October 2008 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Friday, October 31, 2008

The richest Jew in Damascus, 1816

James Silk Buckingham wrote a diary of his travels in the early part of the nineteenth century, called "Travels Among the Arab Tribes Inhabiting the Countries East of Syria and Palestine." He mentions the richest Jew in Damascus, Mallim Yusef, who was a very important member of the Damascus branch of the Ottoman government, "directing all the financial operations" there. Buckingham then describes a visit to the "kihyah bey," or local prime minister,...

19 weeks in a row

For the nineteenth consecutive week, more Palestinian Arabs were violently killed by their own actions than by the evil IDF.The score this week was 4-1. That one from this week, described by the PCHR only as an "elderly Palestinian man," happened to be firing at the IDF at the time with his rifle.Since the beginning of August the score is 80-7.We are now closing in on the 2006-7 streak of 23 weeks in a row of Palestinian Arabs managing to outkill...

How not to dismantle a bomb

From Ma'an:A Hamas police officer was killed and several other Palestinians were wounded on Thursday when an explosive device detonated in a police station in Gaza City.A spokesperson for the movement, Islam Shahwan, said the device had been discovered earlier in the day within the Hamas controlled territory and taken to a police station to be dismantled. While experts took apart the bomb, it exploded, causing several secondary blasts, as well, Shahwan...

Egypt finds 8 missiles in the Sinai meant for Gaza

From Ma'an Arabic:Egyptian police said Tuesday they discovered a cache of weapons in the northern Sinai Desert.An Egyptian security official said police found the 8 surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles in an underground bunker in the northern Sinai Desert.The police sources said that the missiles were on their way to the Gaza Strip. JPost confirms this story.There have been many recent stories about the smuggling tunnels run by Hamas in...

Arab world screwing their own people

Nothing demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Arab world more than the fate of some 2300 miserable refugees from Iraq who are stuck on the Syria/Iraq border. From the UNHCR:AL TANF, Iraq-Syria Border, October 30 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has rushed assistance to hundreds of ... refugees stuck in camps on the Iraq-Syria border after heavy rain and flooding caused chaos and...

Random thoughts and open thread

I just saw a pretty nifty Israeli invention for sale - called Vazu. It is, believe it or not, a foldable vase.Check out Martin Kramer vs. Martin Peretz on Obama and Khalidi.You can forget about trying to change my mind for the election - I already voted (I'm going on a business trip next week and wouldn't have been able to vote on Election Day.)Trivia question: How many World Series has Philadelphia won? Answer: 7! (The Philadelphia Athletics won...

Check out Ami Isseroff's review of Benny Morris' "1948"

Possibly the best reference site for the history of Israel and Zionism on the web is Ami Isseroff's zionism-israel.com , and its sister site MidEast Web. Without a doubt, Isseroff is the most knowledgeable blogger on Israel's history, and his websites are truly encyclopedic (although not as well organized as they should be.)For a stellar example, see Isseroff's review of the new Benny Morris book, 1948: A History of the First Arab Israeli War. And...

PA admits it supports terror against Israel

Daniel Pipes notices how the PA argued to dismiss a lawsuit in US courts against the organization for terror acts that killed over 30 people:The lawsuit, Sokolow v The Palestine Liberation Organization, brought by the intrepid David Strachman, alleges that the PLO carried out two machine-gun and five bombing attacks in the Jerusalem area between January 2001 and February 2004. The plaintiffs allege, in the words of U.S. District Judge George Daniels,...

"Blind shiekh" depressed, whining in prison hospital

A truly saddening story from Palestine Today, quoting the website of the terror group Jemaah Islamiyah: (autotranslated and cleaned up a little)Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Emir of Jemaah Islamiyah, jailed in a prison in America 16 years ago, told his wife in a telephone conversation, "I am in great distress, my health has deteriorated too, and I need the prayers of all the righteous brothers, I do not feel access to prayers , and I feel they do...

Once again, Hamas maintains control over Gaza with no financial responsibility, which is happily taken care of by our tax dollars via the PA. From Ma'an:The Palestinian Authority (PA) will pay compensation to civilians affected by the recent flooding there, according to a statement received by Ma’an on Thursday.The governor of the central Gaza Strip said that Palestinian President...

Vapor stories

Even though the Palestinian Arab press will wildly exaggerate and completely mislead with their stories, usually there is some real event that happened that caused them to light up their imaginations.Sometimes, though, I cannot find that real event.Two recent cases, in which the first one sounds somewhat realistic and the second one a bit less so:Yesterday, Firas Press wrote an article - which they said came from Yediot Aharonot - saying that Hamas...

