Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Even when Egypt "opens" Rafah, hardly anyone gets through

From Ma'an:

Egyptian authorities on Thursday closed the Rafah crossing after it had been temporarily opened for three days.

Palestinian crossing officials told Ma'an that 830 Palestinians in Gaza used the crossing, which was reopened on Tuesday.

There was no indication from Egypt when it will be reopened again.

830 people over three days?

On Monday alone (the last day I have statistics for,) Israel allowed 1,246 people to use the Erez crossing, with only slightly smaller numbers for the previous day. That's over four times the numbers of people allowed to cross rafah each of the three days it was open, even with a huge backlog of people trying to go to Egypt (and return to Gaza.)

How about humanitarian aid?

Egyptian authorities on Wednesday were preparing to ship large quantities of humanitarian aid from the United Arab Emirates to the Gaza Strip.

An Egyptian security official told Ma'an in Cairo that 175 tons of humanitarian aid from the UAE arrived Tuesday evening at El-Arish in North Sinai district.

The shipment includes food, medicines and medical equipment. The cargo was then shipped to the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing to be delivered to the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, 30 tons of humanitarian aid from Saudi Arabia were delivered to the Gaza Strip as well as 13 packages of medical aid from the Egyptian Red Crescent Association.

Ooooh, 175 tons. Impressive.

The Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel, meanwhile, has been transferring about 12,000 tons of goods every day.

Compared to Egypt, Israeli's border with Gaza is positively porous.

01/22 Links Pt2: In Failing to Confront Islamism, the Left Betrays Itself; The Invisible yarmulke

From Ian:

Tarek Fatah: In Failing to Confront Islamism, the Left Betrays Itself

As the world struggles to understand and cope with the rise of pan-Islamism and international jihadi terrorism within Western countries, one thing is becoming increasingly clear - the success of the Islamists is partly due to what I believe is a grand betrayal of civil society by the political left in Western democracies. Instead of leading the fight against the fanatics' religious obscurantism, they have embraced it.
The refusal of social democrats, liberals and leftists to stand up to Islamofascism in the democracies of Europe, North America, India and South Africa, has also had an unintended consequence. It has paved the way for an anti-immigrant backlash against all non-whites, in which the left are portrayed as apologists for religious fanaticism. An unnecessary rise of xenophobia that could have been avoided, had the left led the struggle against Islamofascism, is now entrenched.
Imagine if Labour in the UK, Democrats in the U.S., the Congress and CPM in India, socialists in France and the left in Canada had not catered to Islamists, but instead drawn a line in the sand on such issues as gender apartheid. Think how different things would be today. Instead we've had more than a decade of appeasement.
Last week I sat down with a few surviving friends on the left from the 1960s, who are fortunately in Canada now. "What is wrong with the left today?" we asked ourselves.

Israel omission from Asian Cup video embarrasses Asian Football Confederation

The Asian Football Confederation has been embarrassed by revelations its official video history of the Asian Cup omits any mention of Israel, a former host and winner of the tournament.
A three-minute video posted on the AFC’s official website stirringly recounts the history of the cup, beginning with South Korea’s 1956 victory, up to Japan’s 1-0 defeat of Australia in the 2011 final in Qatar.
Israel hosted and won the Asian Cup in 1964, the only piece of silverware in the country’s football cabinet, during a golden age in which it finished runner-up in the previous two tournaments and third in 1968 (albeit against much weaker competition than today – only six other countries entered in 1964).
Many Arab and Muslim countries refused to play the Jewish state, and in 1974 the confederation adopted a Kuwaiti motion to expel Israel from the AFC. It wandered in the footballing wilderness until it was accepted into the European confederation in 1994.
AFC officials told Guardian Australia they were baffled by the omission, and would be seeking answers. It is understood the video was produced by an external agency. Israel does appear in a table on the tournament’s website listing all past winners. (h/t Rabbi Burns)

Privileged Yet Unequal: An Essay on the Anglo-American Legal Principle of ‘Jews Lose’

