06/07 Links Pt1: Fatah leader praises terrorist stabbers; Why Iran’s Post-Deal Terror Matters ~ EoZ

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah leader praises terrorist stabbers

Although the number of Palestinian terror attacks has lessened, Fatah leaders continue to praise the attacks of the terror wave. Recently, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki glorified the individual terrorists who chose to attack and murder Israelis with knives, saying they had “performed a miracle” causing Israelis to live under “curfew”:
“This people is greater than its leadership. The determination, willpower, and willingness to die for a dignified life are present among the youth who carried a knife after the disappearance of the Arab leadership, including the Palestinian. They performed a miracle by imposing a curfew within Israel with knives and rocks. Blessings to the mothers and fathers who gave birth to those who are marching on the path of light, without anyone having demanded it of them.”
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki’s Facebook page, May 16, 2016]
Zaki also condemned peace promotion, saying that anyone who “talks about renewing the relations with Israel is not a Palestinian and not a member of Fatah!” Zaki gave this speech at the UNRWA Ramallah Women’s Training Center and Educational Science Faculty’s graduation ceremony held at the Palestinian Red Crescent headquarters in Ramallah. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that UNRWA and the Palestinian Red Crescent have hosted or made their facilities available for terror promoting events.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The Fatah Mess

After many years of being gagged, Fatah's young guard is finding its voice. But while members of this faction wish to see a "changing of the guards at the Palestinian palace," this does not mean that they have changed their attitude towards Israel.
Fatah's young guard is neither interested in, nor authorized to, give up the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees -- or even take the basic step of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. In short, the actors might change, but the same show will go on.
The international community, meanwhile, is busy burying its head in the sand of Abbas's very messy backyard. The participants at the Middle East peace conference held in Paris last week may have missed the latest revolt against the PA president. Had they been paying attention, instead of calling for a two-state solution, they might have demanded that Abbas and his Fatah faction get their acts together, and include Israel in the show. Perhaps they also would have mentioned that this ought to happen before Hamas takes over the West Bank and creates another Islamist regime there, too.

JPost Editorial: Peace education

Surveys carried out over the past few decades by respected Palestinian research institutes, as well as by international bodies such as the Pew Research Center and the Arab Barometer initiative, have consistently found Palestinians to hold bigoted and highly negative opinions of Israel and Israelis.
In nearly every single opinion poll that has been conducted among Palestinians, well over half surveyed have consistently expressed the opinion that Israel’s aspiration is to extend its borders to cover all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and to expel its Arab citizens.
Palestinians also think Jews have no historical roots in what they refer to as Palestine.
In 2011, the American political consultant Stanley Greenberg commissioned a survey of Palestinian opinions on behalf of the Israel Project. Seventy-two percent declared it morally right to deny that “Jews have a long history in Jerusalem going back thousands of years,” while 90% said denying that Palestinians have “a long history in Jerusalem going back thousands of years” is morally wrong.
Similarly, in a 2015 survey commissioned for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy by David Pollock, fieldworkers from the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion asked residents of the West Bank and Gaza about Jewish rights to the land. Only 12 percent agreed that “Both Jews and Palestinians have rights to the land,” while more than 80 percent asserted that, “This is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it.”
These findings and others were compiled in a comprehensive essay by Daniel Polisar entitled “What do Palestinians Want?” that appeared in the November 2015 edition of the online magazine Mosaic.
Why is it that Palestinians hold such slanted opinions about Israel and Israelis? At least part of the answer lies in the educational messages taught to Palestinian children from a very young age, even at institutions belonging to the more “moderate” Palestinian leadership.

Shmuley Boteach: Obama’s November surprise for Israel?

Word is going around in diplomatic circles that the Obama administration is planning a November surprise for Israel. Here’s what is said to be going on.
The Paris peace conference last week, to which Israel and the Palestinians were not even invited, will end up exerting enormous pressure on Israel to create a Palestinian state. This renewed pressure will come despite evidence that a Palestinian state in the West Bank will quickly be dominated by genocidal Hamas, which is a threat to Israel and a disaster for the Palestinians. This will lead, in all likelihood, to a United Nations Security Council Resolution either condemning Israel for not creating that state or for not withdrawing from Judea and Samaria in the West Bank, despite the fact that doing so would irreversibly compromise Israel’s security.
Now, here is where it gets interesting. Israeli officials and Jewish communal leaders have told me that they expect that the Obama administration will not veto the resolution at the UNSC. Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, will not exercise the American veto.
This would mean that the resolution/condemnation goes through. President Barack Obama will not worry about how this might affect Hillary Clinton’s election prospects because the UN resolution will come after the November election.
And that’s how the Obama administration will wrap up – with a UN vote against Israel and the United States, for almost the first time, not vetoing a harmful resolution against Israel. Israel will be powerless to stop it.

