Meanwhile.. France and Britain to the rescue?!

A joint French-British UN initiative would call on Israel and the Palestinians to hold immediate, independent investigations into war crimes allegations stemming from the war in Gaza, as part of a bid to send the Goldstone report back to Geneva and out of the hands of the Security Council or the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

The proposal comes before the United Nations General Assembly is scheduled Wednesday to deliberate on the Goldstone report on the war in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

A source at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the details of the initiative during a telephone conversation.

Netanyahu asked the French President to take action among European Union partners in an effort to form collective opposition to any resolution at the UN on the Goldstone report.

The initiative is a list of “red lines” which was adopted by the 27 members of the European Union. Its main points:

1. A resolution brought for the approval of the General Assembly will not include operational steps, like taking the matter to the Security Council or the International Court of Justice.

2. The resolution would call on Israel and the Palestinians to embark on an independent investigation into the events of Operation Cast Lead, and the allegations of war crimes.

3. The handling of the Goldstone report will return to the Human Rights Council, the UN body in Geneva. The parties will have to report to the council on the findings of their investigations in a few months.

According to the Foreign Ministry source, the document was delivered yesterday by the British and French permanent representatives at the UN to the Palestinian Authority delegation at the international body, as well as the representatives of Arab states, and the members of the Security Council.

Arab representatives at the UN are expected to complete Tuesday the first draft of a resolution that will be brought to the General Assembly for a vote.

The French and British has emphasized in their exchanges with the Arab representatives that if the “red lines” are not part of the resolution being prepared, the European Union will abstain, and may even vote against it – and expects that much of the international community will too.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

6:12PM: Here is the latest example of a PA official denying the Jews’ history in the Land of Israel

For a comprehensive treatment of this issue, see here.

6:00PM: An interesting article on Israeli innovation.

Americans think of war or religion when they think of Israel. But Israel is also an unusual high- tech success story.

A survey last May of non-American companies on the Nasdaq counted three Korean companies, five Irish businesses, five from the U.K. and six from Japan. Israel had 64.

In 2008, Israel drew more than twice the venture capital per citizen than the United States. It drew 30 times as much VC cash as continental Europe, and 350 times more than India.

There are some pretty familiar ethnic explanations for the Israeli tech miracle. Jews are supposed to be smart. Jews from overseas will fund Israeli companies regardless of quality. And so on.

But those explanations don’t suffice, as Dan Senor and Saul Singer point out in “Start Up Nation.” (Senor is my colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations). The Israeli record of innovation has less to do with tribe and more with policy. The Israeli military has also played a surprising role in the process.

The story starts with the old Israel, its suspicion of capitalism and its counterproductive affection for trade unions and communal farming. A decade and a half ago the Israeli government established a tech fund that it dubbed Yozma. Yozma’s goal was to lure venture capital to join it in creating Israeli projects. The very signal that Yozma’s creation sent changed Israeli attitudes about business dramatically. One executive paraphrased John Lennon on Elvis to describe the shift. “Before Yozma, there was nothing.”

Education, Women

But other forces contributed. The high level of education for both men and women meant new companies had someone to hire. During his tenure as finance minister earlier this decade, Benjamin Netanyahu pulled his own Margaret Thatcher by cutting taxes and government jobs and privatizing El Al, the national airline, and the Bezeq, the state-owned telecom company. Netanyahu phased out high-return government bonds, thereby forcing domestic capital to find an alternate place to invest. Financial reforms made the marketplace relatively transparent.

The authors identify several less-intuitive factors. One is Israeli tolerance for failure — bankruptcy isn’t the end of a career. Another is immigration. Sure, the immigrants from the former Soviet Union had degrees, but what mattered as much was the immigrant personality, that of the self-selected risk-taker willing to start over, and therefore, also “start up.” It also helped that academic and business doors were open to the immigrants.

Soldiers of Commerce

Yet the secret weapon of Israeli innovation is the Israeli military. The Israeli draft doesn’t merely ask soldiers to serve for two years; they serve for much of their adulthood, returning each year. This sounds like a career disrupter. But the Israel Defense Forces’ elite units end up functioning as the sort of fruitful techno clusters that Michael Porter of Harvard University identified as so hospitable to innovation.

The advantage of being associated with an Israeli elite unit — two famous names are Talpiot and 8200 — is like the advantage of going to Harvard Business School, only greater, says Israeli Tal Keinan.

Keinan is an Israeli investor and a 2001 graduate of Harvard Business School, so he’s able to put in American terms what the Israeli network does. He points out than a Harvard Business School reunion happens only every few years, and it is among people who shared only spreadsheets, not tents or rifles. Says Keinan of the IDF bond: “Imagine a reunion every year, and that it lasts two to four weeks.” Israelis are that much closer and more likely to help each other on projects.

