February 2007 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

What a difference a day makes for Hamas

Yesterday:Russia's foreign minister said on Tuesday the "obvious" progress achieved during recent talks between rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas warranted the lifting of the economic embargo on the Palestinians."Progress is obvious... We are convinced that the progress is enough to mitigate the economic restrictions imposed on the Palestinians," the minister, Sergei Lavrov, told a news conference in Moscow.Lavrov, who earlier held talks...

Martyr matters at Ma'an

Palestinian Media Watch came out with a report yesterday comparing the reporting done by the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News in English and Arabic, and accusing Ma'an of using the terminology of terror in Arabic but not in English:Ma'an releases in Arabic include the hate ideology espoused by the terror organizations that deny Israel's right to exist, express reverence for suicide terrorists and justify terrorist murder as...

PalArab "eyewitnesses" lie again

The wire services are reporting this morning on Israel's killing of three Islamic Jihad terrorists in Jenin, including a leader behind last weeks' aborted suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. This is from AFP:The undercover force in Jenin opened fire on the car carrying the militants, killing Ashraf al-Saadi, 25, a senior Jihad leader in the West Bank, and Alaa Breiki, 26, Palestinian security sources said. A third militant, Mohammad Abu Naasa, 22, was wounded...

Arab terrorist rapists attack Jewish women

From The Jerusalem Post:A gang of serial rapists has been prowling the North, raping Jewish women as revenge for IDF actions in the West Bank, police revealed Tuesday after arresting six suspects."We are raping Jews because of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians in the territories," one of the six suspects told investigators from the Northern District Central Investigative Unit (CIU) during questioning. During their questioning and their brief...

Two Gaza women murdered. But not by Israel, so who cares?

Maan News updates us on how well that unity government is working: Gaza - Ma'an - The Gaza Strip witnessed a number of violent and suspicious incidents over the last 24 hours, Palestinian security sources told Ma'an News Agency. The police are currently investigating these incidents.In one incident, the bullet-ridden body of a woman in her twenties was found in the Atatra area, west of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday. She had been...

Qassam Rocket calendar - February

Here is my best shot at keeping track of when rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza so far this month. On the 8th, 10 were claimed to have been shot by Islamic Jihad but only four or so were recorded as having landed.The numbers in parentheses are from Palestinian terror group claims, not from Israeli confirmed sources.Remember that Israel still regards this as being "calm" and has only rarely responded to Gaza terror since the "cease fire" announced...

The Cotton Market

As we mentioned last month, Palestinian Arabs are protesting a synagogue that is apparently being built on the site of the Cotton Market in the Old City.I have not found any mention of this being built in any Jewish or Israeli sources, but it would be between the Kotel and the Kotel HaKatan and 50-100 meters away from the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.The Cotton Market...

Erez Levanon was a 42-year old devout Breslover chassid from Bat Ayin. He was the father of three, played the guitar and even released a CD - you can hear him here: An intensely spiritual man, he had spent much time in India speaking to Israeli backpackers there about their own religion.Levanon would go out in the fields near his home and pray for an hour every day....

Another peaceful PalArab weekend

The latest, all from Sunday:At approximately 20:30 on Sunday, 25 February 2007, the body of Khalil Sufian El-Mathloum (16-year old resident of Sabra Quarter in Gaza City) was brought to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The boy was killed by a bullet to the chest which was accidentally fired from a firearm mishandled by one of his friends in Remal Quarter in the city.At approximately 19:30 on the same day, Mohammad Abdel Rahman Ali (6) from Zaitoon Quarter...

It's only a big deal when Jews do it

Two posts on the same theme from Life in Israel and My Right Wor...

2500 posts

This is post number 2500.Which makes me wonder - if I want to help Israel, is this the most effective use of my free time? Am I only preaching to the choir?This poll made it sound like blogging is somewhat useful, and I try not to repeat what others are doing.But I still wonde...

Hungry PalArab update

I mentioned last week a UN study that claimed that many Palestinian Arabs are not getting the nutrition they need.Today, in Maan News (Arabic only) I see that vegetable prices in the PA have plummeted due to lack of demand and too much supply.Something is not adding up.....

Review of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East

I am finally (almost) finished with Michael Oren's Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present. It is an important book, and one that would be difficult for me to do justice to. Oren uncovers a rich and complicated relationship between the United States and the Middle East that is older than the US itself. From the Barbary Wars through the first adventurers and missionaries who visited the area in the 19th century,...

2000 British Islamist terrorists

From AP: The threat of homegrown terrorists attacking Britain is greater now than any time since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, a British Sunday newspaper reported, citing a leaked intelligence document.More than 2,000 British-based Islamic terrorists are believed to be plotting attacks, according to a government threat assessment prepared this month, which The Sunday Telegraph said it had seen."The scale of al-Qaeda's ambitions towards...

Shahid inflation

One of the interesting things about the PalArab infighting is watching how the word "shahid" (martyr) is used.It used to be easy - if you were killed while trying to murder Jews, you were in the exclusive Martyr's Club with not only large sexual benefits in Paradise but also your families would be paid handsomely by Arab regimes and the Western-supported moderate Palestinian Authority. Even blowing yourself up accidentally while only trying to build...