Arab League chief claims Kerry thwarted strong French initiative

US Secretary of State John Kerry prevented France from successfully launching a strong new peace initiative last week that could have impacted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi said on Monday.
Kerry was "definitely not enthusiastic" about the June 3 Paris summit, he said and added that the American administration did not play a proactive role in the summit.
The summit, which brought together representatives from 29 countries and international entities such as the UN, was expected to issue a strong statement about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
When the summit convened it had hoped to have in its hand a much touted Quartet report about about the conflict. But disagreement over the language in the report, including US objectives, delayed its publication and it has yet to be issued.

Rice, Mogherini give French initiative short shrift in speeches on Mideast

US National Security Advisor Susan Rice and the European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini gave lengthy addresses on Israel and the Mideast on Monday but barely mentioned the French initiative, a sign the initiative failed to gain significant traction since being launched Friday at an international meeting in Paris.
Speaking for some 30 minutes at the AJC Global Forum, Rice mentioned it only once, saying that US Secretary of State John Kerry attended the Paris parley to underscore that a negotiated two-state solution is the only pathway to peace. In the very next breath, however, she stressed that “a solution cannot be imposed on the parties,” something that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said on numerable occasions.
She said that the US “strongly” opposes Israeli settlement activity, “just as we oppose counterproductive Palestinian actions and strongly condemn incitement and violence.”
Mogherini, in her address, did not mention the French initiative even once. She said that while “it would be great” for new and meaningful negotiations to start immediately, “we should all recognize that the conditions for this to happen are simply not there.“

Top White House official slams settlements, vows military aid

While lashing out at settlement activity, National Security Adviser Susan Rice promised Monday evening that the upcoming defense agreement between the US and Israel will constitute a “significant increase in support” for Israel’s security, despite reports that the negotiations have stumbled.
Rice, who addressed the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum, is one of the central figures involved in negotiating the latest in a series of 10-year military aid deals that have served as the underpinning of US-Israel military assistance for decades. While negotiations on a new Memorandum of Understanding started months ago, talks have slowed amid reported disagreements over the total funding level.
Rice, however, cited the agreement as evidence of the administration’s support for Israel. “Even in these days of belt-tightening, we are prepared to sign the single largest military assistance package with any country in history,” Rice proclaimed, noting that Israel already “receives more than half of the US’s entire foreign military assistance budget.”
The new memorandum, she said, will “constitute a significant increase in support.” The memorandum is expected to grant between $37 and $40 billion in aid over the course of a decade from 2019 to 2029.

In Russian media blitz, PM warns Israel won’t let Iran open Golan front

Israel will not let Iran use the Hezbollah terror group to turn the Syrian side of the Golan Heights border into a new front, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian media outlets in comments published Tuesday.
Netanyahu, who is on a two-day visit to Moscow, told the state-run Interfax news service and TASS news agency ahead of the talks that he would do everything in his power to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold in Syria, and intended to ask Russia for help in curbing the threat from Hezbollah.
“We have a red line, a boundary that we will not allow to be broken. Iran will not be allowed, using Hezbollah, to use Syrian territory to attack us and open up another terrorist front against us in the Golan,” Netanyahu told TASS ahead of a meeting with Putin on Tuesday afternoon — their fourth round of talks in recent months.
The two leaders were expected to continue their ongoing discussion over security coordination between the Russian and the Israeli armies, especially their so-called deconflicting mechanism, installed to assure the Israel Defense Forces does not strike Russian jets operating in Syrian airspace.

