Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Chanukah Video Night 3: Chanukah Rights!

From Six13:

Muslim Brotherhood is suddenly against Egyptian protests

My, how things change after one wins an election.

Firas Press (possibly quoting Al Balad News) is quoting Muslim Brotherhood and Nour officials as saying that Egyptian security should respond to protesters "with an iron fist."

A Nour party spokesman told a rally that protesters in Tahrir Square are not innocent, but a group of terrorists that the Military Council must address "with full force."

The Nour spokesman also questioned the morality of women protesters who sleep outside the home and in public squares.

Doonesbury blames US troops for Christian exodus from Iraq

Yesterday's Doonesbury comic betrays a very interesting mindset.

AP looked at this phenomenon in 2009:

Christians first began leaving Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, during the economic sanctions and repression under Saddam Hussein, who pushed more Islamist policies. But the trickle turned to a flood after Saddam was toppled in 2003 and the violence escalated, said a prominent Iraqi Christian lawmaker, Younadem Kana.

"I hope to leave for any other place in the world," said Sheeran Surkon, a 27-year-old Iraqi woman who fled to Syria in 2004 after she received death threats, her father disappeared and her beauty salon was blown up.

Sukron awaits resettlement to another country, saying she can’t tolerate the violence and new Muslim conservatism in Iraq.

"How can I live there as a woman?" she asked.

Daoud Daoud, 70, a former civil servant in the northern city of Mosul, now spends his time waiting with dozens of others at a Damascus, Syria, resettlement center, hoping to follow his children to Sweden.

"Iraq as we once knew it is over. For us there is no future there," he said.

More than 2 million refugees of all religions have fled Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The recent ebb in violence has lured some Muslim refugees to return in small numbers.

But few Christians contemplate going back, the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees reports.

"They simply do not feel safe enough. They cannot sufficiently count on state security or any other force to protect them," said the the agency’s acting representative in Damascus, Philippe Leclerc.

In a report last year, the head of its Iraq support unit said that Christians are more likely than other fleeing Iraqis to register as refugees in an effort to emigrate to a third country.

"The vast majority of Iraqis still want to return to Iraq when the conditions permit — the notable exception being religious minorities, particularly Christians," the report said.

"When I came here to my parish in Karrada, we had 2,000 families," said Monsignor Luis al-Shabi, 70, who started at St. Joseph’s 40 years ago. "But now we only have 1,000 — half."

The situation is worse in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora to the south — where 30,000 prewar Christians fled during the six years of war. The now-quiet neighborhood has only a single church and a handful of Christians.

More troubling, when a group of Christian families recently tried to return to homes in Dora, two Christian women were killed, Iraq’s Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly said in an interview after meeting with the pope in nearby Jordan.

Execution-style killings late last year targeted Christians in Mosul, as did a string of bombings. In March of last year, the body of Mosul’s Chaldean Christian archbishop was found in a shallow grave a month after he was kidnapped at gunpoint as he left a Mass.

Since then it got worse:

Abdullah al-Nawfali, who heads the Christian endowments fund, says there has been a sharp increase in the number of Christians leaving Iraq since the October 31 suicide attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad.

More than 50 Christians, including two priests, and seven policemen were killed when Iraqi security forces stormed the Baghdad church in which Islamic terrorists wearing explosive vests were holding worshippers hostage.

Nawfali says the number of Christians emigrating from Iraq in November -- immediately after the church siege – more than doubled from the previous month, and the rate of increase in December was even higher.

He says these statistics suggest that Iraq is in danger of losing its Christian community, which has lived for centuries alongside Muslims and other ethnic and religious groups.

To artist Garry Trudeau, Islamists aren't to blame for murdering and persecuting Christians. Iraq's government and army are blameless for not protecting their religious minorities. No, it is America's fault! Life was so great under Saddam Hussein - why can't we go back to running Iraq with a homicidal dictator?

When Copts inevitably flee Egypt for similar reasons, is Trudeau going to write any comics wishing that Mubarak was back in power? Or will he find a way to blame that on America as well?

We all know who is behind persecution of religious minorities in the Middle East. But some people just can't stop themselves from blaming Big Satan (and, inevitably, his little brother.)

Using Trudeau's logic, the publishers of the Mohammed cartoons are to blame for the people killed in the ensuing riots. Which is an interesting position for a political cartoonist to take.

Nour party spokesman claims he was "ambushed" by Israeli reporter

From AP:

Al Nour spokesman Yusri Hammad

The spokesman of Egypt's ultraconservative Islamist party told Israeli Army Radio in unprecedented remarks broadcast Wednesday that the group is not opposed to the country's historic peace treaty with Israel.

Yousseri Hamad's interview with the Israeli broadcaster is unusual for followers of the Salafi Islamic trend, who typically shun Israel for its policies toward Palestinians and its annexation of east Jerusalem, home to Islam's third-holiest site.

