming of speech by Faluji, Dec. 5, 2000]
The Israel Project
notes that American diplomat Dennis Ross recounts in his book The
Missing Peace how the Israelis called Washington with proof that the
Palestinians were “planning massive, violent demonstrations
throughout the West Bank and the next morning, ostensibly a response to
the Sharon visit.” Washington pressured Arafat to dampen the violence, but the Palestinian leader – again per Ross – “did not lift a finger to stop the demonstrations, which produced the second Intifada.”
Who was Shimon Peres. Some interesting quotes are here. He did some good for the State of Israel, but he took many actions, especially in his later years, that were based on delusions of grandeur that harmed many people.
The prosecutor in Nanterre announced the decision on Tuesday, three
months after three French judges recommended the case be dropped, the Times of Israel reported.
Lawyers for Arafat’s widow, Suha, who filed the case in France in
2012 alleging he had been murdered, said the judges closed the
investigation too quickly.
...
Suha Arafat based her lawsuit on a 108-page report released to her by
the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland, which
said the theory that Arafat was poisoned is most consistent with its
results. Russian experts have maintained that Arafat was not poisoned.
The French experts “maintain that the polonium 210 and lead 210 found
in Arafat’s grave and in the samples are of an environmental nature,”
Nanterre prosecutor Catherine Denis said last month.
Many Palestinians continue to believe that Arafat was poisoned by
Israel because he was an obstacle to peace. Israel has denied any
involvement.
Millions of Euros wasted on this nonsense. Maybe this will be the end of it.
Pro Israel? Hillary Clinton calls Israel an occupying force
Hillary Clinton's new book is apparently not particularly pro-Israel and neither is she. Adam Kredo reports that Clinton has plenty in her book calling Israel an 'occupying power.'
Clinton recalls being surprised by what she termed “life under occupation for the Palestinians,” according to the book.
Pro-Israel officials and insiders on Capitol Hill have called
Clinton’s comments tone deaf and said that her claim that Israel is an
occupying force reveals a bias against the Jewish state.
“When we left the city and visited Jericho, in the West Bank, I got
my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians, who were
denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for
granted,” Clinton writes.
Clinton’s comments demonstrate that she supports the Obama
administration’s efforts to pressure and marginalize Israel, which
current Secretary of State John Kerry recently accused of becoming an
“apartheid state,” said one senior GOP Senate aide, who worked with
Clinton when she was at the State Department.
“What we see here is the true Hillary Clinton, no longer muzzling
herself for fear of reelection in New York or Senate confirmation
fights—the woman who embraced Suha Arafat after smiling through
anti-Semitic tirades,” said the former senior GOP Senate aide who for
years battled Clinton’s State Department.
...
“This should put every American on notice that Hillary Clinton plans to
continue Barack Obama’s failed Middle East policy that coddles
terrorists and castigates democratic allies,” said the former official.
“Clinton knows she lost to Obama in 2008 because she was outflanked by
the left—she won’t make that mistake twice and she knows how much the
left hates Israel.”
Clinton goes on to take aim at the Netanyahu government for not
returning land to the Palestinians that she claims has been “occupied by
Israel since 1967.”
...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Clinton claims, is not serious about the peace process.
This claim has been echoed by senior State Department officials,
several of whom have sought to blame Israel for the recent failure of
peace talks.
“Netanyahu has been deeply skeptical of the Oslo framework of
trading land for peace and a two-state solution that would give the
Palestinians a country of their won in territory occupied by Israel
since 1967,” Clinton writes.
One senior pro-Israel official who reviewed Clinton’s comments dubbed them as “troubling.”
Hillary Clinton is not pro-Israel. It's time for Israel's supporters to stop fooling themselves.
Of course Clinton's recent experiences
are relevant to a presidential run. But so are her actions in the 90s,
the 80s and even the 70s. It's not ancient history; it reveals something
about who Clinton was and still is. And re-examining her past is
entirely consistent with practices in recent campaigns.
In the 2012 presidential race, for example, many in the press were very interested in business deals Mitt Romney made in the 1980s. In the 2004 race, many journalists were even more interested in what George W. Bush did with the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, as well as what John Kerry
did in Vietnam that same year. And in 2000, a lot of journalists
invested a lot of time trying to find proof that Bush had used cocaine
three decades earlier.
