Day: September 24, 2009

Why don’t Palestinian leaders get the “refugees” out of their camps?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Israeli diplomat Lenny Ben-David writes on National Review’s Corner:

Recently announced plans for a new, upscale Palestinian settlement in the West Bank are impressive. The projected town, some six miles north of Ramallah, will one day house some 40,000 people, making it the same size as the Israeli settlement towns of Beitar and Modiin. The settlement is named Rawabi, and Qatar is a primary investor. Details are being negotiated with Israeli authorities on issues such as free access across Israeli-controlled areas.

He goes on:

Meanwhile, in a pro-peace op-ed in the Washington Post this summer, Crown Prince Khalifa of Bahrain lamented that “far too many [Palestinians] live in refugee camps in deplorable conditions.” Such camps exist in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon, but Khalifa’s contention is particularly true for those living in areas under Hamas and Palestinian Authority control. Why are these Palestinians stuck in teeming refugee camps when new towns like Rawabi could be built for them?

Ben-David points out that this new town is for the elite of the West Bank. Arab leaders do not want to do anything for the suffering masses. Why? First,

Because “Palestinian” is an artificial category, and a very weakly felt one. The track record dating back to 1947 provides little evidence that the Palestinians’ new-found national identity trumps their clan, religious, political, or class differences. In Israel, we shuddered at the barbarism of the Fatah-Hamas fratricide in Gaza in 2006 — the Palestinian “wakseh” or humiliation — when Palestinian families were gunned down by other Palestinians and political opponents were thrown from tall buildings.

And second,

Beyond the Palestinians’ lack of community feeling lies the so-called “right of return.” Palestinian leaders claim that each family has a right to reoccupy the land it held before Israel’s war for independence. Settling refugees comfortably in other areas would weaken their claim to this “right,” while keeping them in camps is a harsh but effective way to maintain pressure against Israel from the international community. What stands in the way of prosperity for Palestinian-controlled areas is the deep brainwashing of Palestinian children that there must be an actual physical return to their ancestral homes, along with an international and Israeli recognition of the “injustice” done to them.

His diagnosis is better than his prescription. Briefly,

When new communities for the Palestinian refugees are established within the PA- and Hamas-controlled areas — and not before — “Palestinian Heritage Houses” will also be constructed inside a number of Israeli communities or regions.

Okay, but he doesn’t address how you get Arabs to give up the “right of return,” which is the key to the whole thing.  Usefully, though, he has pointed out that there are some Arab leaders thinking about a way out.

Poor Malta: EU countries can’t even be paid enough to take “refugees”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve been writing about the tiny island nation of Malta for over two years.   The island is one of the first bits of  land that thousands of illegal aliens see as they flood out of Africa across the Mediterranean Sea in an attempt to get to Europe.   Recently the big shots at the European Union came up with a plan that pays EU countries to help Malta, but only 100 of Malta’s present 2000 economic migrants turned “refugee” have been spoken for.

From the Times of Malta:

The six EU member states who have indicated they intend to help resettle some of Malta’s 2,000 refugees pledged to take a total of 100 people altogether, EU sources revealed yesterday.

Although the Commission has kept the number of pledges under wraps, sources yesterday confirmed that only “token pledges” were made and that “Brussels is finding it difficult to convince member states to share Malta’s burden”.

[….]

During a presentation to EU Justice Ministers last Monday, Commissioner Jacques Barrot said that out of the 26 member states invited to participate in the Malta pilot-project last July, only France, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Luxembourg and Lithuania replied favourably. He urged the other member states to follow their example as this was “a test of their solidarity” with other member states.

The EU under a pilot scheme, is offering EU member states €4,000 for every migrant they resettle.

How much is that in American dollars?  I wonder did the US get paid for the hundreds of illegal aliens turned refugee that we brought to the US from Malta?

A few other countries are considering taking a few, but Germany won’t decide until they see how the election turns out!  I’m sure taking these immigrants would be an unpopular move in advance of the election.

The sources said some member states like Germany and Sweden have not ruled out their participation. Germany, which usually takes a leading role in such solidarity programmes, is expected to make its position official once next Sunday’s federal elections are over.

I’ve previously been extremely critical of the US State Department’s controversial decision to take Malta’s illegal immigrants because I believe it encourages more human trafficking and more dangerous attempts to reach Malta in overloaded boats.  I guess these four nations agree with me!

On the other hand some member states are flatly refusing to take part, including the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria. “These four member states have made it clear that they don’t agree with such a programme as they believe it will serve to attract more illegal migrants towards the EU,” the sources said.

Malta is hoping to be able to resettle the majority of its protected persons through this EU project. This will happen only if every member state pledges to take an average of 80 refugees each from Malta.

And next year twice as many immigrants will arrive and it will require each country to take 160 and so on, and so on.

For more on Malta just type the word into our search function.

Iraqi Sunni Muslim commander denied US refugee status

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is from the Los Angeles Times yesterday (Hat tip:  Center for Immigration Studies). 

Reporting from Amman, Jordan – The man who had fought Al Qaeda in Iraq sat in the waiting room of the immigration office. He watched others go up before him. After several hours, they called his name: Saad Oraibi Ghafoori.

