#Caring: Red Cross delivers medical supplies to 'Palestinian refugee camp' in Syria for first time in over a year
For the first time in over a year, the Red Cross has succeeded in delivering medical supplies to the 'Palestinian refugee camp' in Yarmouk, Syria.
"This is the first time in over a year that we
have been able to deliver aid to the people in the camp, we hope to do
more," Daphnée Maret, the deputy head of the ICRC delegation in Syria,
who oversaw the operation, said in a statement.
"We
remain extremely concerned about the hardships being endured by the
people living there, in particular the limited access to food, water and
health care."
Syria's ambassador
to the U.N. in Geneva, Hussam Eddin Aala, said that the ICRC delivery
was "the result of continued cooperation" with authorities and the
Palestinian Red Crescent.
"We have
been sending humanitarian assistance in cooperation with UNRWA to the
camp on a daily basis whenever the security situation allows since
January 30," Aala told Reuters, referring to food parcels delivered to
Yarmouk by the U.N. agency taking care of Palestinian refugees
throughout the Middle East.
"We have been exerting continuous efforts to send assistance and evacuate those civilians who need evacuation," he added.
You didn't hear about this, did you? You can bet that if this were a 'refugee camp' in the 'West Bank,' the UN Security Council would have condemned us six times already.
According to Wednesday's daily Haaretz, the Palestinian
Embassy in Greece reported that the ship that sank off the coast of
Malta was carrying more than 450 passengers, most of them Gaza
Palestinians. Other reports say the vessel was rammed intentionally by
another ship run by rival smugglers.
The Gaza-based human rights group Adamir collected the names of more
than 400 missing people. “No one knows where they are; the whole Gaza
Strip is talking about it. It’s such a painful story, as if it’s not
enough what happened in the last war and now another blow comes,” Adamir
director Halil Abu Shamala told Haaretz, noting that most of the passengers were young people but that there were also whole families aboard.
At least 15 Palestinians drowned when another ship sank off the Egyptian coast near Alexandria on Saturday.
Abu Ahmed, who lost his son on that ship, explained to Haaretz
that most of the Gazans leave through tunnels that originate in the
southern Gaza town of Rafah and come out on the Egyptian side of Rafah.
One Gazan involved in such operations told Haaretz: “This
trip costs between $3500 to $4000 dollars a person. It’s a relatively
small tunnel; most of the big ones have been blocked by the Egyptians.
People crawl dozens of meters and at the end of the tunnel on the
Egyptian side of Rafah a minibus or other vehicle waits for them and
takes them to Port Said.”
He added that Egyptian security officials are bribed to look the other way.
Haaretz heard testimony that the refugees board small boats,
sometimes dozens per boat. Once they leave Egyptian territorial waters
they switch to another boat that in most cases sails to Italy. The trip
usually takes about a week.
One refugee told Haaretz that when the boat approaches the
shore it issues a distress call and Italian navy and Red Cross ships
pick them up. In other cases, people jump into the water with life
jackets, and are rescued by the Coast Guard or the Red Cross.
Evelyn Gordon points out that 'Palestinian refugees' are the only refugees in the world who are denied the right of resettlement.
The news that hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza drowned
last week when the boats in which they were trying to reach Europe sank
once again highlights the hypocrisy of the world’s attitude toward the
Palestinians. After all, the “international community” has designated
two-thirds of all Gaza residents as bona fide refugees, even though the
vast majority of them were born in Gaza and have lived there all their
lives. And as bona fide refugees, they shouldn’t have had to board
rickety smugglers’ boats in a desperate attempt to reach Europe; they
should have been able to apply to the UN for orderly resettlement right
from their refugee camps, just as thousands of other refugees do every
year. But they can’t, because Palestinians are the only refugees in the
world who are denied the basic right of resettlement.
Granted, they are also the only
“refugees” in the world for whom refugeehood is an inheritable status
that can be passed down to one’s descendants in perpetuity, generation
after generation. Under the definition used by the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees, which deals with all the world’s refugees except
Palestinians, only a few thousand elderly Gazans who were personally
displaced in 1948 would be considered refugees today, rather than the
1.2 million actually on UN rolls.
