Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Arab diplomat annuls marriage to bearded bride

An Arab ambassador annulled his wedding after discovering that his bride, who wore the niqab, had a beard and squinted, UAE media reported on Wednesday.

The marriage had been arranged through pictures given by the bride’s family that were later proven to be those of the sister of the bride-to-be.

During the brief meetings with his fiancé the ambassador was unable to see her face as she was fully veiled. Once the marriage contract had been signed, he tried to kiss his wife, a doctor, and discovered "she had a beard and squinted."

According to press reports, the ambassador then logged a court complaint claiming he had been “tricked” by his in-laws and a divorce was granted.

The nationalities of the parties involved were not revealed.

Was the father-in-law named "Laban"?

Iranian cleric warns of Jews buying land - in Kurdistan

From Iran's ever-entertaining PressTV:

A Sunni cleric in the northwestern Iranian city of Sardasht has warned about attempts by Israeli Jews to purchase 'Muslim lands' in Iraq's Kurdistan region.

“Unfortunately, in recent weeks, several individuals affiliated with Israeli Jews have been purchasing property from Iraq's Kurdish Muslim population, in violation of our religious guidelines," said Molla Khezr Rahimi in an address to a Quranic event on Tuesday.

Molla Rahimi, speaking at Sardasht's Amini Mosque, added that "individuals with ties to the Zionist regime" have managed to purchase land in Iraqi Kurdistan by offering lucrative deals.

“Some people have sold their land for worldly profits. They have been tricked by the Jews," Rahimi said.

“Selling Muslim land to people affiliated with Israel is haram (religiously forbidden) under any guise whatsoever, even if the land is being purchased to build a church, because this is part of a pre-planned plot."

The cleric told the people of the Kurdish border city that entering into deals with Israeli Jews for financial gain was wrong, as it would set the scene for further “Zionist presence" in the region.

I'm dying to know what the "pre-planned plot" is. Is Israel trying to purchase all of Kurdistan and kick the Muslims out to build a new Jewish state? Are the Jews trying to buy land near Iran to stage a ground invasion? Maybe they plan to build farms and factories that would smuggle evil Jewish goods into Iran. Or maybe they will use the land to build a tunnel underneath Muslim holy sites to destabilize them.

There are so many possible plots, why can't we hear the details?

Col. Travers and Goldstone

JCPA is about to put up a very damning report on the anti-Israel bias that Col. Desmond Travers has. Travers was one of the four members of the Goldstone "fact-finding" mission, and his influence over the report is clear. Here it is:

Col. (ret.) Desmond Travers was one of the four members of the UN Fact Finding Mission that produced what is widely called the Goldstone Report. The Mission investigated Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009. Travers joined the Irish Defense Forces in 1961 and retired after forty years. As the only former officer who belonged to Justice Richard Goldstone's team, he was the senior figure responsible for the military analysis that provided the basis for condemning Israel for war crimes.

After following his repeated public appearances with the other mission members in July 2009, and especially in light of his most recent interviews, serious flaws have now become evident in the methodology he followed, in his collection and processing of data, and in the conclusions he draws. In the past, the flaws in the Goldstone report, and especially its lack of balance, have been criticized by the London Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, but the fundamental problems of its military analysis have not been fully addressed. In the material presented here, this becomes evident in four specific ways:

1. A Fundamental Bias against the Israel Defense Forces

During the Mission's collection of testimonies from Palestinian psychologists in the Gaza Strip, Travers asked them straight out to explain how Israeli soldiers could kill Palestinian children in front of their parents. In an interview with Middle East Monitor, on February 2, 2010, he asserted that in the past Israeli soldiers had "taken out and deliberately shot" Irish peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon. Both of these statements by Travers are completely false. It should be stressed that one of the most vicious and unsubstantiated conclusions in the Goldstone Report is the suggestion that Israel deliberately killed Palestinian civilians.

While Travers assumes the worst of intentions on the part of the Israel Defense Forces, he praises Hamas for their cooperation with the Mission. When he was asked about Hamas intimidation that affected the Mission's inquiries, he replied that that there was "none

whatsoever." Yet the Goldstone Report itself noted in Paragraph 440 that those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of Palestinian armed groups because of a "fear of reprisals." He rejects the notion that Hamas shielded its forces in the civilian population and does not accept the idea that Israel faced asymmetric warfare.

