Israel's Record on the Darfur Refugees

A newspaper in Oregon has the headline “Israel Spurns Darfur Refugees”. As usual this couldn’t be further from the truth. Following, are three sample stories of many that show what is happening in reality. Ynet news reports Sudanese Refugees to Study in Israeli Schools Seventy-six Sudanese refugees, ages four and up, will be integrated into the Israeli school system during the coming academic year, according to an announcement by Education Minister this week.
The Sudanese children will be enrolled in Israeli grade schools and high schools despite the fact that their parents are in the country under refugee status, and without permanent housing.

Then from the Washington Post Flight from Darfur Ends Violently in Egypt Israel has up to 50 African refugees crossing its border a day, according to the UN refugee agency. The Israeli government earlier this year allowed a few of the Sudanese refugees to take jobs inside Israel. But that decision may have inadvertently encouraged this summer's influx, the refugees said. Egypt regards its border with Israel a military zone, and anyone trying to cross it is considered an infiltrator. Since July, Egyptian border guards have repeatedly used lethal force on the unarmed refugees

Meanwhile from Israel 21C Darfur refugees seeing things more clearly, thanks to Israeli eye initiative Israeli ophthalmologist Dr. Drora Zarfati has just returned from a refugee camp in northern Kenya where she and a colleague treated hundreds of Sudanese refugees from Darfur. The team gave examinations to detect eye diseases, and performed surgery for cataracts and droopy eyes. Amid difficult conditions and dangerous floods, Zarfati found that this was not just the most difficult mission she had ever undertaken, but also the most rewarding.

Report from: Israeli Citizens Action Network

Israel and the Darfur Refugees

How many Sudanese refugees have been admitted to the United States and countries in Europe?

Israel has accepted more than 3,000 already and more are trying to come here. To get to Israel, they risk much. Egyptian soldiers threaten them, beat them, and in at least one case that was witnessed by Israeli soldiers (who attempted to help the refugees and were pushed back at gunpoint), the Egyptians have even committed murder.

By comparison, Israel has housed them, fed them and offered them political asylum and even retraining. How is this treated in the media? The answer is - it isn't...until today when Israel announced a new policy

"Israel turns away Darfur refugees" reports CNN.

CNN begins the report by explaining that "Israel on Sunday rejected 50 Africans -- most of them reportedly from Sudan's Darfur region -- who had illegally entered the country from Egypt, a government official said."

The CNN report goes on, "Israel has been struggling with how to cope with an increasing number of Africans, including some from Darfur, who enter the country through Israel's southern border with Egypt. According to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, the refugees were arrested Friday evening as they tried to cross from Egypt into Israel. They were held at a military base in southern Israel before being driven back to Egypt on Sunday, the newspaper reported. The nationalities of the 50 sent back Sunday were not released, but the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, citing figures from the Israeli military, said nearly all of them had escaped the genocide in Darfur."

Rather than praise Israel for admitting thousands of people from an anti-Israel country, the CNN report continues to use negativity, "Israeli law denies asylum to anyone from an enemy state, AP reports. Sudan's Muslim government is hostile to Israel and has no diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. "

Only later on does CNN begin to show the true picture, "Dozens of Israeli lawmakers recently signed a petition urging the government not to deport Sudanese refugees. Arab militias supported by Sudan's government have committed numerous human rights atrocities, U.N. officials say, including the slaughter and gang rape of civilians, destruction of water sources, looting and burning of buildings and crops. Earlier this month, Israel's Channel 10 interviewed Israeli soldiers who said they had witnessed Egyptian security officers executing several Darfur refugees. According to Channel 10, their testimonies were backed up by Israeli military security cameras that showed Egyptian soldiers shooting and killing several asylum-seekers."

Citing a major Israeli newspaper, CNN continued, "According to Haaretz, one of the asylum-seekers 'jumped on the wire fence in an attempt to make it over to the Israeli side, but was reportedly dragged back and bludgeoned to death by the Egyptians.' Responding to the report, Human Rights Watch called on Egypt to investigate the reported deaths."

Only near the end, does CNN finally get around to explaining, "Since the beginning of the year, nearly 3,000 Africans have crossed from Egypt into Israel -- nearly half of them from Sudan, many traveling on foot. Many Sudanese refugees end up in Israeli prisons waiting for the government to decide what to do with them. Israeli volunteers -- outraged at the incarcerations -- have helped many Sudanese find work in Israel's agricultural communities and temporarily live in family homes across Israel."

And so we return to the main issue - how many Sudanese refugees have been taken in and given shelter and housing? We know they aren't being welcomed in Egypt. To set the record straight, CNN should investigate other countries as well.

