Soccer Dad's Mideast Media Sampler 07/26/11‏

My old pal DG, formerly of the unfortunately deceased blog Soccer Dad gives us a daily sampler of noteworthy pieces and worthy reads on the Middle East out today:


1) The Times on Norway

There are no words strong enough to condemn the massacres in Norway committed by Anders Behring Breivik. He is an evil man.

Still there's something troubling about the coverage of this evil by the New York Times.

The title of the news report says a lot, Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.

This is a key argument of the article:

Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”
“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”

The reporter, Soctt Shane got an expert to say (in sequence) 1) you can't tie the actions Breivik to the ideas in the anti-Islamist blogs but 2) if you use their own standards, then their writings did indeed encourage Breivik. In other words, in a rather roundabout way, Shane got his expert to confirm the thesis of the article.


Contrast that with how Isabel Kershner dealt with the subject of Palestinian incitement following the Fogel murders:

Yossi Kuperwasser, a retired Israeli general given responsibility by the Israeli government for monitoring Palestinian incitements to violence and to hatred of Israel, said in a telephone interview that while Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority prime minister, Salam Fayyad, had been careful in their words, “they too encourage an atmosphere of terrorism.”
He noted, for example, that a senior Abbas aide had paid a call to the families of three Fatah militants killed by the Israeli military, conveying condolences from Mr. Abbas. Israel held the three responsible for the fatal shooting of a rabbi in the West Bank in December 2009. In addition, Israeli officials note, streets, summer camps and youth tournaments in the Palestinian Authority have been named for people who committed terrorist attacks.
The new focus on incitement against Israel, together with Israeli dissatisfaction over the Palestinian response to the brutal attack, seemed to pose a question about the Israeli government’s readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas as a serious peace partner — even though Mr. Abbas and Mr. Fayyad are widely considered moderates who have repeatedly said they would never resort to violence.

Instead of making the case that Palestinian incitement leads to terror, Kershner allows the Israelis to make the case. Then she inserts herself into the debate arguing that 1) incitement is a means Israel uses to avoid making a deal with the Palestinians and 2) even if it's it true Abbas has nothing to do with it. Of course, given that much of the Palestinian incitement takes place in the official media or official mosques of the PA, it really doesn't matter what Abbas utters when microphones are on, his government is promoting the incitement. Of course, unlike Shane this week, Kershner portrays the effects of Palestinian incitement as non-existent.


The other thing that's missing from Shane's report is any reason the anti-Jihadist bloggers might feel as they do.


A quick search of the New York Times website, shows that since January 1, 2009, there has been precisely one article that contained both the words "Malmo" and the word "Jews" in it. And it was a letter to the editor written by Abraham Foxman of the ADL, Antisemitism in Sweden.

The Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism has also lamented that “prejudice against Jews is spreading under a very thin veneer” of anti-Israel activity. Riots greeted an Israeli tennis team at a Davis Cup match in Malmo, whose mayor said (on another occasion), “We accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism,” equating Jewish national self-determination with the oldest form of bigotry in the world.

Yet Malmo has been in the news, because the increased antisemitism has been pushing Jews to leave. And one of the driving forces of the antisemitism have been the Muslim immigrants. As Haaretz reports:

But Per Gudmundson, chief editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, a leading Swedish newspaper, is critical of politicians who blame anti-Semitic actions on Muslim living conditions. He said that these politicians offer “weak excuses” for Muslim teenagers accused of anti-Semitic crimes. “Politicians say these kids are poor and oppressed, and we have made them hate. They are, in effect, saying the behavior of these kids is in some way our fault,” he said.
According to Gudmundson, some immigrants from Muslim countries come to Sweden as hardened anti-Semites.

The article in Ha'aretz also points to the lack of assimilation of the immigrants.



The anti-Islamist sentiment, while often harsh, does not exist in a vacuum. Instead of providing the full context, the Times makes it seem that it is only white people who are capable of being prejudiced.

The New York Times has demonstrated that it believes that incitement leads to murder (when it's politically convenient to do so) except when it doesn't. It also refuses to acknowledges the challenges and, sometimes, the threats that go along with the growing Muslim population in Europe, preferring instead to portray those who see the problems as ignorant bigots. Both positions are hypocritical and revealing of the biases that are regularly on display at the Times.


If the Times news reporting is one sided; columnist Roger Cohen has completely gone off the deep end. Cohen who is infamous for defending the official antisemitism of Iran, now sees the Islamaphobia of Europe and declares it just as loathsome as antisemitism. In Breivik and his Enablers, Cohen concludes:

Nothing, however, can excuse the widespread condoning of an anti-Muslim racism once reserved for the Jews of Europe. Not on the weekend when Amy Winehouse, a Jewish girl from East London whose artistry would once have been dismissed by a racist and murderous European right as degenerate “cosmopolitan” trash, died. A good way to remember her is finally to confront the latest iteration of a European bigotry that kills.