Last week, the Community Security Trust—the institutional body primarily responsible for the safety of Jews in Britain—released its preliminary figures on the number of anti-Semitic incidents that had occurred over the course of 2014. The news was not good. Anti-Semitism had hit an all-time high, with a particular spike occurring in July during the course of renewed hostilities between Israel and Gaza. Another poll found that nearly half of all non-Jewish Britons held at least some anti-Semitic views, and for their part British Jews expressed unprecedented feelings of fear and vulnerability. More than half of the Jewish community stated that they feared for their future in Great Britain, and a quarter claimed to have considered leaving the country.
Because I am a lawyer and law professor (albeit not a British one), my natural instinct in these circumstances is to appeal to the law for protection. Anti-Semitic harassment, intimidation, violence, and discrimination are illegal, and a primary purpose of the courts is to provide a shield for vulnerable minorities. Unfortunately, when it comes to Jewish litigants coming to the English courts with allegations of discrimination, doctrine, precedent, and case law all fall away at the hands of one simple rule: Jews lose. They lose consistently, they lose badly, and they will often be humiliated in the process. In her magnificent 2011 book An Unfortunate Coincidence: Jews, Jewishness, and English Law, English law professor Didi Herman concludes that—since the passage of the Race Relations Act of 1976—a Jew has never won a reported discrimination case against a non-Jewish defendant.
British courts seem to bend over backward to avoid finding wrongdoing, even in the most obvious cases. To take one particularly egregious example, one case involved a job applicant who was told by the hiring agency that the company in question simply would not hire Jews. It then asked the candidate what his religion was; instead of answering, the applicant (who was indeed Jewish) stormed out. The court concluded that no discrimination occurred because the plaintiff voluntarily terminated the interview without revealing his Jewish identity.

Hasby Award for Best Media Watchdog

The Hasby Award nominees for Best Media Watchdog this year are;

BBC Watch

CiF Watch

Presspectiva

Honest Reporting Canada

The first three nominees are associated with CAMERA and the last with Honest Reporting, our two previous winners.

And the 2015 Hasby Award goes to:

Human Rights Watch just issued a report about how horrible Israel treats its dometic Thai workers.

Here is the index showing the "rights violations" that HRW found in its research:

Pay and Working Hours
Fired for Striking
Unlawful Deductions, Overcharging for Food and Money Transfers
Living Conditions
Working Conditions and Access to Healthcare
Work-related Deaths
Right to Change Employers

HRW only issued one similar report on foreign workers over the past year, for domestic workers in the UAE. Here is a comparion of the issues they found there:

Physical Abuse
Sexual Violence and Harassment
Psychological and Verbal Abuse

Wage Abuses
Excessive Work and Working Hours without Rest Periods or Time Off

Passport Confiscation
Restricted Communication
Isolation and Forced Confinement

Denial of Adequate Food
Denial of Adequate Healthcare
Inadequate Living Accommodations

Forced Labor and Slavery
Trafficking

Even though the UAE issues are orders of magnitude worse than Israel's, the length of HRW's report on the UAE was about the same.

From looking at the list of topics about Thai workers in Israel, it appears that "Work-related deaths" must be the most damning section. And it does sound bad.

Indeed, an excerpt of the report published in the Bangkok Post as an op-ed was entitled "Thai workers in Israel are dying, and it's got to stop " It was also the highlight in The Guardian's article.

After spending 5 paragraphs about the sudden, unexplained death of a 37-year old Tahi worker, HRW says:

From 2008 to 2013, according to government figures provided by Minister of Health Ya’el German to Israeli Knesset member Dov Khenin of the Hadash party and reported by the Israeli daily Haaretz, 122 Thai workers died in Israel. Of these 122 deaths, 43 were from “sudden nocturnal death syndrome,” 22 from cardiac diseases including cardiac fibrosis and cardiomyopathy, and five from suicide. In 22 cases the cause of death was unknown reasons because Israeli police did not request a post-mortem.[118] Dov Khenin said it was “inconceivable that so many healthy young men die without alarms going off.”

122 deaths among workers between, say, 21 and 40 sounds bad. But HRW adds a crucial piece of information:

Sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS) is a disorder that causes sudden cardiac death (typically of young men) during sleep and is found in south east Asia, particularly Thailand, Japan, Philippines and Cambodia.] A 2002 peer-reviewed medical journal paper concluded that SUNDS is “phenotypically, genetically, and functionally” the same as Brugada syndrome, an uncommon but serious heart condition that is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young, otherwise healthy people around the world.

So a large number of these 122 deaths can be explained as natural causes, dozens of them would have died back in Thailand as well.

