Sunday, June 12, 2011

  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
You may think you've seen deprivation in Gaza. You might think you have seen the depths of the humanitarian crisis there. But I must warn you....it gets even  worse than you could ever imagine.

Warning: the following pictures may shock and sicken you.

I bring you Gaza's Palm Village Resort









Most of the photos from this thread.

I hope that the planned flotilla members manage to find their way to this incredible example of how Gazans are suffering under blockade.

I honestly thought I was seeing photos taken in the Congo.

(h/t Vandoren)
  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
OK, I admit I LOL'ed.



(h/t Jawa Report via Huffwatcher)
  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
From the IDF Spokesperson website:

The following video is of a protest which took place yesterday in Umm Salamuna, southeast of Bethlehem in the West Bank. Every Friday afternoon, protesters gather in the town to demonstrate against the security fence, which has dramatically decreased suicide bombings and other terror attacks inside Israel for over 6 years. Protests in Umm Salamuna often turn violent, with rocks being hurled at IDF and other security forces by rioters who also damage the security fence.


In the video, the deputy battalion commander of the Kfir Brigade offers water to the protesters due to the extremely high temperature mid-afternoon that day. The Palestinian protest leader tells his supporters, “Don’t drink the water!” following which a woman dumps out a cup of water offered to her by the commander.
Whew, that was close! Who knows what the IDF spiked the water with - poison, sex hormones, anti-sex hormones, tiny bacteria that eat out your spleen - the mind reels at how much damage could have resulted if Arab protesters would accept a simple gift of water from a soldier.

They might have even started to regard Israelis as human beings, and that would be the worst possible outcome.
  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
And Muslims downplay the anti-semitism.

From The Foreigner (Norway):
Oslo Jewish Community leaders allege an Islamic organisation is glossing over anti-Semitism in Norwegian schools by focusing more on Muslim harassment.

The current row started on Tuesday, after Oslo municipality presented a report charting racist and anti-Semitic attitudes amongst 7,212 pupils in 48 secondary schools.

Results show 33.3 percent of Jews experience harassment between two and three times per month, compared with 5.3 percent of Muslims.

According to Vårt Land, Ervin Kohn of Oslo’s Jewish Community (DMT) was discouraged by the report. Despite the high figures, however, Secretary General of umbrella organisation Islamsk Råd Norway (IRN), Mehtab Afsar, claims, “it’s really the Muslims that are given a hard time, and charting Muslim harassment is well overdue.”

The day after the report came out, pro-integration network LIM (Likestilling, Integrering, Mangfold) said it encourages all actors to fight against what it views as increasing anti-Semitism in Norway. At the same time, it was openly critical to Mr Afsar’s statements.

“Unfortunately, it seems as though IRN neither intends to recognize or take the problem of anti-Semitism seriously. Secretary General Afsar would rather focus more upon intimidation of Muslims.”

In a further development in what was becoming a growing rift between two ethnic minorities IRN issued a press statement yesterday, also censuring its own Secretary General, saying, “We wish to state once and for all that we clearly distance ourselves from all types of bullying and harassment, including anti-Semitism.

IRN apologises that some individuals have tried to turn a general societal problem into a particularly Muslim one,” it continues.

“I cannot see that IRN takes anti-Semitism seriously when reading this press release,” says Mr Ervin Kohn.

(h/t Callie)
  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
I just got this email from Free Gaza:

As we get ready to sail in two weeks, Israel has stepped up the threats, threatening to sue the Canadians who are going, threatening to sue the satellite phone company if they provide us with service, threatening to kill and maim us if we don't stop, then saying, "I told you so...we said we would kill you."

This behavior has got to stop. Israel is behaving like the schoolyard bully who parents and teachers fear, because his parents are rich and have contributed to the school. It's time for us to put our foot down.

Start calling your member of parliament/congress now. Start writing letters to the editor. Start a civil movement on social networks of outrage against Israel's attacks on civilians. Distribute this statement below and post on your websites.

