Israellycool

Of course, by impartial and professional, they mean not showing bias against any of the palestinian terror organizations. Bias against Israel is fine.

Journalists lamented the balkanization of Palestinian media at a symposium in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Sunday.

A panel titled “The Role of Journalism in Enhancing Civil Society” was held on Sunday at the Shepherd Hotel in Bethlehem. The panel was organized by the Peace Alliance Foundation.

The Director of the Peace Alliance Foundation, Nidal Fuqaha, opened the panel by asserting the important, but dangerous role journalism currently serves in Palestine. He argued that impartiality and professionalism are the way to approach the current crisis.

Ma’an’s Chief Editor, Nasser Lahham also addressed the panel, recommending that Palestinian media employ journalists with diverse affiliations.

“As long as Hamas media employs only Hamas-affiliated journalists, Fatah media employs only Fatah-affiliated journalists, and communist factions’ media employ only communist journalists, the inevitable outcome will be partial journalism far from the professionalism and impartiality that should be strived for,” Lahham explained.

He added that most Palestinian media outlets failed during the inter-Palestinian fighting because each reported according to its affiliation and factional attitudes. Thus, he advised that from now on, we should focus on professionalism rather than political affiliation in our reporting.

Lahham gave an example of Ma’an News Agency which employs journalists with different political affiliations in order to create balance and diversity. In its four years of existence, Ma’an has achieved the highest degree of impartiality, he added.

Which isn’t saying much.

With Hamas claiming they will recognize Israel, and former Nobel Peace Prize winners (such as Jimmy Carter and Mairead Maguire) and so-called “peace activists” in their corner, even their fellow terrorists are seeing through the lies.

An Executive Committee secretary within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) accused Hamas of working toward the establishment of a Saudi-styled “Islamic emirate” in Gaza and, eventually, all of Palestine.

Secretary Yasser Abed Rabbo made the comments at a seminar organized by the Cultural Liberation Organization on Saturday in Ramallah, where he gave a lecture on the signing of the now 20-year-old Palestinian Independence document in Algiers.

The Hamas leadership “wants to return to the era of the PLO before Arafat’s rule,” according to the PLO leader, who went on to say that Hamas is willing to replace the national draft agreement with one that would “establish an Islamic emirate.”

“Yet they still won’t promote national issues,” he said.

Another member at the PLO Executive Committee, Abdul-Rahim Malluh, said that there is “a need to restore respect for the Independence document,” something both men said Hamas was unwilling to do.

Malluh noted that the first and last references in the declaration are in regard to the Palestinian people, themselves, which he claimed contained the legitimacy to go through with Fatah’s attempts to hold new elections in 2010, “as a way to resolve the division and solve the problems of Palestine.”

Of course, Fatah’s main issue with an Islamic emirate in all of “palestine” is the fact they promote a secular nationalist agenda.

While the Israeli government, US and pretty much the entire Western world place their trust in Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party (not to mention weapons and training), our “peace partners” are discussing whether or not they should once again adopt terrorism as their main tactic.

Fatah at a crossroads, conference will decide new track: peace or resistance

The sixth Fatah conference is a pivotal moment which could either be a farewell or the start of a new and stronger unity, said secretary of Fatah’s Central Committee Farouq Qaddoumi.

The Fatah leader spoke with Ma’an in Amman as he worked with the Central Committee to prepare the Sixth Fatah conference, the first since 1989. Qaddoumi will be part of several key decisions on Saturday and Sunday that will determine the character of the Fatah party for the next decade.

While Fatah has decided to hold a conference, it has not decided where it will take place, since location determines to a great extend who will be able to participate. The party has also not decided who will be invited to the conference, since the Fatah membership list has hundreds of thousands of names listed on it. Once these decisions are made, a date will be set and concrete preparations will begin.

Asked his thoughts on the importance of the coming conference, Qaddoumi noted that between the 1989 conference and today, Fatah has experimented with the “peaceful solution and political compromise.” He noted that Israel had thwarted Palestinian peace attempts in several ways, “from assassinating [former Israeli Prime Minister] Yitzhak Rabin to poisoning [former Palestinian President] Yasser Arafat.”

The conference will thus weigh the option of continuing with the peace-track and re-discussing the option of resistance. Qaddoumi said the second option “must be seriously considered since our other choices have failed,” and added that there were other options besides peace and resistance.

The main issue, said Qaddoumi, is to “include Palestinian, Arab and international efforts to reach a just solution which secures Palestinian rights, on top of which is the right of return.”

The return to resistance would be complicated for Fatah, given the changes in the international and political climate since the 1994 Oslo Accords. But Qaddoumi insisted that the international climate should take the Palestinian situation rather than the Palestinians taking into account what he called “political equations.”

“We should benefit from changes rather than being victims of them,” he said. He referred to Hizbullah victories, collapse of the US economy, socialist success in Latin America, Russia’s emerge and Iran’s might as factors which Fatah should take political advantage of.

Just in case you thought they had already abandoned terrorism..

The Fatah terrorist on the right is in severe need of a rocket launcher shoved where the sun don’t shine.

