Sunday, January 12, 2014

  • Sunday, January 12, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Al Arabiya:
Starvation victim in Syria
Severe hunger in a besieged refugee camp for Palestinians in southern Damascus has claimed two lives, raising the death toll to 48 people killed, an opposition Syrian group said Saturday in a statement.

The Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC), a coalition of 40 opposition groups, said Yarmouk camp has depleted its food supplies and medical materials after 180 days of it being encircled by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

SRGC accused the Syrian regime for not allowing humanitarian aid to enter the besieged camp, which is home to an estimated 20,000 Palestinians.

Palestinian activists and journalists in reaction launched a nationwide campaign to pressure their government to help the starving refugees.
Hear that sound?

It is the sound of "pro-Palestinian" activists, pundits, politicians and NGOs not caring.

It is the sound of flotillas not being organized, petitions not being written, and demonstrations not being organized by Westerners who pretend to care so much about Palestinian Arab human rights.

It is the sound of articles not being written in the Guardian, the BBC or the New York Times.



Saturday, January 11, 2014

Human Rights Watch remains as disgusting as ever.

As Ariel Sharon died after his long illness, HRW is very sad. Not about his death, of course:

Ariel Sharon died without facing justice for his role in the massacres of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians by Lebanese militias in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. The killings constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Sharon also escaped accountability for other alleged abuses, such as his role expanding settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, prosecutable as a war crime. Sharon ordered the removal of all Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and from four West Bank settlements in 2005, but the overall number of settlers in occupied territory increased significantly during his term as prime minister.

It’s a shame that Sharon has gone to his grave without facing justice for his role in Sabra and Shatilla and other abuses,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “His passing is another grim reminder that years of virtual impunity for rights abuses have done nothing to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace any closer.”
As far as I can tell, HRW has never written an article like this about the death of any other person. Not Osama bin Laden, not Moammar Qaddafi, not Saddam Hussein. Only Ariel Sharon gets treated this way.

Now, if you do a search through HRW's archives of the word "Phalangist" (or "Keta'eb," which is the current name of that group in Lebanon, still an active political party) you will not find a single condemnation of their massacres in Sabra and Shalita. Every single time they are mentioned it is in context of - Ariel Sharon.

To HRW, the people who actually slaughter human beings and mutilate pregnant women are blameless. They are not worthy of any calls to investigation, there is no reason to seek justice from them.

How can this be? How can Human Rights Watch ignore the perpetrators of the crime and give the lion's share of responsibility to someone who, while he should have anticipated and stopped the crime, was not either its planner nor executor?

The answer is very simple, and it betrays the racism of Human Rights Watch and many other such groups, media and politicians:

Middle Easterners are expected to be savages. Arabs and Maronite Christians, in HRW's world, are animals. They have no free will - their actions are disgusting but inevitable, a consequence of their subhuman natures.

Jews, on the other hand, must act like human beings. They must prevent two sets of animals under their control from killing each other.  Indeed, this is how human beings should act, and Sharon was correctly slammed by Israeli commissions for his not being proactive in stopping what was almost inevitable.

Human Rights Watch, however, only blames Sharon. The esteemed organization cannot be bothered to condemn Maronites or Arabs for acting like this - that is their nature. This is pure racism.

Sabra and Shatila would not exist on the website of Human Rights Watch if it wasn't for Ariel Sharon. In fact, Lebanon saw much worse massacres in recent decades- even against Palestinian civilians - and HRW has not a word to say about those massacres. Only if a Jew can be blamed is it worth being brought up.

Another angle: Sharon forcibly expelled thousands of people from their homes in Gaza and the West Bank. This would seem to be against the Geneva Conventions. The ICRC interprets international law this way: "Individual or mass forcible transfers...are prohibited, regardless of their motive." But they were Jews, so HRW has nothing bad to say about that. Jews in the territories are the only group of people in the world that HRW insists should be forcibly removed from their homes. There is a double standard clear to all: international law must be twisted to ensure that Jews, the indigenous people of ancient Israel and Judah, are always violators of law while Arabs who invaded or moved in millenia later are nearly blameless in their actions.

To put the icing on the HRW anti-semitism cake, they also wrote this about antisemitic French "comedian" Dieudonné:

France made the wrong decision when it banned controversial comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, known for appallingly and insultingly mocking the Holocaust, from performing a number of his stand-up shows.

The government’s representative in Nantes banned a show scheduled for Thursday, on grounds of threats to public order. On the day of the show, one of the city’s courts overturned the ban. But Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls, who has spoken out openly and strongly against Dieudonné, appealed to France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, which later in the day upheld the ban.

On Friday, another court upheld the ban on another show by Dieudonné that was to take place in Tours in the evening. Welcoming the ruling by the Conseil d’Etat, Valls said that “The Republic has won”.

Yet a country’s dedication to human rights and democratic values is measured in the way it treats those with whom it disagrees, and in this instance, France has failed that test. France should respect freedom of expression, including those opinions that shock, offend, or disturb – unless they amount to inciting violence. Any restrictions to this freedom must be necessary and proportionate, and banning Dieudonné shows is neither. If there are indeed threats to public order, authorities should deploy enough police officers to deter violence, not ban the show altogether.
Please, HRW, explain how making fun of the Holocaust and Jews is anything less than incitement. How does creating an environment where Jews being gassed and burned is a subject of mockery make it a safer country for Jews to live in? There is a reason that record numbers of French Jews moved to Israel this year, but, hey, HRW probably considers that a war crime as well.

