Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, March 11, 2008Elder of Ziyon
honor killingPolice investigators noted that the attempted murder was meticulously planned. The youth had informed his family members that he was going to murder his sister early Tuesday morning, and then set off to do just that. He headed to the entrance of the village in a vehicle which he had borrowed from his brother, and awaited his sister’s arrival.
The youth then shot his sister, who was startled to see him and proceeded to kick her repeatedly in order to ensure that she was no longer alive. Chief Superintendent of the Afula Police Department, Orli Malka, stated that “the young woman was clever enough to play dead so that her brother would stop kicking her.” The shooter than called MDA medics and phone the police emergency hotline. "I just shot my sister,” he said, all the while keeping vigil over what he assumed was his sister’s lifeless corpse.
The young man then informed his family that he had shot his sister and was warmly greeted, hugged and congratulated by his brother and other family members.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008Elder of ZiyonA newly-married husband in northwest Syria divorced his wife at their wedding reception after his new bride insulted him with a 'donkey' song, the Al Watan newspaper said on Friday.h/t Israelity
The incident happened in the Syrian city of Latakia after the bride had chosen the Arab song, "I love you, my little donkey," for their first wedding dance.
Singing the song, the woman went on to call her new husband a donkey numerous times, admitting however that she would be angry if anyone else did so.
Meanwhile, the husband did not find his wife's joke amusing and asked the DJ to change the record. The DJ refused to do so, saying that the bride had requested the song.
The furious husband then grabbed the DJ's microphone and cried out "talaq" three times.
Under Sunni Islamic Law, a husband may claim a divorce by saying 'talaq' - which means "I divorce you" - three times. The divorce comes into effect as soon as the words are pronounced.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008Elder of Ziyonself-deathPalestinian medical sources said that 2citizens were killed and eight others injured in a family quarrel took place today, Tuesday, the Shajaiyeh neighborhood in the east of Gaza City.Our very undercounted 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 31.
Medical sources said Subhi Mohammed Hassanein, "53 years", Ahmed Khamis Abu meal "35 years" were killed and eight others injured from both families, including two described their serious in a fight between both families signed today east of Gaza City.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, March 11, 2008Elder of ZiyonA locally manufactured rocket landed late in the night yesterday, Monday, at the southern entrance to the town of Beit Hanoun, north of the Gaza Strip, which led to a cut in the electricity supply to the large areas north of the sector.This small fact is severely underreported.
Eyewitnesses told the official news agency "that the rocket landed at the southern entrance to Beit Hanoun and caused major damage to an electrical transformer; it plunged large parts of the northern sector in the dark."
It should be noted that this incident is not the first, as previously many locally manufactured missiles aimed at Israeli communities fell on Palestinian homes and factories especially in the northern region of the sector and causing substantial material damage not to mention the human losses in many cases.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008Elder of ZiyonAMMAN - Jordanian Christians are up in arms over the activities of foreign missionaries in the Muslim conservative kingdom which is rich in biblical sites, including the spot where Jesus was baptised.Translating this into English, this means that Christians in Jordan - the same types of Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians who are often quoted in Gaza and the West Bank as feeling secure and happy even as their co-religionists abandon their homes in droves because of Islamist pressure - happily embrace their dhimmi, second-class status. The very idea that they might believe that their religion is superior to Islam has been stricken from their thoughts.
The row erupted after the government announced last month that it had deported an unspecified number of expatriates for carrying out Christian missionary activities under the guise of charity work.
The move was welcomed by several Christian figures, with many voicing concern that foreign missionaries were seeking to upset the traditionally stable ties between Muslims and Christians in Jordan.
"Missionary groups have hidden agendas and are close to Christian Zionists," asserted former MP Odeh Kawwas, a Greek Orthodox.
Fellow Christian Fahd Kheitan, an outspoken columnist at Al-Arab Al-Yawm newspaper, said the majority of Christians are "very suspicious and worried".
"The (missionaries) target the strong beliefs of traditional churches in Jordan and try to create religious links with the Zionist movement, which is extremely dangerous," said Kheitan.
Some Christian supporters of Israel, notably a segment in the United States, believe the return of Jews to the Holy Land and the 1948 creation of the Jewish state are in line with biblical prophecy.
In February, acting Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh told parliament that "some foreign groups have come to Jordan under the cover of doing charity, but they broke the law and did missionary activities". He did not give figures.
Converting from Islam to Christianity is strictly prohibited in Jordan and foreign missionary groups are banned from seeking converts, although they can run schools, charitable organisations, hospitals and orphanages.