The interview countered Israeli fears that Islamist parties would seek to cut ties with Israel.

In his remarks to the Israeli station, Hamad said the Salafi Nour Party is committed to agreements signed by previous Egyptian governments, including the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
"We are not opposed to the agreement, and we are saying that Egypt is committed to the agreements that previous Egyptian government have signed," he said, noting that if Egyptians want changes on the treaty, "the place for that is the negotiation table."

In response to the interview, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the comments were worth considering.

"This is certainly food for thought and we will of course keep observing very attentively developments in Egypt," he said.

Salafi Muslims follow a strict interpretation of Islam similar to that practiced in Saudi Arabia. The Salafi Nour Party in Egypt has so far won a quarter of the seats in Egypt's parliamentary elections, placing it second only to the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood.

After the interview aired, Hamad told The Associated Press that he did not know he was talking to Israeli Army Radio, and he was told only it was for an Israeli broadcaster. He claimed that had he known, he would not have agreed to the Army Radio interview because "they occupy our Palestinian brothers."

He also said that his party "without doubt" supports changes to the agreement, including raising troop levels in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Israel. He also said that there need to be guarantees for Palestinians.

"We call for full Sinai rights for Egypt and for our brothers in Palestine and occupied lands, and we see this as directly related to the agreement," he told the AP.

Al Ahram's account contradicts AP's:

Hammad, however, later said he had been "ambushed" by the Israeli reporter that conducted the interview, who, says Hammad, had introduced himself as an Iraqi journalist.

The interview had prompted surprise in Israel – and outrage in Egypt – that a member of Egypt’s hard-line Salafist movement would grant an interview to an Israeli media outlet, especially one associated with the military.

He made the same claim to Al Arabiya:

Hammad told Al Arabiya.net that he received an anonymous phone call and when he started the conversation with the caller, the Israeli journalist at first presented himself as an Iraqi one and spoke with him in Arabic.

“If I knew [the caller being a journalist from the Isareli army radio station], I would not have talked to him,” he said, adding “this is a media deceit and I reject such approach.”

The spokesman said only at the end of the interview the journalist said that he is Israeli.

Speaking of Nour, Hudson-NY has a must-read piece saying that the party isn't really Salafi - but Wahhabi.

Financial Times refuses to correct Hamas claim

The Financial Times wrote earlier this week:

The Islamist Hamas movement celebrated its 24th anniversary last week, with a mass rally in Gaza City that carried a clear and defiant message. “Armed resistance is the way, and it is Hamas’s strategic choice to liberate Palestine,” declared Ismail Haniyeh, the movement’s leader in Gaza.

The same day, as if to remind the world of its violent heritage, the military wing published a list of its bloody achievements since 1987. Among other boasts, it claimed to have killed 1,365 Israeli soldiers, fired 11,093 rockets and mortars at Israel, and carried out 87 suicide bombings.

Honest Reporting called them out on the claim that Hamas had killed 1,365 Israeli soldiers - when in fact most of the dead are civilian,and obviously targeted as civilians - but the Financial Times refused to issue the correction:

thank your for your email, which I followed up with Tobias Buck , our Jerusalem bureau chief, and we don’t feel a correction is warranted. The column clearly attributes its claims to Hamas in Gaza. The statement was carried on the official Qassam Brigades website and referred to “1385 Zionist soldiers”. We and all other outlets tend to translate “Zionist” into “Israeli”, since that is what they mean. Hamas was clearly not talking about civilians.

Honest Reporting correctly notes that since they didn't quote "Zionist" accurately it is disingenuous for them to quote "soldiers" without explanation.

But there is another small point that needs to be emphasized.

The English-language Qassam website did say that Hamas killed 1365 "Zionist soldiers." But at least one Hamas press release in Arabic simply said "Zionists."

From the Hamas-run Palestine Times:

The Information Office of the Qassam Brigades, military wing of Hamas, published today the official statistics on the number of martyrs and wounded, and the jihad operations carried out since the start of the Hamas movement, which started on this day December 14 twenty-four years ago. The Qassam Brigades said in a statement obtained by "Palestine Today." It states: "1848 martyrs, while killing 1365 Zionists and wounding 6411 others." The battalions confirmed they have been carried out 1117 the jihad operations, including 87 martyrdom operations, adding that "it bombed Zionist targets and settlements with 11,093 rockets and mortars." The Al-Qassam Brigades promised, in memory of the people, to start to move forward in the way of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine.

The Arabic al-Qassam website does say "soldiers" though, so I don't know if Palestine Today received a different copy or if they edited it to mean what everyone knows it means - except readers of the Financial Times.

(h/t Honest Reporting)

Jews peacefully visit their holiest site, Muslims freak out

Once again, Muslims are up in arms over several groups of Jews visiting the Temple Mount, site of both historic Jewish Temples.

