2010 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy New Year!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year (and a Shabbat Shalom :) ) Let's hope for a great 2011! I want to thank the people who generously gave me donations through my new PayPal button on the right, as well as those who managed to donate through the old Google Checkout button in the few hours before Google pulled it. I also want to thank those who viewed the Hasbara...

Weekend links

Bat Ye'or on Delegitimizing the Jewish State. Lauren Booth is bankrupt - not only morally, but financially too. (via Israellycool) WSJ on the Leviathan gas field in Israeli territorial waters and the problems being created by greed. Wikileaks: US frustrated with Egypt's military (that gets $1.3 billion a year.) A bit of a conflict of interest by J-Street's leader. A White House clueless about Syria. A 16% increase in aliyah this year. A...

Latest Latma (12/31/10)

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Abbas to celebrate Fatah's first terror attack

Mahmoud Abbas, that so-called moderate leader of the Palestinian Arabs, is set to make a major televised speech tonight to commemorate the 46th anniversary of the start of the "revolution." What happened 46 years ago? On January 1, 1965, Fatah attempted its first terror attack, trying to blow up part of Israel's water infrastructure. Note that this is not the anniversary of the founding of Fatah - which happened in 1957. No, Abbas chooses...

Christians flooding out of Iraq

Another day, another attack: One week after an Islamic extremist group vowed to kill Christians in Iraq, a cluster of 10 bomb attacks rattled Baghdad on Thursday night and sent additional tremors of fear through the country’s already shaken Christian minority. Two people were killed and 20 wounded, all of them Christians, according to the Ministry of the Interior. The bombs were placed near the homes of at least 14 Christian families around the...

Hamas praises press freedoms - as long as the media do Hamas' bidding

Hamas held a ceremony to celebrate journalists in Gaza yesterday, especially those who received international awards this year. Hamas' prime minister Ismail Haniyeh accused the Israeli media of engaging in psychological warfare against Gazans, presumably for doing some actual reporting. He said that Hamas does not suppress media freedoms in Gaza, and then he described exactly what their role is by praising the "role of media in the Palestinian...

Wikileaks: State Department is not always so big on free speech

A new Wikileaks cable reproduced by Aftenposten shows that the US was worried about the potential republication of the Mohammed cartoons on the first anniversary of the cartoon crisis. While the US diplomats did not pressure the newspaper to desist from running the cartoons, they were clearly worried that it might happen and they - understandably - wanted at least some warning so they could inform US interests worldwide to be on alert for...

Hamas destroys a building. No one cares.

Azmi Desouki wanted to start a business in Gaza, and since people are always getting married, he decided to build a wedding hall in Khan Younis. He received all the necessary licenses and completed all the paperwork needed, and built it. The hall was nearly ready to be opened. Yesterday, according to Palestine Press Agency, Hamas destroyed it. The reason? None was given, but it is assumed that it was political, as Desouki identifies with Fatah. However,...

Florida Arab woman arrested in Rafah with pen-cameras

From Ma'an: Egyptian authorities on the Rafah crossing said Thursday that officers detained a Palestinian woman with a US passport for failing to explain why she carried six camera-pens with her. Each recorder, Egyptian officials said, had an eight gigabyte memory, three cameras and high-grade voice recorder. The click-device at the top of each pen act as the on'of switch, officials said. The woman, a resident of the American state of Florida,...

From Naharnet: The chief of the Revolutionary Guard heatedly slapped Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in early 2010, a leaked U.S. cable revealed. According to the February 2009 diplomatic cable, Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari held Ahmadinejad responsible for the post-election "mess" in 2009. It quotes an Iranian watcher in Baku, Azerbaijan, who...

Is a Jordanian writer about to be killed? (UPDATED)

(UPDATEDMudar Zahran is a Jordanian writer of Palestinian descent who has written some articles that have raised the eyebrows of many Arabs. One of his more controversial articles was this excellent op-ed in the Jerusalem Post from last August. MANY OTHER Arab countries are no different than Lebanon in their ill-treatment and discrimination against the Palestinians....

Remember my "Autumn open thread" picture? Well, seasons change...

Southern Sudan does not plan to establish relations with Israel

Last August I linked to an interview in Asharq al-Awsat with the representative of Southern Sudan in the US, saying he saw no reason not to establish diplomatic relations with Israel if the state is established next month in a referendum. Today's Asharq al-Awsat quotes the minister of information for the possible state as saying, unequivocally, that the state would not establish diplomatic relations with Israel if and when it is established. Sudan's...

Does recognition of "Palestine" have any legal meaning?