2. False Information Reported About Weapons Systems

Travers comes up with a story that the IDF had unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) that could obtain a "thermal signature" on a Gaza house and detect that there were large numbers of people inside. Incredibly, he then suggests that with this information that certain houses were "packed with people," the Israeli military would then deliberately order a missile strike on these populated homes. The primary technical problem with his theory is that Israel does not have UAV's that can see though houses and pick up a thermal signature. More importantly, Israel used UAV's to monitor that Palestinian civilians left houses that had received multiple warnings, precisely because Israel sought to minimize civilian casualties, a fact that Travers could not fathom, because of his own clear biases.

3. Completely Inaccurate Data

Travers rejects that Israel began military operations against the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008 as an act of self-defense in response to Hamas rockets. He bases this idea on a "fact" that he presents that in the month prior to start of the war, there were only "something like two" rockets that fell on Israel. Israeli military sources found that there were in fact 32 rockets fired from Gaza at Israel over three days alone--between December 16 and 18, 2008. He adds to his analysis that at this time Hamas sought to extend the tahdiya, or lull arrangement--which he called a cease-fire. Yet the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas announced on December 17 that the lull would come to an end two days later and would not be renewed. The head of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, announced the end of the lull on December 14. To say that Hamas wanted to continue the lull is a complete distortion of events.

In his Middle East Monitor interview, Travers states that he "only came across two incidents of where there was an actual combat situation" – the exchange of fire between Israel and Hamas. Because he minimizes the possibility that Israel was engaged in real combat in the Gaza Strip, it follows that he naturally conclude that Israel was essentially attacking non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead.

4. Lack of Professionalism in Conducting Thorough Investigations

Travers relies on his own prejudices when he looks into the question of whether Gazan Mosques had been militarized by Hamas and turned into weapons depots. In an interview with Harpers, published on October 29, 2009, Travers makes a sweeping generalization: "We found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions." He then dismissed those who suggested that was the case by saying: "Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion." How many mosques did Travers investigate? He admits that the Mission only checked two mosques.

Of course, Israel produced photographic proof that large amounts of weapons were stored in mosques, like the Zaytun Mosque. In a subsequent interview, Travers rejected the Israeli proof: "I do not believe the photographs." He described the photographs as "spurious." Travers appears to be bothered by proof that contradicts the conclusions he reaches on the basis of a very limited investigation. In early 2010, Colonel Tim Collins, a British veteran of the Iraq War, visited Gaza for BBC Newsnight (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/ 8470100 .stm, 20 January 2010) and inspected the ruins of a mosque that Israel had destroyed because it had been a weapons depot. He found that there was evidence of secondary explosions cause by explosives stored in the mosque cellar. Travers clearly did not make the effort that Collins made.

In his questioning of Palestinian witnesses in the Gaza Strip, Travers does not ask the questions that a military advisor should raise. He did not ask those giving testimony if they were member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam units of Hamas and were combatants. He also failed to ask them straight out if their homes had been used to store munitions, like Grad rockets. Instead, his questions reflected his ideological bias.

Travers most recent interview also had a disturbing additional element. When addressing the role of British officers in defending Israel's claims, Travers suddenly adds: "Britain's foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists." Travers implies that British Jews have interests that differ from Britain's own national interests and that Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is influenced by these considerations. This statement, unless corrected, places Travers is a position in which his views are suspect of being motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices. Even without this last statement, he clearly emerges as an individual who is not qualified to take part in any serious fact-finding mission and the U.N. should not seek his services in the future. Given his statements, Justice Richard Goldstone should repudiate Col. Travers and completely reject the conclusions that he reached as a result of his work.

Abbas tried to stop Channel 10 corruption report

Israel's Channel 10 has broadcast details of corruption at the highest levels of the PA, including millions of dollars stolen from public monies (shelled out by the US) and a sex scandal involving a top Abbas aide.

The whistleblower, Fathi Shabaneh, was actually hired to root out corruption in the PA. In a recent interview with The Jerusalem Post:

“Some of the most senior Palestinian officials didn’t have even $3,000 in their pocket when they arrived [after the signing of the Oslo Accords],” Shabaneh said. “Yet we discovered that some of them had tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in their bank accounts.

Until today we didn’t hear about one official who was brought to trial for stealing money from the PA, although we had transferred many of the cases to the Palestinian prosecutor-general.”

The PA response is that it maintains transparency with donor countries and operates a strict oversight mechanism on their payments.