Palestine Press Agency quotes the always histrionic Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation, as they try to incite anger in the teeming Muslim masses by claiming that the "intruders," including students from Jewish schools, were "performing Talmudic rituals" for Chanukah at the holy site.

Even more outrageously, the groups were led by tour guides who explained the details of the destroyed Temples.

The article helpfully adds that "there was an atmosphere of tension and suspense in Al-Aqsa Mosque" during these awful events where the "settlers" were said to "storm" the Mount. Walking peacefully is considered "breaking in" and "storming" in the parlance of the Muslim supremacists who demand exclusive control over the Mount.

Sheikh Kamal Khatib, an Islamic leader in the territories, underscored the point by saying that "Masjid al-Aqsa is ours and ours alone."

The peaceful cleric also issued a veiled threat that the entire Muslim world would go to war if Jews continue to visit the Har HaBayit. "More than once in history, the Al Aqsa Mosque was the torch that destroyed the hopes of empires, and the Al Aqsa Mosque will be the flame in extinguishing the illusions of the Zionist project, because the Al Aqsa Mosque is part of the faith and doctrine of the hearts of 1.5 billion Muslims, not merely 13 million Palestinians. I advise Israel to realize that the continued violation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque...will translate into action for Arabs and Muslims, in true defense of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and we will never allow [the Jews] to continue desecrating and insulting it... It is not in [Israel's] favor and it will not benefit its people; especially considering the new reality and the changes that are occurring in the region."

Interestingly enough, I have never heard any EU member denounce words like these. I've never read an op-ed in the mainstream media about how Muslim supremacism and fanaticism regarding the Temple Mount is a recipe for a never-ending war. On the contrary - in the face of threats like these, the usual reaction is to agree with the Islamists that it is better not to upset the apple cart and risk angering hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Muslims see that their threats cow the liberal Westerners who pretend to be at the forefront of religious freedom for all.

This Western fear of irrational Muslims starting a holy war at the slightest pretext has a long history.

Which is why threats and terror will continue to be effective.

This has been an amazing year for the blog, and it is all thanks to you for reading, Tweeting, Like-ing on Facebook, +1-ing on Google, linking and emailing the posts you liked.

This year the blog broke out of the mold of most websites and went in some new directions. It is no longer a blog - it is a one-person multimedia empire:

I gave a couple of lectures about Hasbara and received great feedback. You can watch one of them here.
I created two very popular poster series, "Apartheid?" and "This Is Zionism." They went viral. The blog received tens of thousands of pageviews, but beyond that, they were reproduced and printed worldwide, translated into many languages, and sent in email chains by many people.
I also created a number of cartoons to illuminate the situation in the Middle East with some humor.
I had a regular writing gig for NewsRealBlog; unfortunately that site closed down.
I partnered with the excellent StandWithUs organization to help spread some of my posters.
I continued to create original videos and reproduce hard-to-find videos on my YouTube channel.
I started doing video interviews of newsmakers, like Alan Dershowitz and Danny Ayalon.
And I also managed to blog! About 3000 posts, many with original reporting, analysis and scoops. I am fairly certain that most mainstream reporters would love to have dug up and reported as much information as was introduced on this blog.

Although I am not great at self-promotion, somehow EoZ keeps gaining fans.

This year I've been quoted and linked to by journalists, pundits and news sources like Roger L. Simon, Melanie Phillips, CAMERA, Fox News NY, Israel Today, Honest Reporting, the GLORIA Center, the Algemeiner Journal, PJ Media, Hot Air, The Propagandist, The Jerusalem Post, The Philadelphia Jewish Voice, Commentary, The Spectator (UK), and The National Interest as well as numerous mentions in Memeorandum. (Not to mention the memorable time that the anti-Zionist +972mag thought they could ridicule me - when the joke was on them.)

A book due out early next year actually thanks me by my blog name, which may be the first time an anonymous blogger is acknowledged in a book!

Technorati, using its opaque algorithm, ranks this blog at the moment as #3 out of of all 16,000 World Politics Blogs they follow, and it is #31 out of 15,000 Politics blogs. Not bad for a one-person operation!

My Twitter followers have been steadily increasing, now at over 1850. About 2000 subscribe to the blog via SMS or email. Not huge, but growing, with more and more of my hits coming from social networking sites.

By the end of the year I will have gotten 1.7 million page views.

As you can imagine, I spend thousands of hours on these activities. And I have some plans for 2012 as well.

If you believe that all of this is worthwhile, please consider donating. Due to a boneheaded move on my part I lost my Google AdSense revenue and as I said I had made a little from writing for a website that no longer exists, so right now asking for money is the main way for me to get a little bit back for the huge amount of time I spend. I do not like asking for money, believe me.