In a way, the waiting burned him. He had once led more than 600 men in Baghdad; Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders came to him for help. Now he lived in a nondescript home in Jordan’s capital with an upset wife and two restless children — a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl — who had been hoping for more than a year to get the call to go to America.

He had sat in classes given by the International Organization for Migration, learning about U.S. apartment rental prices and how to apply for food stamps. He was ready to do whatever the Americans wanted: If they wished him to train U.S. forces heading to Iraq, he would do it; if they wanted him to fight in Afghanistan, he would go.

[…..]

In the office that day in July, Ghafoori was finally summoned to a table. The case officer was blunt: He had been rejected and there was no point in appealing the case.

We let all sorts of other Iraqis into the US, this article suggests we need to consider the fighters too!

Last year, the U.S. government removed hurdles that had made it difficult for its Iraqi employees whose lives were endangered to flee to America. It also cleared similar obstacles for Iraqis working with U.S. companies. The number of Iraqis accepted in America through the State Department’s refugee assistance program jumped from 1,600 to nearly 14,000 in 2008 and is expected to reach 18,000 this year.

But Ghafoori’s case poses a policy challenge for the U.S. government. How should it handle the pool of 100,000 paramilitary fighters called the Sons of Iraq, many of them former insurgents, who have little in common with the Iraqi translators and civil servants that the refugee assistance program aims to help?

Does the United States have any obligation to men like Ghafoori, whom the U.S. military once funded and fought with against a common enemy?

Here is my question, were the Sons of Iraq fighting to rid their country of the Al Qaeda scourge or were they fighting for a plane ticket to the US?  I thought it was the former.

Finally, I’ve never heard of this and it bears looking into:

One of the few routes available to him would be Homeland Security’s Significant Public Benefit Parole program, which is run in close association with the Pentagon to bring in people who served the war efforts. But the program operates in near secrecy and is the equivalent of winning the lottery: The combination of official backing and luck must align to bring the person inside.

Bosnians from North Dakota attempt to kidnap 14-year-old girl in Kentucky

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have resettled over 100,000 Bosnian refugees in the wake of Bill Clinton’s Balkan war*.  Every once in awhile they turn up in crime stories, like this one in Bowling Green, Kentucky last year where a Bosnian teen was shot dead trying to break into a home, or this one where Bosnians concocted a truck driving school scam,  or how about the one from Ft. Wayne, IN where Bosnians with AK-47’s are believed to be involved in gangs.

Now comes a story, hat tip Blulitespecial, that former Bosnian refugees from Fargo, ND travelled to Bowling Green, KY (yes, Bowling Green again) to attempt to kidnap a 14-year-old student so that she could marry into their family in North Dakota.  They must be Muslims because child brides are encouraged for followers of Islam and I guess their refugee resettlement agency failed to tell them that in America we don’t kidnap minor girls to be wives.  Here is the whole short AP story:

FARGO, N.D. — Two men are accused of trying to pick up a 14-year-old girl from her Kentucky school and take her to North Dakota to marry the 14-year-old son of one of the men.

Bowling Green, Ky., police spokesman Barry Pruitt says the teens had been communicating over the Internet and decided they wanted to get married. Pruitt says the boy, his father and another man drove 15 hours to Kentucky. School officials called police when they tried to check the girl out of class on Monday.

Pruitt said the girl was not old enough to legally consent.

The men, 42-year-old Dragan Jovanovic and 18-year-old Elvis Tahirovic, were arraigned Tuesday on one charge each of attempted kidnapping. Their attorney did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday.

Note that AP doesn’t bother to tell us that they are Bosnians, but KXMBTV in Bismark does give their nationality.

Also, readers should know that Bowling Green, KY, Fargo, ND and Ft. Wayne, IN are all “welcoming” cities for refugees, or so the State Department and its resettlement contractors say.

*  The Clinton Administration was happy to resettle so many Bosnians to help their friends in the meat packing industry, here.

More evidence that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s book

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I told you about this controversy back in December, here.  It doesn’t involve refugees, but does help to continue to flesh out our category on ‘community destabilization’ in which we’ve contended immigrants play a huge part.  They are the “have-nots” for the war with the “haves” that Saul Alinsky (Obama’s community organizing inspiration) said would bring “chaos” to communities and ultimately “change.” 

Plus, this whole theory is interesting as hell!

Yesterday at American Thinker researcher Jack Cashill reported that there is proof in the new book about the Obama marriage that Ayers played a substantial role in writing “Dreams from my Father”—a book every one of you should read!

In his new book, “Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage,” Best-selling celebrity journalist, Christopher Andersen, has blown a huge hole in the Obama genius myth without intending to do so.

Relying on inside sources, quite possibly Michelle Obama herself, Andersen describes how Dreams came to be published — just as I had envisioned it in my articles on the authorship of Dreams. With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek advice from “his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”

To flesh out his family history, Obama had taped interviews with various family members. Andersen writes, “These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers.” Andersen quotes a Hyde Park neighbor, “Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both.”

Andersen continues, “In the end, Ayers’s contribution to Barack’s Dreams From My Father would be significant–so much so that the book’s language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’s own writing.”

More to come!

I can’t wait!  When contemplating the magnitude of this fraud (if it’s true), always remember Alinsky taught that the ‘ends justify the means.’  So it would not have been as big a deal for anyone trained in Alinsky methods to do this—to lie.