January 2008 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Gaza/Egypt update

Palestine Press quotes Israel Radio as saying that Egypt arrested 15 Hamas terrorists in its territory.Al-Ahram (Arabic) says that Egypt is prepared to seal the border with new, sophisticated equipment. It estimates that Gazans spent 1.2 billion Egyptian pounds (roughly $210 million) and sums up the week this way (autotranslated):Under the rule of the spirit of the market was the sale of corrupt goods and the use of counterfeit dollars, and the...

200K

Today this blog received its 200,000th visitor.It has been ten months since number 100,000 and the number of average daily visits has been climbing steadily since I started this in 2004. The last few days saw a huge influx of visitors thanks to a link from Little Green Footballs - roughly 5000 readers of just that story.The average reader visits about 1.4 pages; so far I have some 273,000 page hits total.Number 200,000 apparently lives in Toronto;...

Qassams resume after lull - Gazans injured

After a break of four days without Qassams, two were fired into Israel today, with no injuries.A third rocket fell short and hit a house in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, injuring a woman and child, according to the Palestine Press Agenc...

People forget what life was like for the Jews in Palestine in the months that followed the UN partition vote. Until the Haganah took the offensive, Jews were sitting ducks for Palestinian Arab terror attacks, which occurred all the time.The following story was on page 3 of the four-page Palestine Post for February 1, 1948. At that point these types of attacks were so routine...

Sir Moses Montefiore's visit to Morocco, 1863

In October of 1863, a Spaniard in Morocco died, and naturally the community found a Jewish scapegoat(from Sir Moses Montefiore: a centennial biography, published in 1884): At Saffi, a seaport on the West coast of Morocco, a Spaniard had died suddenly, and suspicions of foul play, probably poisoning, had been aroused in the mind of the Spanish Consul. In his official capacity he called upon the Moorish authorities to investigate the case, and they,...

Hamas kills some dude in Khan Younis

It has been a slow month for Palestinian Arab self-deaths, but that may only appear to be so because the reporting out of Gaza is essentially self-censored by every Palestinian Arab news source save for Palestine Press Agency, which doesn't seem to have real credentialed reporters there. It has been fairly accurate in many of its scoops, though.It makes the count a bit difficult.Anyway, PalPress reports that Hamas has killed someone named Mohammed...

Real slow ethnic cleansing

One of the mantras of the Arab world and their useful leftist idiots is that Israel is engaging in an "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinian Arabs, or Arabs altogether. Gaza is always trotted out as the supreme example of Israeli genocide/ethnic cleansing.A consistent recent theme among these propagandists and morons is their utter conviction that Israel planned the entire Rafah wall breach in order to get hundreds of thousands of Gazans to leave - and...

Egypt arrested 5 Gazans with bomb belts; 36 injured in Rafah clashes

Al-Ahram, Egypt's semi-official newspaper, reports on the latest from Hamastan's invasion: (autotranslated)Informed sources announced that over the past few days in Taba (authorities) arrested five Palestinians who were carrying explosive belts and were targeted to conduct suicide operations inside Israel, and is currently being investigated by a security body. These sources said that security forces seized another group that entered the country...

Hamas claiming some Egyptian land

Palestine Press Agency reports of a TV interview with Hamas advisor Amhad Yousef.Yousef is saying that some 13,000 acres of Egyptian territory are really "Palestinian" and he wants an open border with Arab countries: (autotranslated)Ahmed Yousef, political adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, called for the "demolition and removal of the border between Palestinian Rafah and the Egyptian territory and the seizure of thousands of acres built on...

Poverty-stricken Gaza spending spree close to a half billion dollars

The FilBalad News reports that as of Monday, the poor besieged unemployed desperate Gazans had spent $250 million and the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce estimates a total of $480 million spent by the end of the week.Sandmonkey has a great roundup of the problems that the Gazans are causing the average Egyptian, especially in the Sina...

Gaza fuel companies reject fuel shipments again

For the second time in a little more than a week, Gaza fuel companies are rejecting fuel deliveries from Israel:Chief of the Gaza Strip's union of fuel companies, Mahmoud Al-Khizindar affirmed on Tuesday that the fuel companies refused to receive the fuel shipment from Israel to the Gaza Strip save the natural gas and the fuel for running the electricity generating station.He pointed out that Israel reduced the fuel supplies to 10% of the needed...

Peres Peace Center computer game shows Olmert strategy

From, of all places, The Electronic Intifada: I have succeeded in making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In an interview preceding the Annapolis Conference, Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiator Saeb Erakat claimed that peace could be delivered in half an hour. The basis, everyone already knows, is the Clinton draft: two states with border adjustments and division of Jerusalem. In my case, peace took two hours -- or, well, two years....

