June 2014 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, June 30, 2014

Why Hamas denies the kidnappings

Hamas continues to deny that they were behind the kidnappings and murders of Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali: A Hamas spokesman denied responsibility Monday evening for the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers, threatening to “open the gates of hell” against Israel if it launched an attack against the Gaza Strip. “The story of the disappearance and killing of the three...

06/30 Links Pt2: International leaders condemn murder of kidnapped teens

From Ian: International leaders condemn murder of kidnapped teens Politicians and leaders throughout the world fiercely condemned Monday the murder of three Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel and Gil-ad Shaar, whose bodies were found several hours earlier near the Palestinian village of Halhul, north of Hebron. The three had been abducted on June 12 while they were hitchhiking from a bus stop in the Etzion Bloc in the West Bank. “We...

Will the US react to the murder of an American by Hamas? Oh, please!

I see some tweets wondering whether the White House will react strongly to the murder of an American citizen by Hamas. You gotta be kidding. The US treated a case where three Americans were killed in a diplomatic convoy in Gaza with kid gloves! Back in 2003: A powerful remote-controlled bomb detonated beneath an American diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing three American security specialists assigned to the American Embassy...

From NYT: Israeli military searchers found three bodies believed to be those of the missing Israeli teenagers who disappeared more than two weeks ago in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, senior government officials said Monday. The Israeli government called an emergency Cabinet meeting. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity before the official announcement,...

06/30 Links Pt1: EU, U.S., Funding Incentives to Kill Jews; Netanyahu calls for Kurdish independence

From Ian: EU, U.S., Funding Incentives to Kill Jews Children living in territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority, funded by Europe and the U.S., are encouraged to kill Jews and destroy Israel. There can be no peace so long as financial incentives to kill Jews and destroy Israel continue to be dangled in front of Palestinian populations. It is this aggression, and not humanitarian relief, that much of the well-intended international funding...

ISIL/ISIS flags were seen at the funeral of two terrorists killed by the IDF last Friday, according to NRG. Not only that, but one of the terrorists - claimed by the PRC - was wrapped in an ISIL flag. In February, Al Monitor reported that the major Salafist group in Gaza had declared allegiance to ISIS. It seems Ayman al-Zawahri’s statement on Jan. 22 disavowing...

AFP reports: The Israeli government Sunday authorized 1,500 more Jordanians to come and work in its Red Sea resort of Eilat to combat a labor shortage, the tourism ministry said It said the decision was taken because of the “serious crisis” caused by not enough hotel workers. The Jordanians would enter Israel to work and go back across the border to Jordan at night once...

More lazy moral equivalence from Jodi Rudoren in The New York Times, in a story headlined "After West Bank Kidnapping, 2 Mothers Embody a Divide" (originally the headline seems to have been "2 Mothers Cope With Loss of Sons:") It was about 4 a.m. on a Friday when the police banged on Rachel Fraenkel’s door in this Jerusalem suburb looking for her 16-year-old son, Naftali,...

Only Muslims are allowed to attack on Ramadan

Some Arabic media are outraged that Israeli jets hit terrorist targets on the first day of Ramadan. Attacking during holy days must be an unconscionable act. Of course, they weren't too concerned about attacking Israel on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur in1973. But the irony is that the Arab world calls the Yom Kippur War The Ramadan War. That year, Ramadan coincided...

The Popular Resistance Committees have taken responsibility for the recent rocket attacks from Gaza. Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, on Sunday claimed responsibility for launching rockets from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israel. The shelling is part of "our retaliation to the Israeli crimes against our Palestinian...

Aw, and I was so looking forward to this. From Al Arabiya: Egypt’s army on Saturday said it would delay for six months the public use of a device previously announced as being able to treat and cure hepatitis C and AIDS viruses. The postponement of the device was made two days before a scheduled date set by the army for putting the machine to use at military hospitals,...

06/29 Links: After rocket fire, Israeli jets strike 12 locations in Gaza; Israel's War of Words

From Ian: After rocket fire, Israeli jets strike 12 locations in Gaza The Israel Air Force struck twelve separate sites in the Gaza Strip early Sunday in an ongoing air offensive against continued rocket fire at Israel’s southern towns. The strikes targeted a weapons factory in the northern part of the strip, another weapons facility and a “terror center” in central Gaza and six sites in the southern strip, three of them concealed rocket launchers,...

