July 2007 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Lebanon?

I do not place much stock in anonymous Hezbollah terrorists, but this story is still interesting:The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization [at the end of the Second Lebanon War]," a Hizbullah officer said in an interview aired by Channel 10 on Tuesday. The officer shown on Channel 10 said the organization's gunmen had been running low on food and water and facing rapidly diminishing arms supplies. In the interview, the unnamed officer...

A Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs, part 11

Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9Part 10December, 1948 was notable for one other event: the passing of UN General Assembly Resolution 194. The non-binding resolution has been cited innumerable times by Arabs as the source for Israel's obligation to accept all Palestinian Arab refugees. It says nothing of the sort.The resolution included a number of parts, none of which has ever been implemented:Protection of all holy sites in...

Iranians learning Hebrew, Israelis learning Farsi

From YNet:The "intelligence war" between Iran and Israel is gaining momentum, as both countries' intelligence services are increasing efforts to recruit Hebrew and Farsi speakers to their ranks.The Iranian regime needs Hebrew speakers to work as translators, intelligence agents and as part of its propaganda machine against Israel. The main source of Hebrew speakers is Palestinian students studying abroad or Palestinian terrorists sent for military...

Olmert crosses another Israeli "red line"

In diplomacy, one of the worst things you can do is abandon your principles, even for a second. Once you allow even a theoretical exception to a previously iron-clad rule, there is no going back.There was a time when Israel referred to the territories, consistently, as "disputed" and not "occupied." There is a major difference between the two in international law and Israel was on unpopular but strong legal ground to maintain that position - and...

Freedom of the press, PalArab style (VI)

On Monday, Hamas tried to show its best face to foreign journalists:'Gaza today is better,' Ismail Haniyeh, still calling himself Palestinian prime minister, told dozens of foreign reporters who joined a bus tour of the coastal enclave that took in a prison, a church, border posts and security installations. 'But the strangling siege ... has affected Gaza very much,' he added, two days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embarks on a...

The most '60s song

I was just on hold waiting for some technical support and I heard Red Rubber Ball by The Cyrkle. It made me wonder what song is most emblematic of the '60s - the song that when you hear it you are instantly transported back to that era, not necessarily the most popular song of that time. And maybe not even a song you like - for example,the awful Convoy might be very representative of the '70s.My vote would go to Incense and Peppermints by Strawberry...

The IDF's miserable hasbara failure

Here's the text of a letter sent to the IDF by Omedia:To: Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, IDF Chief of Staff From: The Omedia Editorial Board Subject: Information Failure – A Danger to Israel July 15, 2007 Dear Sir, Countless words have been written on the importance of Israel's information policy. The State Comptroller's report of 2002 proclaimed the need for a new media doctrine and noted the dangers inherent in the IDF's fixed mindset. In recent years...

The extremism and bigotry of PA "moderates"

One never hears the word "extremist" associated with the Fatah-led PA West Bank government. That word is relegated to Israeli settlers and groups like Islamic Jihad. In the Western media, the PA is uniformly considered "moderate."There has been a lot of press lately about (possibly illegal) PA "prime minister" Fayyad taking the word "resistance" out of the PA cabinet platform: Radical groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad Sunday accused moderate Prime...

Gaza - the new Riviera?

The Hamas tourism industry has its job cut out for it:If you think of the Gaza Strip as a volatile, violent battleground run by fanatic Islamist militants bent on destroying Israel, Hamas wants you to think again. Think: "Safe, clean and green." One month after seizing the Gaza Strip in a military rout that shattered brittle Palestinian unity, Hamas is embarking on a radical marketing campaign to promote what it calls "the new face of Gaza." They...

Google News seems to have removed "The People's Voice"

The last time this happened it was short-lived, but the "People's Voice" hate site seems to have been de-listed by Google News since our last posting highlighting yet another anti-semitic article published there.A tiny victory, that I don't expect to last, but thanks to those who complained to Google and especially to joem at discarded lies who publicized the issu...

Breathtaking stupidity by the US

Ha'aretz published an editorial saying that "everybody wins" with the US decision to sell $20 billion of weapons to Saudi Arabia and to increase defense aid to Israel to maintain Israel's military edge.While Ha'aretz is perhaps right in the sense that Israel could not have successfully opposed the Saudi deal, this is hardly a "win."Events over the past twelve months in Israel show how the next Arab/Israeli war is likely to play out, and by any reasonable...

This weekend's Gaza honor killing

It is so nice to see that Gaza has turned into such a calm place since Hamas took over. It used to be that most of the people killed were young jihadists, now they are mostly young women, and everyone knows that their lives aren't worth much:The corpse of a Palestinian woman in her twenties was found in the Al Bureij area of the central Gaza Strip with numerous knife gashes on Saturday.Palestinian medical sources stated that the corpse was delivered...

Fatah shows its appreciation for Israel releasing terrorists

The "goodwill gesture" just keeps giving and giving - almost like a cycle of generosity. Today, grateful Fatah members tried to shoot mortars at Israeli towns from Gaza. Thoughtfully, Israel responded back with its own special brand of love, as Ma'an nicely put it:The Israeli forces on Saturday killed two members of Fatah's military wing, the Al Aqsa Brigades, while they were en route to carry out a shelling operation targeting Israeli towns bordering...