And, of course, Arab media regularly has much more open incitement against Jews, as I have documented countless times. Yet to this day, HRW has never said a word against Arab antisemiticm and incitement to kill Jews.

HRW has a halo effect as being one of the most prestigious human rights organizations. And in some parts of the world, perhaps it does some good work. But its standards are twisted into a mockery of human rights when the subject or object of the reports happen to be Jews. The standard for Jews to tolerate hate against themselves is lower than that for anyone else; while the standard for Jews to act in a humane manner is much, much higher than that of their neighbors.

 It is hard to find this to be a coincidence.
From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel and the death of pan-Arabism
The post-pan-Arab Middle East exposes the truth that has been obscured for a century. The Jews and their Jewish state are a natural component of our diverse neighborhood, just like the Kurds, the Christians, the Druse, the various Muslim sects, and the Arabs. The demise of pan-Arabism is our great opportunity, at home and regionally, to build the alliances we need to survive and prosper. But so long as our leaders insist on clinging to the now irrelevant dream of appeasing the defunct pan-Arabists, we will lose these opportunities and convince our allies that we are treacherous, disloyal and temporary.
A criminal culture
Since the stupidity of Oslo, Israelis and the PLO have been ‘negotiating’ to arrive at yet another partition of the sliver of Jewish land that exists precariously among the 22 Arab nations of the Middle East and North Africa. The Palestinians have never stopped incitement and terrorism, and they have never negotiated in good faith toward an end to the conflict. They have pursued a strategy of alternating violence and deceitful diplomacy whose objective is the elimination of Jewish sovereignty.
And yet President Obama says they ‘deserve’ a state!
In deciding whether establishing a new state here is a good idea, it makes sense to think about what the character of that state will be. And there is no doubt that ‘Palestine’ will be an aggressor and a locus of terrorism. A criminal culture will produce a criminal state.
How could the embodiment of the philosophy of Yasser Arafat be anything else?
(h/t NormanF)
Obituary: Israel’s indomitable protector, Ariel Sharon emblemized military audacity, evolving politics
Ariel Sharon, the general and prime minister who embodied the Zionist notion of the new Jew — a robust man, adept with both plowshare and sword, and feared, hated, and adored for his proficiency with the latter, is dead. He was 85 years old.
Doctors at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer said that Sharon, who had been in a vegetative state for eight years, had suffered renal failure in recent days, which led on Saturday afternoon to multiple organ failure and death.

Hate 101, as (apparently) Reuters goes to Hamas schools to see what those cute tykes are learning.







Hamas, like all good governments, is investing its money into the next generation.

(h/t Ian)

Friday, January 10, 2014

From Ian:

Israel: The first modern indigenous state
Just as black people struggled for their rights and basic human dignity during the American Civil Rights Movement, so the Jews continue to struggle for our rights and basic human dignity within our 3,500 year old national home. Just as native peoples everywhere seek to free themselves from the negative influence of hostile conquering populations, so the Jews of the Middle East seek to free themselves from the never-ending hostility of their former masters in that part of the world.
The so-called “Palestinian national movement” is not a national movement of an indigenous people. It is a national movement designed specifically to overthrow the indigenous people and replace that people with the very people who conquered them and held them in something akin to servitude (dhimmitude) for thirteen long centuries.
Like indigenous peoples throughout the world, the Jewish people, too, are worthy of self-determination and self-defense.
Actress Meryl Streep Blasts Walt Disney as Anti-Semitic; ZOA Condemns Actress Emma Thompson
Hollywood actress Meryl Streep blasted Walt Disney as an anti-Semitic misogynist in an unusually long and scathing speech at a film awards dinner on Tuesday night, Variety reported on Thursday.
Ironically, Streep’s nine-minute speech was to honor the actress who portrayed ‘Mary Poppins’ creator P.L. Travers in The Walt Disney Company’s ‘Saving Mr. Banks,’ Emma Thompson, who the Zionist Organization of America denounced on Thursday for her letter in the Guardian advocating for a boycott of Israel’s Habima Theater troupe, which is to perform later this year at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, in London.
Nelson Mandela: Co-opted, Re-mixed and Re-delivered
Anti-Israel activists deliberately manipulated footage of Nelson Mandela, speaking at a 1990 Town Hall meeting anchored by Ted Koppel on ABC Nightline in New York, in an effort to eliminate his declaration "The support for Yassir Arafat in his struggle does not mean that the ANC has ever doubted the right of Israel to exist as a state. We have stood quite openly and firmly for the right of that state to exist within secured borders"
Lies. Manipulation. Selective editing. Could these ethically bankrupt anti-Israeli propagandists stoop any lower?
SWU: Anti-Israel Propaganda Exposed



  • Friday, January 10, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
We all know the Arab theory that the two blue lines on the Israeli flag stand for the Nile and Euphrates rivers, symbolizing Israel's dream to expand to a huge state as promised in the Bible.


Today, Arabs and antisemites are convinced that the "Greater Israel" plan is alive and well.

How does that jive with the fact that Israel has been doing nothing but giving land up since 1977?

Glad you asked. You see, it is all explained in this article in a Hezbollah-leaning website, but apparently it got the ideas from this recent Global Research article expanding on old bizarre theories by the late antisemite Israel Shahak.


You see, Shahak was obsessed with an obscure article written in an Israeli journal in 1982 by someone named Oded Yinon. Out of all the hundreds and thousands of articles written by Israelis, Shahak was convinced that this article, available for all to see, represented Israel's real strategy.

