ELDER OF ZIYON: The lies the Palestinians tell themselves and the world

Every week, Rami Hamdallah, the "prime minister" of the Palestinian Authority, a person who has no real power, has a cabinet meeting where pronouncements are made and nothing is actually done.

The statements do show how much the Palestinian Authority likes to fool itself, and its own people.

This week the statements included:

The Israeli government will pass a law to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, annexing settlement blocs and retaining the Jordan Valley. The Judaization and uprooting confirms the insistence of the Israeli government to renounce all agreements between the parties, a clear expression of its unwillingness to peace or any intention to reach a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Israel has tried to negotiate, the Palestinians refuse. Israel has shown willingness to compromise, Palestinians haven't. But the lies continue.

Taking such a step would not only be the end of the two-state solution, but the end of any hope for peace and would have repercussions for the entire region.

I am still astounded that these regular threats - couched in terms of warnings - aren't recognized as such by the West.

And let me remind you of how seriously the Palestinians take the "two state solution" that they insist they want.

The Council saluted our people to continue expressing their rejection of the unjust American decision and condemned the serious Israeli escalation of the occupation against our defenseless people, which led in recent days to the martyrdom of a number of Palestinian citizens and the occurrence of dozens of injuries, in addition to the wide circle of raids and incursions.

The "salute" includes the two Palestinians who stabbed two rabbis to death, which is what prompted the raids and arrests. The Palestinian leadership tacitly supports such murders.

The Council condemned the draft racist law submitted by the Minister of the Israeli war, "Avigdor Lieberman," deducting the allocations of prisoners and families of the martyrs, from the funds of the Palestinian clearing. 

Yes, they are defending paying terrorists and their families - and saying that anyone who disagrees is a "racist."

The Council also condemned the Israeli  intention to allow humanitarian aid to be provided by the international institutions to the Gaza Strip while continuing its unjust siege for the eleventh year in a row. Life, it bears full responsibility for the suffering of our people in the Gaza Strip.

Unreal - the PA, which only allowed Israel to restore electricity to Gaza when threatened by Israel, which withholds funds for hospitals and medicines and fuel for Gaza, is complaining when Israel allows humanitarian aid into Gaza - and blames Israel for the situation there, a situation that the PA has been actively exacerbating for the past year! 

If only there was a truly free Palestinian media. If only there were journalists on the ground there who had the guts to report on the truth (outside a few Israelis.) If only there was a real opposition movement that truly wanted peace. 

Hamas Lies With Images Again

Alqassam Brigades @AlqassamBrigade

#Palestinian cameraman bleeding after being assaulted by#Israeli soldiers in the #OccupiedJerusalempic.twitter.com/k2rOVT7v7D

10:23 AM - 10 Mar 13

That’s not exactly how things unfolded.

The Palestinian camera man is Atta Awisat, who after being hit by a stone thrown by a peaceful Palestinian protester, refused to be evacuated for treatment, and then went on to claim that Israeli police prevented his treatment.

Israeli police have photographic evidence that a medic approached his stretcher and offered help, but Awisat refused and asked the Red Crescent to take him out of the Temple Mount towards the Western Wall Plaza. He then urged other photographers to take his pictures.

Here’s the images provided by Israeli police.

Here’s Atta Awisat’s reply to the allegations.

I was hit with something thrown at me, the Red Crescent made ​​it clear that this requires urgent treatment, and wanted to take me to Makassed Hospital on the Mount of Olives. I refused, because I wanted medical treatment in an Israeli hospital. When I got to the Mughrabi Gate, the officers looked at me and did nothing. A policeman named Samson approached me and offeredmedical assistance, I ignored it and continued on foot towards the Western Wall, while feeling dizzy. On the way, one of the officers introduced himself as a medic approached me and offered to help, I told him that for about 10 minutes he looked at me, and asked why only now did he come up to me to offer help? Hence I refused his help. In the hospital, I had 30 stitches and 10 teeth were broken.

