October 2006 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

PalArab chaos reigns as everyone is buying weapons

A very revealing article in the Arabic (and not the English) side of the Palestine News Network. (I am doing my own paraphrasiing of the Google auto-translation to make it easier to read):

Qalqiliya - Palestinians are acquiring weapons not only to fight the occupation, but also because of the family disputes and clan clashes that have become more prominent, as well as the use of arms by the warring factions. This is resulting in ordinary Palestinian people acquiring weapons for self-defense in light of the chaos of security problems, the law and the lack of control by the government.

PNN reviews this phenomenon which is entrenched in Palestinian society and diminishes the chances for stability and the rule of law, and replaces it with the law of the jungle.

The rest of the article talks about the black market in weapons, apparently from Arabs in Israel; how the price has gone up as demand has increased lately so guns now cost three times what they cost at the height of the Intifada. Palestinian Arab families are vying to have the best weapons, and bullets are easy to smuggle in from Israel.

Families that cannot afford guns are buying hunting rifles which are manufactured locally by PalArabs.

300 weapons have gone into a single small village in the northern West Bank in anticipation of the coming chaos.

This pretty much proves that PalArab society is doomed. Putting thousands of weapons in the hands of a people who are trigger-happy to begin with, in a place where it is not even conceivable that there will ever be an effective police force or a working judicial and penal system, is a recipe for any Palestinian-controlled areas to become Somalia, with warlords and clans killing each other forever.

The very idea that this could be the nucleus for an effective state is utterly idiotic. We have an immature people who have no discipline and no self-control being given deadly toys. It is a hundred times worse than the most lawless inner-city ghettos in American history.

Which brings up the obvious but little-discussed fact: Even if all the political pieces fell into place, even if the most dovish Israeli government would give all the territories to a PalArab government that pledged unequivocal peace, the resulting Palestinian Arab state would not be tenable. No possible PA government could impose order over the PalArabs without being extraordinarily repressive. Civil war may not be assured, but deadly chaos most certainly is.

It is inevitable that the daily lives of Palestinian Arabs in any sort of independent state are going to be miserable and far, far worse than under "occupation."

But on the bright side - they can always blame the Jews!

Dead PalArabs that I missed - we're up to 142

Since I found the Palestine Human Rights Monitoring Group site, which also maintains a list of Palestinian Arabs who were violently killed by each other (or themselves), I am now compiling a list of deaths I had missed in my count since June 25. Here's what I have so far from late June to mid-September.

I am comparing these with names listed in PCHR, my sole source of PalArab self-deaths until I discovered other sources. It is possible that a couple of these are repeats and the names were spelled wildly differently, but I'm pretty sure I didn't record these deaths previously. In general PCHR records more than PHRMG but there are definitely some that PHRMG finds that PCHR did not record.

Tahiea Jirjawy Magazy Camp shooting 28/6/2006 dead cause bullet in the chest
Zaher Salman Mhareka 27 Salfeet Family Dispute 1/7/2006 dead cause bullet in head from Tha'r Sleman Moadi when he was in barber and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Tha'r Sleman Moadi 26 Salfeet Family Dispute 1/7/2006 dead cause bullet in chest from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Zaher Sleman 27 Salfeet shooting 2/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Basel Tha'r 40 Biet Lahia gun fire 1/7/2006 dead during family dispute
Tha'r Madi 25 salfeet shooting 1/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Faiq Ata Madi 50 Salfeet shooting 1/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Moatasim Qudeih Khan Younis Arm Clashes 16/8/2006 Killed in arm clashes between members of Fatah and Hamas activities.
Mahmoud Amin Awad Jaber 43 Kufur Laqif east of Qalqilia Misuse of Weapons 19/8/2006 Killed accidently by a bullet fired toward him
Wasim Nasim Salman El Masri 18 Khan Younis Police 28/8/2006 Killed by a bullet in the abdomen in Khan Younis
Ra'ed Al Natoor Nablus shooting 9/9/2006 Unknown gun men

So this adds 11 more to the count, which has now hit 141.

UPDATE: 142.

A 30-year-old woman was killed and her five-year old daughter critically wounded after being shot in their home in Kalanswa, Zaka reported Monday night.

The girl was evacuated to Beilinson Hospital for treatment.

Police speculated that the woman, Fatama Salama and her daughter, were shot due to an unpaid debt and that the father of the family was likely the target.

According to Israel Radio, a grenade was thrown into the family's home some months ago.

Israel "Not Eligible for Protection under International Humanitarian Law"

Anyone doubting the hypocrisy of the Palestinian Arab "human rights" groups need only to look at the description of (yet another) international conference about PalArabs:

PCHR and International Federation for Human Rights, in cooperation with a number of Palestinian, Israeli, Arab and international human rights organizations; civil society organizations; solidarity groups with the Palestinian people; and human rights lawyers, academics and experts, will organize a conference on international protection for Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in the period 13-15 December 2006 in Geneva. The conference seeks to lobby the Swiss Government as Depository of the Fourth Geneva Convention to convene a meeting of the High Contracting Parties to task a strong international protection force within the OPT to protect Palestinian civilians and their property.

The idea of organizing this conference emerged for two reasons:

First, there has been unprecedented deterioration in the situation in the OPT, under which crimes committed by IOF against Palestinian civilians have dramatically increased to include killings, destruction of property and economic infrastructure and a total siege mainly targeting Palestinian civilians.

Second, the international community tasked a strong international force consisting of 15,000 soldiers, mostly European, in response to an Israeli demand to protect Israel after a 34-day war against Lebanon and Hizbullah, although Israel is a nuclear country, which has the fourth strongest army in the world, and it is not eligible for protection under international humanitarian law.

The amount of hypocrisy and falsehood here is stunning:

Even though the PCHR itself reports on PalArab infighting and security chaos in the territories, this conference that is supposedly meant to protect Palestinian Arabs completely ignores this major source of their misery. It would not be a good idea to tell the world that Arabs treat fellow Arabs worse than Israelis do.
For the "fourth strongest army in the world" that is supposedly "targeting" Palestinian Arab civilians, they sure do a bad job. Hell, yesterday Arabs killed more people in Iraq than the IDF killed in weeks.
The last paragraph quoted shows the sheer bigotry of these supposed defenders of "human rights." They are saying explicitly that Jews do not have the right to be defended according to their twisted interpretation of international law. Besides the absurdity of framing the UN as a pro-Israeli force in Lebanon that is solely meant to protect Israelis, these moral midgets make up their own arbitrary rules whereby, effectively, Jewish Israeli is allowed, or supposed, to be killed.

A corrolary to this is that Hezbollah has every right to target Israeli Jewish civilians with cluster munitions, according to the PCHR. Any defensive move Israel does is, by their definition, illegal.

In other words, these people who claim to be supporters of human rights are defining Jewish Israelis as being subhuman who do not enjoy any human rights at all.

Just because someone says they are part of a "human rights" organization does not make them moral. As we can see here, the most immoral and twisted thinking can find a pleasant home as it hides behind high-minded platitudes about "human rights" that are effectively not about human rights at all, but about the abrogation of the human rights of Jews.

Tale of two tortures

From the Iranian Radio Broadcast Service:

The human right groups have slammed U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney’s allegations in support of torture.
In a recent interview with one of the American TV channels, Cheney approved the worst kind of torture in which the prisoner practically struggles between life and death.

From the historic Washington Post archives:

CRUCIFIED BY THE ARABS
The Washington Post (1877-1954) - Washington, D.C.
Author: Special Cable to The Washington Post.
Date: Nov 30, 1911
Start Page: 1
Document Types: front_page
Text Word Count: 204

Rome, Nov. 29. -- A party of officers, surgeons, and reporters who have been searching the places in Tripoli retaken by the Italians on November 26 found many bodies of Italian victims of the fighting of October 23.... These bodies had been atrociously mutilated. Some of the victims had been crucified and their eyelids stitched so that they could not close them. Some had been buried to their arm pits, their hands lopped off and their eyes gouged out. The agonized faces of many of them suggest that they had endured awful torture before death came.

Car thefts = "resistance?"