"For years we have been urging the government to close such Christian shops that have nothing to do with Christianity and tolerance," said Kawwas, referring to missionaries who convert Muslims in violation of the law.
"It is an old problem. They create sensitivities and provoke discord among Jordanian Christians, not to mention their threat to Muslim-Christian coexistence," the former lawmaker said.
"These groups don't belong to any church, but they try to hunt followers of other churches and trick some of our Muslim brothers to convert them," he added.
Christians represent around four percent of Jordan's population of nearly six million, including Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian and Latin rites.
They are well integrated in the kingdom, where one Christian holds a ministerial post while eight percent control seats in the 110-member lower house of parliament.
In January, the first spark of controversy was lit by a Christian news agency, Compass Direct News, in a report accusing Jordan of cracking down on expatriate Christians by deporting them or denying them residency permit.
Parliament said the report was aimed at "damaging Muslim-Christian relations in Jordan". It also insisted that Jordan's Christians "are an integral part of society, living in peace and harmony with their Muslim brothers".
The church also voiced its concern.
Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem and Jordan said recently that some foreign missionaries "have undeclared political positions and we do not want the image of Christianity to be distorted."
WE MEET ONE MORE Christian on our pilgrimage--a Catholic shopkeeper in Madaba, a historically Christian town in which Christians are still a significant minority (30 percent). ...I ask him if Christianity will still exist in Jordan in 50 years. He pauses, frowns and begins shaking his head. "My [Muslim] neighbor has two wives and 10 children. My children and nieces and nephews are gone." He lets us do the math.
We ask whether evangelicals would be welcome in Madaba. He frowns again. "They seem strange to us," he says--clearly he has more in common culturally with his Muslim neighbors, though more in common socioeconomically with Westerners. It is a complex identity. "It is very hard for Christians here." Then, as if just realizing he is talking with reporters, he insists: "But don't write that. Write that the government is very good for Christians here. That's important to say."
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of ZiyonHow do you say "I want" in Arabic? How do you say "now"? And "he started"? Every Arab child no doubt knows how to answer those questions, yet the answer is not simple.Imagine that - Israeli Jews working to be in the forefront of children's Arabic language education.
During their first years in school, Arab students face what is known as "diglossia," sharply divergent formal and informal variations of the language. At home and with friends, the pupils speak spoken Arabic, but in their textbooks, they encounter literary Arabic, which has different structures and vocabulary.
Diglossia is present in all the Arabic-speaking countries and communities in the world, as well as other communities.
Israeli Arab educators blame diglossia for Arab students' particularly low scores on reading tests. This is true around the Arab world, as well as in Israel, where Arab Israelis score significantly lower in reading than their Hebrew-speaking peers.
The Center for Educational Technology sponsored a study on the connection between the spoken language, Palestinian Arabic, which preschoolers speak fluently, and the literary language they learn in school. The researchers tried to facilitate learning the literary language by using the spoken vocabulary.
In the 2006 study, some 100 preschoolers from Nahaf, Nazareth, Kafr Kara and Rahat were recorded speaking for two hours. The researchers then recorded their speech, building a vocabulary list of thousands of words. In addition, they noted the different pronunciations in the different communities - the letter "qoof," for example, can be pronounced as a gutteral "q," an "a" or a "g."
In parallel, the researchers examined the most commonly used Arabic language textbook, "Al-Raid," and selected some 700 words that first-graders found difficult. These words, including "I want," "now," and "he started," will serve as the basis for a dictionary between spoken and literary Arabic. Unlike all existing Arabic dictionaries, this one will be arranged by alphabetical order, and not based on word roots, in order to help the children find words.
The study found that the children's spoken vocabulary is richer than that in "Al-Raid." However, the researchers note that to date, there have been hardly any studies on the spoken language, which is considered inferior to its holy "big sister." One of the central reasons for this is the belief that the language of the Quran - literary Arabic - is perfect and cannot be emulated.
Dr. Elinor Saig-Hadad, a lecturer in the linguistics and English literature departments at Bar-Ilan University, headed the study. She says that nowhere in the Arab world has someone tried to bridge the gap between the spoken and the literary language.
"It is impossible to pretend the spoken language does not exist," she says. "There is a gap between the spoken language and the written language in every dialect of Arabic."
Hawala Sa'adi, who is in charge of the project at the Center for Educational Technology, says the dictionary will help children learn the written language. "To this day, people have ignored what the children bring with them from home. The new study materials will help the children close the gap, while getting to know their language," she says.