The Global Research article says:
When viewed in the current context, the war on Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing war on Syria, not to mention the process of regime change in Egypt, must be understood in relation to the Zionist Plan for the Middle East. The latter consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of an Israeli expansionist project.

“Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates.

The Zionist project supports the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel.

Greater Israel would create a number of proxy States. It would include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).
The funny thing is that Shahak's translation of Yinon's article has very little to say about Israel actively causing Arab regimes to fracture. In fact, most of the article (and possibly all, since Shahak cannot be trusted to translate accurately) talks about how this dissolution of the Arab world is inevitable, given the hatred between Sunnis and Shiites, different tribes in Syria, Iraq and Jordan, oil rich states run by a tiny elite but not sharing the wealth with the poor citizens, and so forth. In some ways Yinon's article has been vindicated; he pretty much predicted the Arab Spring in 1982. (Yinon does seem to say that Israel must re-acquire the Sinai from Egypt because the loss of its oil would send Israel into an economic tailspin otherwise. That seems a bit quaint nowadays that Israel is looking to be an energy exporter.)

If Israel's strategy in the 1980s was to cause the Arab world to collapse, it failed, as the current Arab Spring upheavals came over 20 years later.

But the beauty of the theory - especially for Shiites - is that the problems in Egypt, Syria, Libya and so forth can now be blamed on Israel, which is behind everything! Sunni leaders are Israel's puppets!

The Hezbollah article says:
The Zionists ruling Egypt want to turn Egypt gradually into a state of no states, as in Somalia, Iraq, as is happening now in Syria; to destroy Egypt to achieve the dream of a Zionist state from the Nile to the Euphrates.
So that explains everything! Israel is going to rule perhaps 150 million Arabs, because it just wants to. The Arab leaders are Israel's puppets. And the Protocols will be realized! Bwahahaha!

(See also this post from 2007 of a reasonable sounding Egyptian going off the rails when discussing this.)




From Ian:

Israel kills fewest innocents but takes most heat
Professor Richard Falk is a top UN official. Recently he declared that Israel wreaks carnage upon the Palestinians, harboring what he termed "genocidal intent." If we want to understand the relationship between the industry of lies and the discourse of human rights, we could do worse than examine the case of this bad man, perhaps a Jew, who is an embodiment of this link.
Let us gauge the genocide claim. In 2013, 36 Palestinians were killed, according to the human rights organization B'Tselem. At least 30 of those were either involved in clashes with IDF soldiers or were members of terrorist organizations. Only a few innocents were killed. The death of each one of them is to be deeply regretted. Yet one should add that there isn't another conflict in the world where the fatality rate among civilians is as low as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In other conflicts it is estimated that between 60 and 90 percent of fatalities are innocents. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are a minority.
IDF Blog: After Mortars Fired from Gaza, Israel Air Force Targets Terrorists, Terror Site
After mortars were fired from Gaza at Israel, the IDF targeted terrorists during their final preparations to launch rockets toward Israel early Thursday morning (January 9). No damage or injuries were reported among the soldiers.
WATCH as the IAF targets a Gazan terrorist site preparing to launch rockets:

Charles Krauthammer: How to fight academic bigotry
Which makes obvious that the ASA boycott has nothing to do with human rights. It’s an exercise in radical chic, giving marginalized academics a frisson of pretend anti-colonialism, seasoned with a dose of edgy anti-Semitism.
And don’t tell me this is merely about Zionism. The ruse is transparent. Israel is the world’s only Jewish state. To apply to the state of the Jews a double standard that you apply to none other, to judge one people in a way you judge no other, to single out that one people for condemnation and isolation — is to engage in a gross act of discrimination.
And discrimination against Jews has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.

  • Friday, January 10, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
This week there was a double memorial service at the Hazrat Zahra mosque in Tehran.

The first person being remembered was General Ahmad Kazemi, commander of Iran's Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution who died in a plane crash in 2006, which some allege was sabotage.

The other was not for an Iranian at all, but for the Hezbollah commander Hassan Lakkis, assassinated a month ago in Beirut.

One of the facts revealed at the memorial is that Hezbollah was "the first nucleus of the resistance in Lebanon was formed by forces of the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards," and that Lakkis was trained by Iran and had a "special loyalty to Imam Khomeini."

The ceremony showed (yet again) how Hezbollah is nothing more or less than a remote arm of Iran's military.

Two banners were set up at the service, showing two quotes: one from Ayatollah Khomeini and the other from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The quote from Khomeini says "Israel must vanish from the entire world."



The Farsi in the Nasrallah photo says "to target Israel, we need only a few missiles." They mistranslated "a few" as "some."

The juxtaposition of the two banners makes an unmistakable statement: Iran is threatening Israel, militarily, and Hezbollah is the means that it intends to use to accomplish that.

At the event, which had many senior Iranian military figures, officials spoke of a "big surprise that Hezbollah has in store for Israel, and that Hezbollah warehouses are filled with highly accurate missiles aimed at Israel. Another speaker spoke of a time, not so far in the future, that will witness "an apocalyptic battle" across the region for the Holy Land.

Iran is supplying even more advanced missiles to Hezbollah - today.

A few years ago when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that "Israel should be wiped off the map/off the pages of time" there was a lot of apologetics saying it was a mistranslation, or that he didn't mean "militarily," or that Ahmadinejad was just a blowhard and didn't set Iranian policy so it was no big deal.

Iran is saying that Hezbollah, as an arm of Iran, will wipe Israel out. There is no ambiguity here. But people who refuse to see the truth will always find reasons to ignore the facts, even when the facts are printed on large banners in English.