I don't want to read too much into an auto-translated word, but an article in the Arabic "Palestine News Network" speaking about the rash of car thefts by Palestinian Arabs against Israelis, refers to the thefts as "resistance."

Both the Google and WorldLingo language tools translated it the same way.

As we've said before, PalArab leaders look at the conflict as a "zero sum game" while Israelis tend to look for solutions that are win/win. Now, we know that "resistance" is a keyword by the PalArabs to justify terror (as well as to justify why they treat their own people so badly). Given the zero-sum mentality, then petty crimes against Israelis become a low-level "resistance" as well.

This is just conjecture but it is plausible. I would appreciate it if someone who knows Arabic could translate the first paragraph for me at the original site.

Anti-semites can't stomach Neturei Karta

Too repulsive to post in full, too funny not to link.

A Jew-hating moron named Mark Glenn decides that the Neturei Karta's anti-Zionism is not authentic enough for him - because they still believe in the Talmud:

Then ‘the good Rabbi,’ (in typical self-absorbed Jewish fashion) not content with his 45 minutes of fame, decided that the remarks I made about his organization and about the Talmud would not be left out there as the last word, and thus, in typical Jewish fashion, –meaning nervy–got up there, and amidst a performance of lisping, spitting, and bobbing back and forth, actually tried to sell the idea to us stupid, illiterate Goyim that the Talmud was a book of ‘peace and love’.
…peace and love. The Talmud, with its scurrilous description of Jesus and Mary, the sanctioning of murder, lying, theft and genocide was a book of peace and love…

…and then, there it was waaaaay back there in the deepest recesses of the conference hall, like distant thunder or like a waft of air that carries with it the smell of something beautiful to behold, that wonderful word that needed to be said…

….’boooooh!’ followed by another and then another, and a few other comments such as ‘just sit down and shut up, we don’t want to hear it!’

And I smiled, not just with my cheeks, but with all of it, my wrinkling eyes, my bared teeth and all of my soul. He blew it. He let the cat out of the bag. Had he remained seated and took his beatings like a man instead getting back up there and trying to defend the indefensible in the typically Jewish way, meaning whiny, effeminate, and Woody Allenesque, then he might have had a chance.

But not now. He blew it and he knew it and we all knew it.

And when I came out of the men’s room wiping the tears away from my dark, semitic eyes, there they were, with their pale skin, reddish hair and bluish eyes, the Men in Black, the ‘good Rabbis’ from Neturei Karta, standing right in front of me, staring at me very intently. They both turned and began to walk away from the conference, and I could not help but notice something strange…Each of them struck at his breast with his fist, as if there were an imaginary knife that was not seen.

I had heard of something like this before, and I believe that it is something called ‘The Pulsa de Nura’ which is a curse within Talmudic Judaism that is hurled at those who are deemed as enemies of the Jews…

The sheer self-congratulatory air of Glenn, who fashions himself a Talmudic expert, is quite amusing, despite his clear and unadulterated hate which is only matched by his ignorance. But it is people like this who do more to disprove the "anti-Zionist is not anti-semite" chorus than any number of scholarly articles.

Of course, this bigoted ignorant hateful drivel was linked to by Google "News."

A 43-year old man near Nablus (not named) and 45-year old Sami Mutawe of Khan Younis were killed by more of those mysterious "unidentified gunmen" that seem to proliferate in PalArab areas.
A Hamas terrorist died while digging a tunnel to facilitate the murder of Jews.
A man was seriously injured from gunhots that were being fired to celebrate a wedding. Notably, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights was quoted in this article but the website itself has not been updated to mention any of the murders or injuries since October 19th. This means that they have not reported on at least 12 dead PalArabs that I managed to find out about through mostly Arabic sources. Which makes me wonder how many I have missed since I started the count.

Also, if this wedding victim dies, chances are pretty good I won't be able to find out about it.

Anyway, my count of PalArabs violently killed by each other since Operation Summer Rains is now at 129. And my count of NGOs, newspapers, wire services, charities, human rights organizations and Palestinian Arab ministries who keep track of these things remains at zero (PCHR being the exception that proves the rule.)

UPDATE: I did find another source that tries to count PalArabs killed by each other, the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. But it is also woefully inadequate - they only count 73 in the same time period that I counted about 105. But it is another source to look at, as they do list names.

So there are two organizations that try to keep a count, but neither has updated their stats in a couple of weeks.

UPDATE 2: 130.

(IsraelNN.com) An Arab who was trying to steal at the site of the former Palestinian Authority (PA) airport near Rafiah was killed Sunday evening. PA sources claimed that Israeli soldiers were operating in the area and opened fire after PA police fired over the heads of the thief.

IDF spokesmen stated they know nothing of the incident and that Israeli soldiers were not in the area.

The Nation: Give terrorists a chance

Occasionally I make a quick foray to the Left and get really, really scared.

In an article just posted at The Nation, Stephen Glain waxes poetic about the wonderful Muslim Brotherhood:

Kemal Helbawy is a founding member of the Muslim Association of Britain and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian-based Islamist movement with chapters throughout the Islamic world, including Hamas in the Palestinian territories. It comprises the largest opposition bloc in the Egyptian parliament, with eighty-eight seats, and it administers a network of social services that is far more efficient and responsive than those provided by the state. Brotherhood leaders have been at the vanguard of Egypt's grassroots push for political reform, consistent with the Bush Administration's policy of democratizing the Middle East.
But on October 18, Helbawy found out what all that hard work and credibility is worth, at least as far as the White House is concerned. The London-based religious scholar was tightly buckled into his aisle seat on an American Airlines flight bound for New York, where he was to be the lead speaker at a conference on the Muslim Brotherhood. Within minutes after leaving the gate, the flight captain announced a departure delay and the aircraft was towed back. Helbaway was asked to come forward, where he was met by an official of the US Department of Homeland Security and informed he had been rendered inadmissible for entry to the United States without a visa issued by the US embassy in London.

It didn't matter to the agent that, as a British citizen, the 80-year-old Helbawy did not require a visa, nor that Helbawy had traveled frequently to the United States a decade ago as part of a university lecture series. Orders were orders, and Helbawy was escorted off the plane.

Now, what reason could the evil Bush administration possibly have for not wanting a member of this social-services organization to visit the US?

The State Department would not say why Helbawy was barred from the United States. Increasingly, however, the Bush Administration is using broad interpretation of the USA Patriot Act to keep out foreign scholars critical of White House policies. According to State Department documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the act's "ideological exclusion" provision may apply to anyone who "endorses or espouses" terrorism or who voices "irresponsible expressions of opinions."

Of course - it is because the Bush administration is fascist and does not allow people like Glain to make their opinions known!

Nothing to do with the fact that every major terror group is descended from the Muslim Brotherhood. Nothing to do with the fact that the "moderation" that Glain imagines the Brotherhood espouses is only in relation to people who explicitly call for genocide of Jews, while the Brotherhood is only implicit. Nothing to do with the fact that these Islamists want to establish a world under Shari'a law where Glaim's wife will be forced to cover up, where Christians and Jews pay a poll tax and where Israel will not exist.

In taking on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Bush Administration has aligned itself against the most powerful and authentic political movement in the Arab world. Established in 1928 in opposition to foreign occupation and Zionism, the Brotherhood is the closest thing to an established, centrist party in an Arab world that over the years has shifted rightward on a riptide of outrage. Egyptians are drawn in by the group's message of moderation and tolerance and by their contempt for US Middle East policy, which includes support of Hosni Mubarak, the country's brutal, secular president. The group renounced violence decades ago and has condemned Osama bin Laden and his acolytes as apostates. It is not on the US list of terrorist organizations and gets high praise from many Egyptians--secular as well as religious, Christian as well as Muslim--for its civic-mindedness.

No one is arguing that the Egyptian government is not corrupt, but to pretend that the Brotherhood is truly interested in democracy is absurd - shari'a is not compatible with democracy as we know it, but for Islamists to use it as a means to gain power is fine with them.

Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are all ideological descendents of the Brotherhood, and to willfully ignore that in order to pretend that the MB is a progressive, democratic movement is shortsighted and dangerous. It is also a little hypocritical to argue for "realpolitik" in dealing with the Brotherhood but to toss off the actual current leader of Egypt Mubarak as an evil despot that should not be spoken to. And the naivete involved in believing the MB when they say they are moderate is breathtaking.

To think that the mainstream Left in the US has these beliefs is more than frightening.

Evil settlers do another horrendous crime

The worst possible thing has happened to the PalArab cause:

Jews stepped in and bought ambulance supplies for a Palestinian Arab town in the territories that needed them desperately.

Not only that, but they did it when the Palestinian Arab so-called "leadership" told them that they can't help them and need to "find another donor."

Not only that, but the Jews who bought the equipment are "ultra-Orthodox."

Not only that, but they are ultra-orthodox settlers.

Here's the whole, sorry episode:

Thursday, residents of the Modeiin Elite settlement donated NIS 30,000 worth of medical equipment to an ambulance from the neighboring Palestinian village of Naleen.

The ambulance itself was purchased by village residents, but they didn't have enough money for equipment inside the ambulance. Resident Husseini Nafar said that they originally appealed to Palestinian Authority sources, who told them to "find another donor".

Their next appeal was made to head of Modeiin Elite's security Shuky Guterman, who remains in constant contact with village residents. "In the current situation, there's not much for the ambulance to do other than hauling dead people," he was told.

The ambulance did not even have a gurney and all of the drugs inside had expired. Town mayor Yakov Guterman, a charity organization, and residents of the settlement immediately took action to rectify the situation.

A ceremony in honor of the donation - coordinated by the IDF's coordination and liaison branch - was held at the Modeiin Elite fire station, which afforded village residents a view across the fence.

A delegation from Naleen, including village mayor Muhammad Srur, was escorted through the nearest crossing by IDF representatives.

Modeiin's mayor, the first speaker at the event, emphasized that "saving lives is important to both faiths and is mentioned both in the Torah and the Quran. We hope that the people in Naleen will have cause to use the ambulance for happy occasions such as births."

"Neither the left or right-wing can create discourse between us and our neighbors, particularly Naleen," Guterman continued, recounting that some thousand village residents work in Modeiin Elite, thus creating a daily connection between the villages.

Husseini Nafar, the leader of one of the village clans, also spoke and asked in his speech "to stop the building of the fence that will disrupt our life. We aren't willing to be separated from Hashmonaim and Modeiin Elite.

So folks who are routinely described as the most evil, racist people on the planet do more to help the PalArab people than their "leaders" do. The evil settlers employ a thousand of them, they give them medicines and medical equipment, and they treat them like respectable human beings.

It is only a matter of time before some PalArab terrorist, suffering from cognitive dissonance, will attempt to blow up the Jews of Modiin Elite for having the audacity to do such a shameful act that offends Arab honor.

If you think I am joking, look at the Fatah attack on the Efrat medical center in March, 2002. Efrat had raised thousands of dollars for its neighboring Arab villages to have decent medical care and was rewarded with a suicide bombing against the very people who helped the Arabs the most:

In January, without warning, Channel One of Moscow filmed footage in the Arab villages near Efrat, expecting to hear stories about the 'Israeli occupation' and tensions between the small Arab village and the 16 expanding Jewish settlements of Efrat and the Etzion bloc. However, the Russian TV crew heard the opposite message. They heard only praise for the people of Efrat and the Etzion bloc of settlements and seething anger against Arafat and the "PLO occupation" of their fellow Palestinian Arab brethren in the Bethlehem region. Family after family in these Arab villages told Russian TV that they were getting the best medical treatment possible from their friends in Efrat, while their families in Bethlehem had to bribe officials just to get the basics of treatment from the PA. They also spoke with pride about the school that Efrat had built for them.

All of this was aired on Russian TV Channel One very recently. It would seem that the PA was watching. The clear purpose of the recent suicide bombing attack was to disrupt the existing, proper relationship between the Jewish city and the nearby Arab villages. Yet, despite the threats to their lives from Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, the people of the Arab villages near Efrat gathered in an emergency town meeting to issue a statement denouncing the attack in the strongest of terms.

It surprised nobody in those Arab villages that Arafat's police force took credit for the attacks.

I won!

Thanks to the Watcher's Council for voting for my article "Archaeological Temple Artifacts Drive PalArabs Crazy" as this week's best non-council link!

Thanks also to ShrinkWrapped for nominating me, and allowing me to publicly correct my wrong guess in that matter.

PalArabic articles of note

Some things that caught my eye as I continue to over-use Google's auto-translate seature:

WAFA reports that A leader of the first intifada, named Alaa Aldali, was assassinated by another PalArab, I think in Khan Younis. Fatah condemned the killing (Fatah is mistranslated as "open", as apparently it is cognate to the Hebrew "P T KH" root which also means "open.")
Al-Quds mentions that another Arab named Ala Swaileh was also shot and killed in Tulkarem on the eve of the Eid celebrations. His friends responded by smashing dozens of shops, although of course that doesnt contribute to the economic crisis in the territories, because that is wholly Israel's fault. (Our count of violently killed PalArabs by PalArabs is now at 126.)
A Falasteen writer is taking notes from the MoveOn crowd, with a classic headline: "Crazy Bush is waging a total war to destroy the world"
Al-Manar points out that Israelis (or, as the headline says, Jews) are investing in Bahrain and getting chummy with the royal family there. Surprisingly, this story is reported straight.

Cultural immaturity of Islam

Muslims for a Safer America took a survey of American Muslims at an Islamic Society of North America convention in September. While this is not a scientific survey, it is probably a good representation of the thoughts of the more committed Muslims of America who are likely to attend these sorts of conventions.

The conclusion one can draw from this survey is that educated, Western Muslims are living in a complete fantasy world, where they are the perpetual victims and have no responsibility for any problems. In their twisted universe, Muslims didn't do any terror attacks, except maybe London; the US routinely lies and goes to extreme lengths to make Muslims look bad, and in fact the US is at war with Islam itself.

These paranoid fantasies do not come out of a vacuum. They are a direct result of the mindset of Islam, where the ascendancy of the West since the Middle Ages is a direct contradiction to the Islamic assumption that its philosophy was inherently superior. The fact that Islam descended into third-world status and irrelevance for centuries is a source of deep anguish and embarrassment. The more recent reinvigoration of Islam due to petrodollars has not seeped into this collective shame, where Andalusia is still mourned. Muslims are thirsty for relevance and evidence that their beliefs are superior to others'.

The US is everything that Islam is not. This is not a completely good thing - there are definite problems in American society, and some aspects of Islam are praiseworthy. But in real terms, the US dominance of the world scene, militarily and culturally and economically, is a focus for Muslim anger (which is simply a manifestation of embarrassment.)

Today's Muslims would rather react with fear, denial and paranoia to the challenges of the modern world symbolized by the US, rather than introspection about how modern Muslims can evolve Islam to meet today's challenges.

In many ways, it is a cultural immaturity. A mature culture is one that is secure in its own beliefs and confident enough that it can hold its own in the marketplace of ideas. An immature culture is fearful of other beliefs and standards and not certain of the validity of its own. The denial, projection and paranoia are all logical outcomes of this core insecurity.

Immature cultures crave relevance. Lately, the Arabic WAFA website has been filled with articles about Mahmoud Abbas taking telephone calls from leaders of some nations, like Spain or Jordan or Zambia. These press releases are a way to shout to the world that Abbas himself is a world leader, in that he can speak to other world leaders as equals. In reality, he looks more like an autograph seeker, basking in the reflected glory of a Tom Cruise. But this obsession is an indication of his desperate quest for relevance, and ironically it is a true indication of his irrelevance.

Terror is just a manifestation of this quest for relevance. It is the equivalent of a temper tantrum from a two-year old with deadly weapons. If you have insulted me, if you have disrespected me, if you have ignored me - then I will make you pay.

Another example of this immaturity: Muslims are rightly concerned with the saturation of sex in American culture. One cannot look at a sitcom nowadays without being barraged with fairly explicit sexual messages. They are offended by this part of American culture, and they have a right to be.

