October 2010 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Worth reading: "Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People"

From JCPA: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People:From the San Remo Conference (1920) to the Netanyahu-Abbas Talks Joshua Teitelbaum According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the real root of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians had been their ongoing refusal to recognize "the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their historic homeland" and he has singled out this issue as a key "prerequisite for ending...

A couple of recent items about Amnesty International: In May, Amnesty released a strongly worded communique condemning Israel for arresting a "human rights activist:" Amnesty International has called on the Israeli authorities to end their harassment of a human rights activist whose week-long detention by the Israeli authorities was extended today. Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian...

PA restricts how and what media can report. Journalists silent.

From the Jerusalem Post: The Palestinian Authority said on Monday that foreign journalists who visit the West Bank through Israeli media facilitators are “unwelcome.” The move is seen as an attempt by the PA to prevent journalists from writing stories that may reflect negatively on the Palestinian government’s image. The Jerusalem-based Media Central organization thus canceled a planned tour of foreign journalists to Jericho, which...

Kuwait to run for UN Human Rights Council

Another joke in the offing: Kuwait has decided to run for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) membership for 2013-2015 in aim to what it calls “buttressing and disseminating” the culture of human rights, Kuna news agency reported on Thursday. The country’s permanent representative at the U.N. Mansour al-Etebi has embarked on the UNHRC country’s decision during a U.N. General Assembly Social, Human and Cultural Committee meeting late...

Two wrongs

From AP: One of Egypt's best-selling novelists lashed out on Friday at an unauthorized Hebrew translation of his best known novel, describing it as intellectual "theft." Alaa al-Aswany told AP that he will sue an Israeli center for translating his hit book, "The Yacoubian Building," without his permission. The Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information acknowledged it translated the novel against al-Aswany's will on the grounds of "expanding...

Left wing activists caught cutting down Arab olive trees

From YNet: Arabs and leftist activists staged an attack on Palestinian fields in a bid to accuse settlers of vandalism, an organization that claims to have documented the incident says. Tazpit Unit [is] an organization identified with the settlers which documents news events in the territories. Tazpit says that these staged attacks were meant to falsely accuse settlers of...

You can always count on Palestinian Arab intransigence

I've mentioned how an outgoing UNRWA official, Andrew Whitley, caused a storm of protest by stating an obvious truth: that most Palestinian Arab "refugees" will never end up in Israel and that it is cruel to keep feeding them that fantasy - a fantasy that has already ruined three generations of families. Now, that oh-so-"moderate" PA spokesman and serial liar Saeb Erekat has added his voice to the complaints, writing a letter of complaint to the...

Baruch Dayan HaEmet

RivkA, an Israeli blogger who has been chronicling her battle with cancer, passed away on Friday. Her funeral was Saturday night in Jerusalem. While I did not frequent her blog, she sounds like she was an amazing person. Since the topic of Rachel's Tomb came up yesterday, here is her account of her visit there in 2008. May her family be comforte...

Shabbat Shalom open thread

Here's another picture I took with my camera phone this week (heavily cropped and somewhat adjusted to make it brighter.) It was through the car window so it is not as nice as the one I did yesterday. I have been working off and on to move the products from my CafePress store to Printfection, where you have much more variety for every design. I was able to embed the store...

UNESCO pushes a lie

From the UNESCO site: • The Palestinian sites of al-Haram al-Ibrahimi/Tomb of the Patriarchs in al-Khalil/Hebron and the Bilal bin Rabah Mosque/Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem: the Board voted 44 to one (12 abstentions) to reaffirm that the two sites are an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories and that any unilateral action by the Israeli authorities is to be considered a violation of international law, the UNESCO Conventions and...

Latest Latma (10/29/10)

Starts off strong; goes downhill. But still goo...

Jordan condemns UNRWA official's comments

Earlier this week, I mentioned an outgoing UNRWA official had stated out loud what everyone knows - that most descendants of Arab refugees from Palestine in 1948 will never "return" to Israel, and it is cruel to keep feeding them that lie. Predictably, UNRWA distanced itself from the comments. Jordan has now condemned the comments as well: Jordan has condemned remarks by a United Nations official saying Palestinian refugees must not be deluded...

From The Telegraph(UK): A GOVERNMENT minister spoke at an event where suicide bomber accessories and items glorifying terrorism were on open sale. Andrew Stunell, the communities minister, addressed the controversial “Global Peace and Unity” (GPU) conference in East London on Sunday. The event’s programme says its official “supporters” include the Metropolitan Police and...

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has put together a lot of information about the recent Viva Palestina trip to Gaza - and showing exactly what the self-proclaimed "humanitarians" did while they were there. Some highlights: The de facto Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip conducted a media campaign to use the convoy as a lever to improve its image in international...

All week, there have been a number of events in Gaza to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the death of Islamic Jihad co-founder Fathi Shiqaqi. Shiqaqi was first Sunni terrorist leader to find Koranic justification for suicide terrorism. He was assassinated in a Mossad operation in Malta on October 26, 1995. The commemorations reach their peak today with a planned rally...