Still working on next PalArab history post

I find myself with less and less free time, but I am still working on the Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs series.Today I have been researching the UN's role during the 1950s and it is fascinating. The UN at the time did make an honest effort to solve the refugee problem in very fair and realistic ways, and was stymied by a combination of Arab intransigence and Palestinian Arab fantasies about returning to their homes (stoked by the Arabs...

Israel saving the world - again

From AP:Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced plans to buy enough electricity to power 400,000 homes from a massive solar park covering up to nine square miles (23 square kilometers) in California's Mojave Desert. The San Francisco-based utility signed a 25-year contract with Solel Solar Systems, based in Beit Shemesh, Israel, to purchase 553 megawatts of electricity — equivalent to the amount generated by a large coal-fired power plant. Financial...

Al-Ahram weighs in on "Jewish psychosis"

As someone who pretends to be able to examine the Arab psyche, it is always interesting to see how intellectual Arabs examine the Jewish psyche. Turnabout is fair play, right?From a Ph.D. in political science from Oxford, in Egypt's Al-Ahram, comes a typically rambling article, complete with incoherent examples and some hilarious asides. First, he sets the mood to show that he is smarter than the typical reader, to soften them up with his brilliance:The...

Gazans happy three girls are dead

A followup on the three sisters killed in Gaza over the weekend, from Newsweek:When I asked him about the case of the Juha sisters, he grimaced and seemed almost as dismissive as his counterparts from Hamas. "Look, we have information from intelligence sources that they have been committing sins," the attorney general explained. He told me that he had taken a personal interest in the case, and ordered "forensic work" to be done on the bodies. "After...

Harry Potter, Zionist Plot

You just knew this would happen.From MEMRI blog:In an article, the Iranian daily Kayhan, which is identified with Iranian Supreme Leader 'Ali Khamenei, criticized Iran's Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry for approving the distribution of the new book in the "Harry Potter" series. The paper said that "Harry Potter" was a Zionist project in which billions of dollars had been invested in order to disrupt the minds of young people. Source: Kayhan,...

Congress tried to stop UNRWA support for terror in 1961

I just stumbled across a fascinating tidbit of American history.In section 301(c) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (PL 87-195) as amended, Congress has directed that "No contributions by the United States shall be made to [UNRWA] except on the condition that [UNRWA] take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member...

Today's anti-semitism in The People's Voice

Fans of the People's Voice - get ready to cry about "censorship" again, as I reveal yet another piece of Jew-hating filth on its Google News-indexed website:Abe Foxman's outrage at Catholic prayer for his conversion candidly expresses his Jewish attitude toward the basic heart of Christianity. He is threatened and incensed that some believe (and dare to say) we all--Jew and Gentile, male and female, foolish and wise--must convert and become like...

UK inching towards Hamas acceptance

In the Guardian today, Ismail Haniyeh states that Britain has increased diplomatic ties with Hamas:The British government has expanded its links with Hamas in recent weeks, according to the militant organisation's leader, Ismail Haniyeh.Mr Haniyeh, who was the Palestinian prime minister until last month, claims that contacts between Hamas and Britain have increased since they worked together to free Alan Johnston, the BBC Gaza correspondent, who...

Time magazine implies Israel is the obstacle to peace

In an article about the pseudo-Arab League meeting in Israel, Time magazine says:The problem with Olmert's approach is that the Arab world has run out of patience. It is well aware that the Oslo process floundered, at the end, not over customs arrangements and the Palestinian economy, but over borders, Jerusalem and refugees, and those issues are the ones that must be resolved if the process is to be about anything more than marking time.Time is...

More on PalArab survey

More from the Pew research survey:62% of Palestinian Arabs have a favorable opinion of Hamas (more than any country but Bangladesh)76% have a favorable opinion of Hezbollah (far more than any other country, Lebanon was at 35%)56% percent say that the influence of religious leaders in the territories are good.79% have confidence in Hassan Nasrallah as a leader in world affairs, far more than any other countryOnce again, the polls show that ordinary...

Palestinian Arabs overwhelmingly support terror and Bin Laden

A new survey done by the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that, almost alone among all Arabs, Palestinian Arabs solidly support terror:Among the most striking trends in predominantly Muslim nations is the continuing decline in the number saying that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians are justifiable in the defense of Islam. In Lebanon, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia, the proportion of Muslims who view suicide bombing...

Relativistic terror

Another magazine has noticed the new chumminess between the UN and Hezbollah:The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was increased from 2,000 to 13,300 peacekeepers after the month-long war last summer between Israel and Hizbullah. The UN peacekeepers are led by elite European troops and are charged with helping the Lebanese Army ensure that the tense border remained calm....

A scary followup in the Wall Street Journal to an earlier report from Michael Totten of Syrian occupation of Lebanon:As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself. The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just...

(I am keeping this post on top until the end of Tisha B'av on Tuesday night.)Tonight and tomorrow, Jews worldwide will commemorate Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem as well as other calamities throughout Jewish history.Jews in Jerusalem have commemorated Tisha B'Av for centuries by visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem and crying...