  • Friday, January 10, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
Just another day in Gaza.

This is an Islamic Jihad rally to denounce any possible peace deal - because any deal would allow Israel to still exist, which is against Palestinian Arab principles.

Dr. Mohammed al-Hindi, a member of Islamic Jihad's "political wing," spoke and led the crowd in both marching and in the obligatory stepping on an Israeli and American flags.







  • Friday, January 10, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ma'an says:

A Palestinian inmate in Israel's Ofer prison suffered from "hysteria" after carrying out an extended hunger strike, a prisoners' ministry lawyer said Thursday.

Ehab al-Ghaleet, a lawyer for the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, said that Thaer Abdullah was on hunger strike for 50 days, as a result of which he was treated in Assaf Harofeh medical center.

Throughout that period Abdullah suffered from brain dehydration and had to stop his strike before he was returned to Ofer prison, al-Ghaleet said.

Abdullah was brought to a psychiatrist when he returned to Ofer due to his hysteria, al-Ghaleet said.
There has not been a psychological diagnosis of "hysteria" for decades.

What would Def Leppard think?





Ma'an goes on:

Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel, representing 20 percent of the total population and 40 percent of all males in the occupied territories.
I showed that these numbers are complete fiction a number of times.

Anti-Israel groups love to pick up on ridiculous claims like these.

It would be hysterical -  if so many didn't believe and disseminate the lies so easily.

(h/t Bob Knot)

Thursday, January 09, 2014

  • Thursday, January 09, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Israel's Channel 10; translation by Yoel:



From Ian:

Israelly Cool: Israel Palestine Who’s Indigenous?
Now you might ask, why is this important? It is important to indigenous people because we cannot allow the argument that conquerors can become indigenous. If we, as other indigenous people, allow that argument to be made, then we are delegitimising our own rights.
If conquerors can become indigenous, then the white Europeans who came to my indigenous lands in North America could now claim to be indigenous. The white Europeans who went to Australia and New Zealand could now claim to be indigenous. If we, even once, allow that argument to be made, indigenous rights are suddenly devalued and meaningless. This is somewhat peculiar, as those who are arguing for Palestinian “indigenous rights” are usually those who have little grasp of the history, and no understanding of the truth behind indigenous rights.
Report: 2013 Christian Persecution Driven by Islamic Extremism
Of the 14 countries labeled as “extreme persecution,” 11 of them are countries with a predominantly Muslim population, including several Middle Eastern countries such as Syria at number 3, Iraq at number 4, Saudi Arabia at number 6 and Iran at number 9. However, North Korea was the worst offender at number 1.
Egypt, where there has been widespread persecution of its Coptic Christian minority over the past year by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, ranked at number 22. While the Palestinian Territories ranked at number 34.
The report noted that in 36 of the 50 countries, Islamic extremism was the driving force behind Christian persecution.
Tamar Natural Gas Field Worth $52 Billion to Israeli Economy – Ernst & Young
The natural gas in Israel’s Tamar field is worth some $52 billion to the Israeli economy, accountants Ernst & Young Israel said in a new report. The CPA firm will present their report at a gas and energy conference in Tel Aviv next week, according to Israel’s Globes business daily.
The initial findings of the study found that Tamar, which began production less than a year ago, boosted Israel’s GDP by almost 0.5 percentage points, and is projected to boost GDP by 1.5 percentage points for 2014.

  • Thursday, January 09, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Hurriyet Daily News:
A draft bill will permit authorities to limit access to the Internet and monitor all actions by individuals online and keep such records for two years, daily Hürriyet has reported.

Three articles about Internet usage were concealed within a longer draft bill on the Family and Social Policy Ministry’s organizational structure and responsibilities, Yalçın DoÄŸan, a columnist from daily Hürriyet, revealed yesterday.

The draft law will permit officials to limit keywords more easily, meaning access to videos on video-sharing websites such as YouTube that include keywords deemed problematic by Turkish authorities will be blocked.

All individuals’ Internet records, including details about what sites they have visited, which words they have searched for on the web and what activity they have engaged in on social networking websites, will be kept for one or two years, according to the draft law.

Web providers will also be forced to become members of a new Internet union to be formed under the control of government, DoÄŸan wrote.

The draft bill is designed to “protect the family, children and youth from items on the Internet that encourage drug addiction, sexual abuse and suicide,” according to daily Hürriyet.
And the records of what people do in the Internet are no doubt also meant to protect the family - the family of thugs that is running Turkey.

I received 252 visits from Turkey over the last month, which is not a significant percentage of my readers but which places it at #29 out of 174 countries that visited EoZ.  Hope none of my Turkish readers get in trouble.

In other Turkey news, the government is also acting to place the judiciary under its control.



  • Thursday, January 09, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Supreme Leader comedy show keeps adding new material.
Nuclear negotiations with major powers had revealed U.S. “enmity” towards Iran, the Islamic republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday the official IRNA news agency reported, hours before the resumption of talks in Geneva.

“We had announced previously that on certain issues, if we feel it is expedient, we would negotiate with the Satan (the
United States) to deter its evil,” Khamenei told a gathering.

“The nuclear talks showed the enmity of America against Iran, Iranians, Islam and Muslims,” he said.

Don't expect to see this in the mainstream media, which has lately adopted a new meme that Iran and the US have many strategic interests in common.

Let's not publish any of that "Satan" stuff - it just muddies the waters of how we want things to be.

