UNRWA

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) was created in December 1949. Originally designed for helping both Jewish and Arab refugees of 1948 war both inside and outside the State of Israel it ceased operations inside Israel in 1952 when Israel took whole responsibility for these of her residents/ citizens who used to be refugees.
Originally undoubtedly UNRWA was trying to base it actions on UNRRA experience, as United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Organization, funded in 1943, included in UN in 1945 (after it was established) was especially active in 1945 and 1946 and dismantled in 1947.
Only in 1950 did UN establish its agenda designed to deal generally with refugees from all conflicts (UNHCR) and defined who is (and who is not) a refugee and what expectations should be meet by the agenda, but it never unified UNRWA and UNHCR definitions, goals and methods of dealing with problem thus creating very special "cast" among all touched by results of conflicts and border changes. Palestinian "refugees" (of whom majority would never been recognized as such by UNHCR at this time) receive the global highest financial help per capita, are entitled to inherit their status (which vastly adds to the problem) and are absolutely convinced (at least in great part) about UN backed so called "right of return" being in sharp contrast with any rights of any refugees anywhere else.

Let us look more closely at the problem.

1. Palestinians inheriting their refugee status: originally according to different sources there has been between 500,000 and 750,000 Arab refugees of 1948 conflict. Most sources put the number at approximately 650,000 people. Today UNRWA claims to take care about more than 5 million refugees. No other group of refugees ever has been entitled to pass this status to their children and grandchildren. Let us try to explore what would it mean if Palestinian Arabs were treated equally:

• there seem to be between 35,000 and 40,000 people who actually were refugees from the conflict still living. I have no idea how many are living at the UNRWA controlled facilities yet taking (even very good) care about 40,000 old people hardly requires special UN agenda with billion dollar budget and 30,000 regular employees Most of the refugees from around the same time would not be recognized as such by anybody anyway. Let us try: 
• after II WW there where around 5 million Russian displaced persons, as a result of changing borders you can add some 2-3 million Poles, 2 million Germans, many Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and of course virtually all Jews who survived! Their grandchildren constitute vast number of EU citizens and do not expect anybody to pay them for the horrors their grandparents went through.
•  There were some 900,000 Jewish refugees of 1948 conflict mostly evicted from all Arab countries, often without any possessions and after being jailed or even tortured. Their fell out of UNRWA attention at most in 1952 and their grandchildren do not carry "refugee" label or demand international money and "right of return" to wherever it was their grandparents were forced from.
•  Tibetan refugees from occupation of Tibet by China (lasting since 1950) have this status only until some solution can be found. UNHCR on the basis of Gentleman Agreement with the government of Nepal mostly works towards resettling them there and none of their children or grandchildren is treated as "refugee" although their bonds with Tibet are obvious for everybody
• and there were Congo and Angola and South Sudan and Rwanda and Cambodia and.... yeah, we know

2.  Palestinian refugees were denied citizenship in Syria, Lebanon and in Jordan.  They were admitted to the latter country bu then evicted or stripped of residency after Black September tried to overturn Hashemide dynasty in 1970. And who could blame Jordanians? None of us would watch willingly as refugees try to take control of the host country by force. In Syria and Lebanon they were used by Arab politics hostile towards Israel to show as Israeli atrocity but it is not Israeli fault that they were not allowed to live outside refugee camps, were deprived of right to study or take a job  etc. UNRWA is trying to take care of some of the problems (there are 59 UNRWA sponsored towns and villages dispersed on Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian controlled territory with one in Israeli hold territory). Palestinian refugees are offered the highest per capita financial help in the world which - by the way - may be precarious now that Syria has over 3 million refugees (according to UNHCR definition meaning many more than Palestinians ever had) who are under UNHCR protection. Thus we have two different categories of refugees in one country with different level of financing from UN and different UN agendas tending to them.

3. UNHCR  has stated three equivalent solutions for refugees: voluntary repatriation; local integration; or resettlement to a third country in situations where it is impossible for a person to go back home or remain in the host country. It regards ALL but Palestinian refugees. UNRWA, by contrast, emphasizes "right of return", as understood by by Arab propaganda, consequently preventing people from rebuilding their lives and creating them for their children, be it in Palestinian controlled territories or anywhere else. Instead, people are kept in a state of dreaming about "return" to someplace that only their grandparents might have seen. They live the dream and raise their kids to fulfill it with murder and sacrificing their lives, if need be. As it goes for generations it may be compared to third generation of Germans whose grandparents were forced out of Czechoslovakia or Romania or Poland after the war. If they were living just dreaming about going someday - maybe in 2-3 generations - "home" their presence in contemporary Europe would have been like time-bomb. Specially had they preserved Nazi views and had on average 5 children per woman. The same goes for Poles forced of their homes due to change of borders with Soviet Union in 1945 or the Irish forced out of Home Island by Great Famine and now their descendants dreaming about taking both islands (UK included) because it was their "home". Would we feed such dreams or step back in horror? 