Here's a picture that an AFP photographer took yesterday:A Palestinian youth throws a petrol bomb towards Israeli military armoured vehicles in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, January 28.Are Israeli soldiers justified in shooting a youth like this who is throwing a bomb towards them? Or is there some special dispensation for 17 year olds to do whatever they feel like because...

Did Hamas miscalculate?

In the first days after Hamas blew up the wall with Egypt it appeared that it was a great political victory. There was wall to wall coverage of Gazans buying everything from food and fuel to motorcycles and big-screen TVs, Hamas seemed to be negotiating with Egypt directly as a legitimate nation, and Fatah looked weaker than ever.But something unexpected has been happening. This apparent Hamas victory is looking like anything but.MEMRI publishes...

MSM talks about "settlements" in the Negev

The CAMERA blog mentions that the BBC used the word "settlements" to describe Israeli towns in the Negev:Israel began tightening its blockade of the Gaza Strip after an increase in rocket attacks by militants targeting its settlements near the border. As CAMERA notes:Israel withdrew its military and civilian settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Sderot--the prime target of Palestinian rocket and mortar fire--is a city in the western Negev, well...

What if the Beatles had come to Israel?

Israel's Foreign Ministry today extended a formal apology to the Beatles for not allowing them to play in Israel in 1965:"We would like to take this opportunity," the letter says, "to rectify a historic missed opportunity which unfortunately took place in 1965 when you were invited to Israel. Unfortunately, the State of Israel cancelled your performance in the country due to lack of budget and because several politicians in the Knesset had believed...

Hamas counterfeiting Egyptian currency for buying spree

The anti-Hamas but often reliable Palestine Press Agency is claiming that Hamas is counterfeiting Egyptian currency, providing them to Gaza merchants to buy goods wholesale - and then Hamas gets a cut of the sales when the goods are resold in Gaza. (autotranslated)Palestinian merchants who crossed in the last few days to the Egyptian territories for the purchase and needs to clinch deals to supply humanitarian needs of the sector, dealers Egyptians...

Gaza and International Law

A very good article on the legality of Israeli actions in Gaza has been published by Abraham Bell at the JCPA.In addition to doing a much better job than I in showing that Gaza is not legally occupied by Israel, Bell goes further in showing how Israel's actions are legal both if Gaza is considered to have legal independent sovereignty or not. The summary:International law authorizes Israel to initiate military countermeasures in Gaza. If Gaza is...

Arab unity in praise of a dead scumbag

I have yet to see anything in the Arab press that mentions George Habash's death as less than tragic.The entire Arab world - from moderate US allies and Arab members of Knesset to the PA and the far reaches of the diehard Islamist terror groups - is uniformly mourning an arch-terrorist leader.He is being described most often in the Arab press as a force for "unity" and yet he was an unrepentant advocate of terror against civilians worldwide. All...

Sex and al-City

From the New York Post: A Wall Street stockbroker fears for her life after she rebuffed a Brooklyn imam she met on a Muslim dating Web site.In an explosive $50 million lawsuit that blows the lid off the wacky world of Muslim dating in New York, Cherine Allaithy alleges the religious leader promised he would make her one of four future wives and boasted of a cousin in al Qaeda. When she dumped him, he trashed her reputation in the Arab press.The imam,...

Arab News reports:People don’t usually receive condolence messages for the death of animals. But Abdullah ibn Fahaad Al-Fasam Al-Dossari, owner of the most beautiful camel in the world, Mashoufan, received many such messages from camel lovers in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries after his camel died last week following a disease.Mashoufan, which had won first prizes in...

Fisking Khalidi's "Iron Cage" - part two

Part one here. Rashid Khalidi admits in the introduction to his book that he provided very little original research in writing it, and mostly relied on the works of other historians. This does not invalidate a book as a work of history, of course, but it does give the author a little more burden of proof as to which facts he chooses to highlight and which he chooses to ignore. Arab historians, for understandable reasons, love Benny Morris. As one...

Sunday links

My Shrapnel, a new blog of a terror victimAnother PA music video inciting hatred against IsraelInteresting analysis of the possibility of Hamas terrorists going after the multi-national forces in the SinaiThe Second Draft looks at last year's Gaza beach tragedyHH CLI hosted (and now sponsored) by Jack's ShackAussie Dave continues liveblogging the situation in Isra...

Fisking Khalidi's "Iron Cage" - part one

In 2006, Columbia Professor Rashid Khalidi published "The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood." Khalidi, an American of Palestinian Arab descent, occupies the prestigious Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at Columbia University and he heads the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. Khalidi's book has been lauded for its supposed even-handedness in being critical of Palestinian...

