September 2011 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

!Shana Tova u'Metuka שנה טובה ומתוקה!

My lunchtime activity Tuesday was to design this updated Rosh Hashanah graphic, using an obscure drawing tool that no graphic artist with any integrity would be caught dead using. (And already on Wednesday I received a Rosh Hashana e-card - with this very picture I made, with my name carefully edited out!) I wish all of you a happy and sweet New Year. May we all be written...

Al Qaeda upset at Ahmadinejad for 9/11 conspiracy theories (UPDATE: Onion video)

From Al Arabiya: A statement by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he questioned the role of al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks on the U.S. provoked the terrorist organization into issuing a statement in response asking the Iranian president to stop promoting conspiracy theories. In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Ahmadinejad argued that al-Qaeda claiming responsibility for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was a bluff,...

Saudi woman driver sentenced to flogging

From The Telegraph: A Saudi woman has been sentenced to to 10 lashes for challenging a ban on women driving. Amnesty International reported the sentence just two days after Saudi King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in municipal elections. "Flogging is a cruel punishment in all circumstances but it beggars belief that the authorities in Saudi Arabia have imposed lashes on a woman apparently for merely driving a car", Philip Luther,...

Is Israel an apartheid state? (Dennis Prager video)

Nicely done: (h/t jzai...

UNRWA teachers strike in support of Hamas member

From Iran's PressTV, September 12: Scores of UNRWA employees held a sit-in outside the headquarter of the largest international aid agency working in Gaza to protest what they described as arbitrary measures taken against their union leader. Suheil al-Hindy, the head of UNRWA's workers union, was suspended without pay for three months because of his affiliation to the democratically-elected Hamas government. A teachers' strike is scheduled for...

Terrorist logic on the anniversary of the 2nd Intifada

Today marks the eleventh anniversary of the start of the Oslo terror war against Israel from 2000. Palestine Today is an Islamic Jihad newspaper that has two very different articles about this occasion. The first describes, to the uninitiated, how terrible the intifada was to ordinary Palestinian Arabs. Forgetting the inaccuracies in the descriptions, here is what they wrote: Wednesday is the eleventh anniversary of the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada...

Vigilante Muslims attack pro-Jewish Muslim in St. Louis

From Nonie Darwish at FrontPage Magazine: About a year ago, I posted an Arabic language poem titled “Tears at the Heart of the Holocaust” on my website, ArabsForIsrael.com. The poem expressed its Arab author’s love for the Jewish people and his mourning over what happened to them in the Holocaust. The brave poet, Mr. Alaa Alsaegh, is an immigrant to the US from Iraq, who now lives in Missouri. Such poems did not sit well with the Muslim community,...

Latma Rosh Hashanah greetings (video)

(h/t Yerushalime...

Yesterday, President Obama released a generic Rosh Hashanah message: Palestine Press Agency, which is oriented towards Fatah, reports the story fairly straight. But here's how it illustrates the article, in a graphic that it proudly puts its own logo on: Given that prompting, it is of course obvious that the talkbacks will have messages like this first one: How...

Must see video: The photographer behind the scenes

An outstanding video that exposes the Pallywood that is created by photographers and their willing actor subjects: Photojournalism Behind the Scenes [ITA-ENG subs] from Ruben Salvadori on Vimeo. (h/t Caroline Glick via Laur...

Most Israeli Arabs are "proud to be Israeli"

The Israel Democracy Index survey 2011, released their results a few days ago. One question they asked was intriguing: How proud are you to be an Israeli? Among Jews, the vast majority - nearly 88% - said they were either "very proud" or "quite proud" to be Israeli. But the Arab response was positive as well. 52.8% said they were proud, as opposed to 41.6% who said they were not. Nearly 64% of Israeli Arabs said they were "certain"...

Tutu seems to change his mind on boycotting Israel (video, updated)

Desmond Tutu has been the patron saint of the BDS movement, always available to promote any boycott of Israel. A video just released by the Is Rael students organization of their meeting with Desmond Tutu in Cape Town on August 8 seems to show that Tutu is saying the opposite, that "boycott is not the way." Not only that, but he says that Israel has the right to live as an "independent sovereign state, whose boundaries are secured and recognized." The...