So if the “international community” were to argue that Gazans don’t
deserve a right to resettlement because they aren’t really refugees,
that would be perfectly legitimate.
But it doesn’t. In fact, not only has the world adopted the unique
definition of refugeehood promulgated by the Palestinians’ personal
refugee agency, UNRWA, but it actively supports this definition by
funding UNRWA’s ever-expanding budget to keep pace with its
ever-expanding number of “refugees.” And once having accepted the claim
that these born-and-bred Gazans are actually refugees from an Israel
they’ve never seen, the international community is morally obligated to
ensure that they enjoy the same rights as all other refugees.
Instead, Palestinians are the only refugees in the world who are denied the right of resettlement. Whereas UNHCR resettles tens of thousands
of refugees every year, UNRWA hasn’t resettled a single refugee in its
65 years of existence. On the contrary, the schools it runs for
Palestinian refugees indoctrinate them
from kindergarten on that there is one, and only one, way for them to
end their refugee status: by “returning” to the towns or villages in
Israel that their ancestors fled–which most of them have never seen, and
some of which no longer even exist. In short, since Israel would never
voluntarily accept all five million “refugees” on UNRWA’s rolls, it’s
telling them that the only solution to their refugeehood is Israel’s
destruction.
But as long as there are no Jews killing the 'Palestinian refugees'... what difference does it make?
The phrase 'peaceful Palestinian' is almost an oxymoron
Israeli diplomat Yehuda Yaakov - our Consul General to New England no less - describes the hopelessly naive view of the 'Palestinians' that has led to the disaster known as the 'Oslo process.'
I have no doubt that Palestinians, like Israelis, seek normalcy. Like
us, they want a better future for themselves and their children. If
they could speak freely I am sure they would say that they want the
concrete and metal that went into the tunnels to go into schools and
clinics instead.
Any observer can see this plainly in Israel’s
relationship with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — a
relationship which, while far from perfect, certainly reflects an
aspiration toward normalcy at its most basic level: toward improvement,
not destruction.
How can I be so sure? Well, I saw this thirst for normalcy with my own eyes just this summer in New England, while visiting the "Seeds for Peace" summer camp held annually in Maine.
There my wife, Ofra, and I met not only Israeli campers of all
religions, we also chatted with Palestinians. My Arabic-speaking wife
conversed with them in their mother tongue.
We didn't talk politics, of course, just about how wonderful it was
to enjoy life itself. We spoke civilly, shook hands, smiled and even
laughed with each other. Indeed, in this serene New England atmosphere
we saw so clearly how good fences make good neighbors.
Maybe it's something about the air in Maine. Jonathan Tobin, using a New York Times article by architecture critic Michael Kimmelman in which Kimmelman discusses the trials and tribulations of building a town square after 65 years in the Al-Fawwar 'Palestinian refugee camp' south of Hebron, sees things in a far different light.
While the Arab states colluded with Palestinian leaders to keep the
refugees homeless in order that they may be preserved as props in an
endless war against Israel, the residents of the camps have participated
in this dispiriting and pointless charade. They have often resisted any
improvements in their lot because to accept anything more than charity
and subsistence—provided by UNRWA, the United Nations agency dedicated
to keeping Palestinian refugees homeless—was a tacit acceptance that
they weren’t going back to what is now Israel.
As Kimmelman tries to argue, the fact that the residents of the camps
have accepted the building of squares or ball fields can be interpreted
as a sign that their ideological quest is being set aside in order to
deal with their current needs. But even in this slightly hopeful
context, it is hard to ignore the intransigent nature of the culture of
these camps that provides an obstacle to peace that seems impossible to
overcome.