You can donate by clicking on one of these two buttons:

If you dislike PayPal, you can send me an Amazon gift card instead.

Thanks so much for all your support and the very kind compliments, and have a (choose appropriate wish for your circumstance) wonderful Chanukah, a Merry Christmas, a happy Kwanzaa, a joyous winter solstice, a tremendous Festivus and a Happy New Year!

"Siege" news: 500 Christian Gazans go to Bethlehem

From AP:

Christian Palestinians leave Erez border crossing in the northern Gaza Strip December 22, 2011, as they make their way to the West Bank town of Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas. The Israeli army on Thursday gave permits to some 500 Christian Palestinians from Gaza to enter Israel as they make their way to Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas.

Gaza only has around 3000 Christians altogether.

Meanwhile, Egypt has countered Hamas claims that it did not allow some Gazans to go through Rafah, saying that Hamas had not gone through the normal procedures for allowing people through.

Islamic Jihad, Hamas to "temporarily" join PLO leadership? (updated)

Ma'an reports:

President Mahmoud Abbas met Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Wednesday evening in Cairo to put "final touches" on an agreement to reconcile the leaders' rival factions.

Fatah leader in Gaza Yahiya Rabbah said the meeting is intended to agree on a final arrangement before the outcome is announced Thursday.

Thursday's meeting will be for what is being referred to as the temporary leadership of the PLO; it includes the executive committee, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and four independent personalities.

If true, this may be an alternative to the failed attempts in creating a "technocrat" unity government, by adding the leadership of terror groups to the PLO they would indirectly become the leaders of the PA (since the nominally democratic PA reports to the clearly non-democratic PLO.)

Even with the recent flood of false articles that Hamas is "moderating," it is obvious to all but the most dedicated of reality-deniers that Islamic Jihad has not changed its terrorist ways.

Which means that it is the PLO that is literally embracing terror, not terror groups embracing peace.

UPDATE: Fatah denies it. (h/t CHA)

Which side wants peace again?

From JPost:

In the second incident of its kind in the past week, Palestinian political activists Tuesday thwarted a meeting between Israelis and Palestinians in east Jerusalem.

The activists are opposed to such meetings under the pretext that they are designed to promote “normalization” between Palestinians and Israelis.

Tuesday’s meeting was initiated by the Palestine-Israel Journal, a non-profit organization founded in 1994 by Ziad Abu Zayyad and Victor Cygielman, two prominent Palestinian and Israeli journalists.

The group states that its main goal is to encourage dialogue between the civil societies and broaden the base of support for the peace process.

The title of Tuesday’s meeting was the “Arab Spring’s impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

However, the event was called off at the last minute after the organizers learned that a group of Palestinian activists belonging to various factions, including Fatah, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s party, was planning to stage a demonstration in front of the conference hall.

“As a result of circumstances beyond our control, we regret to announce that the conference scheduled to take place today is postponed,” the organizers said in a statement.

The article goes into more detail of last week's episode:

Last week, another organization called the Israeli Palestinian Confederation was forced to cancel a conference at the Ambassador Hotel in east Jerusalem after scores of Palestinians demonstrated outside the building. Some of the protesters stormed the hotel and confiscated leaflets and signs belonging to the organization.

Al Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh, who was invited to address the conference, did not show up after receiving threats from the anti- “normalization” activists.

Earlier this week, Hatem Abdel Kader, a senior Fatah operative, announced that his faction has declared “war” on meetings aimed at promoting “normalization” with Israel.

Nusseibeh denied Tuesday that the purpose of last week’s conference was to promote “normalization” between Israeli and Palestinian academics.

“On the contrary – the goal was to end the occupation and lay a mechanism for a better future for both sides,” he wrote in an article published in the Palestinian daily Al Quds.

He said that those who resorted to violence to foil the conference caused damage to the Palestinian leadership by making it appear as if it’s not interested in peace.

Maybe I missed it, but I never saw any extreme-right wing warmongering hawkish Likudniks ever protesting and threatening people interested in a dialogue with Arabs.

That seems to be exclusively the purview of moderate, peace-seeking Fatah members.

(Notice also that even the most moderate of "moderates," Sari Nusseibeh, feels compelled to distance himself from any hint of "normalization" with Israel. Of course, even he has a big problem with facts.)

(h/t Ian)

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

"Only four more Israeli soldiers need to be captured"

From the Hamas-oriented Palestine Info site:

The Palestinian center for the defense of prisoners has said that all Palestinian prisoners could be out of jail if only four more Israeli soldiers are captured.

Director of the center Ismail Thawabta said that the Shalit deal succeeded in liberating 20% of Palestinian prisoners, calculating that four more Israeli soldiers are needed to secure freedom of the remaining Palestinian prisoners.