Democratic Authority

Beyond the advantage of networking are a flatter hierarchy and the democratic habits of the Israeli military. The challenges of war on the house-to-house level have forced the Israeli military to hand authority down the chain. The skills even junior officers garner get them civilian jobs from people who themselves have served, and therefore know how to read a military resume.

An example of the military-high tech dynamic came when the president of PayPal Inc., Scott Thompson, was on the hunt for software to detect fraud, something American innovators believe they produce better than anyone else.

As a favor to an investor, Thompson met with Shvat Shaked, a co-founder of the Israeli company Fraud Sciences. To Thompson’s astonishment, Fraud Sciences was able to predict the likelihood of fraud better than any mechanism PayPal or others had developed. While at 8200 tracking terrorists, Shaked and fellow 8200 veteran Saar Wilf had discovered a special characteristic of those doing something wrong — they try to hide their traces. The innocent, by contrast, don’t. They had used that knowledge to write the most competitive software.

Muslim Opportunity

Soon investors nurturing projects in Muslim-majority countries will have their own Yozma, the new Global Technology and Innovation Fund that President Obama is touting.

But the Israeli record suggests that such public-sector funds, while exciting, aren’t the most important reason for high-tech innovation. “Most of these countries,” Senor says of the Middle East, “are not behind because they lack money.”

Senor suggests that strengthening the talent pool by allowing women in the workforce, strengthening the right to question and vote out officials within the military or outside it, capitalizing on the value of immigration, and voting in a government that encourages experiments all matter more.

The second message here is for U.S. companies, which tend to value veteran officer candidates less than their Israeli counterparts. U.S. veterans’ time in combat may translate into an ability to make the difference at some of our own start-ups.

4:15PM: Picture of the day:

An unidentified Palestinian man holds a pipe as he tries to push back Jewish settlers into a house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem November 3, 2009, in this handout picture released by the International Solidarity Movement. Jews took over the Palestinian home in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday after an Israeli court ruled in their favour in a lengthy land-ownership dispute — a practice repeatedly condemned by the United Nations. REUTERS/International Solidarity Movement/Handout

Wow, Reuters are surely not even hiding their bias if they are publishing pictures from the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement.

Bonus bias points for the wording “An unidentified Palestinian man holds a pipe as he tries to push back Jewish settlers.” Yes, he certainly looks like he merely wants to push them back. As opposed to striking them with it, for example.

4:05PM: Sorry, had no time for updates so far today.

This is likely the same woman who did the same thing a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, this is how the “peace-loving” ISM folk have reported the attack.

Israeli army open fire on civilians at Huwarra checkpoint

Israeli soldiers opened fire on civilians at Huwarra checkpoint at 8am on Monday 22nd September.

The gunfire followed an alleged attempt by a Palestinian woman to pour acid on Israeli soldiers, echoing an attack that took place at the checkpoint two weeks ago. There are mixed reports as to whether any soldiers were injured in the attempt, with some eyewitnesses claiming that most of the unknown substance was thrown on the ground, some inadvertantly splashing a nearby Palestinian man.

The young woman reportedly ran into the crowd, who were passing through the checkpoint, and was chased by Israeli soldiers. Soldiers then opened fire on the crowd of innocent civilians, using live ammunition. Four people were reportedly injured by the gunfire, with two requiring hospitalisation.

There’s a great combination of dishonesty and moral bankruptcy right there.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Wednesday he would allocate funds to repair water well in the Bethlehem area a day after a man was seriously injured following water-related violence in the city.

Palestinian Authority (PA) forces used teargas and bullets to disperse demonstrators from Aida Refugee Camp who were demanding water from local PA authorities.

A drought, a broken well, and a reduction of water supplies by the Israeli company Mekorot, have resulted in a severe water shortage in Bethlehem this summer. The city’s three refugee camps have been worst affected by this. Camp residents say that they have gone without water at times for up to two weeks.

The Popular Committee of Aida Refugee Camp urged Fayyad on Wednesday to open an investigation into Tuesday’s clashes, which took place near the Intercontinental Hotel, adjacent to the camp, as the prime minister was arriving in the city.

Camp resident Jadallah Abu Srour was seriously injured in the violence, the committee said. In a statement the committee also urged Fayyad and the PA to resolve the water crisis, which it called “urgent.”

Bethlehem governor Salah At-Ta’mari briefed Fayyad on Wednesday about the clashes, which he later told Ma’an were “unfortunate.” The governor also met with residents of the camp, who demanded legal action against the security personnel who opened fire on the demonstrators.

I think it is pretty telling that groups like the ISM – who are very quick to.. err.. raise a stink about our protest dispersal methods – are silent on this. Which just goes to show that they are more about hating Israel than about loving the palestinians.

I’m considering a parody of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Richard Cory” as “Rachel Corrie,” calling her an idiot and a tool of terrorists. Would that pass your muster or would you try to find a reason to take that one down as well? Just wondering what your definition of “free speech” includes, Anis!