HRW then makes a leap, without any factual basis, that many of the men died from heat stroke:

Douglas Casa, a professor in the department of kinesiology and expert in heat exhaustion and heat stroke at the University of Connecticut, told Human Rights Watch that the combination of Israel’s climate and the working conditions described in this report were likely to significantly increase the risk to workers of heat stroke, which can be fatal.[121] Heat exhaustion and heat stroke are not typically the result of pre-existing medical conditions, but rather of high temperatures in tandem with physical exertion. Whereas pre-existing cardiac conditions such as Brugada syndrome can only be detected by an electrocardiogram test, an autopsy can detect heat stroke as a cause of death and steps can be taken to reduce the risk of heat stroke. The main factors in adequately reducing the risk to workers of heat exhaustion are a work-to-rest ratio that takes account of the prevailing environmental conditions, and ensuring that the body temperature is allowed to cool during that rest time through the provision of shade and water.

But not one case of heat stroke was reported! Why is HRW making this assumption that the workers are dying from something preventable when there is literally zero evidence for it?

One more fact that HRW didn't mention in this section- how many Thai workers there are in Israel altogether.

It turns out that there are about 25,000 Thai workers in Israel, most in the agricultural sector. (HRW says 20,000, BBC says 28,000.) HRW quotes Haaretz saying 122 died over 5 years, meaning about 24 a year, or a mortality rate of 96 per 100,000 people. (122/100K as per HRW's figures.)

In the US, the mortality rate for people aged 25-44 in 2006 was about 145 per 100,000 people.

So the odds of dying as a Thai worker under horrible Israeli conditions is significantly less than it is of dying while working at a typical job in the United States for people of the same age. And that includes those who died of SUNDS.

But HRW won't give you context. They will say that all these workers are dying, and it must be Israel's fault - and if they cannot find a reason to blame Israel, they will literally make one up ("heat stroke.")

See also Honest Reporting.

01/22 Links Pt1: Fatah: stabbing a “self-sacrificing operation”; Something Is Rotten in Argentina

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah calls stabbing attack “self-sacrificing operation”‎

Following yesterday's stabbing attack in Tel Aviv, when a young Palestinian stabbed and wounded more than a dozen people in a bus in Tel Aviv, Abbas' Fatah movement posted the following text on Facebook, referring to the terror attack as a "self-sacrificing operation" (amaliya fida'iya in Arabic):
Posted text: "Urgent! Self-sacrificing operation in Tel Aviv: A knife attack inside a bus. Reports of the wounding of 10 Israelis and the wounding of the man who carried out the operation from Israeli police fire. The area has been sealed off and the Israeli police is conducting an extensive search in the area."
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page", Jan. 21, 2015]
The Hamas-controlled Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza praised the attack with the following text on its Facebook page:
"A morning of homeland and freedom, a morning of the knife's point of the rebel for Palestine"
[Facebook page of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza, Jan. 21, 2015]

Something Is Rotten in Argentina

Today, the words memory, truth, and justice, stand as literal pillars commemorating sites of previous state torture and abuse, suggesting an era of human rights and accountability in Argentina. Yet the AMIA case—unresolved since 1994—and the death of Nisman raise profound questions about democracy and the rule of law in Argentina. Ten years after his appointment as special prosecutor and 20 years after the bombing, little has changed in the landscape of justice.
Laura Ginsberg, an activist who lost her husband Enrique Ginsberg in the bombing, has argued for the opening of the SIDE (intelligence services) archives, through her group APEMIA (Association for the Clarification of the Unpunished Massacre of the AMIA). Pablo Gitter, also of APEMIA, says that the need for transparency is urgent because of the pervasive corruption in the judiciary and the state. APEMIA has further called for the creation of an independent investigatory commission, what they call the “CONADEP of the AMIA” (CONADEP referring to the historic 1984 truth commission that facilitated Argentina’s transition from dictatorship to democracy) as the only way to establish the truth of what happened.
How and why did Alberto Nisman die? Who was responsible for the AMIA bombing? When will Argentines see some form of justice in these cases? These remain open questions, challenging the limits of democracy in Argentina. While Nisman’s death has brought the AMIA bombing to the forefront of national and global consciousness, it also presents another impediment to the 20-year pursuit of justice in the case, revealing how the ongoing struggles for some form of accountability and truth continue against a horizon of impunity.