Free Gaza isn't free for their passengers!

The Free Gaza freaks are so far in debt, they apparently charged their idiot passengers about $1000 each for this latest trip!Look at this graphic on their site (they apparently had a typo which I correct):The FGMers have so far spent $740,000 and have raised $325,000 - but $300,000 came from "donations" and $25,000 from "passenger fees".There was no mention of "passenger...

It's been a long 28 year...

Al Quds University has on its website, in English, a "history" of Jerusalem aimed at erasing Jews. Quotes (after a section that claims that Biblical history is filled with lies): The key to clarifying the history of Jerusalem and Palestine lies in distinguishing between literary tradition and recorded history, between imagined memory and material evidence. It is equally important...

Rafah cemetery collapses into smuggling tunnels

From Firas Press and Palestine Today (Arabic):Heavy rain washed away the Azaaarbp cemetery on the Egyptian-Palestinian border town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip today, because of the existence of tunnels beneath the cemetery. Witnesses said a large number of modern and ancient tombs were destroyed by torrential rains and plunged into a the tunnels beneath the cemetery.A large number of houses were submerged in rainwater in all southern...

Free Gaza freaks are seasick!

I signed up to be on Free Gaza's mailing list so I get the latest news quickly. And their dispatches sometimes contain real gems.From Greta Berlin, of the FGM Media Team:It's 2:30 am, and Osama has just gone to get some sleep for a couple of hours. He and I wait in Cyprus for news from the Dignity and watch the small blip of the SPOT checker as it moves slowly toward Gaza and a possible forceful intervention from the well-armed Israeli navy somewhere...

An early Jewish settlement in Palestine (1882)

Famed, eccentric British explorer and writer Laurence Oliphant journeyed to Palestine in the early 1880s. In this excerpt from his book "Haifa; or, Life in modern Palestine," this is a somewhat humorous and illuminating account of the founding of a new unnamed Jewish agricultural settlement in 1882, probably Zichron Yaakov. (h/t anonymous commenter)About sixteen miles to the south of the projecting point of Carmel, upon which the celebrated monastery...

Jihadis love their kiddie pr0n

I had missed this story from a couple of weeks ago, from the Times of London:Paedophilia and terrorism seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. We think of men who prey on children, and those who are a step away, collecting child po-rnography over the internet, as depraved isolated individuals wallowing in their own obsessions.By contrast, despite the destruction of innocent lives that they crave, the popular view is that terrorists are driven...

Today, the Free Gaza leftards and terrorist-huggers gave out another of their endless supply of press releases where they lie about their goals:We are returning to Gaza for exactly the same reasons we came in August: to deliver medical supplies, meet with civil society organizations, volunteer in hospitals, and visit Palestinians who have requested our presence.But their mission...

Egypt's siege of Gaza

Last week, CAMERA released a backgrounder aimed at the many media outlets that refer exclusively to an "Israeli siege" of Gaza without acknowledging that Egypt also chooses to severely restrict people and goods from entering Gaza.A case in point can be seen in this story which has been ignored by the Western press.Ma'an wrote last week:A European group is organizing the largest-ever parliamentary visit to the Gaza Strip next month, aimed at breaking...

LG Electronics markets Quran TV set

The line between religion and commerce is nonexistent when it comes to Islam. Korea-based LG has released a TV with built-in Quran:Keen to read the Quran on your TV set in the comfort of your home or bookmark your favourite phrases from the Holy Quran at the flick of your TV remote? You can now, with LG's latest Quran-enabled Time Machine TV.Fresh from the success of its Qiblah mobile phone, digital leader LG Electronics has announced the Middle...

The peaceful Palestinian Arabs, 1834

I just saw this account of a Muslim riot against Jews in 1834 in Safed in a book called Eōthen by Alexander William Kinglake published in 1846:At length I drewnear to the city of Safet. It sits as proud as a fortress upon thesummit of a craggy height ; yet because of its minarets, and statelytrees, the place looks happy and beautiful. It is one of the holycities of the Talmud, and according to this authority, the Messiahwill reign there for forty...

By the way, I have a YouTube channel

Not that I've worked so hard on setting it up, but if you are interested, you can find it here. Some original material and some repackaging of things on Israeli websites that required Internet Explorer.(This can be considered an open thread...