From Ian:

Why do Leftists Attack the Only Liberal Country in the Middle East?
What is the most rightist doctrine in the world today? It has to be radical Islam. Islamists don’t allow women to go out of their houses alone, nor do they permit women to drive cars. Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by a member of Taliban for advocating education for girls, lists incident after incident describing the oppression of women in her book, “I Am Malala.”
Radical Islamists are also ferociously anti-homosexual. Homosexuality is a capital offense in nine Muslim countries: Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, parts of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
And so, leftists have decided to support ultra-rightists—radical Islamists. Radical Islamists hate Israel, and so groups like the ASA, and individuals like Sarah Schulman, have endorsed extreme anti-Israel policies—opposing Israel under all circumstances. Leftist groups that have passed BDS resolutions have never said that they would end their boycotts if Israel did X or Y or Z. The BDS Movement has no demands, and so its demands cannot be met.
Unilateral Palestinian statehood — real threat or ‘big bluff’?
According to Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Palestinian threat of a unilateral statehood drive is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. “This is a big bluff; it’s just an empty threat,” he said. “So the Palestinians will go to the International Health Organization, the International Postal Union and the Civil Aviation Authority. So what? That won’t give them statehood. It won’t make a difference, because Israel is still sitting in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and any change can only come about as the result of a negotiation process.”
And there is no cause to fear a Palestinian onslaught against Israel in international forums, averred Baker, a former Israeli ambassador to Canada, as such attacks have been going on for years. “There are 20 or so anti-Israel resolutions at the UN at any given moment, so how is this night different from any other night?”
Egypt top newspaper's weird "Zionist conspiracy" theory
Today, the most widely circulating Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, has run a front-page report headlined in red and bold, ''Israeli conspiracy on Sinai's underground water.''
In a black bold lead, the report stresses that ''liberating Sinai and restoring its territories from Israeli occupation was not merely our dream; the dream was to develop this region to be our real exit from all economic troubles.''
However, the report claims, ''the ship of the state is always besieged with conspiracies.''
"Unsatisfied with their crimes in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 in Sinai, Palestine, and South Lebanon; Zionists brought Prosopis juliflora, a kind of Mesquite [shrub or tree] which is considered so dangerous, to Sinai.'' (h/t Bob Knot)

  • Thursday, January 09, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
There has been a bizarre private initiative to have ordinary Arabs and Israelis get together and see if they could agree to a peace plan.

From a press release:
The Israeli and Palestinian leaderships apparently do not have a working strategy to cope with their conflict. So, the time has come for the two peoples to take matters into their own hands!

On January 9-10, 2014 an Israeli delegation, a Palestinian delegation and an audience will negotiate solutions to the conflict. The Congress will have a historic first being held in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Each delegation will include 20 people from all walks of life: Israeli generals, Palestinian commanders, Israeli settlers, Palestinian ex-prisoners, academics, business people, and students; reflecting the entire political spectrum.

The congress is co-chaired by Dr. Sapir Handelman – an Israeli who received the Peter Becker Award in Peace & Conflict Studies; and Mr. Ibrahim Enbawi – a prominent Palestinian leader in East Jerusalem. The chairmen have five sessions to lead the public assembly to reach peace agreements.

This historical event is an important step towards the establishment of a major Israeli-Palestinian Public Negotiating Congress with political power. The congress is designed to involve the people in the peacemaking efforts and motivate the leaderships to conclude agreements.
So how did the meeting in Ramallah go today?

Palestinians threw rocks Thursday at a West Bank hotel, shattering windows and breaking up a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.

The conference was cut short and three dozen Israeli participants were rushed out the back door, put on Palestinian police buses and driven to safety, organizers said.

About 35 Israelis and 50 Palestinians participated in Thursday's gathering, the first the group has held in the West Bank, said Palestinian organizer Ibrahim Enbawi.

After word of the gathering got out, about 30 protesters showed up outside the hotel. Protesters tried to enter the hotel, but found the doors locked, and then began throwing stones that shattered several windows and glass doors.
But did the Israelis learn anything from this episode? Apparently not:
Israeli participant Rami Cohen, a former air force pilot, said he felt uncomfortable after the stone-throwing, but expressed understanding for the protesters.

"There is more anger here than in Israel because the Palestinians suffer more than us," said Cohen, 56, who works for a high tech company in Tel Aviv. "One day, I hope it will be safe for us here in Ramallah as it is safe for us in Tel Aviv."
Come on, Rami - just try again tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that.  Eventually, either the protesters will understand you as much as you understand them, or you'll be lynched and murdered. But if you are killed, it would be a comfort knowing that you found your death eminently understandable.

(h/t Yenta P)

UPDATE: Come to think of it, is there any substantive difference between these Arabs throwing rocks to get rid of Israelis and the BDSers who use violence, threats and intimidation to get rid of Israelis from speaking or performing overseas?

This is a rare BDS victory! I wonder if they will write this up as a milestone.

UPDATE 2: In the comments, sshender describes his idea of how these wonderful initiatives work.

