December 2008 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Long live “Proportionality”!

A mathematician looks at the idea of proportionate response, from the ZioNation blog:Whenever Israel undertakes a more incisive and forceful action to stop terrorist attacks, we hear the angry cries of condemnation for those who only seek to defend themselves and the cries of pity for those who attack, the poor Palestinian massacred.Among the main charges and condemnations...

News roundup (UPDATE 2)

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that "victory is near."Israel plans to open up Kerem Shalom tomorrow yet again, sending some 90 trucks filled with food and medicine.A new website called Aid2Gaza is trying to keep track of all aid sent to Gaza; my earlier estimates of the number of tons a truck holds was way low. The trucks that Israel has been sending hold 30 tons each, which means that Israel has sent about 4500 tons of aid so far this week alone....

Al-Aretz sinks even lower

Well, that didn't take long. Ha'aretz' Gideon Levy has written another of his predictable, sickening articles where Israel's evil is so taken for granted that he makes Al Jazeera sound like Arutz-7: Our finest young men...set out to bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers who had found that rare Gaza commodity, a job, massacring them by the dozen. They bombed a police station, hitting a doctor nearby...They bombed a university that...

More Free Gaza lies

Israel Matzav found the much-anticipated CNN video report on the Free Gaza incident:The inconsistencies/lies in the Free Gaza story keep adding up.The first Free Gaza communique, to their email list, said:The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage.Another of their communiques...

Spot the difference!

YNet: Unknown assailants, believed to be Arab, attacked salespeople at an Israeli-owned stand in Denmark, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday afternoon. Two Israelis reportedly suffered light injuries in the shooting attack. "Two Israelis working a Dead Sea Products stand in a mall were fired upon," Dan Oryan of the Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen told Ynet. "We don’t know how many people were involved in the shooting, but several individuals were...

When patience is not a virtue

Gaza terrorists have been shooting rockets and mortars at Israel since 2001. Some months saw many attacks and some saw only a few, but the net effect is the same - because the rockets are instruments of terror, not of genocide.Of course, the terrorists want to kill as many Israelis and Jews as possible. Even so, the main effectiveness of the Qassams is not the deaths that they cause, but the fear that they instill in residents who are in rocket range....

Keeping up with the news is a bit overwhelming. I thank my commenters for linking to interesting stories. Here are a few that caught my eye:The rocket that hit the school in Beersheba was made in China. Not quite homemade. It was also designed to spread lethal pellets over a large area, which would be considered yet another war crime for anyone who actually bothers to accuse...

PalArab news roundup

Most of the Grad/Katyusha longer-distance rockets are being shot by Hamas, a few from Islamic Jihad. The remaining "older" Qassams are from the PRC. Only a couple have been claimed by Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades since the start of the war.By the way, no one can claim that the rockets hitting Beersheba, Ashdod and Netivot are "home-made." They were all smuggled in during the "calm" while the media was fixated on consumer goods being sent from Egypt...

If the IDF made Hamas-style videos....

Have you ever seen Hamas' jihadist music videos? They are cheesy propaganda with awful music and tacky special effects that would be funny if they weren't advocating genocide. Anyway, here is my take on how an IDF video would look if it was directed by the same talent that Hamas uses......

December Rocket Calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)QS=Qassam landing short in GazaM=MortarF=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)M*- Apparently upgraded 120mm mortarsMS=Mortar landing shortP - unnamed "projectiles"(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claimsYellow=day Israel sent aid to GazaBlue=day Egypt sent aid to Gaza via Israel, inspected by Israel at Kerem Shalom)Green=Both Israeli and Arab aid allowed...

Women and children deaths pretty low

According to a report in Firas Press, quoting the "Conscience Foundation for Human Rights" in the Gaza Strip, so far there have been 368 deaths. Of those, 36 have been children and 9 women.While no one wants civilians to die, these numbers support Israel's claims of precision much more than they support the widespread libel that Israel is reacting with disproportionate and indiscriminate force.Half of Gazans are 17 or under. The remaining half would...