The parallels between how Arabs are reacting to the US promise to veto the PLO statehood stunt and how they reacted to American support for a Jewish state in 1947-48 are remarkable. Here's another example, where Arabs threaten economic sanctions against the US. Note the final part, about how those undesirable Jews immigrating to the Middle East would become a permanent danger...

Gazans are still firing rockets at Israel

The Gaza NGO Safety Office (GANSO) has not updated their normal biweekly reports of rocket and other activity, but they do send out alerts when they find out about significant incidents that could affect the safety of NGO workers in Gaza. And that includes Gaza rockets. Even though there have been very few rockets reaching Israel in September, that doesn't mean that there weren't a lot more attempts: (HMR="Home Made Rockets") MU, 06 SEP: Overnight...

Funny Numbers part 2: Fatah member doubles number of PalArabs

This video from MEMRI is notable for a couple of reasons: For one thing, it is just another indication of how ticked off the Palestinian Arabs were from Obama's UN speech. But more interestingly is the astonishing ease by which Jibril Rajoub lies about the number of Palestinian Arabs there are. He claims that there are 18 million PalArabs, of whom some 8 million live in Israel and the territories and the other 10 million in "refugee camps." In...

Funny Numbers: Avaaz cooks the books

In the run up to the Palestinian Arab UN stunt, an organization called Avaaz.org was all over the social media trying to get people to sign a petition in favor of statehood. They claim to have over 1.1 million signatures on their petition. There is no way to verify that number because they do not seem to list the signers. But they also claim that over a million people viewed their webpage calling for signatures. They even have a counter on the...

Palestine Today reports that the Minister of Tourism in Gaza, Dr. Mohammed Agha, said that there was a remarkable demand for tourism over the past two years. Domestic tourism in 2010 reached $40 million in revenue. This is all, he says, despite Israel's strenuous attempts to destroy Gaza's tourism industry. I wonder why the Middle East Children's Alliance didn't display...

Egypt kills three Gazans. No one cares.

From Ma'an: Three Palestinians were pronounced dead on Tuesday morning after Egyptian authorities pumped sewage inside a smuggling tunnel under the Gaza border on Sunday. The ambulance and emergency services committee in Gaza said the three victims were found alive inside the tunnel. They were evacuated to the Abu Yousef an-Najjar Hospital in Rafah but were pronounced dead 30 minutes after arrival. Nothing on this story in Egyptian newspapers Al...

Jerusalem Arabs still prefer Israel to "Palestine" (updated)

From Ha'aretz: A new opinion poll shows that despite hardships, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are relatively satisfied with their lives under Israeli rule. The survey, implemented by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in cooperation with Princeton University and the Beit Sahur-based Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, found that almost half of East Jerusalem Palestinian respondents said they prefered to remain under Israeli...

Those wily Israelis, supporting both sides of Syrian civil war

If you are an Arab and want to discredit your opponent, accuse them of collaborating with Israel. We've seen it between Hamas and Fatah, and now we are seeing it between Syria and its opposition. A couple of days ago a Lebanese newspaper wrote that Israel is working behind the scenes to keep Bashir Assad in power - over the objections of the French. But today the Syrian government news agency writes that they found Israeli weapons in Homs! It...

Erdogan on CNN: Israel killed "hundreds of thousands of Palestinians"

From the transcript of Fareed Zakaria's interview with Tayyip Erdogan on CNN, Sunday: They say that Palestine is bombing and disturbing the people of Israel, and many Israelis have been killed. I'm very clear in my remarks. I would like to see accurate statistics of how many Israelis have been killed by the bombs thrown by Palestinians or with the rockets that were launched by them, 10, 20, 100, 200, how many? Please document it. Let us know. But...

Palestinian Arab opposition to partition, 1947

The entire Arab world reacted angrily at the concept of partition of Palestine, which was gaining currency in 1946 and early 1947. But the Palestinian Arabs themselves did not make any official statement about it until late January. Here, we can see the arguments used against partition by Jamal eff. Husseini, the PalArab delegate to the Anglo-Arab Conference on Palestine: Another...

Surprise! Al Jazeera reporter was a Hamas member

From JPost: Samer Allawi, Al Jazeera’s former Afghanistan bureau chief, reached a deal with the Israel State state prosecutors office on Sunday under which he will receive a suspended sentence of three years after he confessed to conspiring in Hamas operations. Allawi, a Palestinian, was arrested in August on the border between the West Bank and Jordan at The Allenby Crossing. During an investigation with The Shin Bet (Israel Security...