MEMRI: On 100th Anniversary Of Sykes-Picot Agreement, Some Arab Writers Fear New Sykes-Picot Imposed By U.S., Russia; Others Argue That Internal Arab Strife Is The Real Danger

Marking the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the Ottoman Empire into several territories and thus largely shaped the map of the Middle East as we know it today, the Arab press published many articles discussing this agreement and its outcomes. Some writers focused on the agreements' adversary effects, and warned that the U.S. and Russia are currently formulating a new Sykes-Picot agreement that will subdivide the region's states into even smaller states on a sectarian and ethnic basis. This, in order to further weaken the Arab world and subordinate it to their control. There were also articles that accused the Arab regimes of cooperating with this plan, consciously or unconsciously, and some accused Israel of being party to it.
Conversely, other writers claimed that the disintegration of the Arab world along ethnic and sectarian lines stems not from external plots but from the division and hatred that currently prevail among the Arabs.
Yet another approach was taken by Lebanese journalist Khairallah Khairallah. He wrote that the Sykes-Picot agreement was actually a "gift from heaven," but the Arabs failed to take advantage of it. Instead of using it to develop states that benefit their people, they used it as an excuse to oppress their people and as to justify all their failures.

Iran: Saudis gave Israel ‘strategic’ intel in 2006 Lebanon war

Saudi Arabia gave “strategic” intelligence information to Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the speaker of Iran’s parliament claimed on Monday.
During an interview with the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese satellite TV channel Al Mayadeen, Ali Larijani said that Iran had “definite information” about the kingdom’s security cooperation with Israel, the Walla website reported.
Israel went to war with Iranian ally Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006 following its deadly attack on Israeli troops and abduction of two IDF soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. The 34-day war saw Israel demolish large swathes of the Lebanese terror group’s Beirut stronghold, while Hezbollah fired hundreds of missiles at the north of Israel. The conflict, which ended on August 14, 2006 with a UN resolution, claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese and 165 Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Larijani also said that during Israel’s first round of fighting with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, between December 2008 and January 2009, known in Israel as Operation Cast Lead, the Saudis had “found excuses” to avoid taking any responsibility for Gaza, while Tehran had stood by Hamas and supported its military wing.

PA official decries Rivlin’s ‘apartheid’ West Bank visit

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat took President Reuven Rivlin to task Tuesday over his visit a day earlier visit to West Bank settlements he said are an expression of Israel’s system of “apartheid.”
Rivlin on Monday toured settlements in the Binyamin Regional Council, north of Jerusalem — the first time he has done so since taking office.
Erekat told the PA’s official Wafa news agency that the visit reflects Israel’s “insistence on an apartheid model, and its refusal to abide by international agreements.”
“The Israeli president recognizes that the settlements are illegal and tantamount to a war crime,” Erekat said.
He called on the world to denounce Israeli “terrorism” and to stop treating Israel “as if it were a country above the law.”

PreOccupiedTerritory: We’re So Indigenous, The Land Came From Us By Mahmoud Abbas (satire)

I’m getting tired of having to reiterate our ancient claim to the land of Palestine and how it far precedes that of the Jews, so let me settle this once and for all by establishing that we have been here so long, the very Earth emerged from us, and not the other way around.
That’s right: by the time the tectonic plates formed and created the Syria-Africa Rift Valley where Palestine sits, my people already had an ancient history in the land. Our ancestors frolicked and worshiped in harmony with Nature and the divine will eons before what is now called “the Middle East” came into coherent form. They saw the mountains rise, the Salt Sea form, and the very land masses congeal from the primordial magma. You can’t say that about the interloper, invader Jews.
You can take your archaeology, geology, and paleontology and shove it up your defiled backside with your defiled feet. All those so-called sciences are products of a Jewish conspiracy to deprive the Palestinians of their legitimate indigenous rights. You can show me Jewish artifacts, inscriptions, and texts until your arms fall off; it won’t help. I have decided we were here long before the pig-ape Jews, whose simian and porcine ancestors hadn’t even evolved into being when the Palestinians were already celebrating their five billionth year of peaceful, nonviolent prosperity.

Liberman on northern border: I would advise against testing us

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman held his first visit to the IDF Northern Command on Tuesday.
The freshly appointed minister heard briefings from IDF Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot.
He was also briefed by OC Northern Command, Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the head of the Northern Formation and Commander of the IDF Staff and Command College, Maj.-Gen. Yossi Bachar, and regional commanders in northern Israel.
Defense officials declined to say whether Liberman toured the Syrian or Lebanese borders.
"I heard briefings today on this area, which is always sensitive, and I can say that the northern border is in good and secure hands," Liberman said.

Terrorist shoots up IDF vehicles in Samaria

An Arab terrorist opened fire on two military vehicles early Tuesday morning as they rode on Highway 465 adjacent to Halamish, located in the Binyamin region of Samaria to the northeast of Ramallah.
None of the soldiers were wounding by the shooting attack, although one of the vehicles was damaged by the gunfire.
In response a Jewish civilian who was at the scene returned fire and shot at the terrorist, who managed to flee the scene.
IDF forces are hunting after the Arab terrorist, but there is no word yet of his capture.