Insane Jew-hatred on Egyptian TV

They aren't even trying to pretend that they don't hate Jews anymore. From MEMRI (which now, unbelievably, requires registration to see their videos):Following are excerpts from interviews with several Egyptian clerics, which aired on Al-Nas TV and Al-Rahma TV on December 28 and 29, 2008. One of the clerics, Dr. Salah Sultan, is president of the American Center for Islamic Research (ACIR), a nonprofit organization registered in Ohio and located...

For news junkies....

I try to find topics that are not being covered well elsewhere, but for the main headlines and inside information about the current Gaza op I recommend these three essential blogs:Aussie Dave at Israellycool has been liveblogging from the beginning, with a bemused attitude. Lots of links to insightful/interesting/humorous pictures and videos.Jameel at The Muqata has likewise been liveblogging, a bit straighter than Israellycool but with many links...

Why would Israel bomb a university? Here's why!

Ma'an (as well as many other pro-Hamas venues) publishes an article from a professor at Islamic University in Gaza that asks, plaintively: Why would Israel bomb a university? - By Dr Akram HabeebAs a Fulbright scholar and professor of American literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, I have always preferred to keep silent about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.I always felt that it was my mission to preach love and peaceful coexistence. However,...

The media has a field day covering the many protests against Israel happening worldwide. The protests are colorful; they always have someone photogenic to publish or a gimmick that makes good copy. The impression one gets is that there is a broad-based mass of people who are genuinely concerned about Gazan lives and aghast at Israeli policy.While there are certainly no shortage...

Open thread

People have a lot to say, so I will provide a spot for them to say it.Also, if anyone can find an old-fashioned rendition of Hava Nagila, fast and preferably sung only by a bunch of men, please let me know. I have an idea for a video that should be pretty funny but I need that music. YouTube has a huge number of Hava Nagilas but I couldn't find any that fit the bill, although some of them are mind-blowin...

Saudi family tries to marry off 5 and 11 year old daughters

From Adnkronos (h/t Dhimmi Watch):A doctor in Saudi Arabia was able to stop the wedding of a five and 11 year-old whose family wanted to marry them to protect financial assets. "Thanks to the law that compels spouses to carry out blood analyses before marriage, we were able to stop a wedding with underage girls, among them a five year-old," said Hani Harsani, the doctor in charge of laboratory analysis in an interview with Saudi daily al-Watan."Two...

Palestinian Authority blames Hamas for Gaza deaths

From MEMRI (h/t jhrhv):In his visit to Egypt, PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) placed the responsibility for the Israeli attack on Hamas, saying, "We called the leaders of Hamas, and told them both directly and directly, through Arab parties and non-Arab parties. We talked with them on the phone. We told them, 'Please, do not end the tahdiah.'" Nimr Hammad, an advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, said: "The one responsible for the massacres is Hamas,...

I'm nominated for the 2008 Weblog Awards

Elder of Ziyon has been nominated for the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Middle Eastern or Africa Blog. And I am in very good company.I was similarly nominated in 2006 and was roundly destroyed in the final round, getting less than 10% of the vote of the winner. So to make it interesting I announced my goal to beat The Sudanese Thinker for a distant fourth place, which I managed to get at the last minute.This year I expect to do about the same as I did...

UN Lies

I caught the statement from UNRWA head Karen Abu Zayd and was going to spend some time showing that it was false, but Omri and Meryl Yourish did it first, and better.Meryl's synopsis:Here’s what Omri caught: “What we understood here (was) that there was a 48-hour lull to be called, and this was called by the Israelis,” Abu Zayd said. “They said they would wait 48 hours. That was on Friday morning, I believe, until Sunday morning, and that they were...

Free Gaza freaks turned away

Israel wisely decided not to allow the Free Gaza publicity hounds to arrive in a war zone. The FGM claims that the Israeli Navy rammed and fired on their boat; Israel says that they told the ship to stop and it kept going and rammed into the Israeli boat.The Free Gaza mailing list quotes a Ha'aretz article about the incident but prefixes it with "We all know the Israelis are inveterate liars, so I wouldn't assume any of it is actually true."Since...

Gleeful Hamas press release on 4 Israeli deaths

From Hamas' Al-Qassam website (autotranslated):The Brigades of the Martyr Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, the military wing of the "Hamas" movement bombed on Monday (29/12) the port of Ashdod with "Grad" rockets and the settlement of Nahal Oz with three mortar shells. The Zionist enemy admitted the deaths of four rapists, including an officer, and injuries to more than 20 others wounded...