Now, it just so happens that a large number of Christians are equally offended by the same problem. There are far more Christians in the US than Muslims. Why doesn't organized Islam try to reach out to other groups and deal with what is clearly a core issue for them? Mature groups would work together to reach a common goal. But one gets the impression from Muslims that they would never work with others - whether the reason is xenophobia or an unwillingness to compromise on small issues to gain a greater victory, either way it is a result of immaturity.

There is no more pluralistic society than America. People from countless cultures, religions and nations manage to live here and thrive. America doesn't just tolerate diversity, it celebrates it. It isn't perfect but in American culture, success and hard work are rewarded. To think that the US is targeting Islam is the height of delusion. This delusion is not just psychotic but it is dangerous, and ultimately it is more dangerous to Islam than to the West. The unspoken American contract is that you can do your own thing as long as you are one of us, and American Muslims do not consider themselves American nearly as much as they consider themselves Muslim.

Islam needs to grow up, and one way or another it will have to. The question is how many innocent people will die as it struggles through adolescence.

Academic wackjob of the day

Daniel McGowan, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, just wrote an article at Counterpunch vilifying Elie Wiesel.

He also is a supporter of "RighteousJews.org", where a "righteous Jew" is anyone who wants Israel to be replaced with Palestine and who thinks that the idea of a Jewish state is unforgivably racist, while any number of Muslim states are just fine.

He is obsessed with Deir Yassin, thinking it is on par with Jewish suffering throughout history, and is working to build a memorial.

He wrote a letter to the editor pretending to condemn Wafa Idris' suicide bombing but concluding "The most chilling thing about Wafa Idris and her final act as a Palestinian martyr is the energy, hope, and pride she has given her people, and the realization by others that Israel's helicopter gunships, F-16s, and atomic weapons cannot stop those who will follow her in their struggle for human rights."

We have here another example of someone who toiled anonymously in academia but found some measure of fame by bashing Israel, and the feedback loop goes on, making him want to say more and more outrageous things for his newfound terror-supporting audience.

And his obscure college has a web page praising him and his activities as well, because his fame extends to them.

Weasel watching

I want to thank those on the Watcher's Council who have nominated articles of mine for the weekly Watcher of Weasels awards. (Presumably, the nominators are AbbaGav and/or Soccer Dad.)

This week, I was nominated for "Archaeological Temple Artifacts Drive PalArabs Crazy".

Last week, I was nominated for "Very Interesting Arabic Editorial in Falasteen" (which Carl very nicely wrote about.)

I was nominated in the past as well, for "Abbas Is Now the 'Political Wing' of Hamas" and "The Perfect Weapon".

Though I haven't won yet, I appreciate the nominations and votes from the august Council members.

West ignores Qods Day threats in Iran - against America

From the New York Sun:

It is disturbing when the entire leadership of one nation, along with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, comes out with celebrations and parades every year that call for the annihilation of another country.

It is more twisted that no world leaders or international bodies, including the United Nations, have denounced the activities surrounding Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan.
Isfahan University's Mechanical Energy College took first place in a Quds Day competition for its design of a pilotless plane that can be used for "suicide attacks." The director of the Iranian Broadcasting Organization of Music Production, Mohammad Mirzamani, composed a symphony dedicated to "the victory over the Zionist regime," and the country's religious Web logs were told to report on all the festivities.
Iranian press outlets featured hundreds of photographs from the celebrations in Tehran. Among the notable scenes captured were children in Condoleezza Rice costumes; effigies of President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert, and Prime Minister Blair being lit on fire and dragged through the streets; the burning of American and Israeli flags; and hundreds of posters of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah featuring the caption "I swear to Allah that Israel is weaker than [a] spider house." The posters called for a boycott of such "Israeli" goods as McDonald's, Kit Kat bars, Intel, L'Oreal, Nestlé, Disney, and Marlboro.

Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his Quds Day speech under a banner that read, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the world." He described the holiday as "a day for confrontation between the Islamic faith with the global arrogance."

The words "the Zionist regime is a cancerous gland that needs to be uprooted" were written in a communiqué from the Iranian Foreign Ministry in honor of the holiday. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki held a meeting for other Islamic countries' ambassadors to Iran and told them that Israel's existence would be shattered and that death bells were tolling for the Zionists. At the meeting, the Palestinian Arab ambassador to Tehran, Salah Zawawi, said, "The day for the liberation of Quds Day is close at hand."

A who's who of the Iranian leadership marched in the main Quds Day parade before crowds chanting "death to Israel" and "death to America." The marchers included a former Iranian president, Mohammed Khatemi, and a spokesman for the parliament presidency board, Mohsen Kouhkan, who predicted a quick "final and total defeat of America and the Zionist regime."

The chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, praised "the fasting people taking part in the rally [who] are chanting slogans such as ‘death to America' and ‘death to Israel.'"

"The world arrogance and Zionism today are shivering from Muslim vigilance and are on the threshold of annihilation," he added.

Information Minister Hholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei explained that the holiday "is a proper occasion for people to declare their hatred of America and Israel," while a representative of the Islamic Consulate Assembly, Ahmad Pish-bin, promised that the "final defeat for world arrogance" is coming. ["World arrogance" is the consistent keyword for the United States. -EoZ]

We have a nation of 70 million people being incited daily to a holy war against America, but to refer to their leaders as "evil" gets nothing but smirks from the oh-so-sophisticated intelligentsia who patronizingly say that the world is much more complicated for simple concepts like "good" and "evil."

A couple of weeks ago, on Bill Maher's program, Danielle Pletka mentioned that Iran has threatened America. Maher said she was wrong, and that it only threatened Israel, and when she reiterated it he said "I missed that one," while Ben Affleck kept on getting crazed looks in his eyes as he whined that the world is "complicated". The audience was equally clueless - because the media completely ignores things like these massive rallies in Iran, or spins them as being only anti-Israel.

Of course, these same supposed sophisticates are targets as well. But they prefer to read the NYTimes over the NYSun, and any news that doesn't make it in the Times is not fit to print.

Hezbollah deputy: "Judaism is great, but Jews are pretty bad"

Good thing we have Hezbollah experts to clear up these terrible misconceptions.

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Hizbullah Deputy Secretary-General Sheik Naim Qassem, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on October 17, 2006.
Interviewer: Do you distinguish between Judaism, as a monotheistic religion, and Zionism, even though many Koranic verses refer to the Jews in a somewhat negative manner? They are depicted as miserly and cowardly, as the murderers of the prophets, as people who violate agreements, as usurers, or as people who use corruption to achieve their ends. Do you distinguish between Zionism and Judaism?
Sheik Naim Qassem: When the Koran talks about the Jews, and says: "You will find that the people most hostile to the believers are the Jews and the polytheists," it is describing the general condition of the Jews. In general, the Jewish path in history is replete with problems, such as hostility, slander, schemes, and conspiracies, going against human reality, and so on. When the Koran talks about the Jews, it is not referring to Judaism. Judaism, as a divine message, is part of the holy writings. Therefore, when the Koran talks about "the People of the Book," it is referring to the Jews, the Christians, and others of the People of the Book. Therefore, today, when we face the Israeli entity, when I when we concentrate on Zionism, and we refer to this entity, which was established through plunder, and to these Jews who defend this entity, we do not mean to get into a cultural or intellectual debate, which might conceal the facts. Today, if we say "the Jews," some will say that we refer to the religion, whereas we are referring to the people called Jews. We are not referring to their religion, but to them themselves. Therefore we often use words like "the Zionists" and "the entity" because we do not recognize it to be a state, and we do not recognize that they have such a right. As you know, to this day Israel has no [official] borders. Therefore, we prefer to talk about an "entity" and not a state. We prefer to talk about "Zionists" and "Israelis," instead of "Jews," to avoid confusion. Yet there is nothing wrong with using the term "Jewish entity" when referring to the sinning Jews who cause harm to humanity.

Half of young PalArabs want to get the hell out

The current Christian Science Monitor mentions that one third of the Palestinian Arabs and over half of the younger PalArabs want to emigrate to somewhere else.