If previous such initiatives of (Leftist) Israeli-Palestinian discussions are anything to go by, it would probably have looked something like this: 
1. A day at the Buffet sipping Lattes and reading Haaretz.
2. A day of historical overviews of the conflict that would make Al-Jazeera blush.
3. A day of Palestinians accusing the Israelis of every conceivable wrongdoing accompanied by a choir of sympathetic head nodding from the Israeli side.
4. Half a day of the Israelis apologizing for everything that the Palestinians accused Israel of on the previous day, plus half a day of the Israelis apologizing for other things that the Palestinians neglected to mention.
5. Half a day of the Israelis saying "let byg ones be bygones" and half a day of the Israelis coming up with unrealistic solutions to the conflict, that no sane Israeli would ever accept.
6. A day of the Palestinians taking the Israelis out on a field day:
2 hours - meeting an obscure NGO representative (funded by millions of US$ by the EU, Soros and the NIF) who laments about the hardships of living under the occupation.
2 hours - meeting Tallal - a Palestinian farmer - to hear about the attacks of Settler whipped wild bores on his crops.
2 hours of the "apartheid" wall, with 1 hour of free time for selfies with the "V" sign and for spraying "this wall will fall" or other such themes.
2 hours of yelling and cursing at IDF soldiers.
7. A day of Palestinians explaining to the Israelis why they can never "let bygones be bygones", especially in the context of experiences form the previous field day excursion.
8. A day of Palestinians demanding that Israel submit to all of their demands as a prec ondition to having any dialogue to begin with.
9. A day of Israelis at the buffet discussing their experiences among themselves and arriving at the unanimous conclusion that no progress can be made unless and until Israel repents for all its past sins and acquiesces to all the Palestinian demands.
10. A day of Israelis going back and issuing a press release that the talks were a resounding success and that huge strides have been made towards a reconciliation and that this shows that if it were not for the intransigence of the Israeli government, peace could have been had long ago, since the "real people on the ground" see eye to eye.

  • Thursday, January 09, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
JCPA has a very good analysis of how Israelis and Palestinian Arabs are viewing the current negotiations. Here is an excerpt, but the entire thing is a must-read:

The question, though, is whether the ratification of the 1967 border would entail the end of the dispute. Hopefully, the answer would be yes, with the United States putting its full weight behind the finality of the agreement.20 Yet we cannot ignore certain Palestinian positions which, if they do not change, are likely to generate crises even after an agreement is reached. For example, in an article posted prominently on Fatah’s website, the author discussed – uncharacteristically – the issue of the Jewish refugees. Zionism, according to this author, deliberately sowed terror in Iraq so as to frighten the Jews there and, eventually, settle them in Palestinian areas that were emptied of their residents, who then became refugees. Thus, the right of return is actually the right to return to lands that the United Nations allocated to the Arab state in the partition plan.21

What this means is that, from the Palestinians’ standpoint, the negotiations being held today are about the results of the 1967 war. The Palestinian state to be established along the 1967 lines is not intended to absorb the refugees from the 1948 lands; their proper place will be within the partition-plan borders. After “closing the file” on the 1967 borders, then, the “refugee file” will be opened, and the Palestinians will demand their return to the Arab state postulated by the partition plan. In other words, the real, intended border is not one along the 1967 lines, but the one of 1947.

An internal, strategic document formulated in the office of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, and posted on Palestinian websites in 2013,22 states that the aim of the talks is not to reach an agreement but, rather, to create an alibi for imposing a solution on Israel. According to this document, the Palestinians agreed to enter the talks only after receiving a written commitment from Kerry to support the Palestinian position on the 1967 lines, and after publication of the European Union’s statement that Israel is to be penalized for the settlements – meaning Europe’s recognition of the 1967 lines is to be imposed on Israel. It turns out, then, that the Palestinian strategy is not to reach an agreement with Israel but, instead, to create breaches in its relations with the United States, after already fostering Israel’s dispute with Europe.

Moreover, there have been repeated signs that the Palestinian leadership has claims to Israeli territory within the 1967 lines. In 1999, when Yasser Arafat tried to revive Palestinian territorial demands on the basis of the Partition Map that appears in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the PLO Observer, Nasser al-Kidwa, wrote an official letter to Secretary-General Kofi Anan in which he stated:

Israel must still explain to the international community the measures it took illegally to extend its laws and regulations to the territory it occupied in the war of 1948, beyond the territory allocated to the Jewish state in Resolution 181 (II).23

The PLO at the time was planning to replace the Oslo Accords with Resolution 181 and thereby extend Palestinian territorial claims. This was explained by the Palestinian minister Nabil Sha’ath, who said that it was his hope that the Palestinians would also seek to obtain land in Western Jerusalem and not just in Eastern Jerusalem.

This claim is being sustained to this day. PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi told Radio Palestine on January 8, 2014, that on the Jerusalem issue the Palestinians will also raise the matter of Palestinian properties in Western Jerusalem inside the 1967 lines. Palestinian sources have told this author that the files on Palestinian properties in Western Jerusalem were already prepared at Orient House by the late Feisal Husseini.

Abu Ala, who served as the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly and as a key Palestinian negotiator, stated in al-Hayat al-Judida on December 21, 1998: “It shall be emphasized that the [Palestinian] state has internationally recognized borders set in the [1947] partition resolution.”24

Palestinian reliance on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 continued under Mahmoud Abbas. In September 2011, Abbas spoke at the UN General Assembly and explained that he was applying for UN membership “on the basis of the 1967 borders.” But in the formal Palestinian submission to the UN, in which the Palestinian Authority sought membership, there is no reference whatsoever to the 1967 lines but only to Resolution 181 from 1947. There is a second reference to the 1988 Declaration of Independence that also was based on Resolution 181.25 Thus, there is considerable, cumulative evidence that the Palestinian leadership is maintaining claims to Israeli territory within the 1967 lines.