There might be conflicting reports on the police reactions to Awisat’s injury – obviously, after Awisat changed his take on events when presented with evidence – yet one thing is certain: Hamas is using this as propaganda. Awisat has tried to downplay his injury from his fellow Arabs, and wants to be treated in Apartheid’s Israel hospital (for free I presume).

Boy in iconic image was killed by 'Palestinians'

The dead 4-year old boy in a picture with Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil and Hamas 'Prime Minister' Ismail Haniyeh was killed by a misfired 'Palestinian' rocket, according to a report issued by 'Human Rights Watch.'

The specific case mentioned in the report involves the four year-old boy used as a political tool by Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil during his visit to Gaza.

Holding back tears, Kandil kissed the boy’s lifeless body as he was presented him by Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh. Kandil said,”What I saw today in the hospital, the wounded and the martyrs, the boy … whose blood is still on my hands and clothes, is something that we cannot keep silent about.” At the time Israel strongly denied being involved in the boy’s death.

In the report Human Rights Watch places blame squarely on terrorists in Gaza for the boy’s death. “Some rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups fell short and struck inside Gaza. On November 16, a rocket that appears to have been launched from within Gaza hit a crowded street in the Gazan town of Jabalya, killing a man, 23, and a boy, 4, and wounding five people.”

The 'Palestinians' are frauds through and through, rotten to the core. 

How easy is it for a PalArab to lie on CNN?

This morning, after the incident on the Gaza border, CNN interviewed Diana Buttu, former PLO spokesperson.

See how she avoids answering anything, and how she lies with impunity without the iinterviewer making even a half-hearted attempt to blow holes in her statements:

 

0:19 - "The young man who was killed today was actually a farmer, who was trying to go farm his fields. There is absolutely no evidence that this was a demonstration,..."

She says this while the video is showing a demonstration! And Ma'an adds: 

A relative of the dead man, who was at the scene, told Reuters that Qudaih had been trying to place a Hamas flag on the fence. He added that an Israeli soldier had fired into the air three times before Qdeih was hit in the head by a bullet.

So he was not only demonstrating - he was right at the fence and ignoring warning shots while apparently climbing it! 

When asked about the bus bombing in Tel Aviv, rather than condemn it, Buttu says: 

 0:51 - "Well, the incident regarding the bus occurred before the cease-fire took place - Look, I think we have to put this in its proper perspective..."

and then going on about how it is all about the "occupation." The implication is that a bus bombing is a legitimate act of war. 


She then goes on to say that violence is inevitable for people under "oppression" - in other words, saying that Mahmoud Abbas' calls for "popular resistance" is simply not going to work, and Palestinian Arabs will always resort to violence. Again, the interviewer didn't press her on this matter, asking her if she felt this was their right, or what she thought about the bus bombing or the rocket fire on civilians. 

She then completely ignored a decent question about whether an Islamist political takeover of the Palestinian Arabs was inevitable, answering with a terse "no" without explanation and then went back to her playbook of pretending that Israel was the only one to benefit from the Fatah-Hamas split and of course that they were using it to build new settlements - something that hasn't been done in, oh, about a decade - and somehow ethnically cleansing Arabs:

"getting rid of as many Palestinians as possible."

Again, no pushback from the host on this obvious lie. 

And then Buttu goes on to say that negotiations are not ever going to work, and that the only path to peace is by having the world pressure Israel and support her murderous cousins who just terrorized a couple of million Israelis. 

Gee, thanks, CNN, for allowing a propagandist liar to spew forth for three minutes without a single challenge. Great work. 

Egyptian Arbitrator: The Jews Helped Hitler with Gas Chambers, Killed US Ambassador to Libya

Following are excerpts from an interview with Tareq Hamed, an international arbitrator from Egypt, which aired on Al-Khalijiyya TV on September 19, 2012.

Tareq Hamed: The killing of US ambassador to Libya was done at the urging of the Jews. They sent people to kill him. The reason is that when this ambassador reached Libya... By the way, that ambassador spoke Arabic, loved the Arabs, loved the Muslims, and went there to do actual work. He developed friendly relations between Libya and the US, planning projects and development for the Libyans.