A growing number of Palestinians are openly saying they'd like to leave the West Bank and Gaza if given the chance, raising concern about the possibility of a Palestinian brain drain. The sentiment, which flouts the long-held Palestinian belief that Israeli occupation can only be resisted by staying put, is yet another indication of the deepening despair since Hamas was elected to run the government.

Birzeit University pollster Nader Said, who has monitored emigration attitudes for 12 years, says the percentage of Palestinians willing to relocate once hovered just below 20 percent. When that figure jumped to 32 percent in a September survey, Mr. Said says he was shocked.

Even more telling, adds Said, is that the percentage surges to 44 percent among Palestinians in their 20s and 30s. Among young men, it surges beyond 50 percent.

Malik Shawwa, a consultant specializing in obtaining Canadian visas, says his workload has jumped by two-thirds over the past seven months as more Palestinians ask about leaving. "This is the most important subject in the Palestinian territories," he says. "It's not just a matter of a lack of jobs. It's the situation. They're not secure. They don't trust the government."

It seems that a mere generation of Palestinian Arab history is not enough to instill a deep love of the land. (The majority of today's self-proclaimed "Palestinians'" families emigrated to the area from other countries in the early 20th century in reaction to the phenomenal economic growth as a result of the Zionists.)

As I have mentioned before, most PalArabs just want to live in peace and dignity anywhere, and their "leaders" have a vested interest in keeping them miserable and close to Israel because their goal has nothing to do with what is best for the Palestinian Arabs themselves and everything to do with keeping themselves in power and trying to destroy Israel.

As it stands, if Palestinian Arabs would be welcomed with open arms and equal rights in other Arab countries or elsewhere, a large number would emigrate tomorrow. The idea that they can only be in Palestine is a fiction designed to pressure Israel. And the entire Palestinian Arab media machine is dedicated to this fiction.

It is ironic that supporters of the terrorists will write long articles about the "right" of PalArabs to "return" to Israel but will actively work against their right to move anywhere else in the world.

UPI has a reading comprehension problem

In an interview in Der Spiegel, Mahmoud al-Zahar reiterates Hamas' opposition to recognizing Israel. He makes it very clear that he is against Israel's existence and even suggests that Jews all pack up and move to Europe.

But notice how UPI synopsizes a portion of the interview:

In an interview, Mahmoud al-Zahar acknowledged there were differences within Hamas on the issue of recognizing Israeli sovereignty, "But the big majority supports the resistance" to a two-state solution.

Notice what UPI puts outside the quotes - it thinks that "resistance" means political resistance to a two-state solution. (And the sentence can also be read to mean the exact opposite, that they support the resistance in order to achieve a two-state solution.)

Anyone who ever read anything about Hamas (or any PalArab organization) knows that "resistance" means "terror attacks" (as well as attacks against the IDF, as they never distinguish between the two.)

For UPI to downplay a Hamas official's clear threat to destroy Israel is reprehensible.

Haveil Havalim #90 finally out!

It may be late, but it is great!

Soccer Dad hosts this week's Haveil Havalim, collection of the best of the JBlogosphere. He also kindly included 2 of my 3 posts on "Qods Day."

Check it out!

Pseudo-scholarly Jew-hatred

It is worth skimming this long, boring and heavily footnoted article in the far-left "People's Voice" webrag. (It evidently also was propagated to Al-Jazeerah.info.) Written by Curtis Maynard, one of those people whose entire existence seems to depend on vilifying Israel and Jews in articles written for publications that will publish anything, it breaks no new ground, but it shows that Jew-haters will desperately try to justify their hate with an avalanche of footnotes that they think can substitute for thought.

The author starts off by admitting that the dictionary definition of anti-Semitism is indeed Jew-hatred, and then goes on to disagree with the definition because Arabs are semites. One wonders if he uses "awful" and "awesome" as synonyms.

The writer then descends into absurdity, where he reviews a book by Joseph Bendersky that describes the latent and explicit anti-semitism of the US Army in the first half of the 20th century. Maynard mentions some of the generals who made statements against Jews, including Patton, and then expands it to other prominent Americans who made bigoted statements as well.

Maynard then quotes a critique of that book that mentions the background of the Army's anti-semitic statements, putting it in the context of the times. In no way was the critique itself anti-semitic, from what I can tell.

But Maynard then goes off into bizarro land, saying that if this book was subject to scholarly criticism, then somehow Jew-hatred must be justified. He brings as "proof" the more recent letter written by "5000" Russian "academics" that recommended closing all Jewish institutions in Russia (it was in fact 500 Russians), and then he ends off his huge article with this whopper:

In the end, the reader should take into consideration the fact that numerous seemingly intelligent, educated and patriotic Americans have believed that Jews for whatever reason have accumulated a considerable amount of influence in the United States and elsewhere around the world in a variety of different ways, through banking, the stock market, the news media, government, etc… it is up to the reader to decide if each and everyone of them was a complete crackpot, crank, racist and/or anti-Semite.

In the end, this 7500 word article boils down to the argument that "thousands of Jew-haters cannot be wrong."

More tellingly, the cartoon that was used to illustrate the article subconsciously shows the truth about today's anti-semitism far better than any number of quasi-intellectual arguments:

Naked Jew-hatred still exists, today, in the US. And its proponents are not shy about expressing it and justifying it. Just like the expression "anti-semitism" itself was coined to create a pseudo-scholarly aura around what was simply hate, so do today's anti-semites use the pretense of scholarship to justify their poisonous opinions.

Anti-semitism as a career move

A well-known Jewish Israel-basher and anti-semite, Gilad Atzmon, has generated some controversy by playing jazz saxophone at a club in England.

Thinking himself hilarious, and perhaps showing some Borat envy, he created a fictional character named Artie Fishel who is his caricature of everything wrong about Jews. Artie believes that jazz was created by Jews and anyone who denies it is an anti-semite:

Artie: What do you mean? Are you a Jazz denier? Don’t you know that where jazz is coming from? Jazz is Jewish, Zwing is Jewish. Just get use to it. Do you want another Shoa, and then the another Schindler Liszt? Let’s stop right there. We ask for our music back, no more, no less.

Angie: But, Artie, jazz had its origins in America dating back to a time when former slaves were free to – never mind. Why don’t you introduce us to the musicians in the Promised Band?

Artie: Of course, I love to talk about us! I, myself, play the Zaxophon und Schwartzephon, what some people call the misery stick, what the goyim call clarinet. From time to time I zing as well. Hoy, I have such a beautiful voice, don’t you think so? Angie, why do you laugh? Don’t you like my voice? Anyway, you are an anti Semite. Actually I don’t really care what you think.

Angie: Come on, just get on with introducing the band, please.

Artie: On Droim we have Peter Foreskin. What a wonderful drummer! He is so violent, and angry, and aggressive and relax and quiet and he never, never, never misses the one, and even when he does occasionally misses the one, we always follow him, because we are so tune to each other. This is all due to our Kosher brotherhood. I tell you, once you go Kosher, Zwing is no torture.

Angie: And who is the bassist?

Artie: Hoy, Jaco Pastrami on the Boss. What a great player! The technique, the intonation, I tell you, he sounds like melting Philadelphia cream cheese mixed with smoke salmon.

Shimshon Gib Shoin on Gitoyer. Believe me, once you listen to him, you forget Hendrix and Clapton. Gitoyer is a Jewish instrument. It is noisy, but it can cry and break your heart as if a pogrom is going on.

Angie: Wow! Shimshon Gib Shoin is that good, eh? But the "gitoyer" is not a Jewish instrument, Artie.

Artie: What do you mean ‘not Jewish’? So what is it? Marrocan? Jordanian, Yeguslavian? Every people has its musical instrument so why we the Jews cannot have the Gitoyer? Aren’t we people like other people?

Atzmon is parlaying the criticism leveled at him from the Board of Deputies of British Jews into press releases and articles pushing his "Artie" album. Essentially, he is using his reputation as an anti-semite to make money, in much the same way that Holocaust deniers have.