I had a post (with updates correcting some mistakes) noticing that Abbas didn't define the borders as the "1967 lines" in his formal bid for statehood but did mention the 1947 partition as a basis for legitimacy.
From Bloomberg:
Israel, seeking to tap recent natural-gas finds for export, plans to build a pipeline from the Dead Sea to the Jordanian border to supply its neighbor, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Ministry of Energy and Water Resources expects to begin work on the 15-kilometer (9-mile) link in 2015 and complete it in 2016, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The ministry commissioned the project on behalf of U.S. gas producer Noble Energy Inc. (NBL) and a Jordanian partner, they said.

The 2010 discovery of the offshore Leviathan field, coming after the nearby Tamar find, proved a bonanza for Israel, which expects the gas to meet its needs for a quarter of a century while also enabling exports. For Jordan, which has seen fuel imports from Egypt disrupted by pipeline bombings in Sinai, deliveries from Israel would help to boost security of supply.

An Israeli Energy Ministry official, who asked not to be identified, declined to comment, while calls to Jordan’s energy minister weren’t answered. A spokesman for Noble Energy in Tel Aviv declined to comment when contacted by phone.

Israel, which itself imported Egyptian gas until bombings cut deliveries, reached its first export agreement earlier this week, a 20-year deal to supply a planned Palestinian power station. Noble and its partners at Leviathan, the larger of the two fields, said they’ll get about $1.2 billion to send gas to the plant to be built in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

Partners in the offshore Tamar field, which include Houston-based Noble, also are in talks to sell gas to Jordanian potash plants for 15 years for $500 million to $700 million, Israel’s Calcalist business newspaper reported last month.

Jamal Sarayreh, the chairman of Jordan’s Arab Potash Co., declined to comment when contacted last week. Noble Chief Executive Officer Charles Davidson said in November the company would prefer to export Israeli gas to neighboring countries than to the Far East, which would require seaborne-tanker shipments.

“We will be able to market more gas regionally at lower capital cost because all of these regional markets are basically using pipes, and in some instances they’re connecting the pipes that already exist,” Davidson said.

The new pipeline will start at Sdom, according to the two people. It will be an extension to an existing link that brings gas to the Dead Sea Works Ltd. chemical plant there.
This is very big news, and it shows the importance of a strong economy to Israel's defensive posture.

Jordan (and Egypt) keep doing an interesting dance, publicly inciting hatred against Israel in their media but privately cooperating with the Jewish state. Deals like this strengthen existing peace agreements but they don't reduce the hate - and this seems to be a governmental decision to keep the old mentality of using Israel to divert attention from internal crises.

The contradictory messages cannot easily coexist, but widespread Arab antisemitism would not allow for the governments to act friendlier towards Israel in public. Note how no one will dare confirm any deals - publicizing them is a dangerous business when the Arab media is so invested in hating Israel and Jews.

Normalization with the Arab world will never happen, even if Israel signed a "peace plan" with the Arab League.  From Israel's perspective, the best that can ever be hoped for is detente, not peace. Deals like these (and you can be sure that there are negotiations to export gas to Egypt as well) help strengthen Israel's position in this detente, and other under-the-table agreements will be made, but there will never be peace in the way that Israelis yearn.

  • Thursday, January 09, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
This is the official list of items that Israel does not allow to be exported into Gaza.

The second list is of goods that can be exported for specific NGO projects, they require more paperwork.

Missile equipment and munitions have been strictly forbidden from entering into Gaza as declared in the Defense Export Control Order of 2008.

Controlled Dual Use Items:

1. Fertilizers or any mixture containing choleric potassium with concentrations greater than 5%.
2. Fibers or textiles containing carbon (carbon fibers or graphite fibers), including:
   a. Chopped carbon fibers.
   b. Carbon roving.
   c. Carbon strand.
   d. Carbon fabric tape.
3. Glass fiber-based raw materials, including:
   a. Chopped glass fibers.
   b. Glass roving
   c. Glass strand.
   d. Glass fabric tape.
   e. S-glass.
   f. E-glass.
4. Vessels.
5. Fibers or fabrics featuring polyethylene, also known as Dyneema.
6. Retro detection devices.
7. Gas tanks.
8. Drilling equipment.
9. Equipment for the production of water from drillings.
10. Vinyl esther resins.
11. Epoxy resins.
12. Hardeners for epoxy resins featuring chemical groups of durable or reliable types, including:
   a. DETA – diethylenetriamine.
   b. TETA – thiethylenetramine.
   c. AEP – aminoethylpiperazine.
   d. E-100-ethyleneamine.
   e. Jeffamine T-403.
   f. Catalyst 4,5,6,22,23,105, 140, 145,150,179,190,240.g. D.E.H 20,24,25,26,29,52,58,80,81,82,83,84,85,87.
   h. XZ 92740.00
13. Vinyl esther accelerants, including:
   a. DMA-dimethylaniline.
   b. Cobalt octoate.
   c. MEKP – methylethyl keyone peroxide.
   d. AAP – acetyl acetone peroxide.
   e. CuHP – cumene hydroperoxide.
14. M or H type HTPB, hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene.
15. Water disinfection materials – solutions with a concentration of over 11%.
16. TDI - Toluene diisocyanate.

