Quick Takes: <i>News You May Have Missed</i>

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

By: Aaron Klein

Published: April 6th, 2011

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The Hanan Ashrawi Connection

A former deputy of the late PLO leader Yasir Arafat served on the committee that invented the military doctrine used by President Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international air strikes against Libya.

As this column first reported, billionaire philanthropist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the world’s leading organization pushing the military doctrine. Several of the doctrine’s main founders sit on multiple boards with Soros.

The doctrine and its founders have been deeply tied to Obama aide Samantha Power, who reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya. Power is the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.

Now it has emerged that Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi served on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect.

That commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “Responsibility to Protect,” while defining its guidelines.

Ashrawi is an infamous defender of Palestinian terrorism. Her father, Daoud Mikhail, was a co-founder of the PLO with Arafat. The PLO was engaged in scores of international terrorist acts and was declared a terrorist group by the U.S. in 1987.

During the First Palestinian Intifada, or war of “resistance” against Israel, in 1988, Ashrawi joined what was known as the Intifada Political Committee, which sought to advance Palestinian goals through both politics and “resistance.” She served there until 1993.

In 1991, Arafat appointed Ashrawi to serve as the PLO’s Minister of Higher Education and Research. The Palestinian school system is notorious for its glorification of “martyrdom,” or suicide bombings, and has long preached against the existence of Israel.

In 1998 Ashrawi founded MIFTAH, a nonprofit that seeks to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and refers to that Jewish state’s 1948 creation as “Al Nakba,” or “The Catastrophe.”

In the July 2, 1998, edition of the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, she published an article calling the Holocaust “a deceitful myth, which the Jews have exploited to get sympathy.”

In 2001 Ashrawi became a spokeswoman for the Arab League.

Notably, Amre Moussa, Secretary General of the Arab League, served as an adviser to the same 2001 commission that invented the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine.

“Responsibility to Protect,” or “Responsibility to Act” as cited by Obama is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”

The term “war crimes” has at times been indiscriminately used by various UN-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has also been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops.

White House Wants

Israel, Syria To Talk ‘Peace’

The White House quietly has been urging Israel and Syria to immediately renew negotiations aimed at an Israeli retreat from the strategic Golan Heights, this column has learned.

According to informed Middle Eastern security officials, the Obama administration believes an accord with Israel will strengthen the position of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose regime is threatened by unrest similar to the protests that toppled the leadership of fallen Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The White House is pushing an agreement whereby Israel would either evacuate much of the Golan Heights, or Syria would agree to lease the territory to Israel for a period of up to 30 years.

Fatah, Hamas Set Up

Common Operations Room

The military wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization has formed a common operations room with Hamas, according to information obtained by WorldNetDaily.

Sources inside the Palestinian militant apparatus told WND of a meeting that took place last week in the Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis between Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam, and the Gaza branch of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Abbas’s U.S.-backed Fatah party.

At the meeting, the decision was taken to open what the sources called a common operations room. The sources claimed the cooperation was aimed at fending off any Israeli operation inside the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has recently increased its firing of rockets into nearby Israeli population centers.

Just last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israel may respond with “great force” if Hamas rocketing continues.

The stepped up Hamas-Fatah cooperation comes as the PA has been engaged in an intense effort to convince Hamas to join it in a new unity government.

According to informed Palestinian sources, in a desperate bid to sign a unity government with Hamas, Abbas offered to release scores of Hamas terrorists responsible for attacks against Jews from prison.

This column reported two weeks ago that the PA has also quietly offered to place between 15,000 and 20,000 of Hamas’s forces in Gaza on its payroll if Hamas joins in a unity government.

According to PA sources, the Palestinian leadership feels it better to maintain one major financial apparatus to pay all security forces, instead of having a separate governmental system in Gaza run by Hamas.

Aside from an accommodation on salaries, the PA is ready to give Hamas full official security control of the Gaza Strip if the Islamist organization agrees to form a unity government, according to a PA official.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m.

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About the Author: Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m (CHANGE TO 7-9 p.m.). His website is KleinOnline.com

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

White House Wants

Fatah, Hamas Set Up

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