He said in a press release on Monday that future exchange deals should be made in accordance with the same standards by which Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was freed.

Just an example of Hamas' embrace of "popular resistance."

Egypt gives Hamas $33 million it had seized

A long time ago, the Rafah crossing was heavily supervised, and EU observers worked with Israel and Egypt to ensure that Gaza would not turn into a terrorist haven for Hamas.

My, how times have changed.

In the context of the so-called unity talks in Cairo, Hamas demanded from Egypt some $33 million seized a few years ago - and the new springy Egypt said sure, no problem, its yours!

This may be the money that was taken from Ismail Haniyeh in 2006. At the time he was carrying $35 million in cash, in suitcases, from a fundraising trip to Iran, Qatar and Sudan.

Now Hamas can use that case for its important business of buying bombs and rockets aimed at killing Jews.

Chanukah Video Night 2: The Flatmates featuring Dr. Dredle

Not my style of music, but EoZ is an equal opportunity Chanukah music video supplier.

(h/t Jeremy)

Abbas meets, praises bloodthirsty child killer

Haaretz reports:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for meeting freed Palestinian terrorist Amna Muna during a visit to Turkey on Wednesday.

Muna, who was freed to Turkey during the first stage of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange swap with Hamas, was serving a life sentence for her part in the murder of Ofir Rahum, an Israeli teen from Ashkelon.

On Wednesday Israel Radio reported that Abbas had met Muna in private during his visit to Turkey after holding a group meeting with the rest of the Palestinians deported to Turkey in the Shalit deal.

In response to Abbas' meeting, the Prime Minister's Office released a statement later Wednesday, saying that it was "shocking to see the man who claims to the whole world that he aims for peace with Israel, going as far as Turkey to meet a despicable murderer."

Ha'aretz apparently doesn't think the details of Ofir Rahum's murder, and Amna Muna's role in it, is important enough to mention.

Here's the story, from Wikipedia:

Mona Awana, who was later arrested by the Israeli police, said she decided the day the Palestinians carried out the lynching of two Israelis soldiers in Ramallah in late 2000 to abduct an Israeli and murder him. Mona had been present at the Ramallah lynching, and said she was "excited" by what she saw. Soon after, Mona started to make contact with Israelis on the Internet. Awana contacted several Israeli teenagers via chat rooms. Then she targeted Rahum with whom she pretended to start an online romance. In conversations over several months Mona pressed for one thing — a meeting in Jerusalem. When Rahum suggested a venue closer to his home, she said she couldn't get a car. When he said his parents would object, she promised to get him back by 5. That vow and a few sexual innuendos persuaded the boy. "You don't know how much I am waiting for Wednesday," Mona wrote him two days before. When he came to meet her, she convinced him to escort her to Ramallah.

Awana then drove him toward Ramallah. Somewhere on the way, according to Palestinian eye-witnesses interviewed by a French news agency, at a prearranged location, she bolted from the car, another vehicle drove up and three Palestinian gunmen inside shot Ofir more than 15 times. One terrorist drove off with Ofir's body and dumped it, while the others fled in the second vehicle.

This was not a simple murder. It was a coldblooded, vicious murder of an innocent teenage boy whose only crime was being an Israeli Jew.

That makes her a heroine to the leader of the "moderate" Palestinian Authority.

Abbas didn't just meet her as part of a crowd of ex-prisoners. He showed his honor and respect for the child killer by meeting her in private! (The entire video is proudly displayed on Abbas' YouTube channel.)

This is not surprising, of course - Abbas had traveled to Lebanon to meet with another vicious child-killer, Samir Kuntar.

It seems to be a pattern.

But, if you are the UN or EU, make sure you don't embarrass him by criticizing him. Arabs cannot handle criticism like that. It shames them. And then when they are shamed they become less moderate. And it would be your fault.

So treat someone who praises and lionizes child-murderers with respect - peace depends on it.

Egyptian tourism drops 24%

From Al Masry al Youm English (now renamed Egypt Independent):

Tourism in Egypt was down almost 24 percent for the third quarter of 2011 compared to the same period last year, a government report released Wednesday said.

About 2.8 million tourists visited Egypt between July and September, down from 3.6 million during the same quarter in 2010, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics report.

Not surprisingly, unrest that has been ongoing since January harmed tourism during this period, the report said.

Tourist arrivals from Western Europe decreased the most, followed by those from the Middle East, dropping 33.1 percent and 21.6 percent, respectively.

Tourism Minister Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour has said reinvigorating tourism depends on the country's ability to restore calm to the streets.

Tourism contributes 13.5 percent of Egypt's domestic product, employs 4 million people and is the largest source of national income, according to government figures.

Abdel Nour also said that Egypt's beaches draw 83 percent of the country's tourist activity.

If the Islamists start regulating bikinis and alcohol, that might be enough by itself to destroy Egypt's economy.