Dual Use Items for Projects (that may be imported into Gaza by NGOs such as UNRWA)


  1. Portland cement (bulk or bags or drums).
  2. Natural aggregates, quarry aggregates and all foundation materials.
  3. Prepared concrete.
  4. Concrete elements and/or precast and/or tensed concrete.
  5. Steel elements and/construction products.
  6. Concrete for foundations and pillars of any diameter (including welded steel mesh).
  7. Steel cables of any thickness.
  8. Forms for construction elements of plastic or galvanized steel.
  9. Industrial forms for concrete pouring.
  10.  Beams from composite materials or plastic with a panel thickness of 4mm and thicker.
  11. Thermal insulation materials and/or products excluding roof tiles, plaster/mortar glue, mosaic tiles, building stone/coating stone/exterior stone.
  12. Concrete blocks, silicate, Ytong or equivalent (of any thickness).
  13. Building sealing materials or products which include Epoxy or polyurethane.
  14. Asphalt and its components (bitumen, emulsion) in bulk or in packages of any sort.
  15. Steel elements and/or steel working products for construction.
  16. Elements and/or products for channeling and drainage from precast concrete with diameters of over 1 meter.
  17. Trailers and/or shipping containers.
  18. Vehicles except for personal vehicles (not including 4X4 vehicles), including construction vehicles.
This is it.

Whenever anyone says that Israel is restricting medicines or fuel or medical equipment or pencils or anything else that is not on this list - they are lying.


  • Thursday, January 09, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
With English subtitles:



(h/t Yoel, Sarit)


Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

Follow by Email

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

subscribe via email

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Categories

#PayForSlay Abbas liar Academic fraud administrivia al-Qaeda algeria Alice Walker American Jews AmericanZionism Amnesty analysis anti-semitism anti-Zionism antisemitism apartheid Arab antisemitism arab refugees Arafat archaeology Ari Fuld art Ashrawi ASHREI B'tselem bahrain Balfour bbc BDS BDSFail Bedouin Beitunia beoz Bernie Sanders Biden history Birthright book review Brant Rosen breaking the silence Campus antisemitism Cardozo cartoon of the day Chakindas Chanukah Christians circumcision Clark Kent coexistence Community Standards conspiracy theories COVID-19 Cyprus Daled Amos Daphne Anson David Applebaum Davis report DCI-P Divest This double standards Egypt Elder gets results ElderToons Electronic Intifada Embassy EoZ Trump symposium eoz-symposium EoZNews eoztv Erekat Erekat lung transplant EU Euro-Mid Observer European antisemitism Facebook Facebook jail Fake Civilians 2014 Fake Civilians 2019 Farrakhan Fatah featured Features fisking flotilla Forest Rain Forward free gaza freedom of press palestinian style future martyr Gary Spedding gaza Gaza Platform George Galloway George Soros German Jewry Ghassan Daghlas gideon levy gilad shalit gisha Goldstone Report Good news Grapel Guardian guest post gunness Haaretz Hadassah hamas Hamas war crimes Hananya Naftali hasbara Hasby 2014 Hasby 2016 Hasby 2018 hate speech Hebron helen thomas hezbollah history Hizballah Holocaust Holocaust denial honor killing HRW Human Rights Humanitarian crisis humor huor Hypocrisy ICRC IDF IfNotNow Ilan Pappe Ilhan Omar impossible peace incitement indigenous Indonesia international law interview intransigence iran Iraq Islamic Judeophobia Islamism Israel Loves America Israeli culture Israeli high-tech J Street jabalya James Zogby jeremy bowen Jerusalem jewish fiction Jewish Voice for Peace jihad jimmy carter Joe Biden John Kerry jokes jonathan cook Jordan Joseph Massad Juan Cole Judaism Judea-Samaria Judean Rose Judith Butler Kairos Karl Vick Keith Ellison ken roth khalid amayreh Khaybar Know How to Answer Lebanon leftists Linda Sarsour Linkdump lumish mahmoud zahar Mairav Zonszein Malaysia Marc Lamont Hill Marjorie Taylor Greene max blumenthal Mazen Adi McGraw-Hill media bias Methodist Michael Lynk Michael Ross Miftah Missionaries moderate Islam Mohammed Assaf Mondoweiss moonbats Morocco Mudar Zahran music Muslim Brotherhood Naftali Bennett Nakba Nan Greer Nation of Islam Natural gas Nazi Netanyahu News nftp NGO Nick Cannon NIF Noah Phillips norpac NSU Matrix NYT Occupation offbeat olive oil Omar Barghouti Only in Israel Opinion Opinon oxfam PA corruption PalArab lies Palestine Papers pallywood pchr PCUSA Peace Now Peter Beinart Petra MB philosophy poetry Poland poll Poster Preoccupied Prisoners propaganda Proud to be Zionist Puar Purim purimshpiel Putin Qaradawi Qassam calendar Quora Rafah Ray Hanania real liberals RealJerusalemStreets reference Reuters Richard Falk Richard Landes Richard Silverstein Right of return Rivkah Lambert Adler Robert Werdine rogel alpher roger cohen roger waters Rutgers Saeb Erekat Sarah Schulman Saudi Arabia saudi vice self-death self-death palestinians Seth Rogen settlements sex crimes SFSU shechita sheikh tamimi Shelly Yachimovich Shujaiyeh Simchat Torah Simona Sharoni SodaStream South Africa Sovereignty Speech stamps Superman Syria Tarabin Temple Mount Terrorism This is Zionism Thomas Friedman TOI Tomer Ilan Trump Trump Lame Duck Test Tunisia Turkey UAE Accord UCI UK UN UNDP unesco unhrc UNICEF United Arab Emirates Unity unrwa UNRWA hate unrwa reports UNRWA-USA unwra Varda Vic Rosenthal Washington wikileaks work accident X-washing Y. Ben-David Yemen YMikarov zahran Ziesel zionist attack zoo Zionophobia Ziophobia Zvi

Blog Archive