His response was “This is your level.” I think he meant it as an insult.

Anyway, the idea stayed in my head, so this morning I wrote the song:

I hired Rachel Corrie to help bring Israel down
She was young, she was stupid, didn’t know her way around
She was the perfect patsy, do anything I asked
But even I didn’t know how well she’d perform her last task

Yes I – recruit peacenik wannabes
And I brainwash them for terror
Teach them to hate Israelis
And I wish they all could be
Oh I wish they all could be
Yes I wish they all could be
Rachel Corries.

“Peace and terror are the same” is the lesson that I taught
I told her that the underdog was right no matter what
Killing Jews in Israel is demanded by my god
The ISM is just another arm of my jihad

Yes I – recruit peacenik wannabes
And I brainwash them for terror
Teach them to hate Israelis
And I wish they all could be
Oh I wish they all could be
Yes I wish they all could be
Rachel Corries.

She learned to hate America, the freedom made her gag
She was thinking she was peaceful as she burned her country’s flag
The bulldozer came slowly but I’m glad she hadn’t fled
As good as Corrie was in life, she’s worth much more when she’s dead

And now she’s a propaganda factory
Her death has been the best thing since the SS Liberty
And I’m glad she didn’t flee
Her death was a victory
And I wish I had ninety
Rachel Corries!

If anyone wants to sing and record this, I will be happy to make an appropriate accompanying video.

Yvonne Ridley – convert to Islam and former wife of a PLO colonel, who wrote an infamous eulogy to Shamil Basayev, architect of the Moscow theater hostage crisis and the Beslan school massacre (who proudly claimed responsibilty for the massacre of hundreds of innocent children at Beslan).

Huwaida Arraf - Co-founder of the ISM, who is on record as supporting palestinian terrorism, and has herself acted as a human shield for terrorists.

Paul Larudee – Infamous ISM tool who is on record as supporting palestinian terrorism and is proud of the fact that he once slept in the bed of a suicide bomber.

Excerpt:

..what is most curious about Corrie’s Journals is that hard as she tried to impose the ISM narrative on what she saw, her reports constantly contradicted this narrative, though she didn’t recognize the contradictions.

She wrote that decades of occupation had oppressed Palestinians, yet Gazans kept saying that their difficult situation was due to the Intifada and to Israel’s subsequent counterterrorism measures, not to a decades-old occupation. One Gazan said, “There was a peaceful time in the late seventies and early eighties…things were better before Sharon”—that is, before Sharon became Prime Minister in 2001. (253) Another told her: “Before—no tanks, no bulldozers, no gunshots. Quiet….No noise. After Intifada, daily. Gunshots daily.”

She even confirmed that conditions in Gaza worsened only with the Intifada. She wrote that 60,000 people from Rafah had worked in Israel in 2001, but that the number had dropped to 600 by 2003. But she never drew the logical conclusion that her Gazan informants kept repeating—the terrorist campaign had forced Israel to take defensive measures.

Similarly, Corrie demonized the Israeli soldiers, but they hardly appear demonic. When she and other internationals stand in front of the tanks, the soldiers “open their weird tank lids and wave at us.” The Israeli district command officer worked to “ensure the safety of Palestinian workers.”

Nor, to her surprise, were Palestinians afraid of the soldiers. When a Gazan runs from his home with his two children after ISM mistakenly informed him that his house was to be demolished, she “was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house.” She tried to interpose herself between him and the tanks, yet he clearly did not need her protection. Children play in full view of the tanks, apparently unafraid. (She was stunned to find that despite tanks and bulldozers passing by, “all of these people are genuinely cheerful”—even though this did not fit into her preconceived notions. When IDF soldiers entered a house to position themselves on the roof, no one was bothered or harassed. The children just watched cartoons on TV.

You can read the rest here.

Every nation that has ever been occupied has had the right to protest that occupation. The Americans fought against the British, the French resisted the Nazi occupation, to name just two nations who fought for their freedom. Palestinians have the same right to resist occupation via “legitimate armed struggle,” peaceful actions, or a combination of the two. The ISM is committed to peaceful actions as part of that equation. The violence in this struggle has been the violence against us, not perpetrated by us.

Rather than tackle the specific claims that her organization has met with and protected known terrorists, Arraf launches into the usual ISM propaganda:

A tactic of the Israeli government has been to label every Palestinian man, woman and child a “terrorist” in an attempt to justify its brutal actions against an occupied people. Now the tactic is to also try to vilify peace activists from all over the world who are raising their voices against an evil occupation that is the root cause of violence in Israel/Palestine. The terrorism that we have seen has been directed at us: the Israeli Military terrorism against Palestinian civilians and against internationals like Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, and Brian Avery.

I think we can all draw the necessary conclusions as to what exactly the ISM stands for.