Michael Lumish, of the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under, continues his weekly column here at EoZ. I have tended to be rather tough on my progressive-left Jewish friends and colleagues. I have criticisms and often they do not appreciate those criticisms. I complain that there is a tendency...

From Ma'an: Israel has dropped hundreds of anti-Hamas lollipops in two of the West Bank's largest cities, in a renewed attempt to incite Palestinian popular opinion against the Islamist political group. Palestinian residents of Nablus and Ramallah noticed on Sunday morning that hundreds of lollipops had been dropped in the streets and alleyways of the city, decorated with...

I received a very interesting email from a staunchly Zionist Reform rabbi: I'm living in the twilight zone. Arik Ascherman of "Rabbis for Human Rights" is having issues with Presbyterian Church USA's vote, publicly asking why PCUSA didn't at least propose positive investment as an alternative. The J Street contingent almost seems beside themselves in bewilderment. John Rosove,...

An Iranian cleric has accused Israel of using "jinn" to spy on Iran and its allies. Iranian TV has broadcast a segment where Waliullah Naqi Borfer, an expert in the supernatural jinn of Arab mythology, said that Jews have long experience in manipulating jinn and Israel has tried to use the creatures to perform espionage on Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. The Israelis were unsuccessful...

06/28 Links: Gaza Rocket hits Sderot factory; Peace Process Gets a Boost: Indyk Quits

From Ian: Rocket fired from Gaza slams into Sderot factory A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip slammed into a factory in the southern city of Sderot on Saturday evening, setting the building ablaze. Emergency services were on site to battle the fire. Three employees were reportedly inside the factory at the time, but managed to escape unharmed. One person was lightly injured and was being treated at hospital. Another rocket likely landed in open territory,...

06/27 Links Pt2: Pollard’s release is a matter of justice; Obama seeks $500M to arm Syrian rebels

From Ian: Alan Dershowitz, Irwin Cotler: Pollard’s release is a matter of justice US President Barack Obama’s response to President Shimon Peres’s request for executive clemency for Jonathan Pollard was to refer the matter to US Attorney-General Eric Holder. Indeed, as it happens, a group of American constitutional and criminal law scholars and practitioners, including six Harvard law school professors, Obama’s alma mater, have written to the president...

From Irene, since I cannot appreciate this as much as she does: Imagine wearing a wedding dress made of velvet so fine and fabulously embroidered, that when you die, it will be unstitched and reworked to make a Torah ark curtain. http://www.imj.org.il/exhibitions/2014/dresscodes/en/memo.html Imagine a young mom, adorned with pearls and wearing...

Newest conspiracy theory from Iran

Perhaps the "*-washing" meme has hit its limit: Tehran’s provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ahmad Khatami underlined that the US and Israel have created and supported the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to sow discord among Muslims. Addressing a large and fervent congregation of the people on Tehran University campus on Friday, Ayatollah Khatami said, "The US and Israel are supporting the ISIL with the purpose...

06/27 Links Pt1: Ari Lesser - Bring Back Our Boys; Netanyahu: Break up unity pact with Hamas

From Ian: A mother’s plea for ‘prayer, positive energy, whatever it takes’ to find kidnapped teens The Times of Israel interviewed Rachelle Fraenkel on Thursday afternoon, in a quiet garden near the family home at Nof Ayalon, two weeks after her son Naftali, 16, was kidnapped along with Gil-ad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19. We had contacted her because she has been saying that she wants the world in general, and the Jewish world in particular,...

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Israel agreeing to give the village of Quneitra to Syria in the cease fire negotiations following the Yom Kippur War. Syria is celebrating: The 26th of June, 1974 marks a day of pride for Syrians across the country on which the Israeli occupation of the southern city of Quneitra was brought to an end. The city of Quneitra, located...

There are a number of interesting passages in "The Inner Life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land: From My Private Journal, Volume 1" by Lady Isabel Burton, who was the wife of explorer Richard Francis Burton. At the holy places, Damascus and Jerusalem, religion is the one thought for pugnacious sentiment, as politics used to be in the days when they rose so high in...