Egypt catches Gazans with explosives

Palestine Press Agency reports (autotranslated):Egyptian sources revealed that the security authorities had detained several Palestinians in the Egyptian governorates of possession of explosives and advanced mobile phones capable of penetrating Egyptian security communication networks.Deputies of the prominent ruling National Democratic Party in Egypt warned of the seriousness of leaving open the border with Gaza, without controls, saying that Palestinians...

Iranian official threatens Jews worldwide

From the Iranian Mehr News:International Institute for Holocaust Research Secretary General Mohammad-Ali Ramin has called on the Jewish community to break their silence on Israel’s crimes against Palestinians and give up their support for the Zionist regime.“If the world’s Jews keep silent on the blatant genocide of Palestinians, the entire human community will hold Jewish people responsible for the crimes,” Ramin told the Mehr News Agency on Friday.He...

Great moments in UN history

During the discussion around yesterday's routine UNHRC one-sided condemnation of Israel came this exchange, which pretty much says it all about how serious one should take that august institution:HILLEL NEUER, of United Nations Watch , said that the proposed draft resolution constituted a case of psychological projection. It was Hamas which deliberately fired rockets into Israel. They were the ones rejecting the very notion of distinction between...

Is Gaza occupied?

Yesterday, the ever-reliable UN "Human Rights" Commission did what it literally always does - it condemned Israel and no one else. As Israellycool points out, the resolution used the terminology "occupied Gaza Strip" no less than four times.Is Gaza legally occupied?It is hard to find a good definition of "occupied territory" in international law. The best one is perhaps from the Hague Convention of 1907, which the Geneva Conventions seems to rely...

Two terror attacks near Jerusalem

One Israeli was killed and another wounded Thursday night in a shooting attack near the entrance to the Shuafat refugee camp in northern Jerusalem. One of the wounded died after resuscitation attempts and the other, a female, was listed in serious condition. IDF sources said that terrorists had approached the entrance to Shuafat by foot and opened fire at a group of Israelis nearby and then...

From YNet:The Israeli consulate in New York released 4,200 red balloons Thursday, equal to the number of Qassam rockets fired at Sdeort since the Gaza disengagement, outside the United Nations headquarters in the city. The display aimed to protest the international community's disregard for Qassam fire at Israel.Consul for Media and Public Affairs in New York, David Saranga,...

From FARS(h/t NRO Corne...

An interesting "martyr"

Palestine Today keeps up the tradition of finding roughly one person a day who dies in a hospital in Gaza and blaming his death on Israeli travel restrictions:Palestinian medical sources announced last night on the death of a patient due prevented by the Israeli authorities from leaving the Gaza Strip to receive the necessary treatment abroad.The same sources stated that the young Naji Hamdan Cream (36 years), resident of the Rafah governorate joined...

Fertilizer for bombs and terrorists going through Rafah

From the Daily Telegraph:And somewhere in the teeming crowd, came people anxious to exploit the day for their own less innocent purposes.Fertiliser, broken down into half bags for lugging through the many tunnels that arms smugglers normally use for delivery into Gaza, was to be seen as it was manhandled overland.It was white, oily, crystalline and a dab on the tongue left a sharp, burning sensation.In most countries fertiliser has a perfectly innocent...

Morning links

Israellycool continues his liveblogging of the situation in Gaza, Sderot and vicinity.Egypt Today on the Israeli film The Band and why Egypt refuses to screen it.YNet and BackSpin on anti-semitic Arab cartoons.Canada decides not to attend Durban II : "We'll attend any conference that is opposed to racism and intolerance, not those that actually promote racism and intolerance"Brazilian singer: "I constantly ask myself why I need suffer so. I am not...

More Hamas staged stunts - candlelight edition

From the Jerusalem Post:On at least two occasions this week, Hamas staged scenes of darkness as part of its campaign to end the political and economic sanctions against the Gaza Strip, Palestinian journalists said Wednesday.In the first case, journalists who were invited to cover the Hamas government meeting were surprised to see Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his ministers sitting around a table with burning candles.In the second case on Tuesday,...

Rafah blasts were planned for weeks

From Dion Nissenbaum of McClatchy Newspapers:Before dawn, Palestinian militants blew up and tore down large sections of the concrete and iron walls separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.They had apparently been planning the attack for weeks. With the knowledge of locals, militants had spent weeks methodically using blow torches to cut along the bottom of the 30-foot-tall corrugated iron wall along the Egyptian border.Before dawn on Wednesday, militants...