And his anti-semitism and single-minded anti-Zionism is so extreme that other Marxists and far left moonbats have distanced themselves from him.

As the Jerusalem Post reported:

The Observer newspaper reported in an article in April 2005 that at a conference at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, Atzmon said, "I'm not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act." He also repeatedly spoke of Jewish and Zionist influence around the world and referred to the US as the "Jew-nited States of Jew-merica."

In April of this year, in an article called "Self-Haters Unite," he wrote: "It is always the proud self-hating Jews who transform Jewishness into an ethical message." "Jews are capable of anything. They run the show, they own the world, and they are brutal, monstrous cannibals," he added.

Sue Blackwell, a Birmingham University academic who led the 2005 campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions, has blacklisted Atzmon. On her Web site, in the aptly named section titled "Nazi Alert," she has severed all ties to him, saying: "Some notorious far-right individuals and organizations are jumping onto the Palestinian bandwagon in an attempt to hijack the cause of the Palestinian people for their own anti-Semitic ends."

Atzmon also peddles conspiracy theories. In a 2005 address at the Marxism conference in London he said that MI6 and the CIA were there among the IDF units who "flattened Jenin Refugee Camp" in 2002 and that Israeli officers were advising the American and British armies in Basra and Fallujah.

The article goes on to mention that Atzmon has praised Holocaust-denial materials on his website.

In the case of pathetic people like Atzmon, Norman Finkelstein, Uri Avnery and others, it seems likely that their views have become more extreme over time as they see that the neo-Nazis and far Left embrace them so wholly (Jews who criticize Jews serve to inoculate the Left from charges of bigotry.) They literally become famous for their extreme hate. Fame feeds their egos and they keep going.

In this case, Atzmon decided that his career as a jazz musician would benefit as well from trafficking in anti-Jewish stereotypes. I don't know whether he is truly as ideologically far out as he says he is, but it is clear that when it comes to pursuit of money and fame, he is willing to trade on his Jew-hating reputation.

What is the truth in Beit Hanoun?

This morning, 7 Palestinian Arabs were killed and more injured in Beit Hanoun. The same story is covered in wildly different ways by different media.

Reading the PalArab news in Arabic, as usual, one thinks that the IDF just came to Beit Hanoun for no reason and started firing indiscriminately.

The PalArab English news admits that Israel may have been targeting some terrorists from the PRC.

Haaretz quotes PalArab residents who claim that the IDF opened fire on "militants" who were paying a condolence call. The terrorists fired initially at another family, thinking it was an internal feud, and then shot towards the IDF.

YNet quotes different PalArab sources saying that the IDF only started firing after they accidentally thought that gunfire between the two warring families were meant for them.

The Jerusalem Post says that all seven people killed were gunmen, including a senior PRC member responsible for rocket launches.

So what is the truth?

My guess is that the YNet account is closest, and that not all of the victims were from Israeli fire, based on a quote in Haaretz: "When the smoke cleared, seven Palestinians were dead and
some 20 wounded, a Palestinian Health Ministry official said, blaming IDF gunfire for all the casualties and basing his account on information from ambulance crews at the scene." The Palestinian Health Ministry is known to lie and will definitely cover up any internal PalArab fighting.

So in the end, we know that all seven of the dead will be blamed on Israel, and no one will bother finding out the truth since the propaganda is so much more valuable.

UPDATE: Haaretz now reports that witnesses said six out of the seven were armed.

WAFA: Arabic news completely different from English news

WAFA is the "Palestinian" news agency, and, like the "Palestine News Network," its webpage is available in English, Hebrew, French and Arabic.

And, just like with PNN, they actively censor any news in English that makes Palestinian Arabs look bad.

Today's example: The English webpage has articles about Israeli harassment of PalArabs at checkpoints, a story talking about how the Rachel Corrie play is a smash hit, and a story from ISM about a PalArab man who will not tell his kids that Israel destroyed their house because he doesn't want them to hate. All stories tailor-made for propaganda purposes to put the best possible light on PalArabs and the worst on Israelis - which means it is not "news" at all.

But when one looks at the autotranslated Arabic site, things get a little more interesting:

Masked gunmen killed 25-year old Atta Faraj in the Gaza Strip.
Unidentified gunmen killed Alaa Mubarak in Tulkarem, apparently a Hamas member.

Also, yesterday, "gunmen" on motorcycles killed someone who was autotranslated as "struggling Douglas" in Jericho.

Thanks to the Arabic news, we reconfirm that Palestinian Arabs violently murder each other daily, with no arrests, and very little coverage even by their own press (the Jericho murder wasn't mentioned in any other news source I could find.)

Our PalArab violent self-death count since late Operation Summer Rains began is now at 124.

"Palestine News Network": English vs. Arabic

The "Palestine News Network" publishes editions in English, French, Arabic and Hebrew. Interestingly, the article selection is different in different languages.

For example, the Arabic site mentions a wave of car thefts in Bethlehem. The English site does not (nor does the Hebrew.)

The Arabic site mentions the murder of a Fatah terrorist by "unknown masked men" and the violent reaction by Fatah against Hamas, torching cars and shooting at houses. The English site ignores that.

(The PalArab self-inflicted violent death count is now at 121.)

Archaeological Temple artifacts drive PalArabs crazy

A few years ago, in a major crime against history, religion and archaeology, the Waqf in Jerusalem excavated and trashed tons of material from the most valuable archaeological site on the planet, the Temple Mount. It was a clear attempt to erase any shred of Jewish history from the area so the Muslims can continue to lie about the supposed ancient mosques that they claim were there, a story that gets mosre insane with each passing year.

Since then, many volunteers have been sifting through the rubble, finding priceless antiquities. I quoted an article last year about it, and now more has been found. From Ha'aretz:

By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

The project of sifting layers of Temple Mount dirt has yielded thousands of new artifacts dating from the First Temple period to today. The dirt was removed in 1999 by the Islamic Religious Trust (Waqf) from the Solomon's Stables area to the Kidron Stream Valley. The sifting itself is taking place at Tzurim Valley National Park, at the foot of Mount Scopus, and being funded by the Ir David Foundation. Dr. Gabriel Barkai and Tzachi Zweig, the archaeologists directing the sifting project with the help of hundreds of volunteers, are publishing photographs and information about the new discoveries in the upcoming issue of Ariel, which comes out in a few days.

The bulk of the artifacts are small finds - the term used for artifacts that can be lifted and transported, rather than fixed features. The dirt was removed in the course of excavating the mammoth entrance to the underground mosque built seven years ago in the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount. The Waqf and Islamic Movement in Israel separated dirt from stones, then used the ancient building blocks for rebuilding, in case the police barred construction materials from being brought in.

Most of the finds predate the Middle Ages. The finds include 10,000-year-old flint tools; numerous potsherds; some 1,000 ancient coins; lots of jewelry (pendants, rings, bracelets, earrings and beads in a variety of colors and materials); clothing accessories and decorative pieces; talismans; dice and game pieces made of bone and ivory; ivory and mother of pearl inlay for furniture; figurines and statuettes; stone and metal weights; arrowheads and rifle bullets; stone and glass shards; remains of stone mosaic and glass wall mosaics; decorated tiles and parts of structures; stamps, seals and a host of other items.

The sifting project is precedent-setting: This is the first time dirt from any antiquities site is being sifted in full. Among the many volunteers are soldiers, tourists, high-school students and yeshiva boys. Visitors over the past few months have included ultra-Orthodox MKs and rabbis, who usually steer clear of archaeological digs.

When the dirt was originally trucked out, the late director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Amir Drori, termed it "an archaeological crime," and the attorney general at the time, Elyakim Rubinstein, said it was "a kick to the history of the Jewish people." Now it turns out that the dirt removed from the Temple Mount harbors thousands of small finds from diverse periods.

...The most striking find from this period is a First Temple period bulla, or seal impression, containing ancient Hebrew writing, which may have belonged to a well-known family of priests mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.