Chanukah: The first war of national liberation (Appelbaum)

From Diana Muir Appelbaum at Jewish Ideas Daily:

This is the 2,179th anniversary of the world's first war of national liberation. There have been many since. To a surprising extent, such wars have followed the pattern first established by the Maccabees. They, like later heads of independence movements, were leaders of a people conquered and occupied by a great empire. They fought to claim the right of national self-determination.

...There are no prophets in the book of Maccabees, and no miracles. This is the story of a man and a nation, faced with the awful choice of watching their nation die or risking their own death, who take their fate into their own hands and fight for their right to be governed by Jewish rulers under Jewish laws—the right we call national self-determination.

Most aspects of the Maccabees' ancient war are uncannily familiar. Not the Seleucid army's elephants, of course; but the Greek war machine was beaten by Matityahu's untrained volunteers, just as modern wars for independence often feature well-equipped imperial armies fighting ad hoc forces. Other familiar patterns are also there in I Maccabees. The Jews convened national assemblies, much as modern liberation movements do. They struggled to form a unified command structure. They sought aid from the Seleucid's rival great powers, Rome and Sparta.

The Maccabean war was also just as messy as modern wars of national liberation. The Jews fought against a great empire; but Jews also fought other Jews for principle and power, Jewish Hellenizers against Jews who stood for the ancient covenant.

Despite these ambiguities, the victories won under the leadership of Matityahu and his five sons produced two centuries of autonomous Judean government, giving Jewish intellectuals the time and opportunity to cement an enduring Jewish culture. Without those two centuries of self-government, it is doubtful that Jewish identity would have withstood two millennia during which Jews in Israel lived under foreign occupation and most Jews lived in exile.

The Book of Maccabees is found in the Coptic, Orthodox, and Catholic Bibles; but few Jews have ever read it. Though it was written in Hebrew by a Jew, it survived antiquity only in Greek translation. This is because it is a very dangerous book. To read Maccabees is to risk being persuaded that peoples like the Jews had and have rights to national self-determination. Acting on such an idea, by starting a war of national liberation, is a perilous thing to do.

...Jewish leaders struggling for a Jewish future in the second and third centuries knew about such consequences. Large-scale Jewish uprisings aimed at national liberation had failed in the years 70, 115, and 132 C.E., with horrific results. Matityahu was well aware that the idea of a right to national self-determination was the most dangerous idea the Jews could possibly have entertained.

Hanukkah, the holiday that celebrates Judean independence, was tamed in later years by focusing on its purely religious aspects. The Book of Maccabees was not added to the Jewish canon. Hebrew copies were not made.

But this incendiary text exists. Pick it up and read it. I dare you.

There are differing opinions on why the Book of Maccabees was not canonized. Dr. Rachael Turkienicz mentions a few:

It has also been suggested that the exclusion of the Books of the Maccabees can be traced to the political rivalry that existed during the late Second Temple Period between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees, a priestly class in charge of the Temple, openly rejected the oral interpretations that the Pharisees, the proto-rabbinic class, openly promoted. The Maccabees were a priestly family, while the rabbis who may have determined the final form of the biblical canon at Jamnia were descended from the Pharisees. Is it possible that the exclusion of the Books of Maccabees was one of the last salvos in the battle between the Pharisees and Sadducees? Would the rabbis at Jamnia have been inclined to canonize a document that so clearly praised the priestly Hasmonean family?

Perhaps the answer lies more within the realm of pragmatism and politics. The Books of Maccabees describe the revolt led by the Maccabean family against the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes. A couple of centuries later, Jewish scholars found themselves in Jamnia with the Temple destroyed and Jerusalem lost. Their circumstances were the result of their own failed revolt against the Romans.

Perhaps they felt it unwise to promote a text that heralded the successful outcome of a Jewish revolt. It may have posed a threat both internally and externally. The Romans would certainly not look kindly upon the popularization of such a text, since it might very well reintroduce the concept of revolt to a population desperately trying to survive the devastating outcome of its own failed attempts. Ironically, this very internal/external struggle lies at the core of the Hanukkah story, and perhaps it was this very struggle playing out again in history that prevented the basic texts about Hanukkah from being included within the biblical canon.

This last reason is somewhat congruent with Appelbaum's conjecture, although from a different angle (self-preservation from without rather than suppressing ideas from within.)

I'm not sure that the reason that Maccabees is not included in the Tanach is so convoluted, though. Appelbaum says herself that "there are no prophets in the book of Maccabees, and no miracles." It is also not a set of aphorisms or praises to God, like Mishlei (Proverbs), Tehillim (Psalms) or Kohelet (Ecclesiastes.) That by itself makes it anomalous compared to the canonical books of the Tanach. (The Book of Ruth is also without prophets or obvious miracles, but it has its own lessons as well as a place in the historical context of David's lineage.)