As a Palestinian architect told Kimmelman, the right of return is “an
architectural question in one respect,” as it is a question of the
redistribution of land and buildings. The quest to give these people
better lives and a sense of dignity that has been denied them is one
that deserves sympathy and support. But, unfortunately, even in the
context of a discussion about improving the camps and recognizing that
they are more than mere way stations on a path to Israel’s destruction,
the rhetoric of even the most moderate voices in this piece took it as a
given that “return” to Israel, i.e. the end of the Jewish state, was a
given. Though an almost equal number of Jews were forced to flee from
their homes in the Arab and Muslim world at the same time and made new
lives in Israel and the West, the Palestinian Arabs seem to prefer
ongoing misery to acceptance of the fact that they must move on.
What we must recognize here is that the pathology of hate is not
merely about Palestinian violence but also the ingrained beliefs passed
on from generation to generation that alone of all historical events of
the last century, the creation of Israel must be reversed. Unlike the
countless millions of other refugees from wars of aggression waged in
their name, the descendants of the Palestinians who hoped to see the
Jews prevented from having their state think they can continue to
persist in this delusion and that world should support them in holding
on to it.
Anyone who questions the power of this delusion should have taken
note of the fact that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas specifically rejected an Egyptian offer
to give hundreds of square miles in the Sinai adjacent to Gaza for the
purpose of resettling the refugees. Abbas, the man acclaimed as a peace
partner for Israel by the world, rejected the offer out of hand. The
reason was that he knows the refugees and their supporters won’t listen
to reason and start seeking solutions to their plight that don’t involve
the eradication of Zionism. If it took decades for Palestinians to
accept the need to build a square in their refugee camp, it’s easy to
understand why they won’t give up their ideas about going “home” or
thinking that they should be given, as some insist, a “choice” about
dispossessing the Jews of Israel.
The fact that the Times and most of the rest of the
international media ignored the story about Abbas’s rejection of Egypt’s
offer says a lot about the way the world has accepted Palestinian
assumptions. But while the media obsesses about Israelis building in
lands that were theirs before 1948 and would remain in the Jewish state
even in the event of a peace agreement, they treat the absurd
Palestinian fantasies as reasonable. Far from merely an architectural
question, the camps and what they represent are a permanent obstacle
that must be removed if the Middle East is ever to know peace.
And if that's how the 'Palestinians' in Al Fawwar - who would likely be residents of a 'Palestinian state' were one ever established - feel, imagine the chances that the stateless 'Palestinians' in 'refugee camps' in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq will ever give up their 'right of return,' or that the governments of those countries might ever look them straight in the eye and tell them that 65 years of statelessness was all for nothing.
The longer this goes on, the less likely it is that there will ever be a 'peaceful solution.' And there is no end in sight. Yehuda Yaakov is a starry-eyed, naive fool.
Abu Mazen responsible for the deaths of thousands of Syrians
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen is responsible for the death of this child and thousands of other 'Palestinian' refugees in Syria. To see why, go here.
At least one of the two suicide bombers who targeted an Iranian cultural center in the Hezbullah section of Beirut on Wednesday is... a 'Palestinian' from the Ein Hilweh 'refugee camp.'
One of the alleged suicide bombers has been identified as, Nidal
al-Mghayer, a resident of Sidon’s Baysariyyeh, who has family members
in Ain al-Hilweh, according to a report by the NOW Lebanon website,
which said he was a supporter of fugitive Sunni jihadist cleric Ahmad
al-Assir.
Assir and his followers fought with Lebanese security forces last summer.
DNA tests taken of relatives of Mghayer matched remains at the blast site, sources confirmed, reported The Daily Star.
Mughir’s father was located after the army circulated pictures of the suspect.
Security sources said the father told military intelligence that the picture was that of his son.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV website reported that Mughir fought for a month
in the Syrian city of Qalamoun against the Syrian army.
But give them a 'state' and they'll stop being international terrorists.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is building housing for revenants whom he is expelling from their homes. Because the revenants wish to remain in Judea and Samaria, the new housing will be overlooking 'Palestinian refugee camps.' This one is called Neot Balata. Here's the project's promotional flyer.