Many other findings date from the Persian period (Return to Zion), Hasmonean, Ptolemaic and Herodian periods, as well as from Second Temple times. Second Temple finds include remains of buildings: plaster shards decorated a rust-red, which Barkai says was fashionable at the time; a stone measuring 10 centimeters and on it a sophisticated carving reminiscent of Herodian decorations; and a broken stone from a decorated part of the Temple Mount - still bearing signs of fire, which Barkai says are from the Temple's destruction in 70 C.E.

The project has also yielded artifacts from the Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Early Arab periods. According to Barkai, the Byzantine finds radically alter the assessment that the Temple Mount was empty at that time.

The Muslim reaction in the Arabic papers is predictable. Notice his title, which may or may not be an accurate translation from Google of an al-Hayat article:

Sheikh Taysir Al Tamimi, the Chief Judge of Palestine, chairman of the Supreme Council for the Elimination of Forensic and preacher of Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi reports of the allegations and claims Israeli official in archeology found relics of the structure of Jews under the foundations of Al Aqsa Mosque in 1999, He described the allegations as sheer lie and a falsification of historical facts, If this claim is true for the established minimum and Agaadoha Since then, archaeologists have announced that the Jews repeatedly not finding any trace of their alleged temple, or of Jewish history in Jerusalem. Despite this, they decided to continue the excavations in order to undermine the foundations of the mosque and causing the collapse of its architecture.

"Supreme Council for the Elimination of Forensic?"

Notice the bald-faced lies: it was the Arabs who excavated under the Temple Mount, and archaeologists all agree that the Second Temple existed at that site (although there is still controversy about the First Temple) - let alone that the city was a Jewish city at that period.

Palestinian Arab TV is repeatedly broadcasting even more absurd claims, such as that no Jews were in the area until the 16th century and that the Western Wall was built as part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (which was built 11 centuries later!) And it gets even better:

In a previous interview with WND, Kamal Hatib, vice-chairman of the Islamic Movement, claimed the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built by angels and that a Jewish Temple may have existed but not in Jerusalem.
"When the First Temple was built by Solomon – God bless him – Al Aqsa was already built. We don't believe that a prophet like Solomon would have built the temple at a place where a mosque existed," said Hatib.

"And all the historical and archaeological facts deny any relation between the temples and the location of Al Aqsa. We must know that Jerusalem was occupied and that people left many things, coins and other things everywhere. This does not mean in any way that there is a link between the people who left these things and the place where these things were left," Hatib said.

These are the lies that get broadcast and printed in Islamic media every day, not to mention printed in their textbooks.

When truth is held in such low regard, how can anyone believe anything these clowns ever say?

A little more media bias

Omri notes the bias at the LA Times in reporting on Hezbollah firing cluster bombs all over northern Israel.

LAT was only slightly worse than most news outlets, and even the HRW report itself compares Hezbollah cluster munitions with Israel's:

“We are disturbed to discover that not only Israel but also Hezbollah used cluster munitions in their recent conflict, at a time when many countries are turning away from this kind of weapon precisely because of its impact on civilians,” said Steve Goose, director of Human Rights Watch's Arms Division. “Use of cluster munitions is never justified in civilian-populated areas because they are inaccurate and unreliable.”

"Not only Israel..." In other words, we expect immoral acts of war from the Jewish state, but we are shocked that our heroes in Hezbollah would lower themselves to that level!

While it is not known when and how Hezbollah obtained these foreign-made cluster munitions, and while Hezbollah used far fewer cluster munitions than Israel did in the recent war, the new findings raise serious concerns about the proliferation of these weapons to non-state armed groups, as well as states.

So the LAT was just taking the lead from a hugely biased "human rights" organization, that took two months to realize that damage like this was not caused by a crude Qassam-like rocket:

But the Gold Star for media bias in this case goes to AFP, who put this photo out on their wire in response to the report:

Members of the Mine Action Group (MAG) search for cluster bombs in southern Lebanon, on October 9. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has said that Hezbollah fired cluster munitions into northern Israel during this summer's 34-day war with the Jewish state.(AFP/File/Marwan Naamani)

That's right...to illustrate Hezbollah's use of cluster bombs they had to find a file photo of people looking for Israeli explosives.

I guess it would just strain their resources too much to call up an Israeli stringer to shoot a photo of a damaged building in Kiryat Shmona.

Happy Jerusalem (Qods) Day! - part 3: Jerusalem in Islamic Art

After scouring the Internet, here is every picture of Jerusalem that I could find from Islamic sources before the 20th century:

And here are a very tiny number of the pictures of Jerusalem done in Jewish art:

Wall painting by Eliezer Zusman Katz in the synagogue of Unterlimberg, Germany, 1739 (extant)

Wall painting in the Nicolina Synagogue, Jasi, Romania. The building was destroyed a few days after the photograph was taken

This MIZRACH - SHIVITI is an early American papercut,made in the U.S.A. in 1861. The upper frame contains a gate, presumably that of the Temple in Jerusalem. It carries the inscriptions: "This is the gate to God", and above it, in two separate medallions, "I have set the Lord always before me." As a Mizrach, it would always be placed o the wall of the house facing Jerusalem.

The Second Temple in Jerusalem, wood-cut from the 19th century.

From the 1695 Amsterdam Haggadah, the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Ahmadinejad threatens the free world. Isn't that cute?

The problem with the prevalent Western liberal attitude is that it cannot accept the existence of a fundamentally irrational player on the world scene. If one believes that all problems can be solved through negotiations, as the EU, UN and American Left do, then one must also believe that the other side is always rational and has the roughly same value system that you do.

So the head-in-the-sand crowd will always insist that if only we keep talking like civilized humans, the other side will act reasonably - because that's what we would do, and we are all the same under the skin, let's sing Kumbaya together in four-part harmony.

Ahmadinejad's outrageous pronouncements have become so commonplace that the Western press seems to be treating him more like an eccentric Kaddafi than a Hitler. Let's look at what is happening, just today:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday called the U.N. Security Council and its decisions "illegitimate."

Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands gathered at a pro-Palestinian rally in the capital Tehran Friday that “Israel no longer has a reason to exist, and will soon disappear. The Zionist regime, thank God, has lost all reason to exist”.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Europe on Friday it was stirring up hatred in the Middle East by supporting Israel and said it “may get hurt” if anger in the region boils over.

“You should believe that this regime (Israel) cannot last and has no more benefit to you. What benefit have you got in supporting this regime, except the hatred of the nations?” he said in a speech broadcast on state radio.

“We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region. We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt,” he said.

"You imposed a group of terrorists ... on the region," he said, addressing the US and its allies. "It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow."

"Nations will take revenge," he told a crowd of thousands gathered at a pro-Palestinian rally in the capital Teheran.

Iran, nearing a confrontation with the West over its nuclear program, has developed a missile called "Zelzad 1." Its namesake is a Koranic verse that tells of a conflagration which precipitates Judgment Day. The missile is emblazoned with the slogan: "We will trample America under our feet. Death to America."

The fasting people taking part in the rallies are chanting such slogans as "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" to express their hatred of the world hegemonic powers.

By the way, the last sentence was repeated verbatim in no less than 11 different articles from the Iranian press.

So, we have a man who is openly pursuing nuclear weapons, openly threatening the Western world and openly laughing while the EU and UN continues to try to "negotiate" with him, buying him all the time he needs to turn Iran into a superpower.

He also knows that by repeating his ideas about Israel and America over and over again, he will get gullible "open-minded" Westerners to eventually think, "Say, let's investigate if what he says is true." It is not a huge leap from Ahmadinejad's words to those of Walt and Mearsheimer.

Ahmadinejad's threats cannily exploit the Left's fear of conflict. If supporting Israel will inevitably lead to war, and war is to be avoided at all costs, then maybe it is better not to support Israel. All the pseudo-intellectual anti-Zionist rationalizations follow from the primal fear of conflict. The Left's antipathy towards Israel is not from naked anti-semitism nearly as much as out of this fear.

It is another variant of the century-old threat of the mythical "Arab street" which worked so effectively with Britain and its White Paper as to result in the deaths of untold thousands or millions.

Oh, we will talk a good game, saying how unacceptable it is for Iran's president to speak like this. But we won't actually do anything, just as we didn't do anything about North Korea despite a decade of warning.