When Innocent is Guilty and Murder is the Truth

When a "Quiet Boy" is Really a Would-Be Murderer

On Friday, August 10th, Ahmad Mahmoud Khatib, a 29 year-old Israeli Arab left his pregnant wife and small child - to commit murder. He entered the Old City of Jerusalem, just a few hundred meters from the location that three major religions call holy, and grabbed a security guard's gun.

Well-trained guards were able to quickly stop his rampage, leaving Khatib dead and as many as 10 innocent bystanders and the guard wounded. Almost immediatly, Khatib's family attempted to suggest that it was a plot and that their son was merely a quiet boy who had done no wrong. Even some Arab witnesses, suggested that Khatib had been shot while already laying on the ground and some even suggested that the guards were at fault.

To set the record straight, Israeli police have released closed circuit video footage of the terrorist incident in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday which clearly shows that the terrorist grabbed a security man's gun, fired on a security guard from close range, and was not the victim of an execution-style gunshot at close range.

Thus a "quiet boy" was really a cold-blooded killer, perpetrating a premeditated attack against the security guards and anyone else he could reach. Initially, many local and international media cooperated with the family, rather than focusin on the brave security guard whose heroism saved the day.

Thanks to carefully placed cameras that operate 24-hours per day, the record has been straight, the security guards not only exhonerated but honored, and Ahmad Mahmoud Khatib to be remembered for his evil actions.

Who/What Killed Yasir Arafat?

When Yasif Arafat was very sick and dying in Paris - so many different people accused Israel of making him sick. His wife, his aides, Palestinian leaders were quick to suggest that Israel had poisoned him...but no poison was found. They said Israel had given him cancer...but no cancer was found. There were hints, even than, that something else had caused his death...it has taken many years, and much secrecy, but the truth has come out...as it is most often likely to do.

Yasir Arafat died...not of anything that Israel did...but of AIDS he contracted under circumstances that are not clear...to say the least. Loyal to the end, his private doctor is willing to ignore all evidence and logic in order to maintain that Israel poisoned Arafat...in addition to the AIDS.

Arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat’s doctor has confirmed the long-circulating rumors
that the PLO chairman had AIDS – though the doctor insists Israel poisoned
Arafat as well, causing his death. Rumors have long circulated in both Israel
and the Palestinian Authority that Arafat’s symptoms prior to his death were
caused by AIDS. Within the PA, Israel has always been accused of poisoning the
PLO chairman.

Now, Arafat’s private doctor has joined other PLO officials in acknowledging that Arafat had the HIV virus, but is holding on to the claim that Israel was responsible for his ultimate demise, in a French hospital.

Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi told the Jordanian Amman News Agency that Arafat
did, in fact, have AIDS – but insisted that the HIV virus was injected into the
chairman’s bloodstream, and not the result of illicit sexual activity

.

Senior US intelligence official James J. Welsh, the National Security Agency's former PA analyst, told WorldNetDaily:

"One of the things we looked for when we were intercepting Fatah communications were messages about Ashbal [Lion cub] members who would be called to Beirut from bases outside of Beirut. The Ashbal were often orphaned or abandoned boys who were brought into the organization, ostensibly to train for later entry into Fedayeen fighter units.

Arafat always had several of these 13-15 year old boys in his entourage. We figured out that he would often recall several of these boys to Beirut just before he would leave for a trip outside Lebanon. It proved to be a good indicator of Arafat's travel plans. While Arafat did have a regular security detail, many of those thought to be security personnel - the teenage boys - were actually there for other purposes."

Deny Nadia Abu El Haj Tenure

Nadia Abu El Haj is a candidate for tenure not because she is an accomplished scholar - she is demonstrably not . El Haj work is of the kind that would be regarded as crank scholarship if not for the fashionably post-modern verbiage in which it is dressed.

The premise of her sole book is that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication," invented, not discovered, by dishonest archaeologists. Because such an assertion cannot be proven using evidence, she ignores almost all actual archaeological evidence, turning instead to repeated and unsubstantiated assertions of fact based on conversations she claims to have had with "student volunteers" at archaeological digs and with "archaeologists" she does not name.

Even without the security of tenure El Haj has signed the petition urging Columbia to divest form Israel, and a petition alleging that Israel planned to carry out a brutal and massive ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians at the start of the Iraq war. There was no evidence of such a plan, just as there is no evidence for the absured allegations found in her book. (Such as her allegation that in the year 70, Jerusalem was destroyed not by the Roman Army, but by a Marxist-style rebellion of lower-class Jews targeting upper-class Jews. The book is filled with risible pseudo-history of this type.)

Some of the shortcomings with Abu El Haj's work are outlined in the petition. To sign the petition, please go to: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/barnard/

Further information is available on: www.PaulaSays.com.

I urge you to sign this petition and forward it as widely as possible. While the goal is Barnard and Columbia graduates in particular, please feel free to send it to anyone that you believe will sign it.