Welcome to Team Shalom Fry'd Daze. Fry'd Daze is a long running series dedicated to dialogue in the Middle East. Currently we are in our Third year. These diaries are not intended to be a flame forum, but rather something where community members can meet and exchange ideas about I/P and/or issues that concern the Middle East.
Generally, these diaries take the form of four to five news articles and short commentary selected by the diarist. These stories however, are just a platform to get discussion going. The diaries from now on will publish under the banner of the Team Shalom
What is Team Shalom:
"Team Shalom is Team Peace. We are a group of Kossacks supporting a fair, pragmatic, and realistic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the two-state solution. We support Israel's continued existence as a Jewish and democratic state, with it existing alongside Palestine, a Palestinian and democratic state, as friends and neighbors. We believe this is the only way forward and the only way to achieve an enduring peace. This is the view endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the world's nations, including the Quartet, which consists of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations."
So please participate. The only thing we ask is that you keep comments respectful, reality based and please no use of Anti-Semetic or Anti-Arab memes. Enjoy!
For our first Story we head to Ynet where Two Gaza rockets hit Ashdod
Two Grad rockets exploded in the Ashdod area, one of them near a residential neighborhood and another further away. A rocket alert was also sounded in Ashkelon, but the city was apparently not hit. No injuries or damage have been reported so far.
IDF sources told Ynet that the rockets were fired from the outskirts of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. The fire came from al-Atatra neighborhood, a residential area.
A number of video clips were published earlier this week of terrorists firing rockets from areas populated with civilians in order to make it more difficult for the army to respond.
This was one of my (and many other critiques of the Goldstone Report) where while rightfully claiming that Hamas committed war crimes in targeting civilian areas the report gave Hamas a pass from the crime of endangering it's own citizens by firing from the middle of residential areas and then bailing out and letting the areas be hit in the retaliation.
In our second story we go to Maan News where they awre reporting that the body of slain ISM activist Vittorio Arrigoni was found in an abandoned house in Gaza
In a statement, the Hamas government press office said Arrigoni "was found by security hanging in an abandoned house in northern Gaza."
"When news of the kidnapping of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni became known security services went on general alert and the investigation has led to a member of the group who gave away the other members and showed the place where the activist was kept," Hamas government spokesman Ihab al-Ghoussein said in a statement read on television.
"The security services moved competently and quickly and found the body of the hostage who had been killed several hours earlier in an atrocious way according to a forensic doctor."
Salafist radicals in Gaza were suspected in the kidnapping of Arrigoni, an activist for the International Solidarity Movement, last seen alive in a video posted online Thursday.
Contrary to the Maan report and their own spokesman, Hamas official hints Israel killed Italian activist to intimidate future Gaza flotilla members
Hamas indirectly accused Israel on Friday of engineering the killing of an Italian Palestinian peace activist in Gaza in order to intimidate other foreign activists hoping to sail to Gaza as part of the next flotilla.
"Such an awful crime cannot take place without arrangements between all the parties concerned to keep the blockade imposed on Gaza," Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said at a rally held by the group to honor executed Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni.....
.....He was an outspoken critic of Israel, but in an interview with The Associated Press in 2008 he also criticized Muslim extremists for trying to impose a hardline version of Islam in Gaza. He said he hoped the presence of Western volunteers like him would help liberalize Gazan society.
In other news... Haaretz' editorial board has a piece on the indictment of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman: Lieberman must not wait to resign
And so the situation is that the potentially accused Lieberman retains the presumption of innocence, as a citizen who has until now only been a suspect. However, it is also inconceivable for the State of Israel to be represented internationally by a person who's seen by his own general prosecution as a serial fraudster, a cheat, a money launderer and a harasser of witnesses who planned and carried out, for years and across continents, a series of offenses punishable by a long prison term.
During the past two decades, since the indictments against former minister Aryeh Deri and former deputy minister Rafael Pinhasi, the custom in Israel has been that cabinet ministers resign their post if the attorney general decides to indict them.
Not later, when convicted, but not sooner, while the police are investigating and the prosecution is discussing. The middle phase, the hearing, in terms of a right and not an obligation of the candidate for indictment, allows the minister to retain his or her place in the cabinet.
These are not frivilous charges being brought against FM Lieberman. I do think that Haaretz makes a valid point that if the Police are recommending this course of action they must have an "ironclad" case against him. Given this, outwardly supporting your FM indicted on Fraud, Racketeering, Witness tampering and other charges is not sending a message that you are there to handle things seriously. It smacks far more as "I will do anything to hold my coalition togther, and forget what is right, instead I want to see my side win".
Yossi Verter of Haaretz has a strong take on this:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's declaration of support for his foreign minister was relayed to the media about two-and-a-half hours after Avigdor Lieberman's possible indictment was made public, on Wednesday. The dry formulation sent by the premier's office conceals serious concerns about the future. Netanyahu doesn't have a clue about all of Lieberman's future political aspirations, but he does know one thing: The master plan of the Yisrael Beiteinu leader is to succeed Netanyahu as leader of the Israeli right.
A politician who is determined to be head of the country's right wing cannot rush to topple an incumbent right-wing government. It is bound to fall at some point, due to one pretext or another, in any case. In the past two years, Lieberman has accumulated enough reasons to unseat Netanyahu. He seeks to prove to Likud voters that Yisrael Beiteinu is the real Likud. For this reason, he added Uzi Landau, and also Orly Levy-Abekasis (daughter of veteran Likud politician David Levy ) to his Knesset list, on the eve of the last elections.
Finally, U.S. Senate urges UN to rescind Goldstone's Gaza report
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution on Thursday calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council to rescind the Goldstone Commission's report on the Gaza war, in light of its author's expressed regret for some of its claim.
Resolution 138 urges council members "to reflect the author's repudiation of the Goldstone report's central findings, rescind the report and reconsider further Council actions with respect to the report's findings."
The resolution also asks UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to "do all in his power to redress the damage to Israel's reputation" in the wake of the report, and to bring forth reforms within the council so that it "no longer unfairly, disproportionately and falsely criticizes Israel on a regular basis."
This is something as an American I can completely agree with (my opinion), as I have long felt that the report was tainted by 3 of commissioners commentary on Israel prior to even beginning the investigations. BUT, those three commissioners have had this to say:
LONDON (AFP) -- Three of the authors of a United Nations report which criticized Israel over its 2008-2009 offensive on Gaza on Thursday rejected calls to retract the report.
They said in a statement to The Guardian newspaper in Britain that they found it "necessary to dispel any impression that subsequent developments have rendered any part of the mission's report unsubstantiated.
"Aspersions cast on the findings of the report... cannot be left unchallenged," wrote Pakistani human rights lawyer Hina Jilani, Christine Chinvin, a professor of international law at the London School of Economics and former Irish peacekeeper Desmond Travers.
"We concur in our view that there is no justification for any demand or expectation for reconsideration of the report as nothing of substance has appeared that would in anyway change the context, findings or conclusions of that report with respect to any of the parties to the Gaza conflict," they added
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Please add in your thoughts on these and other stories from the I/P arena.
Shabbat Shalom, Salam and Peace to everyone and Chag Samaeach for Passover (coming next week).