This is sick and tasteless. Cohen conjures up phantoms of antisemitism so he can use the recently deceased singer to "show" the dangers of bigotry.


2) The demographic time bomb


A familiar trope of Thomas Friedman and other critics of Israel is that Israel will soon be outnumber in the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Yet according to David Goldman, population trends are changing. (via Daily Alert)

• Most of the phantom population, the report argues, comes from births that never occurred: The Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics “projected that the number of births in the Territories would total almost 908,000 for the seven-year period from 1997 to 2003. Yet, the actual number of births documented by the PA Ministry of Health for the same period was significantly lower at 699,000, or 238,000 fewer births than had been forecast by the PCBS.”

• Jewish births rose from 96,000 in the year 2000 to 125,000 in 2010, while Arab births fell slightly over the same period – from about 40,781 to 40,750, according to a study by Yaakov Faitelson at the Institute for Zionist Strategies. The percentage of students in the Arab educational system out of all Israel’s total first grade student body will decrease from 29.1% in 2007 to only 24.3% in 2016 and 22.5% in 2020.
  

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Caroline Glick On Israeli Sovreignty Over Judea And Samaria

On June 20th of this year, columnist Caroline Glick spoke at an event called "Israeli Sovereignty Over Judea and Samaria" in Israel ( h/t Carl, and kudos to Paris David Blumenthal for the footage).

What she had to say about strategic considerations, history, Jewish empowerment and the past failures of the Israeli Left in dealing with this situation are all spot on and worth listening to, and there's nothing here I seriously disagree with. But there's an important question I feel she glosses over.

In 1967, Israel was attacked by Jordan and as a consequence, Israel recaptured the areas of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) that Jordan had illegally occupied in 1948 and ethnically cleansed the Jews out of.

At that point, the Israel Labor government could justifiably have repatriated the Arabs living there back to the country they held their citizenship in, which was Jordan and annexed the area, as they did with theGolan Heights and East Jerusalem. Such things usually happen after a war when territory changes hands.

This would have been particularly appropriate after the Arab League's Khartoum Declaration, which responded to an Israeli attempt at diplomacy with 'no peace, no negotiation, no recognition.'

Instead the Israeli government essentially sat on the matter,leaving the situation to fester for 44 years.

At this point, I have to wonder how Ms. Glick plans to deal with the Arabs living in the region, who have been propagandized and trained to hate Jews and Israel for two generations.

This is not the phony 'demographics bomb' myth, which I've already disproved elsewhere. The problem is not maintaining a Jewish majority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, but of trying to absorb and deal with what's at least predominantly a hostile, violent and incompatible element.

What that's going to mean, in real terms, is a partition of Judea and Samaria of some kind that may or may not have anything to do with the pre 1967 lines or anything else Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah want. Or it may mean another war, followed by the repatriation of non-Israeli Arabs across the Jordan.

Stay tuned.

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The Palestinian 'Demographic Bomb' Myth

The big, compelling reason people who claim to be 'friends' of Israel are pressuring them to give up the country's heartland to the Arabs is the so-called demographic bomb..the idea that the Arab birthrate is rapidly overtaking the Jewish one and that Israel had better do this now or face being a minority in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

It's a myth, as I've discussed before and anyone who looks at the actual numbers ought to realize it out of hand.

It might be helpful to share the latest real numbers for those who still need convincing:

Israel's population on the eve of its 61st Independence Day numbers 7,411,000, according to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics Monday afternoon.

Last year, the population was 7,282,000, and when Israel was established, it was just 806,000.

About 75.5 percent, or 5,593,000, of Israel's residents are Jews, 1,498,000 are Arabs (20.2%), while "Others" - immigrants and their offspring who are not registered as Jews by the Interior Ministry - number 320,000 (4.3%).

Let's look at this more closely. Two things this article doesn't mention. One, out of the 806,000 population of Israel mentioned in 1948, almost the exact same percentage, around 20%, were Arab, and that ratio has remained constant throughout Israel's history. So much for the rapidly expanding Arab population. Second, the term 'Arab' does not mesh in the least with 'Palestinian.'

That Arab population includes not only 250,000 Arabs with residence permits who are not Israeli citizens, but Druse, Circassians and Bedouins, who proudly serve in the IDF. Many of them do not regard the Quraysh Palestinians fondly, to say the least.

Demographics expert Yoram Ettinger has more on the subject:

Anyone suggesting that Jews are doomed to become a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is either dramatically mistaken or outrageously misleading.