This is true - but it is not because of Fatah members suddenly wanting to be honest, but rather because the donor countries insist on it. In other words, the PA is still headed by corrupt thugs who would happily steal everything they can, but they need to be more clever than before so as not to be caught. And they are secure in the knowledge that their pseudo-government will never prosecute them for corruption.

And how does Mahmoud Abbas handle the news that the scandal was going to be broadcast? Why, he did what he always does: he threatened to resign (in a letter to Netanyahu) if Channel 10 broadcast the report.

And Mohammed Dahlan led a meeting of Fatah officials this morning - not to discuss how to root out corruption, but to figure out how to contain the scandal.

This is a classic case of how the honor/shame dynamic works. In such a culture, appearance is more important than reality, so therefore all efforts must be made to give an appearance of honesty and transparency but none to actual soul-searching.This is why we see honor killings and this is why we see such a massive cover-up of corruption.

In fact, the Abbas aide who was literally caught naked in bed by Shabaneh's people said on the videotape, "Thank God it’s you and not the Israelis." He was secure in the knowledge that such a scandal will not ever be publicized by the PA.

What a difference a caption makes

The same event, as seen by by Reuters and AP.

Reuters:

An undercover Israeli police officer (R) scuffles with a Palestinian youth suspected of throwing stones while trying to detain him during clashes in the Shuafat refugee camp in the West Bank near Jerusalem February 9, 2010. Clashes erupted between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli police that entered the refugee camp, a Reuters witness said on Tuesday.

AP:

A Palestinian rioter tries to grab a weapon from a plain-clothes Israeli police officer, right, during clashes in Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010. Palestinians scuffled with Israeli security forces, after an arrest operation triggered clashes in the camp the day before.

In Reuters' version, the Israeli is the aggressor. In AP's, we learn that the Palestinian Arab is trying to grab a weapon - presumably to use it on the policeman.

In Reuters' version,the Arab is a "youth." In AP's, he is a rioter.

In Reuters' version, the fighting just spontaneously "erupted" on Monday. In AP's more accurate version, an arrest operation prompted Palestinian Arab violence.

Reuters, not surprisingly, relied on an Arab stringer for its description of the events.

Let's look at the stones being hurled, shall we?

That concrete block, dropped on a person or through a windshield, could easily kill someone.

And here is what a much smaller projectile looks like upon impact with a human head, luckily protected by a helmet:

This is the kind of "non-violent resistance" that the man of peace, the moderate Mahmoud Abbas, is encouraging.

Qaradawi forbids Hamas to reconcile with Fatah

As if we needed any more proof that rabid terror-supporting Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi was really a secret Zionist, he just came out with a fatwa - against Palestinian Arab unity.

Qaradawi said that if Hamas would reconcile with Fatah, then Hamas would lose its hold on Gaza. The logic is that Hamas is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Gaza is now the first piece of land that the Muslim Brotherhood can point to as saying that they control it. Qaradawi does not want to give that up, no matter how much Gazans are suffering.

Qaradawi, who is regarded in some quarters as "moderate," came out with a fatwa in 2007 (according to Palestine Press Agency) saying that Hamas' violent coup was perfectly in line with Sharia law and that it was permissible to murder in order to establish the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.

Hamas' cash flow problem

Hamas gets plenty of money from Iran, but it is having a problem smuggling it into Gaza.

According to Asharq Al-awsat, Hamas employees have not yet been paid for the month of January. Apparently, Egypt has been much more vigilant at stopping money from being transferred over the Rafah border.

Hamas is denying any cash flow crisis, saying they are just distributing salaries in a different way.

Hamas has a $540 million annual budget, and 32,000 employees in Gaza. In addition, there are tens of thousands of PA employees who get paid to sit at home and do nothing.

58% of the PA budget goes to Gaza for these non-working employee salaries, fuel, and electricity.

A brief peek into recent Palestinian Arab court rulings

Palestinian Arab newspapers are different from other nations' media, in that you hardly ever read about court cases and rulings for ordinary crimes. They arrest people, but after that the stories usually disappear. Whether this is a reflection of the complete absence of any normal system of justice, or a cultural anomaly, I cannot say.

However, today there was one of these rare stories, apparently from a military court.

As best as I can interpret it, the following cases were concluded:

* A man was sentenced to death for collaborating with Israel.
* A soldier was sentenced to one year of prison for theft.
* 4 civilians were acquitted of attempted murder charges.
* 6 civilians were sentenced to six months of prison for being "against the general policy of the revolution."