We CAN stop Israeli attacks against us if we work together. Greta [Berlin]
Here is the statement they want everyone to distribute:

ANNOUNCEMENT
June 12, 2011

Regarding statements of government officials in Israel (echoed by officials in other countries) about diplomatic initiatives to impede the “Freedom Flotilla II- Stay Human” mission to Gaza, Palestine, we say:

Proper diplomacy does not exclude humanitarian action; Instead of seeking to prevent an international community of concerned citizens from taking nonviolent action in defense of liberty and human rights, diplomacy must pursue such actions and encourage them.

It is, therefore, a provocation to label the humanitarian action taken by movements supporting human rights to sail to Gaza a “provocation.”

It is a provocation that powerful states and international organizations, such as the US, Israel, the EU and the UN, are asking people to be silent and not react to violations of law and the disdain for universal values.

It is a provocation that international diplomacy is demanding that solidarity action from "people to people" be stopped.
Isn't it precious that the Free Gaza people are asking their drones to send in letters that claim that they are bringing "humanitarian aid" to Gaza and that their actions are "people-to-people?"

Especially since Free Gaza admits, explicitly, on their website, that these flotillas are political, not humanitarian, and that they are not an aid group. Beyond that, they are against humanitarian aid to Gaza going through legal channels, via Israel and Egypt!

Invariably, when it is convenient to them, they claim to the media that they are a humanitarian organization. But in reality their actions are purely political - and, therefore, by definition, a provocation!

As usual, Free Gaza will happily lie to hide their agenda.

(I'd also love to know where Israel threatened to "maim or kill" the flotilla fools assuming that they don't start attacking IDF soldiers with knives and clubs.)
  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
Israel's women's basketball team defeated the Palestinian Arab team late last month at an International Friendship Games match.

The final score was 70-4. 

But Israel's women's team was not happy only humiliating the Palestinian Arabs, but they went on to defeat Jordan 47-7.

This clearly was another case of Israelis purposefully humiliating Arabs, in public, and as such these can be considered war crimes under the Arab interpretation of international law.

Incidentally, the Palestinian Arab team requested not to be interviewed by the Israeli media - even before their match.

(h/t Joel)
  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hamas recently added a 25% tariff on cars and spare parts brought into Gaza through Israel.

Some 4000 cars have gone into the supposedly besieged sector from Israel since last year. This is not counting the recent flood of cars being smuggled in from Libya.

As a result of Hamas' new car tax, Gaza car dealers refused the latest shipments of automobiles that were supposed to come in through Kerem Shalom. None of the cars scheduled to come in since last Thirsday have been delivered.

Sounds like the "humanitarians" have their work cut out for them. Gazans need more cars without the unconscionable tax being placed on them by their, uh, occupiers!
  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are suffering a critical shortage of medicine and medical supplies, Hamas Health Minister Bassem Naem said Saturday.

The crisis was unprecedented even during Israel's massive offensive on Gaza in December 2008, Naem said, adding that the situation was worsening by the day.

Speaking at a conference in Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Naem said 180 types of medicine and 200 medical items had run out in Gaza, including alcohol and needles.

Sources in the Gaza Health Ministry said Palestinian Authority official Nabil Shaath had promised to send medicine to Gaza from Ramallah, but that the supplies never arrived.
There are no Israeli restrictions on medicines entering Gaza. The only party at fault is...the Palestinian Authority!

Will the UN convene a session to condemn them?

UPDATE: Silly me. Of course you can still blame the Jews. (h/t T34)
  • Sunday, June 12, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
From CBS:
Martin Fletcher, of The Times of London, posed a tourist to sneak into Syria, where foreign journalists are banned. He traveled for 6 days before being caught before being caught in the city of Homs, a focal point of the uprising.




Meanwhile, some Syrian army deserters are speaking out about the horrors they participated in:

Syrian army deserters who fled to Turkey have told of atrocities committed by soldiers in suppressing anti-government protests, under threat of execution if they disobeyed orders.

Four conscripts interviewed by AFP recounted instances of rape and wanton murder as President Bashar al-Assad's forces combat demonstrations against his regime across the country.

With a blank stare in his eyes, Tahal al-Lush said the "cleansing" in Ar-Rastan, a town of 50 000 residents in the Syrian province of Homs, prompted him to desert.

"We were told that people were armed there. But when we arrived, we saw that they were ordinary civilians. We were ordered to shoot them," said Lush, who showed his military passbook and other papers as proof of his identity.