In contrast with conventional “wisdom,” there is a Jewish majority of 67% in the combined area of pre-1967 Israel and Judea & Samaria and a 60% majority west of the Jordan River (including Gaza), compared with a 33% and a 8% Jewish minority in 1947 and in 1900 respectively.

The robust Jewish demographic tailwind and Arab demographic headwind are demonstrated through the absolute annual number of Jewish and Arab births in pre-1967 Israel. While the annual number of Arab births stabilized at 39,000 during 1995-2009, the annual number of Jewish births surged by 50% from 80,400 in 1995 to 121,000 in 2009.

The number of Judea & Samaria Arabs is artificially inflated by 66%. It is 1.55MN and not 2.5MN. Thus, the World Bank documents a 32% “inflation” in the number of Palestinian births, a substantial erosion of the Palestinian fertility rate and a significant escalation of Arab emigration from Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Documented entries and exits via international passages feature a 17,000 net Arab emigration from Judea & Samaria in 2009, 14,000 in 2007 and only six years of net-immigration since 1950.

The significant decline in Arab population growth rate has been caused by an intensive family planning campaign, an unprecedented reduction of teen-pregnancy, a swift urbanization process, an all-time-high divorce rate and median wedding-age, an impressive expansion of education especially among women and enhanced career mentality among women.

In contrast with international demographic standards, the Palestinians include some 400,000 overseas residents in their census. They also include 250,000 Jerusalem Arabs, who bear Israeli I.D. cards and are therefore doubly-counted: as Israeli Arabs by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics and as West Bank Arabs by the Palestinians.

I would also add that any census of the Palestinians invariably includes the Arabs of Gaza, about 1.5 million or so, who have absolutely no bearing on the numbers in Judea and Samaria (AKA The West Bank), inhabit an area that is not part of Israel and never would be by any calculation. Counting Gaza's population in regards to any 'demographic bomb' scenario makes as much sense as counting Morocco's.

So, why would the Palestinians fudge their numbers like this? They've got plenty of motivation to do so, as Yakov Faitelson points out in his recounting of various bogus population estimates:

Why fudge the numbers? There are two important reasons: First, overstating the Palestinian population is good for Palestinian morale, bad for Israeli morale, and heightens Jewish fears of the so-called "demographic time bomb"; second, there is a significant financial incentive, as the international community provides money to the Palestinian Authority according to the number of its inhabitants. When the Palestinian Authority pads its population numbers, the Palestinian Authority receives more money.

(I'll say! When the Saudis demanded an audit before they would provide aid to the Palestinian Authority, they found over 37,000 'no-show jobs' - non-existant people who were nevertheless drawing paychecks from UNRWA and other idiot Western donors.)

Careful demographic analysis, however, should lead to a conclusion in stark contrast to the demographic time bomb thesis. The natural increase of the Jewish population in Israel—that is, its yearly birth rate less its yearly death rate—stabilized thirty years ago and, since 2002, has even begun to grow. The natural increase of the total Arab population, comprising both Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, continues to descend toward convergence with the Jewish population, probably in the latter half of this century.

The data, moreover, point to rising levels of Arab emigration, particularly among young people. According to the survey conducted by Bir-Zeit University, 32 percent of all Palestinians and 44 percent of Palestinian youth would emigrate if they could. The official Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida has reported similar numbers. A public opinion poll conducted by the Near East Consulting Corporation in the Gaza Strip reveals an even higher rate—47 percent of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Translated into numbers of people, as of 2006, more than a million Arabs in the Palestinian territories wish to emigrate. As journalist Amit Cohen noted in 2007, "Close to 14,000 Palestinians, more than 1 percent of the population in the Strip, have left the Gaza Strip since the implementation of the withdrawal program, largely for financial reasons.

In an interview reported in the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat around the same time, Salam Fayyad, head of the Emergency Palestinian Government, commented: "How will we be able to deal with the problem of 40,000 to 50,000 Palestinians who have emigrated and many more that are not emigrating just because they do not have the means? We are losing in this respect."

The misuse of demography has been one of the most prominent, yet unexamined, aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many Israelis have so thoroughly absorbed the repeated claims of a diminishing Jewish majority that they do not consider whether their conventional wisdom is false. Before an accurate demographic picture of Israel and the Palestinian territories trickles down to the consciousness of the residents of the region, it must first be understood by Israeli and Palestinian policymakers, academics, and journalists, who need accurate, factual information to do their jobs. The impact on the conflict of such a development would be substantial.

Moreover, the Jewish birthrate in Judea and Samaria ( AKA the West Bank) which includes a high percentage of religious Jews is almost equal to the Palestinian birth rate in terms of births per woman.If you factor out Gaza, it amounts to a 67% Jewish majority in 98.5% of the land west of the Jordan River. And that's without factoring in the 'fudge' factor from the Palestinian Authority.

