Thursday, June 02, 2011

  • Thursday, June 02, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Iran's FARS "news" agency:
A prominent Palestinian activist cautioned on Wednesday that the Zionist regime of Israel is likely to attempt to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque through an artificial earthquake, and urged all Islamic countries to show an immediate and strong reaction to the Israeli plans against the first Muslim Keble.

"The Zionist regime authorities may find control over the Al Aqsa Mosque or issue the order for its destruction through an artificial quake which now seems to be the case, given the Zionists' continued diggings and excavation operations under the Al Aqsa Mosque," Khater noted.
You would think that they could come up with something more original. Aftrall, the "artificial quake" threat has been around for years.

In 2009, an "expert on Israeli affairs" said that Israel was going to create an earthquake in the Negev or the Red Sea in order to destroy Al Aqsa.

And a Hamas MP made the same accusation in 2007.

Come on, Arabs, come up with something more imaginative!

Maybe the Egyptian sharks can grow legs from Israeli genetic engineering and strap on bomb belts when they come to visit the mosque disguised as tourists? Or Israel might release Zionist gophers to eat away at the foundations of the mosque. Maybe some super-secret Joo-Rays are being shot, right now, at the Dome of the Rock with the intent to burn a six-pointed star into the dome which will turn it into a synagogue!

Recycling the old 'artificial earthquake" story? I'm deeply disappointed.
  • Thursday, June 02, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
The British University and College Union (UCU) last week voted to reject the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia definition of anti-semitism.

The EUMC working definition includes specific ways that criticism of Israel is in fact anti-semitic.

Working definition: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

In addition, such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity....

Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:
  • Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  • Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
  • Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
  • Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
  • Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.
The virulently anti-Zionist UCU rejects this definition:

Congress notes with concern that the so-called 'EUMC working definition of antisemitism', while not adopted by the EU or the UK government and having no official status, is being used by bodies such as the NUS and local student unions in relation to activities on campus.

Congress believes that the EUMC definition confuses criticism of Israeli government policy and actions with genuine antisemitism, and is being used to silence debate about Israel and Palestine on campus.

Congress resolves:
  • that UCU will make no use of the EUMC definition (e.g. in educating members or dealing with internal complaints)
  • that UCU will dissociate itself from the EUMC definition in any public discussion on the matter in which UCU is involved
  • that UCU will campaign for open debate on campus concerning Israel's past history and current policy, while continuing to combat all forms of racial or religious discrimination.
Even though the EUCM was careful to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-semitic criticism of Israel, the UCU rejects that distinction - it claims that all criticism of Israel is in fact legitimate, no matter the context.

Ben Gidley at Dissent Magazine goes into great depth on why unions needs to define concepts like racism and anti-semitism - and why the UCU is completely wrong (and disingenuous) in its attempt to pretend that it is  impossible for criticism of Israel to be anti-semitic.

The entire article is worth reading. Its conclusion:
For the union to disassociate itself from the working definition in any public discussion of anti-Semitism is beyond ridiculous. It means insisting that all of the organizations that do take the working definition seriously—the Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom; the NUS; the Union of Jewish Students; the Fundamental Rights Agency; the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe—are dismissed in advance. It undermines their work on anti-Semitism, and it undermines their vital work on anti-Roma racism, Islamophobia, and other racisms.

In the workplace, as the CST’s director writes, this “will serve to (even) further alienate Jews from the union; and it will make it (even) harder for anti-Semitism to be raised there as a matter of concern....[I]t carries the implication that people who complain about anti-Semitism in any Israel-related context are likely to be a bunch of liars, dancing to a pre-ordained tune.”

As an academic who studies racism, I find it bizarre that my union cannot accept that there is even the faintest possibility that institutional racism might exist in our own ranks, even after a series of clearly documented incidents and a shocking number of resignations by Jewish members who perceive it as such. This motion, if passed, [it was passed - EoZ] will in fact legitimate racism in the union and stop any allegation of anti-Semitism—in debates or in the workplace—from being taken seriously. That the motion will be tabled in a session entitled “Campaigning for equality” is ironic, but the irony tastes bitter indeed.
(h/t Adam and Zach N. via Facebook)
  • Thursday, June 02, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
Yaacov Lozowick is retiring from blogging, as he is about to start a new job as Israel's State Archivist.

Yaacov is a brilliant blogger - insightful, thought-provoking, original - and an excellent writer as well.

At least he will continue to put up some notes for all of us to see at a new site.

I wish him good luck in his new - and very impressive! - position, but the Zionist blogosphere will be much poorer without him.
  • Thursday, June 02, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Ya Libnan:

Fatah leader in Lebanon Munir Maqdah said on Wednesday that all Palestinians including Fatah and Hamas groups will take part in the Naksa Day rally scheduled for June 5.

“All Palestinian factions will participate in the event, including institutions from Lebanon’s civil society,” he told the Central News Agency.

“The May 15 clashes are a ball of fire that will keep on growing until it burns the occupier until the Palestinians are granted their right to return to their homeland,” he added.

Palestinian sources told the news agency that the demonstrators are planning on marching to the Lebanese-Israeli border on June 5, where they will set up tents at Maroun al-Ras and at the Khiyam prison.