Douglas Murray - Islam and Democracy Highlights [BBC World Service]
Best bits - 10:25 the difference between holocaust denial and offending religion.
- 13:00 Why are the UK's Muslims of sub-continent origin protesting Israel

The general coordinator of the "Popular Resistance Committees", Mohammed Muheisen, claims that "activists" tore down part of the eastern gate protecting the Jewish community of Efrat.

He says that this action is in line with those of Mahmoud Abbas.

given that the fence is meant to protect Jews and tearing it down is a precursor to Arabs attempting to murder Jewish men, women and children, I'd say that he is right that this action fits in very well with Abbas' pretense of embracing "non-violent resistance."

Remember, for all the talk and UN meetings and articles about how much Jews supposedly attack innocent Arabs in Judea and Samaria, it is the Jews who are forced to live in communities protected by fences and gates, not Arabs.

Source

International aid pledged to rebuild Gaza has not been forthcoming:

Donors have been urged to meet their financial pledges to fund the reconstruction of Gaza following the conflict with Israel last year.

The appeal was made by the UN deputy head of political affairs, Jens Toyberg-Frandzen during a briefing to the Security Council on Thursday.

Last year, international donors pledged US$5.4 billion at a conference held in Cairo Egypt.

"Most pressingly, donors have largely failed to fulfil their pledges, three months after the Cairo conference. This has severely handicapped the ability of the Government of Palestine, the United Nations and other development actors on the ground to make significant progress on recovery and reconstruction work. The importance of donors urgently meeting their pledges cannot be overstated."

One of the major reasons is that Fatah and Hamas are attacking each other.

On Tuesday:

Unidentified assailants blew up a private car belonging to a security officer of the former Hamas-run government in Gaza City early on Tuesday morning.

Initial investigations suggest that an improvised explosive device was set under the vehicle which was parked in front of the officer's house.

Today:

Unidentified assailants blew up a car belonging to a Fatah leader in Gaza City early Thursday.

Witnesses told a Ma'an reporter that a vehicle belonging to Ahmad Alwan went up in flames after a flammable substance was poured on it.

The incident is the latest in a series of attacks on the cars and homes of Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip, where many are angry over the failure of the Fatah-dominated PA to hold Israel accountable for its promises to ease the blockade.

But even though the blame for the current Gaza problems is squarely because of infighting and the donors' reluctance to send money to kleptocrats and terrorists in Gaza, Hamas still stages photo-ops to blame Israel.

Dozens of Palestinian children protested against the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip at the coastal enclave's port on Wednesday, hoping to highlight the effects of a blockade entering its eight year.

The protest came as part of a series of rallies across the Gaza Strip designed to draw attention to the Israeli siege and how it has prevented the reconstruction of Gaza in the wake of Israel's 50-day summer war that destroyed tens of thousands of homes.

Israel is transferring whatever materials that are being paid for. The issue is the money, not any Israeli "siege." And the money isn't coming because Hamas and the PA are playing power games.

Good luck getting the media (and NGOs) to push back on the false "siege" narrative, though.

UPDATE: Buzzfeed had this earlier this week:

A U.N. spokesman told BuzzFeed News that out of $5.4 billion pledged to Gaza following the war, only $100 million has actually been delivered.

During the conference in Cairo in October 2014, Qatar promised $USD 1 billion and Saudi Arabia $USD 500 million. The United States and the European Union pledged a combined $USD 780 million. Along with a myriad of other Arab States, the total in pledged funds was $5.4 billion – of this total, only $100 million has been received. All of it, said U.N. officials, has come from European states.
“The Arab countries haven’t paid anything until now,” Mufeed al-Hasayna, the Palestinian housing minister, told Reuters last month. “The Europeans just a few millions, maybe something from the Swedes.”

Representatives from donor states would not comment on the lack of delivered funds when contacted by BuzzFeed News. One, who only spoke off-record, said it had become increasingly difficult to transfer money to the Gaza Strip due to the lack of progress made in reconciliation between Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), in the West Bank.

Party with UNRWA and help support their pro-terror, antisemitic activities!

Next week, you can party with UNRWA in Washington DC at The Gryphon!

It isn't only fun, but part of your money goes to UNRWA, where it will do so much good:

Using Muslim teachings to instruct kids to hate Jews
Paying teachers who deny the Holocaust
Raising children to want to go on violent jihad
Redefining the concept of "peace" to cover up for the hate that they teach
Paying full-time professional liars
Turning ordinary student elections into propaganda
Painting pictures of terrorists on school walls
Supporting teachers who praise Hitler for genocide
Teach kids every single day that Israel has no right to exist

What a great way to spend a Wednesday night!