The recent recognition of "Palestine" as an independent state by Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and now Ecuador brings up the question of whether these acts have any legal meaning. In the nineteenth century, the general viewpoint in the matter was known as the "constitutive theory of statehood," meaning that a state becomes a legal entity due to the fact that it is recognized by other states. There were problems with this definition,...

Freedom of the Press, PA-style

From The Guardian: An independent West Bank journalist detained for five days by Palestinian security forces after broadcasting a news item relating to frictions within the ruling Fatah party has questioned the extent to which freedom of speech is permitted by the Palestinian Authority. George Canawati of Radio Bethlehem was held in an office at the city's general intelligence service headquarters over the Muslim holiday of Eid last month, according...

The Forward insults me (and many others)

The Forward published an absurd op-ed by Letty Cottin Pogrebin: From the moment the Goldstone Report was released in September 2009, its lead author has been subjected to fierce, well-orchestrated attacks by Israeli and American Jews who purport to be defending the legitimacy of the Jewish state and the safety of the Jewish people. Rather than discuss the contents of the report — which concluded that during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, Israel (as well...

Let's reward Syria for just being great guys

From AFP: President Barack Obama on Wednesday bypassed Congress to name the first US ambassador to Syria in nearly six years, part of his Middle East engagement drive criticized by his Republican opponents. Obama took the controversial step of forcing through the appointments of Ambassador Robert Ford and five other officials while the Senate -- which normally needs to confirm nominations -- was out of session. A senior administration official traveling...

When it comes down to it, all of the anti-Israel agitators, protesters and complainers use the same method for their smears. It is easy, effective and sometimes even partially truthful. The method is to simply compare Israel with their idea of perfection, and note where it falls short. It is insidious, because when it is done well, it is difficult to argue against on a point...

Al Aqsa Brigades declares a truce with Israel?

Palestine News Network reports that the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Gaza - the military wing of Fatah - has declared a truce with Israel. The leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Mekdad Ehab said on Wednesday that the declaration of a truce with the occupation comes unilaterally to ensure the national interest, and in order to avoid giving pretexts for the occupation to wage a new war on the sector [Gaza.] Other groups were in the meeting as...

Burqa Woman - the video

From Pakistani comedian Said Haroon, who naturally is getting death threats: (h/t Solomoni...

Dismantle UNRWA for peace (Commentary)

Michael Bernstam in Commentary writes an important article that lays out the major problems of UNRWA: UNRWA’s mandate created, in effect, a multigenerational dependency of an entire people—a permanent, supranational refugee welfare state in which simply placing most Palestinians on the international dole has extinguished incentives for work and investment. It has succeeded with a vengeance. It has thwarted economic development, destroyed opportunities...

Attention Tel Aviv U: Saudi Arabia found your bird

An article in Saudi Arabia's al-Weeam discusses the discovery of a large, injured bird in the Ha'il region of the country. The bird was not frightened of people, and it had really, really bad breath making it difficult to approach. It had an electronic device attached which said "Ariel" and a metal bracelet that says "H1 - Ho5," on the wing it says "x63" and another bracelet says "Israel - Tel Aviv University." One of the commenters named...

Israel's Flash Mobs, 2010

Jerusalem, New Year's Day 2010: Jerusalem, January: Tel Aviv, January: Haifa, February: Tel Aviv, March: Jerusalem, April: Haifa, April (Freezing for three minutes flashmob:) Tel Aviv, April: May: Haifa Cinemall, May: Holon, July: Tel Aviv, September: Rishon LeTzion Beach, September: Tel Aviv, November: Hadera, November: Jerusalem, December: I'm sure I missed a fe...

Deputy PM: Iran's nuke program delayed three years

From Reuters: The United States and its allies have up to three years to curb Iran's nuclear programme, which has been set back by technical difficulties and sanctions, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday. Saying Iran remained his government's biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes by Israel, saying he hoped U.S.-led action against Tehran would be successful. "I believe that...

Morning links

Sultan Knish writes "Who's Afraid of Israeli Democracy?", slamming Jeffrey Goldberg for his essay "What if Israel Ceases to Be a Democracy?" Yochanan Visser in YNet on "Biased Dutch reporting on Arab-Israeli conflict leads to drastic rise in anti-Semitism" On a related note, we have JPost's 'Norwegians in UNIFIL causing negative view of J'lem' based on a Wikileaks cable. NGO Monitor goes after NGOs and Goldstone for uncritically believing Palestinian...