They added that preparations and contacts are underway with Lebanese authorities, Hezbollah, and other parties in order to stage Sunday’s rally.

Security sources told Kuwaiti newspaper al Anbaa that the Lebanese army won’t allow a repeat of the al Nakba day protests that took place in Maroun al Rass. The sources stressed that the army will not allow Israel any more excuses for more killings

One source told the daily that the army recently succeeded in foiling an attempt to fire a rocket towards Israel … the person was detained just before firing the rocket.
For some reason, even though everyone knows that the Lebanese army fired at demonstrators on May 15, everyone says that all of the dead were killed by Israel.
  • Thursday, June 02, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
An amazing performance on Israel's "A Star is Born" talent show by Hagit Yasou, a 21-year old from Sderot. She is singing in Arabic.



Those racist Israelis!

(h/t SA)
  • Thursday, June 02, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
From CNN:
Dozens of people have died in clashes with troops in western Syria, where government forces reportedly shelled homes in one town, protest organizers and a human rights official said Thursday.

At least 43 people have been killed since Sunday when government forces entered Homs province to end protests against government rule, said Rami Abdel Rahman, president of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A witness in Rastan, who identified himself as a protest organizer named Abu Abdullah, said there was heavy artillery fire and that shelling had destroyed about 20 homes and several mosques.
Abdullah said the fighting has been nonstop since troops cut off the town on Sunday.

Abdullah said he carried the body of a 16-year-old boy killed in the attack on the city.
"He was just walking in the street when he was shot," he said.
I bet that the mosques has quite a few Korans that were destroyed, too.

Meanwhile:
Belgian newspaper “Die Presse” has reportedly confirmed on its website that the Syrian intelligence services has resorted to a new and innovative way to get rid of the bodies of the protesters that were killed by packing them into well locked metal containers and dumping them into the sea making sure they don’t float and expose the crime.

The decision of dumping into the sea was reportedly taken in the wake of the scandal over the mass graves that were discovered not long ago and embarrassed the regime.

The paper quoted unnamed observers as saying that the number of bodies that were dumped so far into the sea are at least two hundred and some of them were killed under torture.

UPDATE: There is a video that appears to show the dead bodies in a refrigerated truck. (h/t Joel)
  • Thursday, June 02, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
An op-ed in the Jerusalem Post shows that even the UN agrees that Gaza is not occupied by Israel! Well, it would if it applied a consistent standard to the definition of "occupation."

The argument for occupation has been that since Israel maintains “absolute authority over Gaza’s airspace and territorial sea [it is] manifestly exercising governmental authority in these areas,” in the words of Prof. Iain Scobbie. Others claim that border control amounts to “effective control” of the interior. But prior blockades, like that of Cuba by president John F. Kennedy, were never considered occupations. Moreover, border controls are typical along every international frontier, even among the friendliest of nations.

...The recent UN Security Council resolution authorizing force against Libya provides an excellent experiment in whether the legal arguments widely made about Israel are also applied in parallel cases. In March, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 in response to Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s violent crackdown on anti-government rebels. The resolution authorized military action, delineated a no-fly zone across all of Libya, froze Libyan assets, and authorized the extensive use of force against Libyan troops.

Yet Resolution 1793 specifically rules out any “occupation” of Libyan territory. This was not stray language. The prohibition of occupation has helped secure the support of several skeptical nations.

At the Council meeting, Lebanon’s delegate stressed that the resolution would not result in the occupation of “even an inch” of Libyan territory.

SO we now have confirmation from the Council that a broad embargo, no-fly zone and months of constant aerial bombardment do not constitute an “occupation.” Certainly these activities have considerable effect on Libya, and “control” much of what happens there. Obviously Israel’s much less comprehensive and invasive measures against Gaza do not constitute an occupation by this standard.

Of course, the Libya resolution proves nothing new; the arguments that Gaza remained occupied after 2005 were always quite surprising.

The obviousness of the above principles when applied anywhere but to Israel should give pause to those who think that even a full withdrawal to pre-1967 lines will lead to Israel’s international legitimacy, or preclude the fabrication of new pretextual claims.
(h/t Greg, Menachem)

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

  • Wednesday, June 01, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
A couple of days ago, Iran's FARS "news" agency reported "Zionist Lobbies Thwart Improvement of US Ties with Iran."

On Wednesday, however, Ahmadinejad said that

These elements (Zionists), which have … formed a government in occupied Palestine today, are marionettes that are playing their parts on stage while the actual politics and actual stage is in the control of the United States.
So who controls whom?

The answer, of course, is that we Elders control the leaders of the US who in turn control the Israeli marionette government.

But we also control Iran, mostly through our Shi'ite division. 

And Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood answers to our Sunni wing.

And the banks, of course, have always been controlled by us.

And the media, especially the FARS News Agency.

And professional bowling. (Well, Elders have to start somewhere!)
  • Wednesday, June 01, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
Another good video for Jerusalem Day:


JPost has a video and story of a soldier returning to the Wall 44 years after an iconic photo was taken of him there.