One of the released Iranian hostages is Jewish

From The Jewish Exponent: By now, the whole world knows the name and face of Joshua Fattal, the 29-year-old Elkins Park native who spent 26 months in an Iranian prison before being reunited with his family last week in Oman and arriving back on U.S. soil on Sunday. But one aspect of the story that has largely gone unreported is the fact that Fattal is Jewish. Josh's father, Jacob Fattal, was born in Iraq and moved to Israel before ultimately settling...

Al Qaeda in Yemen cuts off a boy's hand

From the Yemen Post: According to residents in the southern Yemeni province of Abyan, alleged al-Qaeda militants would have severed the hands of 2 people, including that of a 15-year old boy. [I don't know why it says "would," from the article and others it is clear that they did. - EoZ] Eyewitnesses told the press that they were summoned to the execution, forced to watch while the Islamists cut off the hands of the accused, using a sword. They...

Hamas reiterates it wants Israel destroyed.

Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh made another widely reported speech in Gaza today explaining in very precise terms what Hamas' position is on the PLO bid for statehood. He said that Hamas supports the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state, under two conditions: Never recognize Israel and never concede a single inch of "Palestine." Haniyeh also bristled at the suggestion that Hamas and the US had anything in common in opposing the PLO...

Fact checking the detractors of the fact checkers of Abbas

AP issued a "fact check" of Abbas' speech on Friday. Roi Maor of +972 magazine pretends to demolish AP's arguments, using his own bizarre definitions of "facts." It is too tedious to list each of the three texts here, but if you are interested, follow the links. Here is my response on the 972mag site:: Abbas was wrong that the Pals live "under the only occupation in the world." Maor changes the definition in order to argue, but in fact there...

Saudis give women the right to vote, run for office

Good news: Saudi King Abdullah announced on Sunday he was giving women the right to vote and run in municipal elections, the only public polls in the ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom. He also announced that women would have the right to join the all-appointed Shura (consultative) Council, in an In a five-minute speech opening a new term of the council. “Because we refuse to marginalize women in society in all roles that comply with sharia, we...

Palestinian Arab intellectuals are all against Abbas

Even though Mahmoud Abbas has achieved more popularity than he ever had before in the wake of his vitriolic speech against Israel at the UN, it is hard to ignore that it is difficult to find any Palestinian Arab columnists who support his UN move. And their objections to him are, invariably, that he is not being intransigent enough. The themes that they hammer on are pretty consistent: Abbas is giving up on asserting the "rights" of taking over...

Mudar Zahran on the real reasons Abbas went to the UN: Today Abbas is an illegitimate "president," who has overstayed his term two years by refusing to hold free elections; unable to enforce his government's authority on the Gaza Strip, or even to return to his own house there which was seized by Hamas when it took over the Gaza Strip in 2005, forcing out Abbas's Palestinian...

Report behind the scenes of Abbas/Obama meeting

Palestine Press Agency quotes a source who says what happened behind the scenes during the meeting between President Obama and Mahmoud Abbas last Thursday. According to the source, Obama told Abbas that if a drop of American blood is shed as a result of a US veto, he would hold Abbas personally responsible. Abbas answered that it is up to God. In response, Abbas threatened to dissolve the PA and leave the international community in charge of the...

Here is how the "Middle East Children's Alliance" - the rabidly anti-Israel organization whose Gaza director supports terrorism - characterized the decision by the Oakland Museum of Children's Art to not allow their anti-Israel propaganda from being shown: This is the sign posted outside the storefront where the questionable "Child's View from Gaza" exhibit...

For the 10,000th time, Hamas confirms its dedication to jihad

Every once in a while some credulous Western journalist, or politician, or UN special rapporteur, breathlessly reports that they spoke to a Hamas leader who assured them that the group is ready to offer a cease fire/accept a two-state solution/name your wishful thinking here. The funny thing is that it takes no effort whatsoever to read Hamas' own views on the matter. From...

From Point of No Return blog: In the week of the UN's Durban 3 charade, Harif, the UK Association of Jews from Middle East and North Africa, held its first ever protest rally on behalf of the forgotten refugees of the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. It was a good-natured affair, as 100 or so demonstrators in London's Trafalgar Square drew attention to the UN's hypocrisy. Detail...