With apologies because most of you who don't speak Hebrew (and many of you who do but don't live in Israel) won't get it.
The terrorist, Samir Issawi, was sentenced to 26 years in prison for
terrorism in 2002, and was set free as part of the 'terrorists for Gilad
deal' in 2011. He was rearrested for engaging in terrorism again. Now,
he has been released again....
In 2002 Issawi was sentenced to 26 years in jail for terrorism, going
free after a mere 10 years in the deal to free Gilad Shalit. After
signing a promise not to return to terrorist activities, Issawi promptly
broke those conditions and was rearrested in August 2012.
After 8 months of hunger striking, Issawi was admitted to an Israeli
hospital, and offered an arrangement to stop his hunger strike and go
home after 8 more months of imprisonment. Issawi agreed to the deal, and
was subsequently freed this week to his Jerusalem home.
Issawi was released because of international pressure brought to bear on Israel to release the terrorist.
Similarly, the 'international community' rushes to decry the 'blockade' of Gaza and to send 'flotillas' of supplies to help its 'poor, starving' people.
But when 15 'Palestinians' starve to death, you don't read about it in the New York Times or the Guardian. You have to go to Maan to read about it. Because these 15 'Palestinians' weren't in Gaza and they weren't in the 'West Bank.' They were in Syria.
At least 15 Palestinians have died of hunger since September in a
besieged refugee camp in the Syrian capital Damascus, the UN agency for
Palestinian refugees told AFP on Monday.
"Reports have come in
over the weekend that at least five Palestinian refugees in the besieged
refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus have died because of malnutrition,
bringing the total number of reported cases to 15," UN Relief and Works
Agency spokesman Chris Gunness told AFP.
He warned of a
deteriorating situation in the camp, where some 20,000 Palestinians are
trapped, with limited food and medical supplies.
"Since September 2013 we have been unable to enter the area to deliver desperately needed relief supplies," Gunness said.
"The
continued presence of armed groups that entered the area at the end of
2012 and its closure by government forces have thwarted all our
humanitarian efforts."
Most of the Yarmouk camp in southern
Damascus is under the control of the armed opposition, and it has been
under a siege by troops loyal to President Bashar Assad for around a
year.
Nothing to see here.... Just Muslims killing Muslims....
MTV: A number of Palestinians opened fire on a Hizbullah checkpoint near the Burj al-Barajneh slaughterhouse a... http://t.co/V6ggLnkQUr
— Naharnet (@Naharnet) September 8, 2013
The Syrian Coalition condemns the
use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces in the Yarmouk Camp. The
Syrian Coalition further urges the international community to intercede
in order to protect the civilians against Assad’s systematic use of
chemical weapons.
The Syrian Coalition reminds the
US - that pledged a serious, strong response to Assad’s use of chemical
weapons - of their obligations to protect civilians. It also stresses
the need to take all possible measures to protect civilians in Syria and
urgently open humanitarian corridors that could save thousands of
Syrian lives.
According to video footage
uploaded by activists inside the capital of Damascus, Assad’s forces are
using chemical and toxic gas bombs to shell the Yarmouk Palestinian
Camp. The strategic, systematic use of chemical weapons in order to
achieve military gains only proves the desperate state that Assad’s
regime has reached.
@AliAbunimah, the founder of the Electronic Intifada website and a buddy of President Hussein Obama, has more than 105,000 tweets to his credit (more than three times the number yours truly has), including dozens since Monday. The only tweet that mentioned Syria had nothing to do with the use of chemical weapons against 'Palestinians' by the Assad regime.
Already under fire for editing the tape of a 911 call from George Zimmerman as he was following Trayvon Martin in Florida, NBC is now afraid to do any editing of the 'Palestinian' story. Instead, it lets lies stand as facts.
Abusrour is part of the first generation of children born to refugee parents in the Aida Refugee Camp, which was established in 1950 between the towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala. It is now home to around 5,000 inhabitants all descendants from the 1948 expulsion from Palestine.