The “Palestinian narrative”. Comedy or just inspired fiction?

“Palestinian” history is ancient.
Very ancient.
But its exact age varies depending on whichever one of the 100 or so “Palestinian” leaders you choose to believe (at last count there were at least three separate “Palestines” – centred around Gaza City, Ramallah and Amman respectively and each ruled by a different despot).
These various “Palestines” are using at least 1 billion US dollars a year of YOUR tax revenues to hijack a fourth “Palestine” aka the Jewish state of Israel, which is centred around Jerusalem.
Now, depending on whether you choose to believe such people of renowned integrity as Holcaust denier and anti-Semite Mahmud Abbas, or terrorist and anti-Semite Ismail Haniyeh, or “feminist” and anti-Semite Hanan Ashrawi, or whomever, “Palestinian” history in the land of Israel dates back at least 6000 years.
Or 5000 years.
But at least certainly 3500 years.
Whichever way you look at it, the “Palestinians” were certainly around before Abraham. And he spoke Arabic with a distinct “Palestinain” accent. No, really…

This Muslim Mother Took Her Teenage Daughter To Palestine And Married Her Off As A Child Bride

Imagine being offered up on a platter as a child bride to an absolute stranger several years your senior. Now imagine the person holding the platter was your own mother.
Yasmine Koenig doesn’t have to imagine this horror. She lived through it.
In a first-hand testimonial published in Seventeen Magazine, Yasmine tells her harrowing story to reporter Liz Welch, detailing a mother’s betrayal justified by the barbarism of traditional Islamic honor culture.
At just 15 years old, Yasmine was forced to travel to the theocratic territory of Palestine where she should would be married off to man chosen by her own mother.
Confounded by a lie her mother had told her about returning to her hometown of Chicago, Yasmine packed her belongings and left her friends to relocate halfway across the world. Despite her mother’s reassurances about the trip, Yasmine remained suspicious of her mother’s intentions.

Haniyeh: One day we'll pray at the liberated Al-Aqsa Mosque

Deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday night expressed hope that Palestinian Arabs will soon be able to pray in the “liberated Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
“The first day of Ramadan will be the day that Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque will return, the Israeli occupation will end and all of us will pray at the courtyard of the mosque,” he said in a sermon marking the start of the month of Ramadan.
In a second speech he gave on Monday, Haniyeh declared that Hamas could thwart any diplomatic initiatives by supporting the “Al-Quds Intifada”, the name Palestinian Arab factions have given to the recent terror wave against Israel.
“It is important to maintain the Al-Quds Intifada, which is the way to liberate Jerusalem and bring back the Palestinian people to their land,” he said, in comments quoted by Hamas’s Palestine newspaper.

Analysis: Despite concern, Israel sees Jordan surviving ISIS threat

Despite the terrorist attack that killed five people in Jordan Monday, the fact is that in the face of the many problems and threats embroiling the Hashemite Kingdom, it is nevertheless a relatively stable state in the chaotic Middle East.
The attack took place at the Baqaa camp, 20 km. north of Amman, which was one of several camps erected to shelter Palestinian refugees after the Six Day War in June 1967.
Killed when gunmen opened fire were three Jordanian intelligence officers, one guard and one telephone operator. As of press time, no one had yet claimed responsibility for the incident, which occurred on the first day of Ramadan, but it is most likely that the perpetrators, be they locals or foreigners, acted on behalf of either Islamic State (ISIS) or another jihadist group.
Three months ago, Jordanian security services foiled a plot by ISIS terrorists in the northern city of Irbid, killing seven would-be perpetrators. Jordan is the most important base for the Western coalition fighting ISIS and supporting rebel groups opposed to the regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria.
CIA advisers, US military trainers and special American forces are operating very closely with the Jordanians.