I have a sneaking suspicion the terrorist on the left would oblige him.

Hazem Abu Shanab, a spokesman of the Fatah movement in Gaza, hugs his sons after he was released from Hamas security forces jail in Gaza September 28, 2008. Hamas security forces released 35 people on Sunday, including five senior leaders of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. Hamas said the releases were in order to help the Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks succeed, and to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid el-Fitr.

Ma’an News reports:

The 11 September death of 48-year-old Manwa Hassan Kin’an Abed who sustained a single gunshot wound to the head as she stepped out on her balcony, is the result of recent “security chaos,” according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

The report, released Monday, related the events of the evening.

At approximately 20:30 Al-Aqsa Brigades activists, part of the armed wing of Fatah, announced via mosque loudspeaker at the center of the village, that all “wanted” men in the area should give themselves up and come to the city center.

The men, hidden throughout the city, south of Nablus, responded to the announcement by firing bullets into the air. The Al-Aqsa men responded in kind, and volleys of bullets were launched from both parties.

According to eyewitnesses, Manwa was hit by the gunshot when she stepped onto her balcony after hearing the announcements and gunfire.

Manwa was transferred to a nearby clinic but died immediately.

So let’s get this straight. When palestinian terrorist factions fire their guns with wanton disregard for human life, and kill civilians, it is “security chaos.” But when IDF soldiers fire at combatants deliberately hiding amongst civilians, taking care to avoid collateral damage, the killing of civilians is a “war crime.”

Incidentally, when Ma’an reported the victim’s death last week, they left open the possibility that it was caused by an “Israeli incursion.”

The Arab league has expressed its anger at palestinian infighting.

The head of the Arab League said on Tuesday that he was angry with fractious Palestinian political groups and that sanctions against them were being discussed by Arab governments.

Egypt, the main mediator between often rival Palestinian groups, has been holding bilateral talks with minor groups in preparation for similar talks with the two main groups — Fatah and Hamas.

“I am extremely angry with the Palestinian organizations,” Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the league, told a news conference in an unusually harsh criticism of the Palestinians.

“We are studying the measures to be taken in the face of the current Palestinian chaos,” he said, after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo.

But he added: “The sanctions would not be against anyone in particular. They would be against the party which obstructs reconciliation and maybe against everyone or against the organization which obstructs Egyptian efforts.”

If talks with the main groups succeed, Egypt might bring all the factions together in October after the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and the holiday which follows.

Hamas routed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s forces in Gaza in June 2007. In response, Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government and appointed a new administration in the occupied West Bank where his Fatah group holds sway.

Hamas and Fatah disagree on their approach to talks with Israel and over how to resolve the dispute which led to Hamas control of Gaza.

Moussa gave no details of the sanctions the Arab states envisaged against the Palestinian groups. “They (the sanctions) are now all in the framework of closed consultations within the Arab system,” he added, referring to the Arab League.

He said: “Do they (the Palestinians) have a state for them to be fighting over ministerial positions? We kidded ourselves and called it the state of Palestine. It’s not a state until it obtains its full rights.”

Meanwhile, the Arab League has not once expressed its anger at palestinian terror.

I showed on my blog that Islamic Jihad graduated a class of terrorists this weekend, and noted how much empty space is in Gaza to allow live-fire demonstrations in front of an audience.

Well, PIJ was not the only terror group to graduate a class of masked terrorists this weekend. So did Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades. As Ma’an puts it:

The fighters are part of the Brigades controlled by Fatah, the party which also controls the caretaker government in the West Bank. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is also a member of the party.

The general commander of the Al-Aqsa Brigades and leaders of the Consultation Council (senior leadership of the party who discuss Fatah policy) attended the graduation along with members of other Palestinian factions.

Trainees practiced military shows and skills such as storming buildings and kidnapping soldiers, and demonstrated the launch of rocket-propelled grenades for the ceremony audience.

Al-Aqsa Brigades asserted that the graduation of a class of fighters sends a clear message to Israel that resistance is still a valid choice for freeing Palestinian lands and the Al-Aqsa mosque.

If Al-Aqsa has the freedom to have a public graduation ceremony in Gaza, that means that Hamas is allowing their supposed “sworn enemies” to train militarily. The fact that “other factions” attended the ceremony shows that it is probably not only allowed, but encouraged.

Before the Hamas takeover of Gaza, joint terror attacks between Hamas and Fatah were not unusual.

And while Hamas has shown no compunction about cracking down on groups that show too much independence, Fatah is still allowed to operate freely in some cases.

It seems that while the political wings of Hamas and Fatah are still at odds - Hamas arrests Fatah teachers and civil servants at will - their military wings have no problems with each other, and probably cooperate (along with Islamic Jihad.) This idea is reinforced by the fact that Fatah in Gaza still gets weapons, and all weapons smuggling in Gaza goes through Hamas.

Moreover, Abbas - who is not only a “member” of Fatah but its leader - neither instructs Al Aqsa to attack Hamas nor does he tell them to put down their weapons; rather he is quite happy letting them operate as a terror group together with Hamas and PIJ aimed at fighting Israel while keeping them far enough for plausible deniability so he can get Israel to give him more unilateral concessions.