Maybe, just maybe, some people who care about real human rights and real peace will decide that they can spend that Wednesday night protesting an UNRWA fundraiser.

After all, why should Zionists be the only ones nervous about protesters marring their social events?

01/21 Link Pt2: “I Am Nisman”; Argentine Hostel Popular With Israelis in Violent Antisemitic Attack

From Ian:

“I Am Nisman”

Nisman had been building the case against Iran and Hezbollah for their involvement in the AMIA bombing since 2005. In May 2013, he issued a lengthy indictment charging one Lebanese Hezbollah operative and seven Iranians, including former President Akbar Rafsanjani, with involvement in the attack. One of the Iranians indicted, Mohsen Rezaei, is currently a high official in the Iranian government, while others have served it in diplomatic and military capacities. The indictment came only months after the Kirchner government entered a controversial agreement with the Iranian government agreeing to establish a “Truth Commission” to examine the AMIA bombing.
At the time, President Cristina Kirchner hailed the agreement as a historic one that “guarantees the right to due process of law, a fundamental principle of international criminal law.” It would have allowed five judges (none Argentine or Iranian) to question those allegedly involved in the bombing, offering effective immunity for the perpetrators. Last year, an Argentine federal court barred the implementation of the agreement and ordered the courts to reinstate all extradition orders against the suspects in the bombing.
This is why Argentines are taking to the streets demanding, “Enough with the lies.” It is not simply because the Argentine government dragged its feet in investigating the bombing two decades ago, and it is not because justice has been so woefully delayed in this case. It is because Alberto Nisman, the principal champion of the truth in this sordid affair, stood ready to present evidence that the Kirchner government attempted to trade impunity for oil, and he paid for it with his life.
Initial reports detected no gunpowder residue on Nisman’s hand. The only note found in his apartment seems to have been one he left for his housekeeper: a shopping list for the coming week. Friends, colleagues, and journalists alike report that Nisman did not appear to be suicidal. Yet he did appear to be aware that his days were numbered. “I might come out of this dead,” he told reporters on several occasions. One can only hope that in the weeks and months to come, the people of Argentina continue to pressure their government for the truth, uncompromised and uncorrupted by deals with criminals.

Argentine Hostel Popular With Israelis Targeted in Violent Antisemitic Attack

A group of Israeli tourists has been forced to leave a hostel in Lago Puelo, a national park in Argentina’s Patagonia region, following a violent antisemitic attack which left ten people injured.
Argentine newspaper Clarín reported that three assailants carried out the attack against the Onda Azul hostel, which is popular with Israeli backpackers. Sergio Polak, the owner of the hostel, said, “There were several hours of terror. They shouted, ‘f***ing Jews, you are stealing Patagonia.’”
Israeli website 0404 reported that there were no casualties among the Israeli group, comprised of youngsters who have just completed their army service. However, Polak confirmed that there had been “serious damage” to his property and that the assailants had also stolen the belongings of several guests.
In a separate radio interview, Polak said that the assailants were locals and had been identified. He added that this was not the first time that his hostel had been the target of an antisemitic attack, noting that two cabins had been burned down during the Jewish holiday period in October last year by an assailant who threw a Molotov cocktail. Polak also said that INADI, Argentina’s official anti-discrimination body, had received several complaints in recent weeks concerning antisemitic behavior and attitudes on the part of several local hoteliers and businesses.
Another hostel popular with Israelis in the town of Bariloche, also in Patagonia, was targeted by local antisemites last year, who warned the owners not to accept Israeli tourists. In 2012, the Chabad House in Bariloche, another popular hangout for Israelis, was targeted three times in a single month.

Orim Shimshon: Moderate Muslim mask slips and reveals Jew hatred

FYI: Orim is talking about Ammar Nakshawani, described in Wikipedia as:
"Ammar Nakshawani (born 1981) is a British Iraqi Islamic historian, lecturer, and author. He is listed as one of the The 500 Most Influential Muslims, and is the youngest person on the list at the age of 32. He is one of the most discussed English language Shia speakers in the world today."

