Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Full video: BBC Panorama on hate taught in Islamic schools

Here is the BBC Panorama story I mentioned yesterday on how British Islamic schools teach Jew-hatred and homophobia:

(h/t Suzanne)

Saudi scientists: Camel urine fights cancer, heart attacks, strokes

Jordan's Al Ghad reports that Saudi scientists have proven that camel urine has similar properties as aspirin in fighting blood clots that could cause strokes and heart attacks.

The study compared urine from camels in various parts of the kingdom with that from cows and humans, and discovered that only the camels had these miraculous medicinal properties.

They said that the same blood thinning qualities can also help inhibit the growth of cancerous tumors.

The article says that the scientists are working with American pharmaceutical companies to figure out how to convert the camel urine - and perhaps this story - into a form that people can swallow.

Full video: CBC implicates Hezbollah for Hariri murder

The video of the CBC story I mentioned yesterday:

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog)

Paris museum suspends Israel-bashing exhibit

I mentioned on November 10th that the Museum of Modern Art in Paris was showing an "award winning" collection of photos from the Gaza Strip meant to bash Israel. Not only were the photos biased, but the very rules of the award were created for a single purpose - to compare Israel to Nazis.

Last Sunday, a group of Zionists mobilized on Facebook to create a unique counter-protest.

In the words of the leader of the group, Jean-Patrick Grumberg:

With the active support of members of the Europe-Israel group, volunteers recruited on Facebook, and members of the JDL, leaflets was distributed on Sunday 21 November, before the exhibition opened.

The flyer was a perfectly neutral, and could not be construed as an attack. Photos, taken from Palestinian sites, with this title: "Disturbing Gaza photos." Thus, we followed the logic of the show: the audience was invited to see for themselves that there is another truth, in Gaza.

My goal was to restore some balance. To inform the public, and show this side of Gaza hidden by the media. The result was well above our expectations.

The administration of the museum became trapped by its ignorance - or complicity, we will probably never know - revealed by this leaflet. The photos revealed that they became the purveyors of propaganda disguised as art exhibition, as was revealed by our photos.

Consequence: the museum's management has decided, on Sunday 21 November, to close the exhibition for a period of one week.

The team of volunteers distributing the flyers suffered - how strange - Judeophobic and Israélophobic insults: the truth revealed in the leaflets, I must admit, is a rare attack, because nothing and nobody can challenge the images - the pro-Palestinians know only too well.

The expo is not definitively closed, and we already expect the usual reactions of propaganda specialists.

This is a brilliant example of how pro-Israel activism should work.

(h/t EoL)

Israel cooperating with India on vegetable and fruit farming

Indian Express reports:

The Indo-Israel Centre for Excellence in Vegetables at Gharaunda, near Karnal, the first of its kind in the country, will be inaugurated on December 6.

The centre demonstrates advanced farm technologies of Israel to maximise cultivation and achieve quality production of vegetables. The state’s other Indo-Israel centre, which focuses on excellence in cultivation of fruits, is likely to be inaugurated in the first quarter of 2011.

Impressed by the highly advanced agricultural techniques demonstrated in Haryana, Punjab, and also Karnataka and Gujarat, have asked Israeli experts to develop a similar project in their states. The experts, however, already have their hands full with the ongoing work in the five states mentioned above.

The Gharaunda centre focuses on the use of polyhouses, insect net-houses, walk-in tunnels and other plastic cover techniques to increase the yield of vegetables.

Talking to The Indian Express, Haryana Joint Director, Horticulture, Dr Arjun Singh Saini said: “By using such protected structures, a farmer can get multiple cycles of high productivity in tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicum and cauliflowers in one year, as compared to only one or two cycles in open production. Farmers can also make good profit from off-season demand,” he said.

(h/t Zvi)

UNIFIL has plan to send injured to Israel during a war

From Naharnet:

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has devised a plan to evacuate its wounded to Israel in case of the eruption of a war, reported Al-Akhbar on Monday.

The plan, which was set ten days ago, will be implemented in a joint maneuver with the Israeli army.