Short-term self-interest of the West is the greatest ally that Ahmadinejad has.

Partisanship makes smart people stupid

I just saw this posting at DovBear:

Last night, former AG John Asshcroft implied to the Daily Show's audience that their host Jon Stewart, a great American, would not go to heaven. Here's how it went down (paraphrased):

Stewart: Let's make a bet. If the Cardinals win tonight, I'll give you a TDS tee-shirt. If the Met's win, I go to heaven.

Asshcroft: Well, my father was a preacher and he used to say he was in sales, not management... I'll tell you what. If the Mets win, you can move to St. Louis and you'll think you've gone to heaven.

So now this ancient grounds for anti-Semtism, and the pogroms and acts of mass murder that followed, is being played for laughs? Asshcroft can concede that he thinks Jews lack the spiritual stuff needed to enter the eternal kingdom of the Lord and no one boos? Suppose Stewart was black and he asked for admission to the White-only restroom. Would the audience have then tittered so appreciativly?

I just saw the clip and DB quoted it pretty accurately.

But what on Earth made him think that Ashcroft made an anti-semitic comment? Because Jon Stewart is Jewish????

It is obvious what Ashcroft meant with his "sales, not management" comment - that he cannot guarantee anyone's entry into Heaven but he can try to get people to buy the concept. It follows easily from there that what he can guarantee is that a visit to St. Louis is tantamount to a visit to heaven. All done in a very joking way, while seated on Stewart's "Seat of Heat."

This all comes back to the stupidity of partisanship. I touched on this theme last week and it has really been bugging me. It is not by any means limited to the Left, it is equally idiotic on both sides, as people obsess over the tiniest details of the lives of the people on the other side that they hate with a passion, convinced beyond all reason that the other side is Evil Incarnate.

And when Mr. Evil Incarnate makes a statement, it symbolizes Everything Bad about His Ideology and Those who Think Like Him.

How often do we have to see the moronic argument that "The other side says it is moral/just/progressive. Here is a case where someone on that side did something immoral/unjust/Neanderthal. Ergo, the entire group is a bunch of hypocritical subhumans and I cannot understand why any sane person would want to be associated with them." ?

And these are not stupid people making these stupid arguments. They are smart people who are so blinded by their ideology and their irrational hate for the Other Side that they completely lose any sense of logic or proportionality.

To use this example: Bigotry exists on both the far Right and far Left. If people are really concerned about anti-semitism or racism, let them work to eradicate it from their own side, not throw stones about the hypocrisy of the other side. If they don't, it means that they really don't care about bigotry to begin with, but only about scoring political points.

And that is the true hypocrisy.

Unfortunate and regrettable events (Self-death count now at 120)

Al-Quds newspaper reports on the three PalArabs killed in the past two days, along with kidnappings, shootings and various other mayhem. (I had already mentioned one of them in a previous post.)

It describes the events as "unfortunate."

Anyway, as best as I can piece together from the news report and from headlines at PCHR that link to nonexistent articles, it seems that yesterday:

In one "regrettable" incident, a man named Nabahin was killed as he tried to drive his car into his garage in the Bureij camp.
Another "policeman" died as a result of injuries from internal fighting last Sunday.
One guy in the Jabaliah camp was abducted, shot a couple of times and released.
A Fatah "activist" shot a Hamas "activist" in the back while he was guarding a hospital in Beit Lahiya.
The Qatshah family shot and wounded another "policeman" near Rafah.
The same family then beat another "policeman" in a field nearby.
Gunmen in two Mercedes, no doubt outraged at their poverty-stricken status caused by the Zionists, shot another person in Khan Younis.
Those ubiquitous "unknown gunmen" shot a student at Najah University as he was returning from prayers.
At a technical school in Khan Younis, about ten uniformed "militants" of the General Intelligence Service shot randomly in the air and the students responded with rock-throwing.

So we are now at 119 known PalArabs violently killed since late June. And the chaos seems to be growing.

It's a good thing they have all those thousands of armed policemen - who knows how much worse it would be without them keeping law and order?

UPDATE: 120.

hospital medical sources announced Shahid Kamal aggression in Beit Lahia town in northern Gaza last night killed one of the elements of the force executive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Jamil Sakr Basyuni young (21 years old) shot his colleague in Beit Hanoun.

.With three citizens yesterday, including a child in two separate armed city of Khan Younis..Medical sources indicated that Basyuni arrived at the hospital a critical situation where the difference in life because of the seriousness of his health because of his several shots in the body.

Happy Qods day - part 2

In celebration of the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 declaration of this Friday as Qods (Jerusalem) Day, here is an article from 1910 when early Zionism was in full bloom about how ruthless and bloodthirsty the Jews were as they reclaimed their land.

Can you imagine how awful life must have been for the Arabs there? Their economy went from practically nothing to a strong agricultural one. Real estate values soared. Hospitals were built. Railroads, electricity, telephones all arrived in Palestine.

Many Arabs became rich from selling land, worthless to them, to those strange Jews who actually thought it was valuable. Land that was considered by Arabs to be unusable were turned into gardens by the Jews - who then turned around and employed the Arabs.

Arabs from Syria and Transjordan, who stayed away from Palestine for hundreds of years, suddenly decided to move there - because those awful imperialist colonialist Jews were creating an economy where there was none.

Now, today, which Arab population in the Middle East enjoy the best living standards and the most freedom?

The ones who stayed in Palestine to live together with those horrible, racist, Zionist Jews in 1948 during the "naqba"!

Happy Qods day! (updated)

This Friday is Qods Day, when Muslims pretend to care about Jerusalem. It was instituted by the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran's "Religious Weblogs Office" wants all blogs to commemorate this day, so who am I to disagree?

Let's talk about how important Jerusalem was to the Arabs in the nineteen years the Old City was under Arab rule, from 1948-1967:

Did Jordan, which annexed the West Bank and Jerusalem in 1950, move its capital to Jerusalem? Ummmm...no.
Jewish families who lived in the Old City's Jewish Quarter for centuries were kicked out.
Did the Arab Muslims who are supposed to be so committed to religious pluralism allow Jews to worship or even visit Jerusalem? Ummmm...no. (The 1949 Armistice Agreement specifically stipulated that Jews should be allowed to visit their holy places.)
During Jordanian rule, more Palestinian Arabs moved to the East Bank than any who immigrated westward and into East Jerusalem. The population of Muslims in Jerusalem did not increase all that much in those 19 years.
In 1951, the Jordanian king Abdullah I was assassinated - inside the Al Aqsa Mosque, by a Palestinian Arab who heard rumors that Jordan and Israel were considering a peace treaty.
Christians in Jerusalem were also persecuted during that time period: their schools were forced to close on Fridays rather than Sundays, they were not allowed to purchase land.
While the Dome of the Rock was accorded a measure of respect, the rest of Jerusalem was pretty much ignored throughout the Muslim world.
Jordanian radio broadcast Friday prayers from Amman, not Jerusalem.
No foreign Arab leader visited Jerusalem during those 19 years.
The PLO's founding document does not mention Jerusalem. (last three from Daniel Pipes, h/t Soccer Dad.)

It would be a safe bet that this is a model of how Jerusalem would be treated if it should ever come under Muslim rule again.

Thank God that will never happen. For centuries, Jews risked their lives to move to a Muslim-ruled Jerusalem that was thoroughly neglected by the Muslim world, and Christians made regular pilgrimages there as well. Jerusalem, under Muslim rule, was a filthy and disgusting ruin, not even a shell of how it looked before the Romans conquered it.

Three times a day for nearly two millennia Jews prayed for the restoration and rebuilding of Jerusalem. It was a beautiful city whose destruction was considered a tragedy beyond comprehension by all Jews.

For nearly two millennia others conquered Jerusalem but no one bothered to rebuild it. The only people to truly care about Jerusalem were the Jews. And the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 is considered a holiday for all Jews today.

So, I am happy to celebrate Qods Day this Friday, the last Friday of Ramadan, because when it comes to Jerusalem, the good guys won.