US blacks have higher unemployment rates than WB PalArabs

From the Washington Post: Unemployment for African Americans is projected to reach a 25-year high this year, according to a study released Thursday by an economic think tank, with the national rate soaring to 17.2 percent and the rates in five states exceeding 20 percent. Better not tell human rights organizations, or else they will start writing a whole lot of reports about how the US is oppressing blacks to cause this high unemployment rate. After...

A good question from an unlikely source

"Kaffir" put my Trivia Question post from yesterday on Reddit, and the first commenter asked: Wow dude, what the hell is your angle, Israel is never going to get a more peaceful Palestinian leader than Abbas. Is that why you don't like him? And in that single sentence, the commenter encapsulated the entire argument between the left and the right. Should Abbas be judged on his words and actions, or relative to other Palestinian Arab leaders? One...

Hamas continues to arrest and beat political opponents

Today, Hamas raided and closed the headquarters of a group called the Democratic Union of Palestine in Rafah, confiscating some of the group's files and arresting and beating its leaders. Hamas also detained and beat 14 Fatah members. These sort of events are happening pretty much every day, yet one would have to look long and hard to find any Western so-called "human rights for Gaza" organization mentioning them, let alone condemning...

EoZ Hasbara 2.0 video now available

The video of my Hasbara 2.0 lecture at Yeshiva University on December 7 (audio plus slides) is now available. The lecture enumerates 11 Rules of Hasbara and 14 ways that anyone can be a reporter - i.e., find news that the media misses - in the Internet age. I also discuss how to amplify and publicize the news that the mainstream media misses, with simple methods that anyone can and should do. I believe that the video can be very helpful to people...

Hey, Abbas: Would "Palestine" allow conversions to Christianity?

From Al Masry al-Youm: In June 2009, an Egyptian court declined a request by [Christian convert Maher] al-Gohary to register his current religion in his identity documents. The verdict said that "conversion from Islam is unacceptable since it contradicts the prevailing order and because society has a Muslim majority," adding that "conversion is at odds with Article 2 of the Constitution which says that Islam is the primary source of legislation." Islam...

Why Israelis are skeptical (The Australian op-ed)

A pretty good summation of how Israelis think, by Jeremy Sharon in The Australian: The current Israeli insistence on the deployment of Israeli troops on both the western and eastern borders of any future Palestinian state is regarded as of critical importance to Israel's long-term security. This is seen as one of the inviolable lessons of the Gaza withdrawal and the 2008 Gaza conflict. The other lesson Israel learnt from Operation Cast Lead is that...

HuffPo op-ed: How a liberal can defend Israel

From David Harris in the Huffington Post: "I read the things you write about Israel. I hate them. How can you defend that country? What happened to the good liberal boy I knew 30 years ago?" I replied: "That good liberal boy hasn't changed his view. Israel is a liberal cause, and I am proud to speak up for it." Yes, I'm proud to speak up for Israel. A recent trip once again reminded me why. Sometimes, it's the seemingly small things, the things...

Egyptians unhappy with Jewish pilgrims

From Al Ahram, Sunday: Cairo International Airport announced on Sunday it was implementing emergency measures as hundreds of Israelis arrive to mark the annual moulid of Abu Hasira. A 19th-century Moroccan Jewish rabbi, Abu Hasira's mausoleum is located in the village of Damatiuh, outside the delta city of Damanhour, where he died while travelling to Jerusalem in the 1880s. Three flights from Tel Aviv arrived in Cairo today carrying 550 Israeli...

From Iran's FARS News Agency: Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said on Tuesday that a fate worse than what Hitler experienced is waiting for the US and Britain's warmongering leaders. "The American, British and Zionist regimes are the three sides of the evil triangle of warmongering and terrorism in the world," Vahidi said, addressing senior military...

HRW ignores widespread slavery in Mauritania

Italy's La Repubblica has a report on the phenomenon of widespread slavery in Mauritania. Members of an anti-slavery NGO group were jailed for protesting the enslavement of two girls, aged 9 and 13. "White Moors," who are ethnic Arabs, are enslaving nearly 600,000 "Black Moors" in Mauritania. Last month a UN special envoy noted that slavery is still a major problem in the Islamic country. Blacks who are former slaves and others are living...

Morning links

Those moderate Palestinian Arabs have yet again reiterated that they want everything and will not accept anything less, even as a temporary measure. The Islamo-nazism blog has a lot information about how brutally Arabs are treating Africans trying to get to Israel, The Africans are subjected to torture, rape, and extortion. Evelyn Gordon at Commentary: Islamists slaughter Christians and Jews are blamed. Wired has more information...