Dr. Michal Shleifer, the language department head at the educational technology center, says one of the aims of the study is to improve children's written language ability through educational materials, rather than having it pushed aside by the spoken language.
"We do not want to interfere with the status of the written language, but rather to help the children acquire it," she says. "The question is how to do that, and that is the importance of the research."
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of Ziyon
A student stands behind a podium as a video of Hezbollah's Leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah plays during a pro-Palestinian meeting at a cultural centre in Tehran March 9, 2008. Students agreed on a one-million dollar reward for the murder of three Israeli commanders, Ehud Barak, Amos Yadlin and Meir Dagan. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl (IRAN)
A "pro-Palestinian" meeting?
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of Ziyonmedia bias
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of Ziyonmedia biasAP licenses its works (photos, news stories, video and so on) to newspapers, Web sites and broadcasters for the purpose of showing news events and to illustrate news stories or commentary on the news events.This makes a certain amount of sense, but what is going to happen is what I did in a previous posting today: make a story about something outrageous that happened into a story about media bias, by criticizing either the staging of the picture or the caption, thereby killing two birds with one stone.So, for example (this one was on LGF as well):If the entirety of the work is used (such as when a whole photo is reproduced), that is considered a substantial “taking” under fair use law. If there are many photos used, that is a substantial taking of AP’s photo library.
In the case of criticism, the commentary or criticism has to be about the protected work, not commentary or criticism in general – not using, as in the case of Snappedshot.com, protected photos to illustrate something on which the blogger was commenting. One cannot post a copyrighted photo of President Bush to illustrate commentary criticizing the policies of his administration, for example.
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of ZiyonalgeriaEight would-be suicide bombers left eastern Algeria a few days ago and are reportedly heading to the Gaza Strip to commit suicide attacks against Israeli soldiers, reported pan Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat on Monday.I wonder if Egypt would kill Algerian terrorists going to Gaza the way they kill refugees from Africa going to Israel.
The young men reportedly left their homes days ago without saying anything to their families.
Reportedly, their intent is to join Hamas' armed wing, the Izzadin al-Qassam brigades, considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.
It is reported that the eight were driven to go to Gaza after the grim images broadcasted by Arab satellite TV stations showing the dead, following Israel's military operation against alleged Palestinian rocket crews.
The report said that after a few days, two of the would-be bombers reached Gaza and called their parents saying they were in good health and that they wanted "to carry out a suicide attack against the Jews."
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of ZiyonThe Israel Defense Forces are set to introduce an unmanned jeep into the ongoing conflict with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.Of course, the only reason Israel needs to spend millions on saving its own people's lives is because its opponents consider their people's lives to be nearly worthless.
While pilotless drones are already common in the Israel Air Force, this is the first time a driverless jeep will be used by the army's ground forces.
Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries jointly developed the guardian for the IDF, and it is expected to be deployed this summer along the security fence with the Gaza Strip, replacing many manned vehicles.
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of Ziyon
Iranian hardline students have offered rewards totalling a million dollars for the "execution" of three Israeli military leaders after Israel's deadly strikes on Gaza, the student news agency ISNA reported on Monday.Nothing to see here. Just a cute little picture of Israeli officials being threatened with assassination. Just part of Iran's right of free expression when it comes to genocidal plans for Israel.
The group is even encouraging Iranians to donate their kidneys to increase the bounties on the heads of Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Mossad spy agency director Meir Dagan and military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.
The rewards were announced by the Justice Seeking Students Group on Sunday at a ceremony in Tehran entitled "setting the bounty for the revolutionary execution of the designers of state terrorism," ISNA said.
The bounty for Barak is set at $400 000 while those for Dagan and Yadlin are $300 000 each, the report said. It is not clear where the money is coming from.
"These sums will be given to any person or their families who could punish these individuals in any part of the world," the organisers of the event announced.
Pictures taken at the ceremony showed a banner bearing pictures of the three Israelis against the backdrop of an Israeli flag, with rifle sights stencilled onto the foreheads of the trio.
"Israel must be wiped off the map," read a quote from Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini printed on the top of the banner.
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of ZiyonSenior Kuwaiti strategist Sami al-Faraj says an Israeli military strike on the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities is not a bad idea.
In a Sunday interview with the daily Al-Siyassah, the former government adviser said Iran's nuclear program has become a major concern for all Persian Gulf littoral states and therefore an Israeli attack may be an appropriate solution.