So by the standards set in coverage of other candidates, Clinton's past is not too far past.
That's especially true because there will be millions of young voters
in 2016 who know little about the Clinton White House. Americans who
had not even been born when Bill Clinton
first took the oath of office in 1993 will be eligible to vote two
years from now. They need to know that Hillary Clinton has been more
than Secretary of State.
York goes on to describe some of Hillary's actions going all the way back to the 1970's, which ought to be relevant to her suitability to be President. I'd like to add a couple more.
One should be obvious to all of you from the picture above - the kiss and embrace of Soha Arafat, now the widow of Yasser Arafat, but then his wife, after Soha accused Israel of poisoning 'Palestinian' water with cancer-causing agents. Hillary later claimed that she didn't understand what Soha had said. Here's a contemporary New York Post headline.
In his book American Evita, Christopher Anderson writes.
...
It was during this trip to his home state that Bill took Hillary to meet
a politically well connected friend. When they drove up to the house,
Bill and Hillary noticed that a menorah-the seven branched Hebrew
candelabrum (not to be confused with the more common and subtler
mezuzah)-has been affixed to the front door.
"My daddy was
half Jewish," explained Bill's friend. "One day when he came to visit ,
my daddy placed the menorah on my door because he wanted me to be proud
that we were part Jewish. And I wasn't about to say no to my daddy."
To his astonishment, as soon as Hillary saw the menorah, she refused
to get out of the car. "Bill walked up to me and said that she was hot
and tired, but later he explained the real reason." According to the
friend and another eyewitness, Bill said, "I'm sorry, but Hillary's
really tight with the people in the PLO in New York. They're friends of
hers, and she just doesn't feel right about the menorah." (2)
Perhaps the American Jewish community can be awakened before it votes another anti-Semite into the White House....
“The marriage to Arafat was a big mistake and I regret it,” said Suha Arafat in an interview published last week in the Turkish-language Sabah newspaper. “We were married for 22 years and it felt like 50.”
Arafat added that she had repeatedly tried to leave her husband but was denied her freedom.
“I tried to divorce Arafat more than 100 times
and he didn’t let me,” she said. “Everyone knows about this story,
especially those who were in his inner circle.”
According to
the report, the two first met in 1986 when she was a student in Paris
and engaged to a local lawyer. At the time, Suha recalled, the
Palestinian leader, 33 years her senior, was a much sought after man.
“There were many women who wanted to marry him but he only wanted me, despite the objections of my family,” she said.
Suha said that although her relatives, a well-established Ramallah family, were opposed to the union, the pair married in secret on her birthday four years later. Her
mother was furious at the development and flew to Tunis where she
angrily berated Arafat for entering into a marriage with her daughter,
which she deemed inappropriate.
“Fate chose me and it wasn’t easy right from the start,” she said.
But actually, they were the perfect couple. Yasser was, and Suha is, an anti-Semite.
Suha recalled that after her husband initiated the first intifada in
1987 — it actually began as a spontaneous uprising — the world’s media
attention was focused on him, “and it is no secret that it [the media]
is controlled by Jews” she noted.
But she's still enamored with Yasser and still denying she got all that money.
Since Arafat’s death in a Paris hospital in
2004 — she has claimed that he was poisoned — Suha said she has had
dozens of marriage proposals, but rejected all hopeful suitors with the
same answer: “Arafat was my hero.”
Suha lives on a stipend she gets from the
Palestinian Authority, which she said is barely sufficient to support
her and her daughter, and is a far distance from reports on millions of dollars that went to her through secret bank accounts.
“All the
stories about Arafat putting millions in my bank account are nonsense
and lies,” she said. The money is with those who were close to Arafat
and anyone who is determined can find it.”
Of course she doesn't discuss her $100,000 per month 'allowance' from the 'Palestinian Authority' budget....
Suha admits it: Yasser Arafat planned the intifada after Camp David collapsed
Yasser Arafat's widow Suha has told Dubai television that her husband planned the intifada right after the failure of Camp David in August 2000. The intifada had absolutely nothing to do with Ariel Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount.
Senior counter-terrorism analyst says Polonium on Arafat's belongings was planted recently
A senior counter-terrorism analyst has told the Jerusalem Post that the levels of Polonium found on Yasser Arafat's belongings indicate that the substance was planted on the belongings long after Arafat's death.