Ben Dror Yemini takes apart Abbas' lies in his NYT op-ed.

Anti-semitism keeps increasing in Venezuela.

Melanie Phillips - The Floating Theatre of Jihad

Sultan Knish - The great error of Israeli normalization

The last surviving "righteous gentile" who saved Austrian Jews during the Holocaust

Having money problems? Jihad is the answer! Just kidnap people and ransom them - it is a wonderful Islamic money making machine!


(h/t Menachem, T34, Jed, Cheryl, Jack, Silke)
  • Wednesday, June 01, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
The BBC recalls the Farhud, the pogrom against Baghdad's Jews in 1941:

On 1 June 1941, a Nazi-inspired pogrom erupted in Baghdad, bringing to an end more than two millennia of peaceful existence for the city's Jewish minority. Some Jewish children witnessed the bloodshed, and retain vivid memories 70 years later.

Heskel Haddad, an 11-year-old boy was finishing a festive meal and preparing to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot, oblivious to the angry mob that was about to take over the city.

Thousands of armed Iraqi Muslims were on the rampage, with swords, knives and guns.

The two days of violence that followed have become known as the Farhud (Arabic for "violent dispossession"). About 800 Jews were killed, spelling the end for a Jewish community that dated from the time of Babylon.

"On the first night of Shavuot we usually go to synagogue and stay up all night studying Torah," says Haddad, now a veteran ophthalmologist in New York.

"Suddenly we heard screams, 'Allah Allah!' and shots were fired. We went out to the roof to see what's happening, we saw fires, we saw people on the roofs in the ghetto screaming, begging God to help them."

The violence continued through the night. A red hand sign, or hamsa, had been painted on Jewish homes, to mark them out. Families had to defend themselves by whatever means they could.

...In a nearby street in a mixed Jewish and Muslim quarter, Steve Acre lived with his widowed mother and eight siblings in a house owned by a Muslim.

Acre, now 79 and living in Montreal, climbed a palm tree in the courtyard when the violence began. He still remembers the cry "Cutal al yehud" which translates as "slaughter the Jews".

"Later lots of men came outside and set the house on fire. And the men were shouting like from joy, in jubilation holding up something that looked like a slab of meat in their hands.

"Then I found out, it was a woman's breast they were carrying - they cut her breast off and tortured her before they killed her, my mother's best friend, Sabicha."

The BBC still downplays the Jew-hatred that caused this event:

Until the Farhud, Baghdad had been a model of peaceful coexistence for Jews and Arabs. Jews made up about one in three of the city's population in 1941, and most saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second.

So what caused this terrible turn of events?

A month earlier, a pro-Nazi lawyer Rashid Ali al-Gilani, had overthrown Iraq's royal family, and started broadcasting Nazi propaganda on the radio.

But when an attack on a British Air Force base outside Baghdad ended in humiliating failure, he was forced to flee. The Farhud took place in the power vacuum that followed.
So whenever there is a temporary power vacuum, one must expect residents who lived peacefully with Jews for generations to rise up and massacre them?

Obviously, even though Jews had integrated into Iraqi life and even though there were some Iraqi Muslims who saved Jews, there was still a strong undercurrent of Muslim anti-semitism in Iraq. While the BBC calls it a "Nazi-inspired pogrom" it was enthusiastically performed by Muslims - not Nazis - the very neighbors of the Jews who they lived in harmony with.

This indicates that Islam itself is the problem, not the Nazis or the "power vacuum" or anything else. If in the absence of a strong government the Muslims could be easily incited to slaughter their Jewish neighbors, it means that it was anything but a "model of peaceful co-existence" - and by the BBC saying that, it implies that the natural order of the world is for people to want to slaughter Jews but they suppress that desire because of external factors.

More Farhud articles and links at the Point of No Return blog.

(h/t Aparatchik)
  • Wednesday, June 01, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
There actually is a pilgrimage festival by Muslims to Jerusalem.

It is Nabi Musa, a seven-day festival celebrating Moses.

What is the date of the festival?

It turns out that the holiday is not pegged to the Muslim calendar, but to the Christian calendar. And it does not date back to antiquity, but to the 19th century.

Read this description from 1955:
As Wikipedia notes, the date for this "Muslim" holiday is "beginning on the Friday before Good Friday in the old Orthodox Greek calendar."

In other words, the holiday is fake. It was meant specifically to counter Christian pilgrims converging on Jerusalem during Holy Week.

It isn't a celebration - it is a veiled attack on another religion.
  • Wednesday, June 01, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
So why exactly is that anomalous 19 years considered the "status quo" again?

And why are the succeeding 44 years of a  re-unified Jerusalem considered something that is somehow an obstacle to peace?

It isn't because of its legal status. It isn't because the world loves Palestinian Arabs. It isn't because the world accepted Jordan's annexation of half the city. It certainly isn't from any displays of love of the city shown by the Muslim world during those 19 years.

There is only one possible explanation: too many people do not like the idea of Jews controlling their own holiest city.

That is the issue of Jerusalem in a nutshell. And it just so happens to be the issue of Israel in a nutshell as well.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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