Rocket fire after the disengagement.

Many terror-apologists are playing loose with the facts about what happened after Israel voluntarily evacuated all Jews from Gaza, so here is a short time-line of rocket attacks from Gaza in the aftermath of disengagement:September 12, 2005: The Israeli flag is lowered in Gaza and disengagement is over.September 12: Rocket attack on Sderot.September 12: Rocket attack on Yad Mordechai.9/23: Islamic Jihad attacks Kfar Aza9/24: Hamas attacks Sderot,...

Nice shooting

Some videos released by the IAF and ID...

Fatah militant accidentally kills another in WB

It is not easy to understand the Arabic Ma'an news story, but it appears that a Fatah Presidential Guard member "accidentally" killed a colleague - and wounded two others.I can understand a single accidental bullet, but three?It seems that a woman threw something out of her window that might have caused the soldier to fire. So she was arrested.The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now 23...

Once again, Iran makes it explicitly clear that it wants to destroy Israel, despite the claims of its apologists.Iran's Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar (R) stands under a banner as he takes part in an anti-Israel rally in Tehran in support of Palestinians in Gaza, December 29, 2008. Maybe those words translate into Persian as "We love flowers and cute cuddly animals."...

I have not seen this confirmed anywhere. From Palestine Today:Saraya al Quds, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, stated that it shot at Israeli occupation soldiers in the Jenin province, on Thursday evening, and confirmed casualties among the soldiers.There is no doubt that Islamic Jihad and Hamas would love to see this conflict expand to the West Bank, so this is an arena that...

There are more Gazans alive today than on Saturday morning

The word "genocide" is being bandied about a lot in the Arab world and far left-wing media outlets to describe Israeli actions in Gaza.One editorial in the Gulf News that caught my eye doesn't use the word explicitly but implies it, as it castigates Arab governments for not doing anything:While Gaza is burning, Arab officials are busy working the phones in an attempt to arrange an Arab emergency meeting. The earliest date possible, we are being told,...

To Israel's critics who pretend to want "peace"

There has been no shortage of criticism of Israel for finally deciding to do something about incessant rocket attacks against its citizens. From the U.N. Secretary-General calling Israel's actions "excessive" to French President Nicolas Sarkozy saying that Israel is using a "disproportionate use of force" to the EU's Javier Solana saying "There is no military solution" to the situation in Gaza, down to the more reliably anti-Israel crowd from the...

Hamas, PIJ playing games with Gaza lives

Despite the fact that Egypt offered to take in as many injured people as it could, Hamas has been forcibly blocking Gazans from getting medical help. So far, only 8 people were allowed through Rafah to get medical treatment.Meanwhile, Islamic Jihad took credit for shooting mortars at Nahal Oz this morning. Nahal Oz is where Israel transfers fuel to Gaza, so by bombing the crossing Islamic Jihad is consciously trying to stop any fuel from reaching...

Anti-Israel and anti-semitic propaganda in overdrive

The Free Gaza terror supporters are going nuts over Operation Cast Lead, furiously writing pro-Hamas spin in their website and sending another clown boat to Gaza to bring "aid" - which comprises less than 1% of the aid that Israel itself has sent to Gaza in the past two days.They are unabashedly to make statements like "On Saturday, December 27, Israel began Operation "Cast Lead," a military onslaught against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip...

Latest disinformation: "Shalit wounded in airstrike"

The Islamic Jihad-linked Palestine Today website reports that "informed sources said that the Israeli soldier captive in Gaza, Gilad Shalit, was wounded in a raid by Israeli planes."Further reading shows that these "informed sources" was some website called Islam Today (not sure which of those it was), and there is no confirmation by anyone who would know the truth.It is pretty obvious that this is just a disinformation campaign to try to get Israel...

On Sunday I received the wonderful news that EoZ frequent commenter, occasional blogger and one-time guest poster Yerushalimey is getting married iy"h this coming Wednesday night!His kallah (bride) is also a blogger, but her blog is not 100% anonymous so I am not linking to it without permission. I will tell you that she is a relatively recent immigrant to Israel from California...