Another heartless IDF restriction

Firas Press reports that the IDF decided to suspend deliveries of clothing to Gaza for a while.It says that no official reason was given. What could possibly possess the Israelis to deprive Gazans of clothing?Then we find out the reason: according to other sources, the IDF has discovered IDF uniforms being smuggled into Gaza in the clothing shipments, to be used by terrorist...

From the ever-humorous Ma'an Palestinian Arab "news" agency:Concern over earlier reports of increased rates of physical birth-defects and stillborn deliveries are heightened in the southern Gaza Strip after Director of Social Health Department in the de facto Health Ministry Salah Rantisi announced that he found an additional foetus with physical mutations in an ultrasound....

Hamas' top priority: releasing murderers of Jewish civilians

As Hamas continues to slowly grow in respectability in the West, it is instructive to see exactly who Hamas is demanding to be released from Israeli jails in exchange for Gilad Shalit.Ma'an quotes Israel's Channel Two as saying that the list includes some of the most heinous terrorists responsible for scores of deaths of civilians. Hamas' heroes are in direct proportion to the number of Jews they killed.At the top of the list is the person responsible...

Casual anti-semitism in Yemen Times

Incongruously placed at the top of an article about the Arab nations' place in the world comes these two paragraphs in the Yemen Times:The whole world is currently undergoing an unprecedented financial crisis that reminds the elderly of what happened in 1929, which was also known as “Year of Economic Recession”. According to economic and political analysts, the economic recession of 1929 was caused by the Zionist Rochield [sic - Rothschild] family...

The evil Zionists tried to get rid of good Palestinian malaria!

The hatred that so-called progressive intellectuals have of Israel and Zionism truly knows no bounds. A good example can be seen in this review of a book called "Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920-1947" by Sondra M. Sufian.It is hard to know how much bias is from the author and how much from the reviewer, but the thesis of the book is, as the article states:The Zionists imported European and U.S. medical...

Free Gaza freaks set to sail again

Last we looked, the Free Gaza leftards were trying desperately to find a new boat, willing to sell their old boats to anyone strange enough to want them.Apparently, their please were less than successful, as their press release from a couple of days ago stated:On October 28, 2008, the Free Gaza Movement will set sail again for Gaza. On board will be a Nobel Peace Prize winner, five physicians, a member of the Israeli Knesset, and a member of the...

Ancient Palestine, according to Palestinian Arabs

The Democratic Front for the History of Palestine, a Marxist group that is part of the PLO, has a history of Palestine on its website that is says came from the Palestinian National Information Center, a part of the Palestinian Authority.It is a bizarre mix of purposeful pseudo-scholarly lies and Quranic fantasy.It is almost certain that this is the "history" taught in Palestinian Arab universities.Here are some relevant parts:▪ First: Palestine...

PalArab news roundup

Three Gazans were killed in yet another smuggling tunnel collapse in Rafah.Fatah plans to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Yasir Arafat's death in Gaza. Not sure yet what Hamas thinks about it.A "former" Al Aqsa Brigades terrorist was shot multiple times in Nablus.Supreme Palestinian Judge Sheikh Tayseer At-Tamimi and two other members of the "Islamic Christian Front" gave a long list of grievances about how badly Arabs in Jerusalem are treated...

18 weeks in a row

For the eighteenth consecutive week, Palestinian Arabs managed to die violently by their own actions in higher numbers than those that were killed by Israel.According to PCHR, one Palestinian Arab was killed by the IDF this week, from Thursday to Wednesday.In that same time period, three Palestinian Arabs were violently killed - one "training accident", one murder, and one smuggling tunnel electrocution.The score since the beginning of September...

Whiplash-inducing headline of the day

From the ever-humorous Palestinian Arab Ma'an website:Israeli peace activists throw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers in Ni'lin Newspeak is alive and wel...

Today's Sharia News

Iranian authorities have confirmed that they will continue to apply the death penalty to minors.Deputy prosecutor general Hossein Zebhi told a newspaper that under Sharia law only a murder victim's family could commute a death sentence. He had suggested last week that judges were being told to stop imposing the death penalty on young offenders. Iran has been widely condemned for being one of the few remaining nations to execute offenders aged...

The Phillies, Obama and Israel

I became a Phillies fan when the Philadelphia Phillies were pretty much the worst team in baseball.In 1972, the Phillies ended up in last place in their division. Their lineup consisted of forgettable players who I was enamored with, like Roger Freed and Denny Doyle in the starting lineup.The Phillies' ugly 59-97 record is most remarkable because a full 27 of those wins were due to a single pitcher, Steve Carlton, who racked up an amazing 27-10 record...