The paper said that the army contacted UNIFIL command after it received news of the maneuver to confirm it, after which the army command said that the step would be a negative development that demonstrates UNIFIL's ties with Israel.

Again with the Jewish doctors!

Time to buy Ahava products

As I wrote in August, I plan to give free advertising to any Israeli company that is vandalized by the Israel-hater movement.

On Monday, Ahava in London was shut down for a few hours because two of the bigots broke in and caused damage.

So it is time to buy more beauty-care products.

Click on the ad to be redirected to the Ahava online store. Free shipping (at least in the US)!

Stuxnet? Iran's centrifuges temporarily shut down

From AP:

Iran's nuclear program has suffered a recent setback, with major technical problems forcing the temporary shutdown of thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium, diplomats told The Associated Press on Monday.

The diplomats said they had no specifics on the nature of the problem that in recent months led Iranian experts to briefly power down the machines they use for enrichment — a nuclear technology that has both civilian and military uses.

But suspicions focused on the Stuxnet worm, the computer virus thought to be aimed at Iran's nuclear program, which experts last week identified as being calibrated to destroy centrifuges by sending them spinning out of control.

There have been hints that the program is beset by technical problems. Even a brief shutdown of the thousands of enriching machines would be the strongest documentation to date that the program — Iran's nuclear cornerstone and a source of national pride — is in trouble.

Iran's enrichment program has come under renewed focus with the conclusion of cyber experts and analysts that the Stuxnet worm that infected Iran's nuclear program was designed to abruptly change the rotational speeds of motors such as ones used in centrifuges. Such sudden changes can crash centrifuges and damage them beyond repair.

WaPo adds:

Iran's nuclear program has experienced serious problems, including unexplained fluctuations in the performance of the thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium, leading to a rare but temporary shutdown, international inspectors are expected to reveal Tuesday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. unit that monitors nuclear programs, will provide no explanation of the problems. But speculation immediately centered on the Stuxnet worm, a computer virus that some researchers say appears to have been designed specifically to target Iran's centrifuge machines so that they spin out of control.

Even before the Stuxnet attack, the Natanz facility that houses the centrifuges had not been operating at full capacity, according to experts and U.S. officials.

Olli Heinonen, a former top IAEA official, said Monday at a meeting sponsored by the Arms Control Association that 3,772 centrifuges at the facility were being fed uranium gas and 5,084 machines were idle. "This indicates that there is a problem," he said.

Heinonen also said that Iran appears to have suffered a setback in its efforts to develop a second-generation centrifuge capable of enriching uranium more quickly. Iran's centrifuges are based on a Pakistani copy of a decades-old Dutch design, and Heinonen said Iran may have trouble obtaining the raw materials - such as high-strength carbon - for an upgrade because of international sanctions.

The Wired article I quoted recently seemed to indicate that Stuxnet was being more subtle than AP's and WaPo's characterization of the code making the centrifuges spin out of control. Wired made it sound like Stuxnet was only trying to reduce the quality of the uranium, but the fact that so many centrifuges are out of commission could mean that this was either an intended or unintended consequence of Stuxnet's code.

(h/t Jacob)

This year's FBI report confirms: no Islamophobia in America

The latest FBI hate crimes report was just released, and it shows once again that hate crimes against Muslims are tiny compared with hate crimes against Jews.

There were 107 hate crimes recorded against Muslims in 2009, compared to 931 anti-semitic hate crimes.

As I mentioned last August when I dug into the previous statistics a bit deeper, if you assume that America is Islamophobic then you must insist that the USA is much more anti-semitic.

Obviously it is neither, unless one has an agenda.

Latest Al Qaeda magazine at a glance

Here's a Wordle of the latest Al Qaeda magazine, called Inspire:

Pretty much the entire magazine is dedicated to the UPS package bombs. Al Qaeda claims that a UPS plane that crashed in September was taken down by a similar bomb.

Some choice bits:

Allah says: {O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them.

Here's the justification that is already accepted as reasonable by the Thaddeus Russells of the world:

The operation of the explosive packages which was performed by the mujahidin of the Arabian Peninsula against the companies of air freight belonging to the disbelieving nations is our right. It is our right because we are defending the Muslim lands. This operation has struck fear in the hearts of the Americans and their allies. This operation is a response to the Crusaders aggression against the Muslims of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Maghreb, Chechnya and the Arabian Peninsula. It is a response to the continuous support to the usurping Jews who are invading Jerusalem and are blockading Gaza.

And this:

Today we are facing a coalition of Crusaders and Zionists and we in al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula will never forget Palestine. How can we forget it when our motto is: "Here we start and in al-Aqsa we meet"? So we listed the address of the "Congregation Or Chadash", a Gay and Lesbian synagogue on our one of our packages. The second package was sent to "Congregation B'nai Zion". Both synagogues are in Chicago, Obama's city.

(h/t Zach for the PDF, sorry, no URL)

PA Ministry of Information: Kotel not Jewish

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Western Wall belongs to Muslims and is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sharif [the Noble Sanctuary], according to an official paper published on Monday by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information in Ramallah.

The paper, which has been presented as a “study,” was prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information to “refute” Jews’ claim to the Western Wall.

“The Zionist occupation falsely and unjustly claims that it owns this wall which it calls the Western Wall or Kotel,” Taha, who is also a renowned Palestinian poet and writer, wrote in his project. “The Al-Buraq Wall is in fact the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

He added that the Jews had never used the site for worship until the Balfour Declaration of 1917. “This wall was never part of the so-called Temple Mount, but Muslim tolerance allowed the Jews to stand in front of it and weep over its destruction,” he wrote.

“During the British mandate in Palestine, the number of Jews who visited the wall increased to a point where the Muslims felt threatened and then there was the Al-Buraq Revolution on August 23, 1929, where dozens of Muslims were martyred and a large number of Jews were killed.”

The author, who is affiliated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, emphasizes that over the past few decades Jews had failed to prove that the wall had any connection to their religion.

Just in case you think that there is the slightest possibility that the author of this "study" actually believes what he is writing, rather than knowingly and willfully lying, here is the proof.

The "study" is on the PA Ministry of Information website (only the Arabic version.) One of its claims is:

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, published in 1917, the Western Wall became part of the Jewish religious tradition around the year 1520 AD, as a result of Jewish immigration from Spain, after the Ottoman conquest the year 1517

It just so happens that the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1917 says no such thing. Its entry on Jerusalem says:

Certain customs peculiar to Jerusalem are mentioned in the rabbinical writings....In writing deeds in Jerusalem it was customary to state not only the day but also the hour of execution (Ket. 94b). A man approaching the city recited, "Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation" (Isa. lxiv. 10), and made a rent in his garment (M. Ḳ. 26 and parallels)—a custom observed to this day. As a congregation, the Jews of Jerusalem are called specifically (Ber. 9b) and (Yer. Ma'as. Sh. ii. 10).

The Rabbis further held that the western wall, the Gate of the Priests, and the Huldah Gate were not and never will be destroyed (Cant. R. § 2), and that whether the Temple was standing or not the Shekinah was not removed from it; it still dwelt near the western wall (Tan., Shemot, x.; Cant. R. ii. 9). God will bring back all the former joy to Jerusalem; and every one that on earth bewails its destruction will in the future world rejoice at its restoration (Pes. 28 and parallels).

The very source that Taha uses to "prove" that Jews had no interest in the Kotel shows that this interest pre-dates Islam and Mohammed's night journey on his magical flying horse.

Now that we have proven that an official Palestinian Authority ministry is willing to knowingly publish lies, why exactly should anyone trust any agreement made with that same entity?

Tribute to Helen Thomas by a Hezbollah/Hamas supporter and 9/11 "truther" (update)

I mentioned that Helen Thomas was honored in a Washington ceremony last week as the recipient of the "Courage in Journalism" award last week by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. My conjecture was that she received her award not in spite of her anti-semitism, but because of it.

It appears I am right.

The person who presented the award to her was James Abourezk, former senator - and terrorist supporter.

When Abourezk gave a glowing review to the Walt/Mearsheimer book on the Jewish Lobby, I noted that he had been on Hezbollah TV praising Hamas and Hezbollah, and saying that Zionists were involved with the 9/11 attacks. This gave rise to a comment thread on the review site where he and I argued a bit. I'm fairly sure I won that argument, decisively.

Here's part of what Abourezk said at the Helen Thomas tribute:

from People's Cube

Even Barack Obama, who has been advertised as a tolerant man, had to join in the denunciations of Helen. He, along with the others in the press corps, acted very much like children in a school yard. When one of the children falls down, the rest start kicking.

Helen was not necessarily done in by her statement about Israel. What she said is what I’ve been saying for years - the Zionists should get the hell out of Palestine.

Where they go when they leave there is not my concern, just as it is not the Zionists' concern where the Palestinians went when they were driven out of Palestine.

...As the Zionists and the Israelis are working very hard to get our country into a war with Iran, there remains almost no voice in the press or in the Congress to call a halt to this madness.

That is why we are all paying tribute to Helen tonight, and I hope, for a long time after this night. We pay tribute to all soldiers who act with bravery, and tonight, we add Helen Thomas to that company. She deserves our thanks, and she deserves the thanks of our nation.

So indeed Thomas was not honored by the ADC for her decades of journalistic work but for her anti-semitic and genocidal comments about Jews in Israel.

And James Abourezk is proud to agree with her.

(The rest of his speech shows that his regard for the truth has not gone up at all since my little exposure of his lies.)

By the way, i see that previous award recipient Ray Hanania finds my earlier mention of Thomas to be reprehensible:

On the one hand, the writer argues that Helen Thomas did not say that Jews should get out of the occupied territory, making the precision of the words their strongest case. And then they hypocritically violate principle, morality and even truth, arguing that Helen Thomas said that Jews should get out of Israel. The fact is Helen Thomas NEVER used the word "Jews." She was asked by a racist rabbi what Israelis should do and she said "Get the hell out of Palestine."

And then that "racist rabbi" said to her "So you are saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany" and she added "And to America, and everywhere else."

Hanania knows this, of course, as he attacks EoZ as "an often racistly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate site."

Sorry, Ray, but you are a liar. Helen made very clear what she meant, and the video shows that. Your defense of her is indefensible.

UPDATE: Not that this is the first time that I caught Ray Hanania lying....

Iran's involvement in a Nazi website

Last week, Barry Rubin had a scoop:

Is Iran’s government sponsoring an Internet site that extols the German Nazis, their history and achievements, including the antisemitism that the current Iranian regime also supports? Or is it merely permitting one to operate in its highly censored communications' system?

Here are the facts. There is a discussion group site entitled IranNazi that has an Iranian internet URL. It is written in Persian and seems to have begun on August 24. All the material on the site is pro-Nazi and features pictures of Adolph Hitler, the swastika, and goose-stepping German soldiers. There is an English-language part as well.

This site pretends to be an association for the research of Nazism and to be "completely historical and scientific."

کاملا پژوهشی و علمی تاریخی است

It includes such topics as claims that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the well-known antisemitic forgery is true; insistence that the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis never happened and is in fact a lie; makes the prediction that Israel will collapse in five years; and highlights cartoons and satire ridiculing the Holocaust. All four of these positions are also taken by the Iranian government and official media.

The main page includes the following message:

این تارنما طبق قوانین جمهوری اسلامی ایران و تحت نظارت کارگروه رسانه های دیجیتال وزارت فرهنگ و ارشاد جمهوری اسلامی فعالیت می کند .

In English it means: "This website is under Islamic Republic of Iran laws and it is under the supervision of the working committee on Digital Media of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance."

Iran does not have freedom of speech and certainly not freedom of the Internet. Given the tight censorship in Iran and the fact that all sites are closely monitored, permission to publish--especially to claim government sponsorship--is evidence of state backing.

So is this, then, a state-backed site, showing just how far the regime has gone in boosting Nazism historically and antisemitism or a private initiative by some Iranian immigrants in the United States who are supporters of the Iranian regime? Is the statement on the site, which has not been suppressed by the government, accurate? It isn't completely clear.

A very well-informed and highly credible Iranian notes that the fact that it isn't blocked "is a significant indication that the government at least does not have problem with it." The deputy minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance is Muhammad Ali Ramin, who was President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's advisor on Holocaust issue and founder of Holocaust Institute in Tehran and the president of the conference of Holocaust; A Global Perspective, which denied that the mass murder of Jews never took place.

I was skeptical. I did a little digging; the server of the group is physically in Arizona and the other websites on the same Iranian host were the usual assortment of random Internet sites: one selling videos, one apparently selling perfume. The IranNazi.ir site seemed to be just another site set up by some Jew-hater.

Al-Arabiya, however, seems to be taking it as seriously as Rubin did, as the site was specifically allowed by Iran:

Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic guidance lifted the block it had imposed on a pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish website, amid concerns by both conservatives and reformists.

While it blocks around five million political, cultural, religious, and “indecent” websites, the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance permitted the operation of a website called irannazi.ir, also called the Center for Historical Studies on World War I and Nazism.” The website is run by a group called the Center for Nazi Iranian Studies.

The re-opening of the website was met with objections in Iranian political circles, which was shown in the reactions of both the pro-government website Tabnak and the pro-reformist Rooz Online.

Tabnak demanded that the Iranian government provides an explanation for allowing the website to operate while Rooz Online accused deputy minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance is Muhammad Ali Ramin of being behind lifting the ban on the website.

Rooz reported that Ramin had connections with neo-Nazis when he lived in Europe and that he is known for his support for Nazi ideas.

Ramin is also the founder of the Holocaust Institute in Tehran and was the president of a conference called Holocaust: A Global Perspective, which denied the extermination of Jews by the German Third Reich.

The website published a statement about the previous ban imposed on it after its administrators were accused of insulting religious minorities. After the re-launch, they called on visitors to use the word “Zionist” instead of “Jew.”

The website has several chat rooms that are categorized according to the topics users want to discuss like Third Reich, Second World War, principles of Nazism, and the ideas of Adolf Hitler.

It is indeed significant that the Iranian regime specifically unbanned this site while it continues to censore millions of others.

The If/Then Fallacy

Diplomats, pundits and politicians, whether Israeli or European or American, have consistently made the same mistake when deciding what Israel must do to gain peace. I call it the "If/Then Fallacy."

The logic goes that if Israel makes a unilateral move towards peace, then it will inevitably gain some sort of reward.

And it is false - consistently and provably so.

I recently stumbled onto and quoted a 1988 version of this formulation in Time magazine, where columnist Michael Kramer wrote:

If [Israel puts forth a detailed plan for peace and] the Palestinians reject an offer reasonable people can identify as forthcoming and courageous -- as they have rejected every attempt at compromise for almost a century -- [then] no one could fault Israel for then saying, "Shalom. Come to talk to us again when you've grown up."

Of course, Israel has done exactly that - at Camp David as well as at other times. But the "else" clause didn't follow as the script demanded - on the contrary, Israel's offer was met with a pre-planned war against Israeli civilians that ended up killing thousands.

Zaki Shalom, in Strategic Assessment's October issue, goes through the goals of Israel's disengagement from Gaza. He writes many implicit and explicit reasons that the Israeli government wanted to make such a drastic move, and notes:

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, withdrawing IDF troops from the Gaza Strip, destroying the Jewish settlement there, and evacuating Israeli residents were supposed to bring about Israel’s complete divestment of responsibility for the Gaza Strip and its residents. From this point onwards, so the plan’s authors contended, the local residents would be their own lords and masters, choose the leadership they would desire, and bear responsibility for their actions, for better or for worse. Gaza, so it was explained, is a bottomless hole, an expanse of quicksand. Israel freed of responsibility for the Strip was a highly important strategic asset for the future development and prosperity of the State of Israel.

If Israel would go through that exercise, then Gaza will no longer be Israel's problem. How did that work out?

In practice, these expectations were not realized. On paper, it seemed that removing IDF forces from the Strip, dismantling all Jewish settlements there, and moving the residents into the areas within the Green Line would allow a complete disengagement from the Gaza Strip and a divestment of all responsibility for it. As coined by Yitzhak Rabin and long echoed by Ehud Barak, the idea was, “We’re here and they’re there.” The disengagement plan of April 18, 2004, stated: “The process of disengagement will serve to dispel claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”11

Five years later, it is clear that this expectation did not materialize. Rather, “We left Gaza, but Gaza didn’t leave us” is the reality. The international community sees Israel and its government as bearing full responsibility for the Gaza Strip.

The same fallacious logic was used in 2000 when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in conformity with UN resolutions. The UN certified that Israel's withdrawal was complete. Certainly there was a drastic reduction in tension in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal, but Hezbollah did not accept the UN-drawn Blue Line and made a number of additional territorial claims against Israel, of which the Shebaa Farms is the most famous.

Then, of course, in 2006 Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers to spark the Second Lebanon war. Somehow, Israel's move towards peace did not result in peace, against what everyone assumed. And in the years since the war, Israel - having no territorial claims against Lebanon and reacting to Hezbollah's increased provocations - is today perceived as the aggressor.

Now there is a new instantiation of the If/Then Fallacy, with Israel prepared to withdraw from Ghajar. The logic, as always, is that it gives one less thing for Hezbollah to complain about and therefore would contribute to peace.

And, as always, that logic is wrong.

From Ma'an:

Hezbollah on Sunday dismissed an Israeli decision to pull troops out of a disputed village on the border with Lebanon as nothing more than a "trick" and accused the UN of complicity with Israel.

"The Israeli enemy wants to show that it has fully pulled out from Lebanese territory," Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad said in a speech in south Lebanon, excerpts of which were distributed to the media in Beirut.

"This is maneuvering in complicity with the United Nations," Raad said in the first reaction by the Shiite militant group Hezbollah since Israel announced its decision.

So the residents of Ghajar will be sacrificed for no real political or tactical benefit by Israel, except perhaps for a very limited amount of goodwill from the UN that will disappear on the next border incident initiated by Hezbollah that Israel dares respond to.

While there may be some short-term diplomatic gains for Israel when it announces these unilateral moves, there is an elemental flaw with the "If Israel does X, then Arabs will respond positively" formulation. The flaw is that it assumes good faith on the part of people who are determined to eliminate Israel.

The world, and even Israeli leaders, keep forgetting that the entire raison d'etre of Palestinian Arab nationalism (and Hezbollah's very existence) is not to build a state but to destroy one.

The "historic Palestine" desired never had anything to do with history and always was congruent with what Israel controlled. The major political and military entity controlling Lebanon has, in its charter, the phrase "Our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated." Neither Hamas nor the PA has shown the least interest in building a state, and every single PA action that seems to point towards state-building has been done because of US pressure, not because of an innate desire for independence. The fate of millions of stateless Palestinian Arabs is being purposefully delayed by their and other Arab leaders for no other reason than to use them as a demographic and political weapon against Israel. Poll after poll has shown that the Palestinian Arabs desire to wipe Israel out.

It is not possible to make peace with those who are determined to destroy you. This simple fact, which should be axiomatic, is set aside and ignored time and time again because of the deep desire for Westerners and Israelis to find a formula for peace despite all evidence to the contrary. Wishful thinking and false assumptions have replaced cold, hard and admittedly uncomfortable facts.

Just because everyone in the West wants a solution doesn't mean there is one.

Hating Israel doesn't stop Gulf royal from seeking care there (updated x2)

From JPost:

A member of the royal family of a Persian Gulf state is undergoing advanced medical treatment in Israel, sources close to Deputy Minister for Negev and Galilee Development Ayoub Kara (Likud) revealed Sunday.

Kara’s office confirmed that the foreign visitor had completed a series of tests Sunday, in preparation for heart surgery on Tuesday, but would not detail the medical tourist’s country of origin, or the name of the hospital in which he is being treated.

Kara’s office became involved in the visit when Kara aided the patient in securing the necessary paperwork in order to allow him to enter Israel. Israel does not have official diplomatic relations with any of the Persian Gulf states.

Reminds me of an old All in the Family episode, where the bigoted Archie Bunker, pretending to have whiplash, insists on a Jewish lawyer:

It is amazing how tolerant people become when they need help.

And how easily they revert back once they are finished.

(h/t Zvi)

UPDATE: Apparently, the patient is a princess, arriving with her husband.

UPDATE 2: Arutz-7 adds an intriguing piece:

The woman's husband, a prince of the unnamed Gulf kingdom himself, is considered a key figure in his country. He told MK Kara that if – and hopefully, when – his wife recovers, he plans to lobby for construction of a large medical center that will take in patients from around the Arab world – with Israeli doctors helping to set up the project. In a statement, MK Kara's sees medicine as an important bridge to bring Israel and the Arab world closer, “especially given the fact that in recent years more and more Arabs have been exposed to Israeli medicine, and are well aware of the high quality of Israeli medicine.”

(h/t Joel)

Saudi-funded schools in Britain teaching Jew-hatred, homophobia

BBC's Panorama will be broadcasting this story later today:

BBC Panorama found that more than 40 Saudi Students' Schools and Clubs are teaching the official Saudi national curriculum to about 5,000 pupils.

One text book shows how the hands and feet of thieves are chopped off.

The Saudi government said it had no official ties to the part-time schools and clubs and did not endorse them.

However, a building in west London where Panorama obtained one of the text books is owned by the Saudi government.

The director of education for the Saudi Students' Schools and Clubs said the Saudi Cultural Bureau, which is part of the embassy, had authority over the network.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said there was no place for the Saudi teachings with regard to Jews or homosexuals in Britain: "To my mind it doesn't seem to me that this is the sort of material that should be used in English schools."

He said in light of the BBC's findings, the school inspectorate Ofsted was looking into the possible regulation and inspection of out-of-hours schools and clubs. At present, part-time schools do not fall within Ofsted's mandate.

"Ofsted are doing some work in this area, they'll be reporting to me shortly about how we can ensure that part-time provision is better registered and better inspected in the future," Mr Gove said.

One of the text books asks children to list the "reprehensible" qualities of Jewish people. A text for younger children asks what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam - the answer given in the text book is "hellfire".

Another text describes the punishment for gay sex as death and states a difference of opinion about whether it should be carried out by stoning, burning with fire or throwing the person over a cliff.

In a book for 14-year-olds, Sharia law and its punishment for theft are explained, including detailed diagrams about how hands and feet of thieves are amputated.

The use of these materials in Britain comes three years after a BBC investigation found a Saudi-funded school in west London was using texts that referred to Jewish people and Christians in derogatory terms. That prompted assurances at the highest diplomatic levels that the materials would be removed.

Panorama has also found evidence of extreme views on some private, full-time Muslim school websites, including messages that state: "Our children are exposed to a culture that is in opposition to almost everything Islam stands for" and "We need to defend our children from the forces of evil".

(h/t Nadav)

Must-read CBC report shows Hezbollah murdered Hariri

CBC's Neil MacDonald has produced a great piece of investigative journalism that describes the Hariri murder investigation as well as the stonewalling being done by some of the leaders of that very investigation.

In short, the evidence is overwhelming that Hezbollah was behind the murder, but the commission has shown timidity and worse in investigating it.

Excerpts:

It wasn't until late 2007 that the awkwardly titled UN International Independent Investigation Commission actually got around to some serious investigating.

By then, nearly three years had passed since the spectacular public murder of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

A months-long CBC investigation, relying on interviews with multiple sources from inside the UN inquiry and some of the commission's own records, found examples of timidity, bureaucratic inertia and incompetence bordering on gross negligence.

Among other things, CBC News has learned that:

Evidence gathered by Lebanese police and, much later, the UN, points overwhelmingly to the fact that the assassins were from Hezbollah, the militant Party of God that is largely sponsored by Syria and Iran. CBC News has obtained cellphone and other telecommunications evidence that is at the core of the case.