There is one more problem with UNRWA: it is an old organization. With workforce of over 30,000 people, mostly Palestinians who live out of donations to it it is now "a nation of its own" as someone has described it. To many people with their families and status depend on preserving status quo: same stories, same propaganda, same life-patterns, same dependency. They were taught it and taught very well. They adapted to this situation and as all of us knowing some kind of situation with its upsides and downsides are familiar with it and they dread changes, even for good, because one has to adapt to changes, change the way of thinking and behaving and solving problems. This could be seen in former communist countries where people, even dreaming about a change found it challenging because they had to adapt to new realities, find their ways, take new responsibilities, learn new tricks (like an old dog). In UNRWA controlled  settlements very few are ready for a challenge of changes - even ones for better for them and their neighbors. And maybe this preservation of mentality (we will fight, kill, be killed, one day return, murder all Jews, our home is someplace else) by obstructing forces that would move these people into different patterns is the worst thing UNRWA does - to both Palestinians and Israelis.

Pallywood

Pallywood is the name Israelis and organizations like Honest Reporting give to staged movies and scenes that are sometimes used by Western media to show "Israeli atrocities". On many occasions it has been proven that these movies are faked, staged and it is easy to prove yet so many Western media either fall for it or - unfortunately - happily cooperate in spreading such lies!
Here are some examples (the best one I will leave for a dessert)
injured recovers just in seconds
faking head injury
sometimes it doesn't go so smooth
funerals may sometimes seem like resurrections
THIS IS A MUST SEE  where even a Jewish baby injured by Hamas rocket is sold as "Gazan victim"

Here is a link to a documentary about so called Pallywood.

Didn't I promise the best for a dessert?
You may not be familiar with it but there is an Indian movie from 1975  called "Sholay" shot in Karnataka, Southern India, here is a scene from this movie used just days ago by Al Jazeera as... you guessed - "live from Gaza"

Please make these pieces of art available if you want to have less fiction passing for facts for propaganda reasons.

Tykocin

I have just came back from a long weekend in Biebrza National Park, beautiful lowland at the east of Poland. There is also small and sleepy town near protected area called Tykocin with a long history and I would like to show you some of it and tell a bit about it.
The village was established sometime in XI century and originally it was just a small settlement but in XV century it was given the status of town and started its quick development. Having great protectors among wealthy gentry to whom it belonged (changing hands due to political issues) it developed well although with some hassle around middle XVII century (Swedish wars) and by the end of XVIII century when Poland lost her independance.

First Jewish families settled here in 1522 and the Jewish community was developing rapidly with the protection of Polish kings. By 1800 Jews constituted 70% of Tykocin's population and it was the second greatest and most important Jewish community after Cracow. As far as I know it was also always peacefully coexisting with non-Jewish neighbours.
Tykocin became Polish again after regaining independence (1918) and right before II WW it had population of 5,000 half of them Jewish.

During Shoah it lost all but 1 Jewish citizens and around 400-500 non-Jewish ones (taken to concentration camps by Germans) thus loosing nearly 70% of inhabitants and civic rights (it was village again after the war). Today it is sleepy little town trying to remember its history. The synagogue devastated by Nazis during occupation was one of the first in Poland to be renovated and here's how it looks now.

As you can see at some homes you can still see the reminders of old inhabitants (this star of David by the door) and (last picture) on the new B&B names are given in Hebrew as well as in Polish

Biased media reports

There is a long list of biased or untruthful media reports concerning Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza in European media.

It is truth that every foreign reporter in Gaza has its personal "guarding angel" (devil?) who takes care that they see what is meant for them to see. It is truth that those not complying with Hamas' instructions in media sometimes receive death threats (and occasionally speak about it, of course AFTER leaving Gaza but it is obvious). Still if one wants to be a reporter specially in tough places it requires some courage and moral compass and reporters are very keen on talking about their ethics code and being the forth power so it would have been nice to grow up to it - at least partly. 