Dr. Ely Karmon, of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center's Institute for Counter-Terrorism, is a specialist in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism.
Responding to an Al Jazeera report published Wednesday, which said that specialists at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, discovered abnormally high levels of polonium on Arafat's belongings, Karmon said that the half life of the substance would make it impossible for polonium to have been discovered at such high levels if it had been used to kill Arafat eight years ago.
According to the Al-Jazeera report, polonium has a half-life of 138 days, "meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months."
And yet, eight years after Arafat's death, the Swiss scientists reported finding polonium levels of 54mBq and 180mBq on his belonging, considered to be high levels.
"If it had been used to for poisoning, minimal levels should be seen now. Yet much higher levels were found. Someone planted the polonium much later," Karmon said.
"Because of the half life of the substance, the conclusion is that the polonium is much more fresh," he added.
In a to convince the world that Yasser Arafat really was poisoned, the 'Palestinian Authority' will disturb Arafat's rest and exhume his body for an autopsy... just when Arafat was getting used to the temperature in hell....
The Palestinian administration said it would approve Suha Arafat's request to bring Arafat's remains up for autopsy from his limestone mausoleum in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"The Authority, as it always has been, is ready to completely cooperate with and clear the way for an investigation into the true causes leading to the martyrdom of the late president," said Nabil Abu Rdeineh, spokesman to Arafat's successor as Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, without giving a date for such a move.
"I want the world to know the truth about the assassination of Yasser Arafat," Suha Arafat told the Qatar-based satellite TV channel, without making any direct accusations but noting that Israel and the United States saw him as an obstacle to peace.
I wonder what they'll do to the body. The Arab Muslims are really, really good at mutilating bodies.
Hey - wouldn't it be neat if they had a car swarm and played catch with Arafat's body parts? Heh.
The 'Palestinians' are said to be 'out of money' again (Hat Tip: IMRA).
Government borrowing from the Palestinian banking system has reached the maximum tolerable risk limit as per the sound banking principles, governor of the Palestine Monetary Authority Jihad Al-Wazir said Monday.
He noted that banks operating in Palestine have increased their lending to the government in the last two months by over $300 million, which makes banks unable to increase their lending in the coming period unless actual repayments from donor countries are made.
Wazir said in a statement that the Palestine Monetary Authority, sort of central bank, has taken in the last few years several supervisory measures aimed at enhancing and strengthening the efficiency of the banking sector and its ability to absorb shocks in anticipation of regional and international political and economic developments.
He added that “the Palestine Monetary Authority strives consistently to maintain the strength of banks' financial positions, especially in view of the regional and the European financial crisis development.”
What they should do is take money from Abu Mazen and his sons, and from Arafat's Swiss bank accounts (maybe they can cut back Suha's 'budget'?). But we all know that it is far more likely that the broke Europeans will be stupid enough to pony up some more cash for their favorite charity.
There's a fascinating archive of papers sitting in Tunisia. Its exposure would fascinate the world. It's the archive of Yasser Arafat's papers and it includes plans for terror attacks. Who knows - maybe it includes Yasser's secret Swiss bank account numbers.
There are at least three contenders for the archives: Fatah, Hamas and Suha. Who will get it? I would love to see Wikileaks buy it and publicize it....
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded that the archive of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat be handed over to his care, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported Thursday.
The documents, which are currently in Tunisia, reportedly contains fascinating information on planned terror attacks against Israeli targets, the funding sources of terror organizations and negotiations with Israeli officials from the political and security establishments.
The London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported this week that the archive has been a point of contention ever since Arafat’s death in 2004 and the Hamas-Fatah split. "Both Hamas and Fatah have wanted the archive…however, an agreement between the PLO and former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali did not allow for the archives to be handed over,” the report stated.
...
It was further reported that Arafat's widow, Suha, has also been trying to obtain the documents.
Abbas, Yedioth Ahronoth said, has filed an official request with the Tunisian government to have the documents transferred over to him. Sources told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the Palestinians will seek at least an electronic version of the archive.
"These documents are part of out national and operational history," a Palestinian news outlet said. "If there are secrets, it is time they are revealed, even if it causes embarrassment to leaders and heads of intelligence agencies in the Arab community."