Egypt arrests group planning to bomb US ships in Damietta

Egyptian security authorities arrested 14 men from the city of Damietta last Tuesday, saying that they formed a terrorist cell called "Soldiers of Allah," and seized weapons and explosives, saying they 'were planned to be used in terrorist attacks'. The group held meetings in the home of one of their leaders, 35-year old Subhi Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who is a pharmacist. They were planning to carry out terrorist operations against a number of commercial...

Report: US plan for Israel to lease settlements from PA

Asharq al-Awsat reports that the US and Israel are in secret negotiations in Washington to define the borders between Israel and a future Palestinian Arab state. According to the sources, the agreement that the US is pushing involves recognition of a Palestinian Arab state exactly along the 1949 armistice lines in return for Palestinian Arab agreement to lease parts of "Arab" eastern Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to Israel for somewhere between...

Egyptian elections coming up

The Egyptian regime is having major problems trying to keep the elections legal, and yet marginalizing the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt has made the Muslim Brotherhood's slogan, "Islam is the Solution", illegal for use on campaign posters. Even though the MB is not allowed to run, they back independent candidates who subscribe to their positions. From The Canadian Press: Egyptian security detained 65 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood...

My cell phone camera might not be nearly as good as a dedicated camera, but in the right conditions it can do OK. I took this shot this morning. ...

Who does the AP consider an "extremist"?

Here are all the recent stories I could find by AP that used the word "extremist" as a factual statement, not as a quote: October 19: A northern Virginia man who warned the creators of the animated TV show "South Park" that they risked death for mocking the prophet Muhammad is scheduled to plead guilty to supporting an al-Qaida linked terrorist group, according to court records....Prosecutors say that Chesser tried twice in the last year to travel...

Iran and Saudis likely joining UN women's rights agency

From AP: Iran, where a woman convicted of adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning, is likely to become a member of the board of the new U.N. agency to promote equality for women, prompting outrage from the U.S. and human rights groups. Some rights groups are also upset that Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive and are barred from many facilities used by men, is also vying to join the governing body of UN Women. The General...

Egyptian Christians in trouble

Israel Today, a Christian Zionist publication, refers to Raymond Ibrahim's recent piece in writing an update on the dangers facing Egypt's Coptic minority: Egypt has parliamentary elections coming up next month and an important presidential election next year. As with similar regimes throughout history, the current rulers of Egypt need a scapegoat to take the voters’ attention off its disastrous social and economic policies (after all, rigging elections...

A new weapons route from Iran to Gaza?

From Ha'aretz: Nigeria's secret service said on Tuesday it had intercepted 13 containers of weapons from Iran in what Israeli defense sources believe may be part of a new smuggling route from Iran to Hamas in Gaza. Rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives camouflaged as building material were seized in the Nigerian port of Lagos after being unloaded from an Iranian ship. Nigerian media reports said the ship, which came from Iran, docked...

Jordanian "honor killer" has sentence reduced

From Al Arabiya: A Jordanian man was condemned to death on Wednesday for killing his raped teenage niece to "cleanse" the family's honor, but the sentence was later commuted to 10 years in jail. "The victim's family has urged the court to reduce the sentence, and it was commuted to 10 years in prison," a criminal court official told AFP. Murder is punishable by the death penalty in Jordan, but in the case of so-called "honor killings," a court...

In 2006, Pew Research asked people throughout the world their opinion of Jews. The country that came in dead last, with 98% saying that they do not like Jews, was Jordan. (Egypt came in at 97%.) That's all the background you need to understand this: It has been a while since Israelis entering Jordan were first required to deposit items of a Jewish-religious nature in order...

Lauren Booth sets the record straight about her Islamic adventure

Al Quds al Arabi, the London-based pan-Arabic newspaper, interviewed Lauren Booth about her conversion to Islam. First, she said that she simply converted to Islam, not to any particular sect within Islam. I guess she needs to get past page 60 of the Koran to make such a decision. She said she did it after returning from Iran, not in Iran. Some newspaper mentioned that she...

Wednesday afternoon links

Israeligirl: Cultural Oppression in Iran Haaretz: Israeli Arab activist (and head of an NGO network) admits to spying for Hezbollah Backspin: The Legal Niceties of Hamas Executions Soccer Dad: Wanting peace more than the Palestinians Sultan Knish: When Jewish Windows Break Remember the nutty anti-semitic article about how Jews leaving the White House is a bad omen for America? Well, it now has a new audience - readers of the Arab...

Your tax dollars paying for PalArab pensions

A couple of weeks ago: The European Commission decided, on 5 October, to provide an additional financial package worth €61.4 million for the Occupied Palestinian Territories under the 2010 budget. Some €41.4 million will go towards helping the Palestinian Authority meet its salary obligations for teachers, doctors and nurses in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.But apparently some of that €41.4 million is going elsewhere: The Prime Minister...

Imagine that the State of Israel published maps showing its boundaries looking something like this: This map would include parts of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, as well as all of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Do you think it might offend people? Would it spur a huge set of angry demonstrations and op-eds, accusing Israel of expansionism and having aggressive, militaristic...