"Irvine 10" guilty

From JTA: A California jury found 10 Muslim students guilty of misdemeanors for disrupting a 2010 campus speech by Israel's ambassador to the United States. In an incident that drew national attention, 11 Muslim students stood one by one and interrupted a February 2010 speech by Ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California, Irvine. Oren twice walked off the stage as students shouted "mass murderer!" and "war criminal!" before they were...

Tens of thousands of Copts fleeing Egypt

From Al Masry al Youm: Nearly 93,000 Coptic Christians have left Egypt since 19 March, a report by an Egypt-based Coptic NGO has said. The number may increase to 250,000 by the end of 2011, according to Naguib Gabriel, the head of the Egyptian Federation of Human Rights, which released the report. The current trend of Coptic immigration endangers the structure of Egypt's population, Gabriel told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Sunday. He urged the ruling...

Egypt allows 664 Palestinian Arabs to become citizens

For the second time in the past two months, Egypt is allowing some 600 Arabs who have Egyptian mothers and Palestinian Arab fathers to become citizens of Egypt, implementing at 2006 court ruling. As I wrote in August: Tens of thousands of Gazans have applied for Egyptian citizenship, some paying huge sums to lawyers to help make their case. In 1959, the Arab League resolution 1547 confirmed earlier resolutions calling on Arab countries...

Oakland museum had agreed to show fake "Gaza kids art" anyway

Two weeks ago I reported the controversy at an Oakland children's museum where an art exhibit that was allegedly made by Gaza children was dropped after complaints. The anti-Israel (and pro-terror) activists who were behind the show vowed to show the drawings anyway outside the museum. As I noted, a number of art experts (also see the comments) flatly said that there was no way that some of these drawings were made by children. Moreover, I noted...

Fatah official describes the PLO's real goals

From MEMRI: Following are excerpts from an interview with Abbas Zaki, member of the Fatah Central Committee, which aired on the Al-Jazeera network on September 23, 2011. Abbas Zaki: The settlement should be based upon the borders of June 4, 1967. When we say that the settlement should be based upon these borders, President [Abbas] understands, we understand, and everybody knows that the greater goal cannot be accomplished in one go. If Israel...

YNet reports: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was the focal point of the 66th UN General Assembly in New York, saw more than just the historic bid for Palestinian statehood and impassioned speeches, but also the near-disassembling of the Mideast Quartet, Ynet learned on Saturday. The Quartet of Middle East mediators, which is made up of the he United States, Russia,...

The annual "settlers uproot olive trees" libel

From Ma'an, today: Dozens of Israeli settlers on Sunday uprooted over 400 Palestinian-owned olive trees near Nablus in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian Authority official said. And last week: Israeli settlers uprooted over 500 olive and fig trees in Deir Istiya village in Salfit on Monday morning, witnesses said. As usual, there are no photos of these "uprooted" trees. Based on the research that Yisrael Medad did, plus the comments on...

Video: PalArabs throwing shoes at video of Bibi's UN speech

Netanyahu: The Palestinians should first make peace with Israel and then get their state. But I also want to tell you this. After such a peace agreement is signed, Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. We will be the first. Response: (h/t Yoe...

From YNet: Asher Palmer Israel Police suspect that what initially appeared to be an ordinary car accident that killed a man and an infant was actually caused by an act of terror. Asher Palmer, 25, and his 1-year-old son, Yonatan, were killed Friday when their car overturned on Highway 60 near Kiryat Arba. After an initial inquiry, the police denied the possibility that...

Statehood bid scares away investors in PA

Palestine Today quotes the Financial Times as saying that the UN statehood stunt is already scaring away potential investors in the Palestinian Arab areas. It quotes Jihad Wazir, governor of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, as saying that since the statehood bid was announced, there has been a marked slowdown in economic activity in the West Bank. At least one foreign investment deal from the UAE and a bank merger has been postponed...

Abbas is formally demanding 1947 lines! (updated, corrected)

In recent weeks, everyone has been anticipating what exactly Mahmoud Abbas would be demanding from the UN in his statehood stunt. Most of the comments made by the Palestinian Arab side was that the demand would be for a state on the so-called "1967 border" (really 1949 armistice lines.) But the actual text of his request demands much, much more. This is the text of...