Arafat refused to transfer the documents from Tunis for fear that Israel would get its hands on them.
CNN interviews Suha Arafat, who compares her husband to Nelson Mandela.
Suha was interviewed for a CNN documentary series The Price of Kings. CNN claims it is the first time that Suha has agreed to be interviewed on camera. She was interviewed by CNN's Becky Anderson.
Following allegations within the Arab world that Israel poisoned Yasser Arafat, who died of a mysterious illness in 2004, Anderson asked Suha whether she would have wanted a full autopsy on his body.
"Yes, but it was the decision of the Palestinian Authority, and I respected their decision. Yasser died with his secrets with him and no one can know the truth now."
Well, some people, aside from Suha, known the truth. Like his personal physician, Dr. Ashraf al-Qurdi.
When asked why after years of silence did she decide to speak out now she said: "Because of the injustices that was exerted against my husband and myself all this time.
"This has made me speak about what happened especially the last days of Yasser, the last you know, after the intifada Yasser and myself were portrayed as devils. I was portrayed as very, very - as the Mary Antoinette of the Arab world."
Well, gee, I wonder why. Maybe that's what happens when you're the widow of the leader of an 'impoverished people,' and they have to pay you half a million dollars per year to live in Paris in addition to possibly having access to the Swiss bank accounts he stole from them.
"Did he have a conscience?" asked Anderson; "Of course he had a conscience. Yasser Arafat was the conscience – he was the Mandela of the Arab world, the Mandela of Palestine," Suha stated.
Mandela was smart enough to take a deal when he was offered one. Arafat set loose terrorists to commit random murders instead.
Suha claimed that the arrest warrant coincided with the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to seek membership in UNESCO and the UN with the aim of defaming her husband and the Palestinian cause. She said that if her husband were alive he would have told her not to worry about the allegations and that they [the Tunisians] can go to hell.
She added that the former Tunisian first lady kicked her and her daughter, Zahwa, out of Tunisia in a humiliating manner. "The Tunisian authorities packed all our personal belongings in cartons and asked us to leave the house which was given to us in Tunis,” Suha Arafat said. “Tarabulsi also threatened to throw our personal items to the street within 48 hours if we did not leave the country. She also stripped me of my Tunisian citizenship.”
She said that since Arafat’s death the Palestinian Authority has been paying her a monthly salary of $12,000.
In an interview with a Tunisian TV station, Suha said that the school was the only business she had with Tarabulsi. “It was a humanitarian deal,” she explained. “I wanted to start a university for unprivileged people. Leila [Tarabulsi] was the real president of Tunisia for 23 years. All of the Tunisian people were oppressed. I was also a victim of her.”
So if the charges aren't true, why would the opponents of the people who threw her out be going after her? An Arab/Muslim country trying to embarrass the 'Palestinians'? You've got to be kidding. And by the way, why is she getting $12,000 per month in foreign aid money (the 'Palestinians' have nothing else) as a salary for shopping in Paris? Hmmm.
Tunisia has issued an arrest warrant for Suha Arafat, the widow of 'Palestinian' leader Yasser Arafat. She is charged with - what else - corruption.
The allegations go back to a 2006 business deal, when Suha Arafat had a fallout with former first lady of Tunisia over the establishment of an international school in Tunis, AFP quoted Tunisian newspapers as saying.
In 2007, Suha was declared persona non grata in Tunisia and had her citizenship revoked, reportedly by presidential decree. Suha was reported to be living in Malta, at least several months a year, where she owns a home.
Since the ouster of former Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, a number of former regime officials have been charged with corruption.
Suha was raised as a Catholic in Ramallah and Nablus and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Suha met Yasser Arafat when she was on assignment in Jordan for a French newspaper. She was immediately appointed as a public relations adviser to the PLO and later as an economic consultant to her husband. The two married secretly in 1990 at Arafat's house in Tunisia and kept the wedding secret for 15 months.
She drew sharp criticism from many Palestinians when she tried to prevent senior PA officials, including PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, from visiting her husband while he was being treated in a military hospital in Paris.
Here's a Wikileaks document dump about what Suha Arafat learned about corruption during her years as the first lady of the 'Palestinian Authority.' Apparently quite a bit.
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
