|
In this mailing:
by Khaled Abu Toameh
• March 8, 2016 at 5:00 am
- The striking
teachers are exposing the Palestinian Authority (PA) as playing
Western donors for suckers.
- No one, in
fact, knows how many Palestinians are on the Palestinian payroll.
- Donors might
not be aware, for instance, that they are paying over 50,000
employees from the Gaza Strip to not work. This has been the case
since 20007, when Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip. In
response, the PA ordered all its employees to boycott Hamas and
promised to pay them full salaries for sitting at home.
- The Palestinian
committee has been tasked to avoid scandal and ensure that donors do
not get to the bottom of the case.
Left: Striking Palestinian teachers protest in
Ramallah last week. Right: Palestinian Authority policemen deploy in the
street to intimidate the teachers.
Western donors want to see a list of the names of Palestinians who
are on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the PA is not
happy about it.
What is driving this demand? Thousands of Palestinian school
teachers in the West Bank are striking for better conditions. The
Palestinian leadership, in response, has ordered a security crackdown on
the strikers.
To justify the crackdown, PA officials have claimed that the strike
was organized by Hamas as part of a conspiracy to embarrass and undermine
the regime of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
What is really happening is that the teachers are blowing the
whistle on PA corruption. They have accused the PA Ministry of Education
of wasting donors' funds and deceiving them by inflating the number of
teachers. They claim that the list of employees (about 56,000) ostensibly
hired by the ministry contains many fictitious names. These include
teachers and administrative workers of the ministry.
by Susan Warner
• March 8, 2016 at 4:00 am
- The United
Methodist Church is following in the footsteps of the Presbyterian
Church (USA), the United Church of Christ and the United Church of
Canada, who all passed resolutions boycotting and divesting from the
State of Israel.
- In a sort of
blundering naiveté, the United Methodist Church is ignoring what is
surely inevitable: the very divestment they ostensibly imagine will
stop the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians may actually
serve to exacerbate it.
- "Not all
is lost. Many of the delegates to the General Conference come from
Africa. They have witnessed jihad up close and personal and will
likely have a much more sympathetic view of Israel's predicament
than many of the delegates who live in the relative safety of the
United States." — Dexter Van Zile, Christian media analyst.
- "The BDS
Movement has already fulfilled part of its potential – as a stalking
horse for those seeking to destroy Israel by other means. ... It's
committed not to peace but to a piecemeal elimination of
Israel." — Dr. Harold Brackman, Simon Wiesenthal Center.
On May 10, 2016, the General Conference of the United Methodist
Church (UMC) will gather at the Oregon Convention Center, hosting
thousands of Methodist leaders, delegates and visitors.
This leading policy-making event meets once every four years to
revise church law and adopt resolutions on current moral, social, public
policy and economic issues. The conference also approves plans and
budgets for church-wide programs.
This year, four new proposals in support of the anti-Israel Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are being prepared for
consideration of the general assembly during the 10-day event.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment