Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Sneak preview of tomorrow's Latma: Jihad Bells

They didn't create the English subtitles yet, but the music video is in English already - and it is a good one:

(h/t Ruchie)

Hasbara 2.0 - a taxonomy of effective communication

Towards the end of my Hasbara 2.0 lecture, I (too quickly) went over this slide:

The higher you go up the pyramid, the bigger the emotional pay-off. Things like videos, songs, and plays reach people on a visceral level and are far more effective than text or verbal communication alone.

Take data that you or others discover, and push it up the pyramid. Convert raw data into a chart, convert a static chart into a Flash animation with voice-over. The higher up you can bring it, the more that people get emotionally involved. Text rarely goes viral, but videos do. If you can move things up the scale you can make the message far more effective.

The Gaza Mall is a perfect example. Reading about it is interesting, but seeing it in photos has a greater impact. Watching a video of people actually shopping there raises it up a notch - and making people laugh while watching it is even better.

That is my point - effective hasbara is not simply repeating information, but transforming it into a form that will get into people's hearts as well as minds. Most people make their judgments in their hearts before their minds. The information must be 100% accurate, of course, but it needs to be presented in a way that penetrates people's psyches on all levels.

The posters and comics and videos I've made recently have been intended as a way of taking my own advice, and it definitely works. My posters are getting more hits than my regular posts, and they spread much faster, especially via Facebook and Twitter. But they are not meant to stop here, or to merely get copied - they are meant to be used. My part in the hasbara universe is to generate data and tools; others are free to use them. While of course I would prefer to know how they are being used, and I would prefer that people keep my website name on the graphics, they are meant to be used, not just to entertain my readers. Print them, turn them into posters, make them into postcards, forward them, place them on social bookmarking sites or message boards, email them, convert them into balloons if you want. But to me, hasbara should not be done by organizations in a vacuum - everyone should share their creations and their ideas, and let the good ones rise to the top. If some Zionist organization wants to use my posters, comics or videos, or - better yet - it can improve them, go for it!

Arab diplomat accuses Israel of "illegal occupation" - in 1959

If you think that Arabs consider Israel's "illegal occupation" to be only east of the Green Line, here is what a major Arab diplomat said in 1959 in response to a speech by a rabbi:

And that was hardly the only time. Here's an article from 1966:

Notice that in neither of these articles are Arabs from Palestine referred to as "Palestinians."

Time for the annual Camel Beauty Contest!

These stories never get old:

Nearly 20,000 camels from the UAE and other Gulf Arab countries have converged on Abu Dhabi’s western region for one of the world’s biggest camel beauty contests involving prizes worth nearly Dh35 million ($9.5 million).

The camels have been brought from various parts of the UAE as well as neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and other Gulf nations for the week-long beauty competition in the western town of Dhafra.

The contest, which started on Thursday, will stretch until next Friday and officials described it as one of the largest camel beauty pageant in the world in terms of the value of prizes and number of camels.

More than 800 camel owners from the UAE and other regional nations are participating in the event, which is sponsored by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince and deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces. It is organised by the Culture and Heritage Authority.

Do the camels always look this happy or are they coached how to smile for the judges?

PalArab news roundup

The PA claims to have stopped a Hamas cel in Ramallah that was planning to attack PalArab forces.

Firas Press reports that Israel will allow some 50,000 mobile phones to be imported into Gaza.

They also quote Bashir Assad as saying that Syria does not support Hamas, but supports its cause. Which is very interesting since Hamas' political headquarters is in Damascus, and nothing happens in Damascus without the Syrian regime's approval.

Palestine Times reports that Egypt is considering limiting where Israeli tourists can go in the country, in the wake of espionage allegations. They are concerned about the upcoming January pilgrimage of some Jews to the grave of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira.

Another Palestine Times article claims that the Mossad has infiltrated the highest levels of Fatah. This explains Arafat's "assassination." (PalTimes is a Hamas newspaper.)

Al Ahram quotes the BBC as saying that Israeli police arrested a man who was planning to blow up the Al Aqsa mosque.The Peninsula mentioned this a couple of days ago.

UPDATE: Upon request, I added a few pictures (Himmler, Brezhnev, Castro.) Not sure if it adds or detracts, but it's here if someone prefers it:

Wikileaks: Pope deliberately chose harsh words about Islam

A new Wikileaks cables shows an interesting American analysis of Pope Benedict's controversial statement about Islam in September 2006:

Following a bit of personal reminiscence about his own university days, the pope embarked on the lecture with the following passage:

"I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Munster) of part of the dialogue carried on -- perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara -- by the erudite Byuzantiine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both....

[T]he emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). the emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion. It is one of the suras of the early
period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also know the instructions, devloped later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without
descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", heturns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central
question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and
inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something
unreasonable.

...It taxes the imagination in today's world to suppose that a reference -- by the pope! -- to the Prophet Mohammed's innovations as "evil and inhuman" would pass unnoticed. Nor is it likely that the particular quotation is accidental. Benedict is known for his meticulous ways, and also for his distinctly cooler (compared to John Paul II) approach toward Islam and interreligious dialogue. The pope is preparing for an important visit to Istanbul in November. His invocation of Manuel, an emperor whose life was defined in combat with the Ottomans who destroyed his empire a few decades later, must have been deliberate. So, too, the decision to quote the precise words of Manuel -- rather than a milder paraphrase -- is significant in a pope known for his belief that one must neither compromise with the truth, nor back down from defending the faith.

...Our view is that Benedict very likely chose his words carefully and was not averse to having them interpreted as a sign of his skepticism about Islam; his earlier actions, such as the transfer of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald last spring, made this attitude clear enough. However, he surely did not intend for them to lead to violence or a worsening of tensions between Christians and Muslims.

A new type of "honor killing"

From Ha'aretz:

A Palestinian caught trying to infiltrate a settlement Wednesday night claims he was sent by his family members, who had hoped he would be killed by soldiers during the infiltration.

Israel Defense Forces soldiers patrolling the central West Bank near the settlement of Beit El on Wednesday spotted a Palestinian walking toward the settlement and subsequently arrested him.

According to the investigation into the incident, the boy was behaving in a strange manner and the soldiers originally thought that he was drunk. Later on in the investigation, it was clarified that he was actually suffering from a mental illness.

The boy told investigators that his family wanted him dead. He said they threatened him at gunpoint, forcing him to walk towards the settlement with the hope that soldiers would think he was trying to infiltrate and would shoot him.

IDF scouts who searched the area confirmed the boy's version of events and found four family members who had tried to flee the area.

Most so-called "honor killings" are really about avoiding shame. This was both about avoiding shame - and acquiring honor for the family at the same time.

The family obviously felt that having a mentally handicapped son was shameful, and therefore unacceptable. But it was not shameful enough to murder him; after all, he is not a girl who is rumored to have been dating someone inappropriate. No one can blame the son for his condition. In this case, the family decided to turn him from a symbol of longstanding family shame into one where they would be able to bask in the reflected glory of his becoming a shahid.

Not that this is entirely new. Women who have shamed their families by their actions have been convinced to become suicide bombers in the past as well for very similar reasons - to erase shame and convert it into honor.

(h/t Ruchie)

"Israel doesn't need the West Bank to be secure" (van Creveld)

This op-ed in the Forward last week Martin van Creveld made some waves, because the writer has some serious credentials.

His thesis is that the 1967 borders are defensible. I am not a military analyst, but I will annotate where I find problems with his logic:

When everything is said and done, how important is the West Bank to Israel’s defense?

To answer the question, our best starting point is the situation before the 1967 war. At that time, the Arab armed forces surrounding Israel outnumbered the Jewish state’s army by a ratio of 3-to-1. Not only was the high ground in Judea and Samaria in Jordanian hands, but Israel’s capital in West Jerusalem was bordered on three sides by hostile territory. Arab armies even stood within 14 miles of Tel Aviv. Still, nobody back then engaged in the sort of fretting we hear today about “defensible borders,” let alone Abba Eban’s famous formulation, “Auschwitz borders.” When the time came, it took the Israel Defense Forces just six days to crush all its enemies combined.

If Jordan had tanks on the ridge, and would have attacked Israel a few hours sooner, things very well may have turned out differently. The fact is that Jordan was not terribly interested in war and that is what made the Green Line "defensible" before 1967 - Jordan's King Hussein was not the aggressor Nasser was.

In reality, the snaking Green Line is more than twice the length of the border between the West Bank and Jordan. That by itself makes the Green line less defensible.

Since then, of course, much has happened. Though relations with Egypt and Jordan may not always be rosy, both countries have left “the circle of enmity,” as the Hebrew expression goes. Following two-and-a-half decades of astonishing growth, Israel’s GDP is now larger than those of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt combined. As to military power, suffice it to say that Israel is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of arms.

True, but I believe irrelevant.

Syria, Israel’s main remaining hostile neighbor, has never on its own been strong enough to seriously threaten Israel. While Damascus is getting some weapons from Iran, the latter is no substitute for the genuine superpower patron that Syria had in the old Soviet Union.

Also true, but this article is not about the Golan - and there are other issues there.

Overall, therefore, Israel’s position is much stronger than it was at any time in the past. So how does the West Bank fit into this picture?

One of the main threats that Israel faces today is from ballistic missiles. Yet everybody knows that holding on to the West Bank won’t help Israel defend itself against missiles coming from Syria or Iran. Even the most extreme hawk would concede this point.

Van Creveld is ignoring shorter-range Qassam and Grad-type missiles. There would be nothing stopping a Palestine from allowing those to be smuggled in or built, and nothing Israel could do tostop them.

While they may not be a military threat, Israel has never looked at the conflict in purely military terms, as van Creveld seems to like to do. Israel's position has always been, to its credit, that the security of its citizens are paramount. A danger to civilians is a more pressing issue than the ability to win a war. Van Creveld seems to be thinking in terms of military history, his area of expertise, but that is only part of the story - an Israeli victory in the field can easily be a Pyrrhic victory in terms of the number killed. A situation where easily assembled rockets can effectively hold the biggest population centers of Israel hostage is simply unacceptable, and Israel's ability to win a war is not important if the entire country must live their entire lives the way Sderot lived two years ago.

As far as the threat of a land invasion, it is of course true that the distance between the former Green Line and the Mediterranean is very small — at its narrowest point, what is sometimes affectionately known as “Old” Israel is just nine miles wide. As was noted before, it is also true that the West Bank comprises the high ground and overlooks Israel’s coastal plain.

On the other hand, since the West Bank itself is surrounded by Israel on three sides, anybody who tries to enter it from the east is sticking his head into a noose. To make things worse for a prospective invader, the ascent from the Jordan Valley into the heights of Judea and Samaria is topographically one of the most difficult on earth. Just four roads lead from east to west, all of which are easily blocked by air strikes or by means of precision-guided missiles. To put the icing on the cake, Israeli forces stationed in Jerusalem could quickly cut off the only road connecting the southern portion of the West Bank with its northern section in the event of an armed conflict.

Van Creveld seems to be making a number of unspoken assumptions here. I'll make mine explicit: a demilitarized Palestine will not remain so for long,and Israel would be powerless to stop say, a Hamas government in the West Bank to outsource its army duties to Iran. Or a Muslim Brotherhood coup in Jordan changing the equation. If tanks are already positioned on the high ground, there is little that Israel can do to stop them from cutting the country in half without having a significant proportion of the reserves always mobilized.

Similarly, under that scenario, I do not believe that there is much Israel could do to protect Jerusalem from being cut off from the rest of the country, exactly as it was in 1948.

The defense of the West Bank by Arab forces would be a truly suicidal enterprise. The late King Hussein understood these facts well. Until 1967 he was careful to keep most of his forces east of the Jordan River. When he momentarily forgot these realities in 1967, it took Israel just three days of fighting to remind him of them.

Sorry, but I don't understand why. And even if it was "suicidal," if the enemy is motivated by promises of virgins in paradise, we cannot assume rationality in their decision-making.

Therefore, just as Israel does not need the West Bank to defend itself against ballistic missiles, it does not need that territory to defend itself against conventional warfare. If it could retain a security presence in the Jordan Valley, keep the eventual Palestinian state demilitarized and maintain control of the relevant airspace, that would all be well and good. However, none of these conditions existed before 1967; in view of geography and the balance of forces, none is really essential today either.

Again, I reject the premise that a military edge is the only pre-requisite for Israel's security.

And how about terrorism? As experience in Gaza has shown, a fence (or preferably a wall) can stop suicide bombers from entering. As experience in Gaza has also shown, it cannot stop mortar rounds and rockets. Mortar and rocket fire from the West Bank could be very unpleasant. On the other hand, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran already have missiles capable of reaching every point in Israel, Tel Aviv included. Many of those missiles are large and powerful. Compared to the damage they can cause, anything the Palestinians are ever likely to do would amount to mere pinpricks.

It certainly appears from this statement, and the earlier ones, that van Creveld looks at war like a videogame. Actual human casualties from Qassam-type rockets and terrorism are merely "unpleasant." But from Israel's perspective, they are entirely unacceptable, and his facile acceptance of the hell that Israelis would live under shows that he is not in touch with Israel's very raison d'etre.

Furthermore, in recent years Israel has shown it can deal with that kind of threat if it really wants to. Since 2006, when the Second Lebanon War killed perhaps 2,000 Lebanese, many of them civilians, and led to the destruction of an entire section of Beirut, the northern border has been absolutely quiet.

Um, the LAF shot and killed an IDF officer earlier this year during the tree-cutting ambush. It does not help his argument when he makes statements that are demonstratively false. Besides, Hezbollah's motivation is not to secure Lebanon but to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible - a basic concept that seems to elude van Creveld.

Since Operation Cast Lead, which killed perhaps 1,200 Gazans, many of them civilians, and led to the destruction of much of the city of Gaza, not one Israeli has been killed by a mortar round or rocket coming from the Gaza Strip. Since mortar rounds and rockets continue to be fired from time to time, that is hardly accidental. Obviously Hamas, while reluctant to give up what it calls “resistance,” is taking care not to provoke Israel too much.

His description of the destruction is exaggerated.

There is no doubt that Israel's reactions in the north and the south have deterred Hezbollah and Hamas for the time being, but van Creveld ignores that in the time since both wars, both the enemies have more than recovered their losses and are both militarily much stronger than they were before. He also ignores that in both those cases, the wars were sparked by Arab actions that had no military value on their part. Van Creveld is again assuming a conventional war scenario where each side acts rationally, but that is simply not the case with Iranian-backed Islamist groups.

Keeping all these facts in mind — and provided that Israel maintains its military strength and builds a wall to stop suicide bombers — it is crystal-clear that Israel can easily afford to give up the West Bank.

That statement is beyond absurd. Van Creveld did not even touch on many other arguments against ceding the West Bank to a sworn enemy.

One example is the vulnerability of Ben Gurion Airport to simple anti-aircraft missiles.

Another is the amount of time it takes for Israel to mobilize its reserves - in those 48 hours, the amount of damage that Israel must absorb is significantly higher without the West Bank as a buffer.

A third is the simple realization that Israel, by ceding the West Bank, could be setting up a scenario where it is completely surrounded by Iranian proxy forces in Lebanon, Syria, "Palestine" and "Hamastan."

In addition, there are a number of papers on the topic of defensible borders written by people with much more military expertise than I have. They bring up many more points that van Creveld ignores with his flat statement that his thesis is "crystal clear."

Strategically speaking, the risk of doing so is negligible.

Only if you consider it acceptable to have an entire nation held hostage by radical Islamists with crude rockets - that Israel cannot defend against without potentially starting a war with the Arab world. They might not run to defend Gaza but a sovereign nation, with defense pacts, is a different story - especially if they think they can win. Israel's perceived weakness in withdrawing from lands won in war will never make Arab nations less likely to attack!

What is not negligible is the demographic, social, cultural and political challenge that ruling over 2.5 million — nobody knows exactly how many — occupied Palestinians in the West Bank poses. Should Israeli rule over them continue, then the country will definitely turn into what it is already fast becoming: namely, an apartheid state that can only maintain its control by means of repressive secret police actions.

Now we see that van Creveld might have more of an agenda than simply speaking from a purely military perspective. The issue is real, but it does not belong in an article like this; it indicates that his analysis might be colored by his bias.

To save itself from such a fate, Israel should rid itself of the West Bank, most of Arab Jerusalem specifically included. If possible, it should do so by agreement with the Palestinian Authority; if not, then it should proceed unilaterally, as the — in my view, very successful — withdrawal from Gaza suggests. Or else I would strongly advise my children and grandson to seek some other, less purblind and less stiff-necked, country to live in.

Israel's withdrawal from Gaza resulted in thousands of rockets and a war that killed some 1200 people. What exactly are his criteria for success? Again, a statement like that calls into question van Creveld's entire perspective on what it means to be an Israeli, and what its citizens should be forced to endure, for his seemingly bizarre concept of living in security.

Martin van Creveld is an Israeli military historian and the author of “The Land of Blood and Honey: The Rise of Modern Israel” (St. Martin’s Press, 2010).

(h/t Zach)

Yes, Iran has a nuclear weapons program

From the Daily Telegraph:

Iran is operating a worldwide recruitment network for nuclear scientists to lure them to the country to work on its nuclear weapons programme, officials have told the Daily Telegraph.

They claim that the country is particularly reliant on North Korean scientists but also recruits people with expertise from African countries to work on developing missiles and nuclear production activities.

North Korea relies on an lucrative financing agreement with Iran to fund its expanding nuclear activities. In return for Iranian money and testing facilities, North Korea sends technology and scientists.

Mohamed Reza Heydari, a former Iranian consul in Oslo, told The Daily Telegraph, that he had personally helped scores of North Koreans enter the country while working for the foreign ministry's office in Tehran's Imam Khomenei airport.

"Our mission was to coordinate with a team from the Ministry of Intelligence in checking the visas of the foreign diplomatic and trade delegates who visited Iran, with special attention to VIPs," he said.

"We had the instructions to forego any visa and passport inspections for Palestinians belonging to Hamas and North Korean military and engineering staff who visit Iran on regular basis.

"The North Koreans were all technicians and military experts involved in two aspects of Iran's nuclear programme. One to enable Iran to achieve nuclear bomb capability, and the other to help increase the range of Iran's ballistic missiles."

He said: "In all our embassies abroad, especially in the African countries, the staff of foreign ministry were always looking for local scientists and technicians who were experts in nuclear technology and offered them lucrative contracts to lure them into Iran.

"The façade of the nuclear programme is that it is for peaceful purposes, but behind it they have a completely different agenda."

The sad part is that every thinking person has known this for years, and those who refuse to believe it won't believe it now either.

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar)

Gazans have no interest in BDS - they prefer Israeli products

"We buy Israeli products. They are much better than the others."

Israel's Channel Two has a story about how Gazans prefer Israeli goods to the Egyptian or Jordanian items they can get through the Rafah smuggling tunnels.

The interviewees universally say that Israeli goods are of much higher quality - and the impoverished Gazans are more than happy to pay the higher prices that some Israeli products cost.

Apparently, Palestinian Arabs from Gaza are not interested in boycotting Israeli goods. That is strictly the domain of clueless Western haters of Israel.

(h/t Ruchie)

Iran faces economic crisis

Al Arabiya (Arabic only) has an article detailing the economic woes that Iran faces.

With the worsening budget deficit, soaring fuel consumption and its simultaneous problems in production, Iran's options are extremely limited.

The country has only two choices: either the devaluation of local currency and a willingness to face the negative economic consequences, or removal of subsidies on the staples and facing the wrath of the street.

[Analysts believe that] low-income people will be most affected by the decision to lift subsidies on basic food commodities that will be channeled for the benefit of employers, which may lead to unrest in the short term.

...Many fear that the elimination of subsidies will cause a higher inflation rate than the 10% inflation Iran has currently, which can increase the discontent towards the government.

I have doubts about the chances of sanctions working at this late stage, but this is the time to tighten them further.

A Palestinian Arab ambassador's lie

From TheJC:

A senior officer of the Board of Deputies has urged president Vivian Wineman to issue a "historic" invitation to the Palestinian Authority's UK Ambassador, Manuel Hassassian, to address British Jewry's main representative body.

Board treasurer Laurence Brass, in a letter to Mr Wineman, said it would be right to open dialogue with the Palestinian envoy even if it incurred criticism from right-wingers "who have tended to dominate" its Middle East agenda.

I just stumbled upon this video, apparently from 2007, of this Palestinian representative to the UK denying that the videos of Palestinian Arabs celebrating 9/11 were real:

Not only does he say that the videos don't show them celebrating 9/11, but he makes the astounding claim that the videos were of Palestinian Arabs celebrating the Oslo Accords!

Here's one of the actual videos from CNN;

Right after 9/11, rumors started that the CNN videos were fake. Here was CNN's reaction at the time:

There is absolutely no truth to the information that is now distributed on the Internet that CNN used 10-year-old video when showing the celebrating of some Palestinians in East Jerusalem after the terror attacks in the U.S. The video was shot that day by a Reuters camera crew. CNN is a client of Reuters and like other clients, received the video and broadcast it. Reuters officials have publicly made the facts clear as well.

Here is yet another example of a Palestinian Arab spokesperson who has no compunction about openly lying on TV, in English.

Not only that, but in the same interview he supports rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

Yet instead of being an embarrassment to his people - he remains a representative of them. Lies and justifying terror are simply part of his job.

Why on Earth would a Jewish organization want to invite a proven liar and terror advocate to speak to them? Dialog with liars is hardly a worthwhile endeavor. He should have been shunned, publicly and permanently, once his lies were exposed.

The PA has a new chief Dhimmi

Ma'an has an article by Faisal Hijazin, Parish Priest of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Ramallah, talking about how difficult life is for Christians in Bethlehem:

This Christmas, Christians around the world will be singing such Christmas Carols as “O Little Town of Bethlehem” without knowing that in truth, they could soon be singing of a town where you can no longer find the living presence of Christ, the community of those baptized into his body, the Church; “O Lost Town of Bethlehem” could be a more accurate sentiment when Christians awake to find that the Christian presence in this small holy city has, after 2,000 years, come to an end.

The fact is that this is a community that has been suffocating under military occupation, and all the restriction of liberty – particularly separation from family living very short distances away due to the “Wall of Separation” - that this subjection to arbitrary regulations and threat of imminent violence carries with it. The prolongation, decade after decade, of these circumstances, means that Christians are leaving their beloved city to seek places where they can raise their families where they can live, work and pray with the dignity of human beings. This is perhaps an accusation of our failure to willingly suffer all things in Christ. Though our faith has sustained us for many years, yet, failing to see change coming, many, and ever more, opt for places that offer brighter futures.

The hardships of the political situation have severely reduced the Christian population. Certainly, there are some voices in the international press who present this flight as a result of Islamic persecution. This is false. While of course the Christian community of Palestine has problems due to its minority status, as happens to minority populations virtually everywhere, still careful polling of emigrating Christians clearly demonstrates that the primary reason for leaving is the condition of living under the heavy thumb of the military occupation, without rights, of the Israeli government. This is a situation that, in one form or another, has gone on for 62 years.

Really? Israeli policies were forcing Christians out of Bethlehem before 1967 when Jordan occupied the city? Wow, those Jews are really cunning!

...It has not always been easy to control my own anger, let alone counsel forgiveness to the suffering and bereaved. Some have been able to hear Christ’s words of comfort. Others think of flight. Israel makes no distinction whatsoever between Christians and Muslims. The glaring fact is that the Israelis want the Palestinian land, but do want the Palestinians, the people who have lived there for thousands of years. And, without restrictions on their power, they act accordingly.

Bethlehem's population has been steadily increasing, year after year: 21,670 in 1997, 28,111 in 2004, 29,927 in 2008 (PCBS estimates.) Hijazin freely admits that Israeli policies are equal for Muslims and Christians. Yet the Christian population keeps decreasing while the Muslim population goes up.

So how can it be that Christians are fleeing because of Israeli policies while Muslims are moving in under those same policies?

Hijazin is practicing the usual form of dhimmitude that we see this time of year, where Jews are blamed for Christian suffering and Muslim persecution of the minority population is hushed up.

The only Middle East nation with an increasing Christian population is Israel. There is no way that one can blame Christian flight on Israel while simultaneously explaining the Muslim takeover of the city. Father Hijazin is simply a liar.

Oh, and that claim that Bethlehem Christians have "lived there for thousands of years"? This paper from Bethlehem University has this interesting fact:

[L]arge numbers of the settled Christians including the citizens of Bethlehem were ethnically Arabs of the Ghassanid tribes that had migrated earlier from the Yaman northward toward geographical Syria. Bethlehem's two largest Christian Arab clans/quarters trace their origin to these southern Arabian Christian tribes (the Gassanids). These include Al- Farahiyyah clan/ quarter who trace their origin to the Yaman and to their grandfather, Farah, who came from Wadi Musa in southern Syria (now in Jordan). There is also An- Najajreh, who say that their ancestors came from Najran in Arabia. Likewise, Al- 'Anatreh clan/ quarter trace their ancestry to Christian Arab tribes.

There may be some Palestinian Arabs who have lived there since Roman times, but I have yet to find anyone who could claim to trace their family back even a thousand years. On the contrary, the most important Palestinian Arab families seem to have arrived in the last 500 years.

Arabs fooled by video of "amazing new Iranian airplane"

Firas Press links to a YouTube video that claims to show an Iranian airplane being launched from underwater:

Western intelligence sources said that Iran's air industry has succeeded in manufacturing a fighter plane that takes off directly from under the sea. Those sources considered this a serious technological development that demonstrates the new capabilities of the Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard forces that support them.

One minor problem: it is fake.

The video is a few years old, and it is simply a video of an F-15 superimposed on top of a video of a missile launch from a submarine.

Dishonest Reporter Awards released

Honest Reporting has released its annual "Dishonest Reporter" rewards, noting the worst anti-Israel bias throughout the year in the press.

Highlights include:

Reuters for having so many reporters on the scene before a routine Israeli tree-cutting operation on the Lebanese border - almost as if they knew that the LAF was going to start shooting and killing Israeli soldiers.

The Guardian for similarly claiming to be "at the right place at the right time" with a gaggle of other reporters who were waiting for Arab youths to throw stones at Jewish-owned cars in Jerusalem.

Paul McKeough for his biased and lying article on the Mavi Marmara - that received a prestigious award.

And Time Magazine for their cover story, "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace."

Read the whole thing.

Priest spouts anti-semitism on Greek TV

From JPost:

A high-level priest on the morning show of the largest television station in Greece blamed world Jewry for Greece's financial problems on Tuesday.

The Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim also blamed world Jewry for other ills in the country during his appearance on Mega TV.

Mixing Freemasons with Jewish bankers such as Baron Rothschild and world Zionism, the Metropolite said that there is a conspiracy to enslave Greece and Christian Orthodoxy. He also accused international Zionism of trying to destroy the family unit by promoting one-parent families and same-sex marriages.

Thirteen minutes into the program the Greek host asked the Metropolite, "Why do you disagree with Hitler's policies? If they are doing all this, wasn't he right in burning them?"

The Metropolite answered, "Adolf Hitler was an instrument of world Zionism and was financed from the renowned Rothschild family with the sole purpose of convincing the Jews to leave the shores of Europe and go to Israel to establish the new Empire."

Jews such as "Rockefeller, Rothschild and Soros control the international banking system that controls globalization," the Metropolite also said.

I found a Greek blog post from last January that detailed and provided links to this priest's public anti-semitic remarks.

From the official webpage of the Greek Orthodox Church:

The Jews use Hollywood to promote the degradation of Christ and the Church through the movie "The da Vinci Code..."

Other quotes:

Jews, along with Satanists, are trying to homogenize humanity and enforce the ecumenical religion of darkness - their latest trick: cremation.

...the sharp claws of the Zionist monster....[performing] the Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people...

The powerful prelate referred to people who make up the Bilderberg are "elite officers of the Jewish lobby and from the world of recognized Jewish bankers like Rothschild and Rockefeller and the known anti-Greek Kissinger, Brzezinski and Soros."

This guy has been saying this stuff, proudly and publicly, for years!

Hamas munitions apparently explode in Gaza neighborhood

Palestine Press Agency reports that a series of powerful explosions rocked Gaza City this morning, injuring one.

It quoted residents as saying that rockets were stored on a lower level of that building.

Evidence that it was a Hamas arms depot hidden in a residential neighborhood comes from the fact that Hamas immediately cordoned off the area, it forcefully prevented journalists from approaching the scene and taking photos, and it evacuated residents in "fear of other explosions that may result from the presence of missiles or weapons inside the building [that could be set off by the] fire which resulted from the explosions."

A poster that goes for the jugular

Another in my series:

Wikileaks: New Zealand used spy flap to help sell lambs to Arabs

From The Guardian:

US diplomats disparaged New Zealand's reaction to a suspected Israeli spy ring as a "flap" and accused New Zealand's government of grandstanding in order to sell more lamb to Arab countries, according to leaked cables.

The arrest and conviction in 2004 of two Israeli citizens, who were caught using the identity of a cerebral palsy sufferer to apply for a New Zealand passport, caused a serious rift between New Zealand and Israel, with allegations that the two men and others involved were Mossad agents.

"The New Zealand government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law," New Zealand's then-prime minister, Helen Clark, said after the arrests.

But US officials in Wellington told their colleagues in Washington that New Zealand had "little to lose" from the breakdown in diplomatic relations with Israel and was instead merely trying to bolster its exports to Arab states.

A confidential cable written in July 2004, after New Zealand imposed high-level diplomatic sanctions against Israel, comments: "The GoNZ [government of New Zealand] has little to lose by such stringent action, with limited contact and trade with Israel, and possibly something to gain in the Arab world, as the GoNZ is establishing an embassy in Egypt and actively pursuing trade with Arab states."

A cable two days later was even more pointed, saying: "Its overly strong reaction to Israel over this issue suggests the GNZ sees this flap as an opportunity to bolster its credibility with the Arab community, and by doing so, perhaps, help NZ lamb and other products gain greater access to a larger and more lucrative market."