PalArab self-death update

Things have certainly calmed down in the territories, although not as much as you might think.While Fatah and Hamas are not as successful in killing each other as beforehand, their efforts to kill Jews continue unabated (as yesterday's foiled terror attack shows.)Yesterday, a Gaza man blew himself up while working on a bomb, making the counts of PalArabs who have been killed violently by each other go up to 322 since Operation Summer Rains and 117...

Arab family in Ramle has honor-murdered 8 of its women

A simply horrendous story in Haaretz: The murder of Hamda Abu-Ghanem, whose bullet-riddled body was found in mid-January at her parents' house in Ramle, surprised nobody.As police set about their investigation, everyone was aware that the victim's brother had been threatening to kill her, and that long before the murder, she had taken refuge in a battered women's shelter.It was a typical "honor killing," meant to remove some perceived stain on the...

The case for a larger Israel

Smooth Stone points to an interesting website with a PDF of an entire book, "The Case for a Larger Israel," by David Naggar. He argues that for lasting peace, Israel should expand. Naggar also has a blog that makes some interesting points.Now, I am way too much of a realist to think that, no matter how compelling the argument, it would ever amount to much. But there is much value in making such an argument anyway, even if the idea itself is doomed...

Hungry Palestinian Arabs

How does one reconcile this: Around 46 per cent of Gaza and West Bank households are "food insecure" or in danger of becoming so, according to a UN report on the impact of conflict and the global boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.The unpublished draft report, the first of its kind since the boycott was imposed when the Hamas government took office last March, says bluntly that the problem "is primarily a function of restricted...

Breaking news:Rumor of Israeli abducted in Nablus (updated)

Maan News has this blurb:"Unconfirmed reports of Israeli settler from Elon Moreh settlement abducted in Nablus"No confirmation from any Israeli or other source. Let's hope it isn't true.UPDATE: Maan no longer reports it so, thankfully, it appears to have been a false repor...

Poor Ziopedia Jew-haters

Ziopedia is the virulently Jew-hating website that Eric Hunt wrote an article for bragging about trying to kidnap and assault Elie Wiesel.Fellow lunatic site Al-Jazeerah.info published a short whiny piece by Ziopedia's publisher that is simply hilarious:Due to obscene political pressure by the Zionist Mafia, both PayPal and StormPay were forced to suspend our donations accounts. Your generous financial support is needed for ZioPedia.org to survive...

Olmert says he'll respond to Qassams - eventually

Ehud Olmert today re-affirmed his vision of an independent Palestinian Arab state - and then said something even dumber: Olmert said that if the Kassam rocket attacks on Israel continue, Israel would have to retaliate. "We are not going to restrain ourselves forever," he said. "The continued attacks challenge Israel's patience. In the end, if the attacks continue, we will respond."Funny...where have we heard that before?In late November, when the...

A magical place where terrorism always pays

Hadi Saud had a problem.Last year he was shot in the leg and he never got proper treatment. He was also unemployed and he was jealous of all those Palestinian Arabs who manage to get jobs doing nothing. Even though he was a long-standing member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, the pay was apparently not very good.So he hatched a plan.He kidnapped three American women aid workers who were in Nablus, called up the...

It seems that the wire services send out their articles with a default, suggested headline thatmost newspapers will copy verbatim. So it is interesting to see dozens of headlines in Google News that say:The article slowly clarifies exactly who this "Palestinian"was: Israeli troops on Wednesday fatally shot a West Bank leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group who was involved...

Bahrain's hot new club

Bahrain was the site of yet another protest against Israel. But I got a kick out of the name of the organization that organized the protest:"We are against any interference at one of the most holy places for Muslims and we strongly condemn what Israel is doing," said chairman of the Bahraini Society Against Normalisation of Relations with the Zionist Enemy, Mohammed Al Aradi, who led the protest.Demonstrators condemned the demolition of some portions...

As I've mentioned before, the major issue that the Muslims have with any archaeological digs in Jerusalem is the possibility that Jewish items and buildings will be found, and hence the digs will end up "Judaizing" Jerusalem.What they refuse to admit is that many of the digs have uncovered critical periods of Islamic history as well.There was a recent report claiming that...

Hamas/Fatah truce update

Just because the Western media hasn't been reporting any fighting between Hamas and Fatah doesn't mean that they are playing happily together:Ramallah - Ma'an - The Fatah movement warned on Tuesday that several "atrocities" had taken place in the Gaza Strip in order to gain "extra time". Since Sunday, there have been four violent assaults on various civilian targets in the Gaza Strip, the Fatah spokesperson, Jamal Nazzal, said, adding that the perpetrators...

Mecca accord lies

Maan News reports:Ramallah - Ma'an - The head of the Fatah bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) has assured that all the demands of the Quartet are found in the Mecca deal.The Quartet – comprising of the UN, EU, US and Russia – has stipulated that any new Palestinian government must renounce violence, accept the state of Israel's right to exist and adopt the previously signed peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.The...

Ten years ago: Empire State Building PalArab terror attack

Ten years ago this week, a Palestinian Arab man shot seven people on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and killed one of them before killing himself.At the time, his family and the US media all tried to paint this as the act of a deranged loner who was depressed over money problems and they did everything they could to distance this attack from terror. Initial reports said he was Egyptian, not a Palestinian Arab.A few days later it...