UN investigators came to believe their inquiry was penetrated early by Hezbollah and that that the commission's lax security likely led to the murder of a young, dedicated Lebanese policeman who had largely cracked the case on his own and was co-operating with the international inquiry.

UN commission insiders also suspected Hariri's own chief of protocol at the time, a man who now heads Lebanon's intelligence service, of colluding with Hezbollah. But those suspicions, laid out in an extensive internal memo, were not pursued, basically for diplomatic reasons.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t t34zakat)

Because when you think Mike Tyson, you think "quality kosher cuisine"

From the New York Post:

Mike Tyson is in talks with businessman Moshe Malamud to launch a high-end restaurant chain, a source said. The two talked shop at Malamud's favorite kosher eatery, Solo, on Madison Avenue, where Tyson dined with his pregnant wife, Lakiha Spicer, on mushroom soup and mixed vegetables. Tyson, who announced his decision to follow a strict vegan diet last spring, is said to have interest in breaking into the kosher-food business. "They discussed the concept as well as the name, but nothing was finalized," a rep for Solo said. Tyson's rep had no comment.

Which reminds me, what is the blessing one makes before taking a bite of a human ear?

Tyson converted to Islam when he was in prison for raping Miss Black Rhode Island in 1991 and he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca earlier this year. So he already has the a built in clientele from the large the Islamic wife-beating rapist cannibal glatt-kosher population.

Muslims claim they invented etiquette

Felesteen, a Hamas newspaper, has an article that starts off with an anecdote of a British girl who converted to Islam and then noticed, six months later, that all the rules of etiquette that she grew up with were first found in the Koran!

The article goes on to show how the West "stole" the rules of etiquette from Islam.

Examples:

Honoring parents? In the Koran! (Also in the Torah, which predates the Koran by a couple thousand years.)

Don't enter a house before knocking? In the Koran! (Also in the Talmud, quoting Ben Sira from hundreds of years earlier, Nidah 10b - including not entering one's own house suddenly.)

I admit I didn't understand most of the other examples, so, who knows, maybe Islam invented proper place-settings for a formal meal.

Israel: Doing airport security right (Michael Totten)

From Michael Totten in the New York Post (h/t Daled Amos, who has more):

Terrorists have yet to use the same weapon twice, and the TSA isn't even looking for whatever they'll try to use next. I can think of all sorts of things a person could use to wreak havoc on a plane that aren't banned. Security officials should pay less attention to objects, and more attention to people.

The Israelis do. They are, out of dreadful necessity, the world's foremost experts in counterterrorism. And they couldn't care less about what your grandmother brings on a plane. Instead, officials at Ben Gurion International Airport interview everyone in line before they're even allowed to check in.

And Israeli officials profile. They don't profile racially, but they profile. Israeli Arabs breeze through rather quickly, but thanks to the dozens of dubious-looking stamps in my passport -- almost half are from Lebanon and Iraq -- I get pulled off to the side for more questioning every time. And I'm a white, nominally Christian American.

If they pull you aside, you had better tell them the truth. They'll ask you so many wildly unpredictable questions so quickly, you couldn't possibly invent a fake story and keep it all straight. Don't even try. They're highly trained and experienced, and they catch everyone who tries to pull something over on them.

Because I fit one of their profiles, it takes me 15 or 20 minutes longer to get through the first wave of security than it does for most people. The agents make up for it, though, by escorting me to the front of the line at the metal detector. They don't put anyone into a "porn machine." There's no point. Terrorists can't penetrate that deeply into the airport.

The Israeli experience isn't pleasant, exactly, and there's a lot not to like about it. It can be exasperating for those of us who are interrogated more thoroughly.

The system has its advantages, though, aside from the fact that no one looks or reaches into anyone's pants. Israelis don't use security theater to make passengers feel like they're safe. They use real security measures to ensure that travelers actually are safe. Even when suicide bombers exploded themselves almost daily in Israeli cities, not a single one managed to get through that airport.