Abusrour considers himself “fortunate” to have gotten a scholarship to study in France, where he stayed for nine years and got his master’s and Ph.D in biological and medical engineering. But his heart was always also with theater, painting and photography. He came home with the dream of working with children to help shape the future of a Palestinian state.
Why are descendants in a 'refugee camp'? Because unlike every other refugee program in the world, the goal for the 'Palestinians' is not to resettle them - as Israel did with its refugees from Arab countries without any UN help. The goal for 'Palestinian refugees' is to leave them as a festering sore, a permanent underclass waiting to pounce on the Jewish state.
Most of the Arabs who fled what is now Israel in 1948 did so at the request of the Arab leadership with the full expectation that they would triumphantly return after five Arab armies drove the Jews into the Sea. It didn't happen that way, but there was no '1948 expulsion.'
But he's really suffering, isn't he? A Masters and a PhD in France - and he's not even using them. Can you afford to go to (or to send your kids to) another country for advanced university degrees? Probably not. But your taxes are paying for UNRWA to send 'Palestinians' like Abusrour to get advanced degrees in France. Call it 'charity.'
The center started working with children in refugee camps in the area of Bethlehem and Bet-Jala, but then spread all over the West Bank with mobile “beautiful resistance” programs in theater, dance and music training.
He explained the center’s philosophy: “Resistance, because we are under occupation still until today and we have this right to resist the occupation; and beautiful, to reflect all this beauty, this humanity, this culture, this heritage, this beautiful heritage of unarmed struggle that the Palestinians have carried over the years even before Gandhi and Martin Luther King.”
Huh? Gandhi was resisting Britain in the 1940's, long before the word 'Palestinian' meant anything other than Jew. And 'Palestinian resistance' has been anything but non-violent. Throwing stones is a violent act.
Suicide bombing is a violent act. Sharpshooting is a violent act. Gandhi and King (well, at least King) would have abhorred the manner in which the 'Palestinians' conduct their struggle. But don't expect NBC to tell you that.
For many Palestinians, it is hard to ignore the long-term support the U.S. has given and continues to give Israel for its security. Many find it hard to understand how a country like the U.S., which plays a leading role in shaping the policies of other countries, can help Israel’s continuous violation of the Palestinian’s rights.
“As a Palestinian I see that [the U.S.] is supportive of an apartheid system that is suffocating us, that is continuing a violation of human rights and human values that we share as Palestinians,” said Abusrour. “I see the governments of the United States of America, one after the other, supporting this illegal occupation.”
No response. None. Abusrour's accusations are left to sit as if they are facts.
What happened? Is NBC afraid to edit anymore since the Trayvon Martin incident?
'Palestinians' in Syria kill each other over 'Naqsa day'
A gutten zummer (good summer) to everyone. Yes, that's the traditional greeting when Shavuoth ends.
A reminder to all of you that because I am in Israel, I only have one day of holiday rather than two. For those of you for whom it is still a holiday, please walk away from your computer and find something else to do :-)
14 'Palestinians' were killed on Monday, and 143 were wounded, when over 100,000 'Palestinians' at the Yarmouk 'refugee camp' outside of Damascus attacked the headquarters of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of 'Palestine,' because.... they didn't send anyone to commit suicide on Israel's border with Syria.
Angered over the failure of camp leaders to organize demonstrations marking the Naksa, the anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights, an estimated 100,000 mourners were said to have attacked the headquarters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.
Reports said the party's leadership refused to participate in the Naksa Day events, but encouraged camp residents to do so. Tensions had already been high in the camp, according to Palestinian sources in the area, because of a divide in the support of leaders for the Syrian regime, and many camp residents who support pro-opposition groups.
Militants with the PRFL-GC reportedly opened fire on the crowd, who were taken to a local camp hospital for treatment. The report cited hospital staff saying 14 were pronounced dead.
During the clash, mourners reportedly set fire into the PFLP-GC headquarters, and demanded condemned the group for its use of weapons against the crowd.
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