Perhaps the answer can be found if we can find the original source of the Al Hanissim prayer. That inserted prayer, said during Chanukah, thanks God more for the military victory than for the miracle of the oil. But it is unclear when it was written; from what I can tell the earliest known mention is in the 9th century Siddur of Rav Amram but some speculate that it was written by the family of Matisyahu (Matthias) themselves. (The Talmud mentions the victory but doesn't dwell on it and then goes into the halachic issues of lighting the menorah.)

If we knew when Al Hanissim was inserted into the prayers, we might have a better idea of whether the idea of a Jewish military revolt was considered dangerous or not at the time of the canonization of the Tanach. But it also might hint to another reason Maccabees is not in the canon - because it was not written as if the military victory was miraculous.

Syrian news claims 5 kids killed by Israeli mine

From SANA, Syria's official "news" agency:

An Israeli mine blast on Tuesday killed 5 children from one family in al-Rafid village, southern al-Quneitra province.

Head of the General Association for Rehabilitating Mine-injured People, Dr. Omar al-Hibeh said the martyrs are all brothers, pointing out that the number of people killed because of leftover Israeli mines in al-Quneitra province increased to 225 and the number of wounded people is 720.

For his part, Governor of al-Quneitra province, Hussain Arnous, said the people of the occupied Syrian Arab Golan are suffering from a chronic problem which is the mine fields set up by the Israeli occupation army around the villages and farms.

Director of the Martyr Mahmoud Abaza Hospital in al-Quneitra, Dr. Ali Kanaan, said the hospital received 10 injured people because of mine and cluster bomb blasts this year.

The Israeli occupation forces set up more than one million mines and cluster bombs before they withdrew from al-Qenitera city.

There are definitely old landmines in the area, some of them Israeli, just as there are old Syrian minefields through the Golan Heights - but they haven't killed anywhere close to 225 people, and they didn't kill five kids yesterday.

The way to know that this story is bogus is simple: It doesn't even say the family name of the supposedly five dead brothers.

But that doesn't mean that Arabic media is skeptical when reporting it. Al Quds al Arabi even adds the poignant "fact" that the brothers were all between 3 and 6 years old.

However, there might be a grain of truth in the story. Syria has been mining its own border with Lebanon to stop people from fleeing the country. Is it possible that some people were killed trying to flee Syria, forcing Syria to blame Israel?

Islamic Jihad's guide to using cell phones - without the Mossad killing you

Palestine Today published a guide for terrorists on how to use their cell phones - without getting tracked by Israel.

The guide, created by the Al Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad, informs us of how cell phones can track people.

The most dangerous way is when Israel actually surreptitiously installs a tracking device on the phone itself. This way the phone can be tracked even if you remove the battery. Careful mujahadeen must know where they get their phones from!

The phone number can be used to track the type of device, and sometimes more.

Voice mail messages can be used to identify the person whose phone it is. Technology should be used to disguise one's voice.

The Mossad can also use neighbors' cell phones to monitor all phones in a 12 meter radius.

And the Israelis can hack into the cell towers to figure out who is calling whom, and from where.

The tips given include:

Remove the battery when not in use
Place cell phones in aluminum containers a half centimeter thick
Buy older cell phones; smart phones are way too smart.
Use paper to send messages between mujahadeen
Change cell phones often
Use software to make it sound like your voice is that of a woman or child in your voicemail message

When lots of mujahadeen meet, they should place their cell phones at least 10 meters away from the meeting in case there are listening devices on the phones. Also meet where there is white noise like water running.

Also, don't hold meetings in places with glass windows, because there is technology to shoot a laser beam at the window and convert vibrations from the reflected beam into sound.

Another hundred killed in Syria yesterday

From Al Masry al Youm:

Activists say Syrian troops have killed at least 100 people in a northwest town in one of the deadliest incidents since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime began in March.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the killings occurred in the town of Kfar Owaid in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday. It says 111 people died. The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, says more than 100 people were killed in the town.

The two groups had earlier reported that regime troops attacked the town with heavy machine gun fire and shelling, killing dozens.

So far today, the death toll is 14.

The BBC adds

A Lebanese human rights activist, Wissam Tarif of the campaign group Avaaz, told the BBC that 269 had died in Idlib on Tuesday alone - 163 of them defectors, but also 97 government troops and nine civilians.

Which means that more Arabs were killed by Syria in the past two days than by Israel all year.

Is Hamas renouncing terror?