They opposed this. This is the Jewish mentality.
[...]
Interviewer: Israel received millions and millions from Germany because of the Holocaust, or the gas chambers.

Tareq Hamed: Which they themselves did in order to get their own country... Something must be said for the sake of history, so that people will know. Everyone is saying one thing, while the truth is completely different.

The Jews themselves greatly helped Hitler with the gas chambers, at the urging of England, because the Jews at that time were scattered and wanted a country. Something big had to happen to generate the world's sympathy towards them. The Jews were expelled from all countries, so this had to be done, so that the international community would decide to establish their state.

Before colonialism was over, their country was founded in Palestine, on the basis of that Holocaust, which was fabricated, and in which only a few died – not a lot of people, like they claim. All the compensations they got...

Interviewer: They say 3 million were killed.

Tareq Hamed: The Jews in the whole world numbered 2.5 million back then, so how could 3 million have been burned?

What a surprise: Abbas proven a liar again

We all knew that Mahmoud Abbas was a liar. We proved it in 2007, we proved it in his speech to the UN, we proved it again and again and again, even quite recently.

And here are two more:

Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday confirmed the accuracy of her account of a 2008 meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in which he had told her why he couldn’t accept then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s terms for a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. In an interview at the weekend, Abbas had denied that the conversation Rice described and quoted in her memoir had taken place at all.

“Dr. Rice stands by her account of the conversation and what she wrote in her book,” Rice’s chief of staff, Georgia Godfrey, told The Times of Israel.

During an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 news that aired Saturday night, Abbas denied a crucial passage in Rice’s memoirs about his failure to accept Olmert’s peace offer.

In “No Higher Honor,” Rice records making a visit to Ramallah in May 2008, immediately after Olmert had detailed the offer to her, during which she “sketched out the details” of the Israeli proposal, which included an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank with one-for-one territorial swaps, the division of Jerusalem between Israel and a new Palestinian state, and an international trusteeship to control the Old City. Olmert suggested symbolic and practical solutions to the Palestinian refugee issue, and offered to allow a limited number of Palestinian refugees to live in Israel, being the first Israeli prime minister to do so.

Regarding the refugee question, Abbas said according to Rice’s account: “I can’t tell four million Palestinians that only five thousand of them can go home.”

During Saturday’s interview, however, Abbas denied making this statement, adding that no such conversation between him and Rice ever took place. When the interviewer, Danny Kushmaro, asked Abbas specifically about the quote in Rice’s book, he responded: “I absolutely did not say that.”

Was Rice lying, Kushmaro, then asked. “I’m not calling her a liar,” the Palestinian president replied. “I am saying that we never had that conversation.”

In the same interview, Abbas also denied making a statement attributed to him by a senior US journalist. In 2009, the deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post, Jackson Diehl, wrote that he met Abbas and discussed with him Olmert’s 2008 peace proposal and why the Palestinian side turned it down. “The gaps were wide,” Abbas said, according to Diehl’s account at the time.

“I didn’t say that,” Abbas said in Saturday’s interview when Kushmaro asked him about that quote.

But Diehl, like Rice, insists the quotes in his piece were accurate. “I stand behind the 2009 column I wrote about the meeting that my colleague Fred Hiatt and I had with Mahmoud Abbas, and all of the quotations it contains,” Diehl told The Times of Israel.

He may be in inveterate liar, but he's a moderate inveterate liar, so Israel really should give in to his ever-growing list of demands and make an agreement with him. It wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on, but the goodwill of the world towards Israel should last a good three or four days. 

Abbas Accuses Israel of 'Ethnic Cleansing' in Jerusalem PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas uses a ‘Nakba Day’ speech to accuse Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas used a ‘Nakba Day’ speech on Tuesday to accuse Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem.

Nakba Day, or the day of catastrophe, is what the Arabs call the English date of May 15, when the State of Israel was re-established with a declaration of independence in 1948.