AFP reports:

A leading Islamic organisation has called on the United Nations to make "contempt of religions" illegal and urged the West to protect Muslim communities following the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars, headed by influential preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, appealed to Muslims to continue peaceful protests against images of the Prophet Mohammed but "not to resort to any violence".

The latest cartoon of the prophet in Charlie Hebdo has angered many Muslims and triggered protests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

In a statement released Tuesday, the union said there should be protection for "prophets" and urged Islamic countries to submit a draft law to the UN calling for defamation of religions to be outlawed.

The union said the UN should then issue a "law criminalising contempt of religions and the prophets and all the holy sites".

In 2004, Qaradawi said:

Judaism is the No. 1 propagator of violence. As I said in the last program, the Torah itself states that when you enter a certain country, you must offer peace, and if they agree, all their residents are your slaves. In other countries, you should not offer peace or conversion. You must destroy them all, do not leave a living soul. In the first country you must slay all males and leave only the women, but in the second country, you must not leave… you must uproot them. This is in Judaism, in the Torah.

He is not saying that Jews are violent, but that Judaism is violent. Sounds defamatory to me!

Arrest that man!

After all, many Muslim countries already have a law against "defamation of religion" in place. Yet defaming Judaism or Christianity is never prosecuted.

I guess when Muslims say they wan tto outlaw "defamation of religions" they really mean "defamation of Islam."

Arab nations, specifically the OIC, has tried numerous times (with varying success) to get the UN to issue statements against defamation of religion. If you want to see how deep Muslim control of the UN is, see this 2011 post about how Arab nations got Brazil to abstain on these votes, rather than to opposed them.

Palestinians Form Elite Unit To Cry For Foreign Cameras (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Palestinians Form Elite Unit To Cry For Foreign Cameras

The first group of alumni is scheduled to perform for a compliant video crew from the BBC next week

Hebron, January 21 - After an embarrassing incident in which a woman was caught on camera being coached to cry just so when Western media personnel were present, the Palestine Liberation Organization has established a crack unit of agents specially trained in producing the necessary heart-rending sobs and wails without the potential awkwardness of it appearing staged.

The incident in question occurred earlier this week in Hebron, where Israeli troops were enforcing an order to seal off an empty house from which firebombs had been thrown. In a video distributed by pro-Palestinian activists, an elderly woman could be seen and heard weeping over the loss of access to her family's home that they had inhabited for "hundreds of years." However, a wider, more comprehensive recording of the incident emerged showing the woman being coached outside the frame of the other camera's view, indicating a setup to exploit the moment rather than an authentic episode.

Palestinians have long exploited Western media to play to the viewers' emotions, and the media personnel have largely played along in pursuit of a compelling story, if not outright sympathy for the Palestinian cause. The ubiquity of mobile devices with video capability, along with footage from surveillance cameras, has occasionally served to expose the rehearsed, contrived nature of confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces, a phenomenon known as "Pallywood."

To forestall such fiascos, the PLO has now trained a cadre of actors to portray the victims in the set-piece drama for the benefit of Western audiences, journalists, and activists. Cultural and religious sensibilities initially threatened the project, which was not budgeted to account for separate programs for male and female participants, but a last-minute infusion of funding from Qatar helped secure the necessary personnel. The first group of alumni is scheduled to perform for a compliant video crew from the BBC next week, though the venue has not been disclosed.

A Palestinian official speaking on condition of anonymity suggested the location would be an olive orchard, a tried-and-true venue for libeling Jewish settlers over cut-down trees. He said, however, that the backstory had yet to be fleshed out. One faction of the creative team favors an elderly man and his descendants glumly surveying olive tree stumps, while another favors the more dramatic picture of having people dressed like Jews "caught" in the act of felling the trees and fleeing when confronted.

If successful, the organizers intend to deploy the unit across areas of friction with the IDF, especially where homes are demolished either for their illegal construction or their use as a base for terrorist activities. Those scenes will call for more of the heart-rending weeping and cried of desperation, skills that the members of the unit have honed intensely. Shortly thereafter, officials see daily incidents in which Israeli drivers will be filmed "running over" Palestinians and leaving them for dead.

An earlier program to train Palestinians to pretend to attack Israelis, and thus provoke them into violence that would them be filmed, was scrapped when the trainees repeatedly ignored the "pretend" element and used deadly materials such as Molotov cocktails and improvised firearms.