Suspect held over Jordan attack in which 5 intelligence agents killed

Jordanian authorities have arrested a suspect accused of gunning down five intelligence agents on Monday in their office at a Palestinian refugee camp.
“Investigations are under way but early indications are that this was an isolated and individual act,” said government spokesman Mohamed Momani, announcing the arrest without identifying the suspect.
The gunman struck at Baqaa camp north of the capital early Monday — the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — in what Momani called a “terrorist attack.”
The suspect fled the scene after the killings.
A security source told AFP he was arrested later at a mosque in the Salt region north of Amman.
The suspect was armed and resisted arrest, the source said, adding that a police officer had been injured in the swoop.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

ISIS slams rivals as 'Jews of Jihad'

Supporters of the Islamic State have continued to refer to arch rival terrorist organization Al-Qaida as the "Jews of Jihad" on Twitter, The Middle East Media Research Institute reported Monday, using the hashtag as a derogatory term based on the claim that the two share the same negative qualities.
The hashtag first made its appearance on the Internet in January 2016 in an article titled "The Jews of Jihad: Al-Zawahiri's Al-Qaida" by prominent pro-ISIS supporter Abu Maysara Al-Shami. The article was written as a condemnation for an alleged conspiracy concocted by al-Qaida to join the ranks of ISIS in order to destroy the Islamist group from within.
Al-Shami's description of Al-Qaida as Jews is based on his comparison between this suggested plan and a widely-held Sunni belief that Shia Islam was initially founded by the Jews to divert Muslims away from their religion, according to MEMRI.

Why Iran’s Post-Deal Terror Matters

The IRGC is significant because it is not merely a terror group; it’s a terrorism conglomerate. It has a hand in the funding of terrorism around the world and is a major player in the Iranian economy, which owns many state-run businesses. As the New York Times reported earlier this year, very little of the foreign investment that is pouring into Iran since the sanctions collapsed are going to the private sector in that country. Almost the entire vast windfall in cash is going to state-run companies, many of which are controlled by the IRGC.
That means the only immediate effect of the deal is to help make it easy to continue and intensify the same activities that the State Department correctly points out make it so dangerous.
All of this illustrates again how self-contradictory the administration’s Iran policy has become. As our Max Boot noted last week, the tacit alliance against ISIS is not only of questionable utility, at best, it means exchanging the rule of one terrorist regime for another as Iran’s terror proxies in Iraq that are mentioned in the State Department report will dominate the country, not the Baghdad government backed by the U.S.
All this also shows how hard it will be for Obama’s successor to undo the damage that has been done by the nuclear pact and a policy of appeasement of Iran. Iran is using its terrorist proxies to advance its goal of regional hegemony in the Middle East. That threat that has forced Saudi Arabia to look to Israel rather than to a United States that no longer seems willing to stand up against Tehran. Add to that the fact that Iran is now immeasurably richer and that the new economic ties with Europe make it impossible to re-impose international sanctions, and it’s easy to see how much more dangerous the world has become as a result of Obama’s nuclear diplomacy. The fact that the confirmation of this dismal prospect comes from his own State Department rather than critics seems to be lost on the administration and its cheerleaders who helped sell the country on this unfolding disaster.

Lawmakers Ask State Dept Watchdog to Probe Deletion of Iran Deal Footage

Leading lawmakers have asked the State Department inspector general to open an inquiry into the agency’s deliberate deletion of press briefing footage about the Iran nuclear deal.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), who heads the National Security Subcommittee, asked State Department Inspector General Steve Linick to launch an inquiry into the department’s Bureau of Public Affairs in a letter Monday afternoon.
“We are puzzled by the apparent degradation of the Bureau’s commitment to transparency and openness,” the lawmakers wrote.
The State Department first acknowledged last week that someone in the department intentionally deleted several minutes of video from a press briefing in December 2013. The deleted video showed Jen Psaki, then a spokesperson for the department, admitting the government misled the press about the United States’ secret negotiations with Iran.
Specifically, Psaki, now Obama’s top press adviser, was asked by Fox News reporter James Rosen whether the department’s policy was to “lie” about secret negotiations with Iran in order to preserve their secrecy. He was referring to a 2012 statement by the department that secret negotiations with Iran were not underway, when in reality they were.