In Europe just during the last month we have been dealing with:

• overusing the word "genocide" with regards to defensive actions taken by Israeli forces when in reality - depending on the source of information - 1,600 to 1,800 people in Gaza have been killed during over a month of open conflict and (according to Israeli sources) 750-1,000 of them being active Hamas terrorists. I will come back later to their identification as civilians/ terrorists but speaking purely about their number and comparing it with the number of victims in other ongoing conflicts (Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Southern Sudan or Nigeria to mention just a few, one European) the number of victims in Gaza is relatively small. And still there is no other conflict in connection with which the word "genocide" would have appeared so often if at all (even if, as with Iraqi ISIS it would have been based on facts),
•  reporting the number of victims in Gaza based on Hamas' word exclusively which mean that as victims of Israel the subsequent groups were included: people who deceased due to natural causes during the conflict, people who were hit by Hamas' rockets destined for Israel that didn't make it into Israeli territory, people who were prevented from escaping their homes by Hamas (after warnings from IDF) and made into victims (or martyrs as they put it), people shot by Hamas as suspected Israeli spies (read: those who opposed Hamas in any way including insisting on evacuation). It is rather hard to count these people as victims of Israel, on the contrary - excluding those deceased due to natural causes they are all victims of Hamas and whoever cares about them should blame Hamas,
• accepting that all those without uniforms and personal weapons are civilians. Well, I don't know about any terrorist organization using (especially extensively) uniforms, do you? And not having personal weapons on you does not mean you are not involved in terrorist activities like planning terror acts, launching rockets or constructing bombs. In fact the number of civilian victims remaining to high (as any and on any side is to high) is much smaller - the usage of pictures of victims of Syrian war or car accidents or even Fogel children (Jewish children murdered on purpose by Palestinian terrorist!!!) and introducing them under false names as victims of this conflict has been detected. They are easy to find out but apparently not many were willing to look for such frauds,
• purposeful misleading information (if you prefer straight talk: lying) in media like yesterday (Friday) when some media reported that the cease-fire has ended due to Israeli fire while in reality Hamas started launching rockets on Israel 3 hours before the cease-fire was over and Israel responded only after having 17 rockets launched into her territory,
• the difference in number of victims is nearly exclusively due to completely different approach to them on both sides. While Israel is the country which protects her citizens more than any other country I know of (shelters in the south for nearly everybody mean that e.g. when rocket directly hit a building in Israel yesterday there was only one person injured) Hamas uses (abuses!!!!) Palestinians to create their bodies as anti-Israeli weapon in media thus forcing people warned by IDF to evacuate not only to stay but even to climb onto the roofs on the building under fire. It is a crime against humanity. The crime for which Hamas is to blame and it should be said aloud!

 Here are some links to relevant materials by some courageous reporters (note: they are international):
Indian TV coverage about shooting rockets.
France24 report about launching rockets from the hotel with journalists and with UN flag over it.
Finish reported confirming Hamas using civilians as human shields.

Having seen so much of biased reporting in recent days I wholeheartedly invite you to join the FB event "enough is enough" against bad reporting. You may find it here.

Death tunnels

One of the most important objectives of Operation Protective Edge was (and still is) destroying of tunnels dug by Hamas into the Israeli territory.

I have already signaled in my last post that tunnels - dug constantly over the period of some years - have cost lives of at least 160 Gaza children (and many more civilians) - victims nobody in the West is crying over as few have heard about them and even fewer are willing to make the story public.

Time and again the world sees an article about not allowing building materials to Gaza. That is far from truth (although some restrictions apply) and I have written about it already here. But the materials reaching Gaza are used for purposes I presume have not much to do with intentions of most supporters (though some intend exactly this use). Here is the graphic show of the use I mean:

This is what brings woe on the inhabitants of Gaza. But what the use of so vast tunnel system? According to gathered information - gathered for a period of time - they were prepared to use as attack tunnels to infiltrate the Israeli territory for a sole purpose of killing and kidnapping Israeli citizens. In some of the tunnels weapons were found. In some Israeli army uniforms, motorcycles or even cages for the purpose of keeping hostages were located.

It is impossible to spot those tunnels from above, even less so to destroy them in this way. So far the only way there is  to learn about them is intelligence activities and searching on the ground. The only way to destroy them is by putting troops on the ground.

Some sources indicate that for this year's Rosh Hashana (Israeli New Year) which will take place on the 24th of September, the big offensive was being prepared by Hamas. The massive attacks, killings and abductions if succeeded could have taken as many lives as the attack on the WTC.

Some of the tunnels discovered were reaching 2 kilometers (1.4 mile) into the Israeli territory.  Some had their openings in kibbutzim nearby. Many had not only reinforced walls (with donated materials so needed in Gaza for civilian purposes) but also  phone lines and military equipment of different sorts (as stated above). Here how some of them looked:

Is there any wonder why Israel had to destroy them? Just imagine living with not only rockets falling but the threat of having your near and dear killed or kidnapped. What kind of state would allow it? Certainly one which cares not about its citizens (we all know USSR conducted "test" nuclear attack with the use of their own troops), but Israel is the kind of democracy that is protecting her citizens - the kind of democracy we would all love to live in and few of us has this opportunity.

I repeat what I said - it is horrible that people are being killed; it is horrible there is such a war but the culpable is but one - Hamas, and I ask you to put blame where it belongs.