“For decades, Israel has been building settlements in Jerusalem and around it,” Abbas said in a televised speech, according to a report on Israel’s Channel 2 News. “This is done while there is a massive destruction of houses in the city and their original inhabitants are being uprooted on a daily basis.”

Abbas also claimed that Israel intentionally harms the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, saying, “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is being targeted by the occupation and together with the extremists has become the main target. They are trying to make Muslims and Christians flee the city by imposing heavy taxes, a policy which can only be called ethnic cleansing.”

The PA Chairman also said that “the continued Israeli occupation of Jerusalem is the main factor which fans the tension and wars in the region and the world,” and vowed to “turn every grain and stone to put a complete stop to the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem - the capital of Palestine. As long as the occupation continues there will be no peace.”

He also clarified that “no peace agreement with Israel will be signed without it recognizing an independent Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem. Until then, the Israelis will not be able to live peacefully, but will continue to deal with the consequences of their existence in the heart of a hostile environment.”

Abbas warned that if what he said in his speech does not occur exactly the way he noted, “this will lead to the inevitable formation of a bi-national state. Such analternative is unacceptable to the Israelis, and we are not interested in it either.”

His comments came one day after Israel signed an agreement with PA prisoners to end their hunger strike, which has been gaining international sympathy.

The Prime Minister's Office said on Monday that the deal that ended the hunger strikewas a goodwill gesture to Abbas.

Part of the deal was the transfer of 100 bodies of PA Arab terrorists currently buried in Israel. The Netanyahu administration instructed security officials to prepare to transfer the bodies to the PA in another apparent gesture of conciliation to Abbas.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, at least four Israeli security personnel were hurt in Nakba Day clashes with PA Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

Hundreds of PA residents threw stones and firebombs outside the Ofer Prison adjacent to the Beitunya crossing. The IDF and Israel Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and other crowd dispersal means.

Egyptian Cleric Wagdi Ghoneim: Israel Spreads Drugs and AIDS in Egypt

This has it all - the Protocols, Zionist heroin, and naked Israeli girls purposefully spreading AIDS among Egyptian youth (hijacking an old urban legend, no less.)

MEMRI: Egyptian Cleric Amin Al-Ansari: The Jews Use Women to Harm Muslim Society

Deir Yassin lies

It looked like a story that would please the Brand Israel crowd at the Foreign Ministry. What to do on a Saturday if you're in Jerusalem and not into religion. Humus in Abu Ghosh from the one-time world record-holder, a nice, easy hike in the Sataf forest, and a trendy cafe in mostly secular Ein Karem. And maybe the story did please the Leftists at the Foreign Ministry. But it sure didn't please me and it shouldn't please you either when you read this.

We left with full stomachs, and 10 minutes later, turned off at the Jewish community of Mevasseret Zion, and followed winding roads through the Jerusalem Forest to Ein Karem. Situated inside a gorge and dominated by a golden-domed Russian Orthodox church perched on a hilltop, Ein Karem, now incorporated into municipal Jerusalem, is believed by many Christians to be the birthplace of John the Baptist.

During the war of 1948, 300 Arab guerrilla fighters from Ein Karem, with support from Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian troops, battled Jewish soldiers and ambushed convoys on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. After the April 1948 massacre by Jewish paramilitary forces of 120 Arab civilians in the nearby village of Deir Yassin, Ein Karem was evacuated, and resettled by Israelis. The Muslims are all gone now, and as I wandered through the village, one of the few to survive the 1948 war with most of its buildings intact, I was keenly aware of Ein Karem’s controversial past and couldn’t help but notice that there was no mention — in tourist guides or signs at historic sites — of the Arab evacuations.

There was no 'massacre' at Deir Yassin (and the fact that the Times admits only 120 deaths out of the 750 people who lived there shows it, but they still call it a massacre) and the only 'evacuation' from Ein Karem was the one voluntarily undertaken by the Arab population. No one forced them to leave.