Iran's Anti-Semitism Is More Than Just Hate, It's A Strategy To Make Friends In The Middle East

Iran has found it particularly difficult to find friends in the Middle East as of late. With an inflammatory sectarian divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the Middle East growing ever wider, predominantly Shia Iran has become a pariah among Sunni terrorist groups. That said, if there is one thing that Sunni and Shia extremists hate more than each other, its Israel and the Jewish people. By leveraging that hatred, Iran hopes to make some new partners in the Middle East.
The Islamic Republic has drastically increased its anti-Semitic rhetoric in recent months. Having recently concluded its infamous Holocaust denial cartoon contest in May, Iran has decided to hold another competition at the end of June, with this event’s theme being the “Zionist Caliphate.” Organizers say the contest will focus on “Zionism, terrorism and racism” as well as “[ISIS] terrorism and genocide in the name of religion and to the benefit of the Zionists.”
Outlandish as the theme may sound, it makes some sense from the Islamic Republic’s perspective. Shia Iran is a mortal enemy of the Sunni Islamic State, the conflict between the two has been a major catalyst for the growing sectarian divide. Alleging that ISIS is a front for the “Zionists” could help draw support for the organization away from the Sunni population.
“Iran’s anti-Semitic assault is one of the few rhetorical weapons the clerics can deploy that has broad popular appeal among Sunni Muslims,” wrote Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

“Labour Camps” House Nearly 60% of Qatar’s Population

Nearly 60% of Qatar’s residents live in what the government calls “labour camps,” according to an April 2015 census report released by Doha on Sunday.
Qatar’s Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) found that 1.4 million people reside in what the department described as “labour camps,” Agence France-Presse reported. At the time of the survey, the Gulf monarchy had a population of about 2.4 million. Nearly all of those living in the camps were men.
Qatar has come under international criticism in recent years over the harsh living and working conditions endured by its large migrant workforce, which is building the country’s infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup competition. Qatar utilizes a system of labor known as kafala, under which migrant workers must have a sponsor in order to enter and leave the country, effectively rendering them fully dependent on their host companies. Documented abuses in the system include workers not being paid or having their wages significantly lowered, abysmal working and living conditions, and even death.
Last week, 11 people were killed and another 12 injured after a fire broke out in one of the camps that host the workers.
Qatar’s treatment of its migrant workforce came increased scrutiny when it arrested a BBC crew investigating the conditions that laborers were forced to endure last year, as well as when it refused to allow Nepalese workers to return home last April following a devastating earthquake in that country. Qatar created an agency to polish its image following those scandals, but has not necessarily improved conditions for the workers.
Nepalese migrants building World Cup infrastructure died at a rate of one every two days in 2014, The Guardian reported.

Bomb attack on police bus in Istanbul kills 11

A bomb ripped through a Turkish police vehicle near Istanbul’s historic centre Tuesday, killing seven officers and four civilians and adding to security concerns after a string of attacks in Turkey’s biggest city.
The bomb targeted a service shuttle bus carrying officers from Istanbul’s anti-riot police as it was passing through the central Beyazit district close to many of the city’s top tourist sites, Istanbul governor Vasip Sahin said in a live statement on Turkish television.
Thirty six people were wounded, three of them seriously, he added.
Reports said the explosion took place close to the Vezneciler metro station, which is within walking distance of some of the city’s main tourist sites including the famed Suleymaniye Mosque.
The metro station was closed as a security precaution.
Pictures showed the bomb had turned the police vehicle into mangled wreckage and that nearby shops had their front windows smashed out by the force of the blast.

PreOccupiedTerritory: After Istanbul Bombing, Palestinians Scramble To Make It About Them (satire)

The key is finding the right detail of the bombing, explained Fatah official Saeb Erekat. “Right now we only know that there was a bombing attack, not who perpetrated it,” he said. “If we knew right away that it was, say, the Kurdish insurgency, we could draw parallels between the brutality of the PKK and the brutality of the IDF, and say we face that kind of brutality every day at the hands of the IDF, altering the story to be about us instead of Turkey.”
“Alternatively,” he continued, “if it turns out it was the Islamic State that perpetrated the bombing, we would point out how Daesh has suspiciously not attacked Israel, and it is common knowledge in the Muslim world that Israel is behind Daesh, and the solution to their problem – which is really just a symptom of our problem – is the defeat of Israel.”
“Another possibility is that it’s any number of groups allied with the Syrian regime,” he added. “Depending on which one – some local Shiite militia, Hezbollah, whoever – our hook for making it about us will have to be developed accordingly. It’s a little bit frustrating to have to wait until more details are known, because there’s only so much rhetorical hay you can make with general pronouncements of solidarity.”
Palestinian activists and advocates for their cause have for years attempted to hijack others’ struggles for political or diplomatic leverage against Israel, asserting that their cause and the cause of other oppressed victims are inherently linked. They have been encouraged in these efforts by governments across Europe and the Americas that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, pursue a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the linchpin for regional stability, enabling the Palestinians to believe everything really is about them.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.