"When we entered the houses, we opened fire on everyone, the young, the old... Women were raped in front of their husbands and children," he said, giving the number of deaths as some 700, difficult to verify as journalists are not allowed to circulate freely in Syria.

(h/t Israel Muse)

Saturday, June 11, 2011

  • Saturday, June 11, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
A bit off topic...

This has been bugging me today so I was wondering if anyone had a good answer.

In next week's parasha (Bamidbar/Numbers 13:1), the list of the meraglim includes:


ד  וְאֵלֶּה, שְׁמוֹתָם:  לְמַטֵּה רְאוּבֵן, שַׁמּוּעַ בֶּן-זַכּוּר.4 And these were their names: of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur.

ח  לְמַטֵּה אֶפְרָיִם, הוֹשֵׁעַ בִּן-נוּן.8 Of the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Nun.
יא  לְמַטֵּה יוֹסֵף, לְמַטֵּה מְנַשֶּׁה--גַּדִּי, בֶּן-סוּסִי.11 Of the tribe of Joseph, namely, of the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi.

Why wasn't mateh (tribe of) Ephraim placed under mateh Yosef (Joseph)? And why was there a separation of 2 verses between them?

I didn't see any answers in the meforshim I had available. It seems fairly glaring so I figured someone must have commented on it, perhaps in the context of the entire order listed.

Any ideas?
  • Saturday, June 11, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
From The Egyptian Gazette:
As the revolutionaries have been organising million-strong protests in Al Tahrir Square to press for their unfulfilled demands via social networking websites, the Salafists are now doing the same to persuade other Muslims to grow beards and be more pious.

These Salafists are calling for a million men to be bearded before the holy fasting month of Ramadan which starts in August.

Their campaign is a very controversial one, showed how wide the gap is between Islamists and secularists in the post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt.

Such a campaign indicates a radical change in Egypt after the toppling of an authoritarian regime, obviously indicating an unbalance in favour of religion in the Egyptian street, according to analysts.

"This freedom is a fruit of the January 25 revolution. In the presence of the [now disbanded] State Security Police under Mubarak, asking Egyptians to grow beards was like dreaming of touching the moon," says Sheikh Safwat Hegzai, a Salafist cleric.

He argues that this campaign is something normal, resulting from the freedom gained after toppling an authoritarian regime.

"I would like to see a similar campaign for a million women to wear the niqab [full-face veil]," Hegazi adds.

(h/t jzaik)

Friday, June 10, 2011

  • Friday, June 10, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
A nice article about Israel's energy potential in the Financial Post:

In the first 25 years after Israel’s founding in 1948, it was repeatedly attacked by the large armies of its Arab neighbours. Each time, Israel prevailed on the battlefield, only to have its victories rolled back by Western powers who feared losing access to Arab oilfields.

The fear was and is legitimate – Arab nations have often threatened to use their “oil weapon” against countries that support Israel and twice made good their threat through crippling OPEC oil embargoes.

But that fear, which shackles Israel to this day, may soon end. The old energy order in the Middle East is crumbling with Iran and Syria having left the Western fold and others, including Saudi Arabia, the largest of them all, in danger of doing so. Simultaneously, a new energy order is emerging to give the West some spine. In this new order, Israel is a major player.

The new energy order is founded on rock – the shale that traps vast stores of energy in deposits around the world. One of the largest deposits – 250 billion barrels of oil in Israel’s Shfela basin, comparable to Saudi Arabia’s entire reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil – has until now been unexploited, partly because the technology required has been expensive, mostly because the multinational oil companies that have the technology fear offending Muslims. “None of the major oil companies are willing to do business in Israel because they don’t want to be cut off from the Mideast supply of oil,” explains Howard Jonas, CEO of IDT, the U.S. company that owns the Shfela concession through its subsidiary, Israeli Energy Initiatives. Jonas, an ardent Zionist, considers the Shfela deposit merely a beginning: “We believe that under Israel is more oil than under Saudi Arabia. There may be as much as half a trillion barrels.”