From The National Interest:

Jane’s, an internationally respected British security and defense risk-analysis firm, has recently reported that Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is on “the brink of renouncing armed resistance and moving to a policy of nonviolent resistance to Israel.” Jane’s, with which I have been a monthly writer to three of its publications since 2007, has several hard-to-ignore quotes in its report of Hamas leaders saying that the move was not “tactical” but “strategic.” Also interviewed are Palestinian Authority intelligence officers who said that Hamas’s strategy was “gradual and nuanced,” with one senior officer telling Jane’s that Hamas “intends to keep its military and security units to control the situation in Gaza, not necessarily to fight the Israelis.” The interviewees’ names were not mentioned for obvious security reasons.

...The report, written by my friend and colleague David Hartwell, Jane’s Middle East and Islamic affairs editor, argues that the springboard for this new strategic approach by Hamas is the Arab uprising. More directly, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey reportedly played a key role in convincing Hamas to reconcile with its historical rival Fatah and end armed resistance against Israel. Hartwell writes that Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, in a meeting on November 24 in Cairo with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, accepted “in writing with a signature” the need to embrace peaceful activism. And if this is not controversial enough, echoing Syrian opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun, Hamas’s leadership also told Jane’s that it will be “downgrading its ties with Syria and Iran and forge new relationships with Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey.”

Jane's is a respected source, and I would love to read the actual article - and not just the spin from this author.

It appears that Hamas is indeed supporting "non-violent resistance" in the sense that Abbas has been pushing it (meaning, stones and boulders and slingshots and even Molotov cocktails are all considered "non-violent.") They are seeing the PR benefits that accrue to their cause when the IDF fires tear gas on protesters that are "merely" throwing stones, and Hamas has no desire to stand in the way of such actions. The usual formulation from Hamas is that it supports "resistance in all its forms."

This is a far cry from saying that Hamas is renouncing armed resistance and terrorism.

It is true that Hamas has been trying to keep things quiet in Gaza since Cast Lead, but that is purely tactical - it was hurt badly during that war and does not want another one.

However, like Hezbollah, Hamas continues to obtain weapons and continues to build its military capability, in ways that have nothing to do with internal security. The Al Qassam Brigades, as far as I can tell, has never been used for any internal Gaza security tasks, although it has been used to fight the PA forces and more recently to terrorize Fatah leaders.

Hamas rhetoric of supporting violence has not abated one bit. Recent statements and actions by Hamas, as well as last week's rallies proved that yet again.

The Financial Post (Canada) adds a crucial quote from Jane's that is missing in the National Interest article:

For the time being, however, Jane's says Hamas "may operate a twin-track policy of not completely renouncing violence, but also embracing non-violent resistance."

"In this scenario, the group would then be able to keep its political and military options open," Mr. Hartwell said.

In my estimation, this is not "for the time being" but a long-term policy. Hamas' very existence is based on terrorism; it cannot abandon it for at least a generation without a revolt from an entire population raised under the banner of violent jihad. Hamas will embrace tactical lulls of terror, but it is not anxious to change its entire philosophy.

I do agree that the Arab Spring has shaken up Hamas to make them want to unify with Fatah - on paper. The protests in Gaza and the West Bank last spring demanding unity scared the hell out of Hamas and Fatah, both of whom feared that they would lose their positions of power. But even with the meetings this week in Cairo, the very basic demands of each side have not been dealt with - both sides still hold political prisoners of the other side, Fatah is still not sending blank PA passports to Gaza, and all that seems to be agreed upon is the formation of committees and promises to meet again and again. No discernible movement has taken place on creating a caretaker unity government. The idea that the PA and Hamas' security forces would be integrated any time soon is laughable.

I suspect that there is another dynamic at work, however. It appears that there is some friction between Hamas leadership in Gaza and Khaled Meshal in Damascus. Already there have been quite a few statements by Gaza's Mahmoud Zahar slamming Fatah and casting doubt on any possible reconciliation. Ismail Haniyeh has been more quiet, but it must rankle him that as the only truly elected Palestinian Arab leader he has been shunted aside in the talks between Abbas and Meshal. Furthermore, the Al Qassam Brigades themselves do not appear to consider Meshal to be their leader.

Hamas is better at hiding internal differences than Fatah is, but the impression I am getting is that Gaza's Hamas leaders are not as on board with this entire unity plan as Meshal is. A change of strategy away from terror would more likely split Hamas - perhaps into a Muslim Brotherhood-style political party on one hand and a pure terrorist group on the other.

Another important factor is that Hamas, while officially acting against rocket fire from Gaza, has a quite chummy relationship with more overt Gaza terror groups like Islamic Jihad and the PFLP. Similarly to how Arafat acted, Hamas knows that they can always quietly encourage terrorism from these other groups while maintaining its own pretense of acting responsibly.

Altogether, while Hamas will not stand in the way of "popular resistance," nor will it stand in the way of a state on the "1967 borders." But it will also never renounce terror nor will it ever renounce its dedication to destroying Israel altogether. The two ideas are not at odds with each other, and analysts must understand that before allowing their own wishful thinking to overwhelm the facts.