The question is what would it do if it were a nuclear nation? We have to call a spade a spade and say that burying the military nuclear Iranian project is in the interest of PGCC states, said al-Faraj, who heads the independent Kuwait Center for Strategy Studies.
He added that it would be 'less embarrassing' if Israel cripples Iran's nuclear program rather than the US.
Honestly speaking, they would be achieving something of great strategic value for the PGCC by stopping Iran's tendency for hegemony over the area, he said.
Monday, March 10, 2008Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, March 09, 2008Elder of ZiyonIsrael has decided to take advantage of Thursday's bloody terror attack in Jerusalem in order to launch an aggressive campaign against Hamas.This, more than my last two posts, underlines the sheer incompetence of Israeli efforts to get its message out.
Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that the political echelon instructed the Government Press Office to distribute the shocking images from the yeshiva shooting worldwide, including pictures of holy books perforated with bullets, a blood-stained praying shawl and the terrorist's body inside the yeshiva.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni decided that the Foreign Ministry would work to convey the Israeli messages to the international community.
Sunday, March 09, 2008Elder of ZiyonOn Wednesday, Israeli authorities discovered chemicals used for making explosives just one hour after Israel opened up Gaza crossings for shipments of humanitarian goods. The chemicals were discovered in a sealed container and were intended for use in Kassam rockets.
Sunday, March 09, 2008Elder of ZiyonThe Israeli military says it does not target civilian sites, but attacks by warplanes and tanks in the crowded strip make such casualties almost inevitable.It would appear that the Atallah family was either the target of an indiscriminate policy of punishing civilians, as the Palestinian Arabs would spin it, or at the very least they were the accidental victims from an Israeli airstrike gone awry. And, after all, a relative said that there was no rocket factory nearby, and why wouldn't you believe him?
At least 10 people from three generations were in the Atallah household when the missile struck Saturday just before sunset.
Medhat Abdullah, a relative of the family, was at work nearby when he heard the news. He arrived to find the home almost flattened, the walls collapsed and the ceiling caved.
"It's a massacre. When you kill a whole family, what else do you call it?" he asked. "What am I supposed to do? Forgive [the Israelis]?"
Among the dead in the Atallah family were patriarch Abdel Rahman Atallah, 65, his wife, Suad, two sons and two daughters. One of Atallah's grandchildren, a 23-month-old baby, was pulled from the rubble alive but suffering from oxygen deprivation. The child remains in the intensive care unit of a Gaza City hospital on an artificial respirator.
The dead must be buried promptly according to Islamic custom, but relatives still hadn't recovered all the bodies in time for the funeral Sunday afternoon.
The final two bodies, almost unrecognizable, were pulled from the rubble after the funeral procession had already left, Abdullah said. They were wrapped in blankets and rushed to the cemetery.
Abdullah said there were no militant strongholds in the area, and no factories for making Kassam rockets.
One of Abdel Rahman Atallah's sons was a member of the Executive Force, a Hamas-led police unit, and may have been involved in launching rockets into Israel, Abdullah said. But that, he said, did not justify the missile strike.
The deliberate use of civilian homes to shield Hamas arms and explosives manufacturing facilitiesThe Israeli statement didn't explicitly say that the Atallah family is being referred to, but apparently it was them, as a line buried in a Ha'aretz (March 7) op-ed made clear:Hamas frequently uses civilian homes in the Gaza Strip for the manufacture of rockets, explosives, antitank missiles and other arms being used against Israel. Rockets, explosives and other arms were also found in the mosque in Jabalya.
Weapons found in a mosque in Jabalya, including RPG
rockets and hand grenades
(IDF Spokesman)For example, a factory manufacturing dozens of Kassam rockets a day was located in the basement and first floor of a two-storey building. The terrorist responsible for the factory was housed with his family on that second floor. When Israel targeted the factory, destroying scores of rockets as well as the factory’s capability to continue producing those rockets, civilians in the house were unfortunately hit as well.
A Hamas explosives lab in the ground floor of a residential
building in Jabalya
A Hamas Kassam rocket manufacturing shop in the Darj
neighborhood of Gaza
Israel's explanation that civilian members of the Atallah family were killed in an Israel Air Force bombing because they chose to build an assembly line for Qassam rockets in their home did not penetrate the public mind.Indeed it did not penetrate the public mind, because Israel itself didn't address it until nearly a week after the event and even then it only referenced it obliquely.
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