Because the oil multinationals have feared to develop Shfela, one of the world’s largest oil developments is being undertaken by an unlikely troop. Jonas’s IDT is a consumer-oriented telecom and media company that is a relative newcomer to the heavy industry world of energy development. Joining IDT in this latter-day Zionist Project is Lord Jacob Rothschild, a septuagenarian banker and philanthropist whose forefathers helped finance Zionist settlements in Palestine from the mid-1800s; Michael Steinhardt, a septuagenarian hedge fund investor and Zionist philanthropist; and Rupert Murdoch, the octogenarian chairman of News Corporation who uncompromisingly opposes, in his words, the “ongoing war against the Jews” by Muslim terrorists, by the Western left in general, and by Europe’s “most elite politicians” in particular.

Where others would have long ago retired, these businessmen-philanthropists have joined the battle on Israel’s side. While they’re in it for the money, they are also determined to free the world of Arab oil dependence by providing Israel with an oil weapon of its own. The company’s oil shale technology “could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world,” states Lord Rothschild.

To win this war, Israeli Energy Initiatives has enlisted some of the energy industry’s savviest old soldiers – here a former president of Mobil Oil (Eugene Renna), there a former president of Occidental Oil Shale (Allan Sass), over there a former president of Halliburton (Dick Cheney). But the Field Commander for the operation, and the person who in their mind will lead them to ultimate victory, is Harold Vinegar, a veteran pulled out of retirement and sent into the fray. Vinegar, a legend in the field, had been Shell Oil’s chief scientist and, with some 240 patents to his name over his 32 years at Shell, revolutionized the shale oil industry.

Before oil met Vinegar, this was dirty business, a sprawling open mine operation that crushed and heated rock to yield a heavy tar amid mountains of spent shale. The low-value tar then needed to be processed and refined. The bottom line: low economic return, high environmental cost.

Vinegar boosted the bottom line by dropping the environmental damage. No open pit mining, no spent shale, no heavy tar to manage. In his pioneering approach, heated rods are inserted underground into the shale, releasing from it natural gas and light liquids. The natural gas provides the project’s need for heat; the light liquids are easily refined into high-value jet fuel, diesel and naphtha. The new bottom line: oil at a highly profitable cost of about $35-$40 a barrel and an exceedingly low environmental footprint. Vinegar’s process produces greenhouse gas emissions less than half that from conventional oil wells and, unlike open pit mining, does not consume water. The land area from which he will extract a volume of oil equivalent to that in Saudi Arabia? Approximately 25 square kilometers.

Although the Israeli shale project is still at an early stage, its massive potential and Vinegar’s reputation have already begun to change attitudes toward Israel. “We have been approached by all the majors,” Vinegar recently told the press, and for good reason. “Israel is very well positioned for oil exporting” to both European and Asian markets. The majors have other reasons, too, for casting their eyes afresh at Israel. Through its natural gas finds in the Mediterranean’s Levant Basin, and with no help from the oil majors, Israel is becoming a major natural gas exporter to Europe. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Levant Basin has vast natural gas supplies, most of it within Israel’s jurisdiction.

Attitudes to Israel in some European capitals – those in line to receive Israeli gas — have already warmed and the shift to Israel may in time become tectonic, in Europe and elsewhere, when oil is at stake – 38 countries have an estimated 4.8-trillion barrels of shale oil, many of which would benefit from the shale oil technology now being pioneered in Israel. Speeding that shift could be the Arab Spring, which many fear will flip pro-Western Arab states into hostile camps. Long time U.S. ally Saudi Arabia is reportedly so distrustful of the U.S. following its abandonment of long-time Egyptian ally, President Hosni Mubarak, that it has pulled back its relationship with the West in favour of China.

Before 1973, when the Arab world first punished the West for its relationship with Israel, Israel was a favourite of the left and of most of the free world. Under Arab punishment, much of the world started seeing the world through Arab eyes and turned on Israel.

But freed of the threat of Arab punishment, and in a new world energy order, Western countries may turn again, to their benefit. Rupert Murdoch well expresses the highest hopes of his partners: “If [our] effort to develop shale oil is successful, as I believe it will be, then the news we’ll report in the coming decades will reflect a more prosperous, more democratic and more secure world.”
Isn't it amazing how European attitudes towards Israel might change just because of oil and natural gas?

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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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