Surprisingly, after the “massacre,” the Irgun escorted a representative of the Red Cross through the town and held a press conference. The New York Times' subsequent description of the battle was essentially the same as Begin's. The Times said more than 200 Arabs were killed, 40 captured and 70 women and children were released. No hint of a massacre appeared in the report. “Paradoxically, the Jews say about 250 out of 400 village inhabitants [were killed], while Arab survivors say only 110 of 1,000.”7 A study by Bir Zeit University, based on discussions with each family from the village, arrived at a figure of 107 Arab civilians dead and 12 wounded, in addition to 13 "fighters," evidence that the number of dead was smaller than claimed and that the village did have troops based there.8 Other Arab sources have subsequently suggested the number may have been even lower.9

In fact, the attackers left open an escape corridor from the village and more than 200 residents left unharmed. For example, at 9:30 A.M., about five hours after the fighting started, the Lehi evacuated 40 old men, women and children on trucks and took them to a base in Sheikh Bader. Later, the Arabs were taken to East Jerusalem. Starting at 2:00 P.M., residents were taken out of the village. The trucks passed through the Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim after the Sabbath had begun, so the neighborhood people cursed and spit at them, not because they were Arabs, but because the vehicles were desecrating the Sabbath. Seeing the Arabs in the hands of Jews also helped raise the morale of the people of Jerusalem who were despondent from the setbacks in the fighting to that point.10 Another source says 70 women and children were taken away and turned over to the British.11 If the intent was to massacre the inhabitants, no one would have been evacuated.

After the remaining Arabs feigned surrender and then fired on the Jewish troops, some Jews killed Arab soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. None of the sources specify how many women and children were killed (the Times report said it was about half the victims; their original casualty figure came from the Irgun source), but there were some among the casualties. Any intentional murder of children or women is completely unjustified. At least some of the women who were killed, however, became targets because of men who tried to disguise themselves as women. The Irgun commander reported, for example, that the attackers "found men dressed as women and therefore they began to shoot at women who did not hasten to go down to the place designated for gathering the prisoners."12 Another story was told by a member of the Haganah who overheard a group of Arabs from Deir Yassin who said "the Jews found out that Arab warriors had disguised themselves as women. The Jews searched the women too. One of the people being checked realized he had been caught, took out a pistol and shot the Jewish commander. His friends, crazed with anger, shot in all directions and killed the Arabs in the area."13

Contrary to claims from Arab propagandists at the time and some since, no evidence has ever been produced that any women were raped. On the contrary, every villager ever interviewed has denied these allegations. Like many of the claims, this was a deliberate propaganda ploy, but one that backfired. Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948 told Khalidi "there was no rape," but Khalidi replied, "We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews." Nusseibeh told the BBC 50 years later, "This was our biggest mistake. We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror."14

One of the places from which the Arabs fled was Ein Karem.

Even some pro-Arab lobbies now admit that there was no massacre at Deir Yassin.

A pro-Arab lobby group which has always claimed that 254 Arabs died during the 1948 battle of Deir Yassin has quietly changed its story, and now admits that about 100, not 254, were killed. The change comes just weeks after the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) released a study showing that the number of Arabs killed in Deir Yassin was less than half of what has been claimed, and that they were not massacred.

The "Deir Yassin Remembered" group, which is headed by Daniel McGowan of Hobart & William Smith Colleges (NY), had repeatedly claimed that 254 Arabs died at Deir Yassin. For example, in the April 1996 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, McGowan wrote of "254 innocent men, women and children who were systematically slaughtered." A February 1998 posting on the group's web site, the "Deir Yassin Remember Online Information Center," claimed that "In all, 254 men, women, and children were systematically slaughtered."

But during the past week, the "Deir Yassin Remembered Group" has twice revised the death toll downwards. In a press release on March 22, 1998, McGowan wrote that "an estimated 100-250 Arab villagers were slaughtered." Then, in a listing of forthcoming activities, released on March 25, 1998, McGowan reported that "over 100 Palestinian men, women and children were killed."

The changes in the death toll count come in the wake of the ZOA's publication of a new study, Deir Yassin History of a Lie, a 32-page analysis (with 156 footnotes) by ZOA National President Morton A. Klein. (For a free copy, please call (212) 481-1500.)