Just like Arafat.

Members of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ security forces walk around with their guns pointed as they take part in a police training session, in the West Bank city of Jenin, Monday, Aug. 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

Beware Hamas! If Fatah ever engage you in a ballet dance-off, you will no doubt lose.

With the events of the last week in Gaza, even a major newspaper of an enemy country like Lebanon’s The Daily Star sees Israel’s humanity and the palestinian’s brutality.

It is a damning indication of just how bad things have become in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip when Fatah militants there must look to Israel for protection from their Palestinian rivals. The Jewish state announced on Monday that it would help a group of 150 Fatah fighters who had fled weekend clashes in Gaza relocate to the West Bank, after determining that they would face “imminent danger” if they were to return home. The scenes of Israel coming to the rescue of Palestinians after a bout of Arab fratricide were reminiscent of the events of Black September, during which scores of Palestinians sought asylum in Israel to escape King Hussein’s crackdown on the Palestine Liberation Organization. The only difference this time around is that instead of seeking refuge from a heavy-handed Arab crackdown, Palestinians are fleeing from the murderous hands of their own Palestinian brothers.

Achievement of the Palestinian cause requires that all factions maintain a semblance of orderliness and keep their eyes on the price of independent statehood. In this both Fatah and Hamas have been miserable failures. Both have put partisan interests ahead of national ones and therefore have failed to maintain anything like a united Palestinian front. Even the mediation attempts of Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have not been enough to curb the political infighting and internecine bloodshed that have served to further threaten the Palestinians’ very right to existence.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza has been deteriorating since the international community callously decided to punish an entire people for having exercised their democratic rights in the legislative elections of January 2006. But the Hamas movement is now exacerbating the situation by undermining the rule of law in the territory. After accusing its Fatah rivals of carrying out a deadly bombing late last week that killed five Hamas leaders and a little girl, the Islamist party launched what can be only be described as a witch-hunt, rounding up some 200 Fatah activists. Fatah provided an equally bad example of governance in the West Bank when it retaliated against the move by rounding up scores of people it branded “Hamas activists,” including many judges, students and activists who have no known affiliation with the Islamist party. On both sides of divided Palestine, civilians must now add Fatah and Hamas to the long list of threats to their security and wellbeing.

The events of the last week are just the most recent example of how the situation in the Occupied Territories has gone from bad to worse under the watchful eyes of elected Palestinian “representatives.” Hundreds of people were killed last year when the two groups allowed their rivalry to degenerate into street violence. Hundreds more were prevented from going about their normal activities such as attending school, going to work or expressing political views.

Over the past few days the two Palestinian factions seem to be close to repeated the same disastrous mistakes. We have seen Palestinians denigrating the legitimacy of other Palestinians, Palestinians making war on other Palestinians, and Palestinians arresting other Palestinians, while the Jewish state has come to the rescue of those Palestinians who fear for their lives. Israel has never looked so good.

It’s been a Fatah vs Hamas bloodbath today, with 4 killed and 80 wounded, including 12 children.

But according to the palestinian Ma’an News Agency, the real news is the leg injury sustained by a Fatah clan member.

Hillis family shot in leg by Israel near Nahal Oz crossing after day of Hamas/Fatah clashes in Gaza City

According to Al-Jazira Ahmad Hillis, head of a Fatah-affiliated family in Gaza City, was shot in the leg during clashes next to Nahal Oz crossing. Reports say that Israeli soldiers shot him as he approached the crossing area.

Clashes between the family and the de facto Hamas-led government police lasted all day Saturday, and saw the deaths of two Hamas-affiliated security officers and two others who have not been identified. More than 80 people have been injured including more than 12 children, says Khalid Radi, the spokesperson of de facto ministry of health.

Because you can’t let a day go by without blaming Israel.

Despite the fact that this leg injury is hardly the important story of the day, there is another problem with it.

It’s not true.

In fact, not only did Israel not shoot Ahmad Hillis and his clan, but we actually allowed them into Israel.

More than two dozens members of the Fatah-linked Hilles clan fled the Gaza Strip on Saturday and entered Israel, after a day of clashes with the ruling Hamas faction had left at least four people dead and more than 80 wounded.

Israeli officials said Saturday that the Hilles clan members were allowed through a Gaza crossing into Israel, speaking on condition of anonymity since no official announcement had been made.

Clan leader and senior Fatah official Ahmed Hilles was among those who had reached Israel, according to a Palestinian official close to the events.

Meanwhile, notice how the usual voices condemning Israel when palestinians die after we target terrorists are silent while the palestinians kill each other. The reason is simple, really. They do not condemn Israel because of their great love for the palestinians, but rather because of their hate for Israel.

Come to think of it, I wonder if anyone is going to condemn Israel for Ahmad Hillis’ “leg injury.”

King of the auto-translation, Elder of Ziyon, points us to a Palestine Press Agency article about the utter humiliation suffered by Fatah’s Mohammed Nafez, who was abducted by Hamas and then had his mustache shaved off.

Here are the before and after shots.

Now I don’t know about you, but I would have having that mustache would be more humiliating.