If anything, demographics point towards Israel not giving up a single square dunam of land more to the Palestinians, not the other way around. With all those kids, the Israelis are going to need the space...whereas the Palestinians have 22 other Arab countries to go live in if they choose to.

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Exposing The Palestinian's Phony 'Demographics' Threat Against Israel

You've heard it all before, as the prime rationale for a Palestinian state by the left..if those stubborn Joos don't knuckle under and give the Palestinians everything they want, the Arabs will soon be a majority. And then the only choices the Jews will have left is to be a minority in their own country or to give up democracy in favor of minority rule.

I've discussed what absolute horse manure this is many times, but it might be helpful to share the latest real numbers for those who still need convincing:

Israel's population on the eve of its 61st Independence Day numbers 7,411,000, according to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics Monday afternoon.

Last year, the population was 7,282,000, and when Israel was established, it was just 806,000.

About 75.5 percent, or 5,593,000, of Israel's residents are Jews, 1,498,000 are Arabs (20.2%), while "Others" - immigrants and their offspring who are not registered as Jews by the Interior Ministry - number 320,000 (4.3%).

Let's look at this more closely. Two things the article doesn't mention. One, out of the 806,000 population mentioned in 1948, almost the exact same percentage, around 20%, were Arab, and that ratio has remained constant throught Israel's history. So much for the rapidly expanding Arab population. Second, the term 'Arab' does not mesh in the least with 'Palestinian.'

That Arab population includes not only Arabs with residence permits who are not Israeli citizens, but Druse, Circassians and Bedouins, who proudly serve in the IDF and do not regard the Quraysh Palestinians fondly, to say the least.

Another factor is increased Arab emigration and the Palestinian's constant inflation of the Arab numbers. They've got plenty of motivation to do so, as Yakov Faitelson points in in his recounting of various bogus population estimates:

Why fudge the numbers? There are two important reasons: First, overstating the Palestinian population is good for Palestinian morale, bad for Israeli morale, and heightens Jewish fears of the so-called "demographic time bomb"; second, there is a significant financial incentive, as the international community provides money to the Palestinian Authority according to the number of its inhabitants. When the Palestinian Authority pads its population numbers, the Palestinian Authority receives more money.

(I'll say! When the Saudis demanded an audit before they would provide aid to the Palestinian Authority, they found over 37,000 'no-show jobs' - non-existant people who were nevertheless drawing paychecks from UNRWA and other idiot Western donors.)

Careful demographic analysis, however, should lead to a conclusion in stark contrast to the demographic time bomb thesis. The natural increase of the Jewish population in Israel—that is, its yearly birth rate less its yearly death rate—stabilized thirty years ago and, since 2002, has even begun to grow. The natural increase of the total Arab population, comprising both Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, continues to descend toward convergence with the Jewish population, probably in the latter half of this century.

The data, moreover, point to rising levels of Arab emigration, particularly among young people. According to the survey conducted by Bir-Zeit University, 32 percent of all Palestinians and 44 percent of Palestinian youth would emigrate if they could.[48] The official Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida has reported similar numbers.[49] A public opinion poll conducted by the Near East Consulting Corporation in the Gaza Strip reveals an even higher rate—47 percent of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. [50] Translated into numbers of people, as of 2006, more than a million Arabs in the Palestinian territories wish to emigrate. As journalist Amit Cohen noted in 2007, "Close to 14,000 Palestinians, more than 1 percent of the population in the Strip, have left the Gaza Strip since the implementation of the withdrawal program,[51] largely for financial reasons.[52]

In an interview reported in the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat around the same time, Salam Fayyad, head of the Emergency Palestinian Government, commented: "How will we be able to deal with the problem of 40,000 to 50,000 Palestinians who have emigrated and many more that are not emigrating just because they do not have the means? We are losing in this respect."[53]

The misuse of demography has been one of the most prominent, yet unexamined, aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many Israelis have so thoroughly absorbed the repeated claims of a diminishing Jewish majority that they do not consider whether their conventional wisdom is false. Before an accurate demographic picture of Israel and the Palestinian territories trickles down to the consciousness of the residents of the region, it must first be understood by Israeli and Palestinian policymakers, academics, and journalists, who need accurate, factual information to do their jobs. The impact on the conflict of such a development would be substantial.

Moreover, the Jewish birthrate in Judea and Samaria ( AKA the West Bank) which includes a high percentage of religious Jews is almost equal to the Palestinian birth rate in terms of births per woman.If you factor out Gaza, it amounts to a 67% Jewish majority in 98.5% of the land west of the Jordan River. And that's without factoring in the 'fudge' factor from the Palestinian Authority.

Or, as Yasir Arafat once said, "I've killed for my cause..don't you think I would lie for it?"

(hat tip, Carl)