Among other things, the ZOA study shows that the original claim of 254 dead was not based on any actual body count. The number was invented by Mordechai Ra'anan, leader of the Jewish soldiers who fought in Deir Yassin. He later admitted that the figure was a deliberate exaggeration in order to undermine the morale of the Arab forces, which had launched a war against the Jews in Mandate Palestine to prevent the establishment of Israel. Other eyewitnesses to the battle estimated that about 100 Arabs had died. Despite Ra'anan's admission, the figure 254 was circulated by Palestinian Arab leader Hussein Khalidi. His claims about Deir Yassin were the basis for an article in the New York Times claiming a massacre took place--an article that has been widely reprinted and cited as "proof" of the massacre throughout the past 50 years.

The ZOA study describes how in 1987, researchers from Bir Zeit University, an Arab university in Palestinian Authority territory, interviewed every Arab survivor of the battle and concluded that the number of civilians who died in Deir Yassin could not have been more than 120. Despite the study, the "Deir Yassin Remembered" group continued using the figure of 254 dead.

Read the whole thing.

Much, much more on Deir Yassin here and here.

Was Mahmoud Abbas's Family Expelled From Palestine? by Jeffrey Goldberg

In an op-ed in the Times today (about which more later, if I can get to it), the Palestinian president,  Mahmoud Abbas writes the following about himself: "Sixty-three years ago, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was forced to leave his home in the Galilean city of Safed and flee with his family to Syria. He took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees. Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their home and homeland, they were denied that most basic of human rights."

This statement creates a couple of impressions. One subtle impression is that a certain group of people can't seem to help but oppress little boys from the Galilee. The second, clearer impression that it was the Zionist army that "forced" Abbas's family to leave Safed. This does not seem to be true. On other occasions, Abbas has stated that his family left Safed out of a general fear that Jews would seek "retribution" against the Arabs of Safed for an earlier slaughter of Jews by Arabs. Here is his 2007 recounting of his family's self-exile from Safed:

When Abbas was 13, "we left on foot at night to the Jordan River... Eventually we settled in Damascus... My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work. "People were motivated to run away... They feared retribution from Zionist terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising [Muslim pogroms instigated by the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, known later for his Nazi sympathies]. This was in the memory of our families and parents... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and our belongings."

There is no particular reason to hope for a successful peace process when the leader of the Palestinians is selling a false history of Israel's independence. Abbas writes of the United Nations vote to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish, one Arab: "In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued." 

Reaching a successful settlement of this dispute will require both sides, Arab and Israeli, to grapple with their mistakes. Mahmoud Abbas cannot bring himself to note that the Jews accepted the partition plan, while the Arabs rejected it, and went to war to extinguish the new Jewish state in the cradle, and then lost their offensive war. During this war, many Arabs were expelled from Palestine by Israeli forces; many others fled. This is not a unique historical event; most wars cause massive population dislocations. It is worth noting that some Jews, a smaller number, were also expelled from their towns and farms by Arab forces. Larger numbers of Jews -- 800,000 -- were subsequently expelled from Arab countries, where they and their ancestors had lived for hundreds, even thousands, of years. These Jews are not considered refugees today because they were taken in by Israel and given citizenship. The Arab refugees from Palestine were not treated nearly so well by their brethren.

Reciting this history is depressing, of course, because it means the two sides are still battling it out over what happened in 1948. A more constructive discussion would center on the aftermath of the 1967 war. Mahmoud Abbas won't be returning to Safed. But he could be president of an independent state of Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in Jerusalem. If only he -- and, of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu -- could find a way to avoid rehearsing old grievances and instead work toward a future in which both parties don't get all that they want, but get enough to live.

Class on Islam in Germany

This is an ordinary class on Islam in Germany given by ordinary Muslims for ordinary Germans (most of those in the class are apparently already Muslims). This is not a class given by Hamas or Hezbullah or al-Qaeda or other 'militant' organizations. How do 'ordinary Muslims' think about Jews and Christians?

Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas lies about his support for honoring terrorist Dalal Mughrabi