See? They have a perfectly good criminal justice system!

Palestinian NGO Network demands apology from Berlusconi

From YNet, February 3:

In a speech in Jerusalem, Berlusconi said Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza last year was justified self-defense. But during a stop in the West Bank, he later explained this does not rule out sympathy for the war's victims. some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the fighting.

Berlusconi said, "Just as it's right to cry for the victims of the Shoah, it's right to show pain for what happened in Gaza." Shoah is the Hebrew word for Holocaust.

The Palestinian NGO Network is outraged and demands an apology for Berusconi's equating Gaza with Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Just kidding! They are really demanding an apology for Berlusconi saying that Operation Cast Lead was a reaction to years of Palestinian Arab rocket attacks, and not for saying that it was a case of pure, naked, unjustified aggression meant to murder 1.5 million people.

November 2009-February 2010 rocket calendars

Q=Qassam
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
MS=Mortar landing short
P=Projectile of unknown type
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

November 2009

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
1	2	3 1Q	4	5	6	7
8 1Q	9 1Q	10	11	12	13 2Q	14
15	16	17	18 1Q	19	20	21 1Q
22	23 1Q	24	25	26 5M	27	28
29	30

December 2009

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13 2Q	14	15	16 2Q	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28 (1P)	29	30 1M	31 (2P) 1M?

January 2010

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
					1 1M 1MS	2
3	4 1MS	5	6	7 1Q 10M	8 1M	9 2Q
10 4MS	11 1Q	12	13 1Q	14	15 1M	16
17	18	19	20 1Q	21	22	23
24 1Q	25	26	27	28	29	30 1Q
31

February 2010

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
	1	2 1Q	3 1Q	4	5	6
7 1Q	8 1Q	9	10 ?P	11	12 1Q	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28

Two good followups to horrible stories

From Al Arabiya, in a followup to this story:

Saudi Arabia's human rights commission has hired a lawyer to help a 12-year-old girl divorce her 80-year-old husband, the lawyer said, a move activists hope will lead to a ban on child marriages.

Also from Al Arabiya, in a followup to this story:

Prosecutors in Turkey are seeking life in jail for the father and grandfather of a girl who was buried alive for befriending boys, local judicial sources said Monday.

The pair were arrested after the body of 16-year-old Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a hole in a chicken pen outside her house in Kahta town, Adiyaman province, 40 days after she went missing.
A post mortem showed a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, meaning she was buried alive, forensic experts have said.

The judicial source said they would likely face a charge of "premeditated homicide with aggravating circumstances, perpetrated with cruelty" being drawn up by prosecutors.

Turkish law demands life in prison if convicted of those charges.

Gulf girls gone wild!

From the Arab News:

MAKKAH [Mecca] -Female jail wardens were brought into a girls’ school in Makkah on Monday after students went on a rampage in protest over the confiscation of their mobile phones. The students also attacked the school principal for confiscating their phones.
Police arrived at the girls’ school in the city’s Mansour district after receiving a call from the principal’s husband that his wife was besieged in her office by a group of angry students.
Wardens from a women’s prison were finally brought in to break the siege and rescue the principal. During the riot, girls broke tables and chairs and opened gas cylinders.
The rioting happened after the principal and her assistant found seven camera phones, makeup items and perfume in classrooms while students sat exams. Bringing such items are against the school’s rules.
Once exams were over, students whose mobiles and other possessions were taken rushed to the principal’s office to protest. The principal’s husband said he called the police after receiving a telephone call from his distraught wife.
A number of teachers had earlier unsuccessfully tried to calm the students down. Police have filed cases against the students with the Education Department in Makkah, which has set up a committee to investigate the incident.
The Education Department condemned the students’ behavior and confirmed that bringing mobile phones into schools was not allowed. It added that this is an isolated and rare incident.
The majority of students at the school are from the local African community. There are 750 students of various nationalities in the school.

And the lesson is - don't mess with teenagers' cell phones!

(So they were not really Gulf girls, but I couldn't resist the alliteration.)

Latest IDF secret weapon: Odor-free socks!

From AFP, January 28th (how did I miss this?)

Israel's foot soldiers are getting new odour-free socks that can be worn for two weeks straight without smelling or stinking up the feet, the Maariv daily reported on Thursday.

"It may sound ridiculous... but this is a very important issue that causes many problems during training," the newspaper quoted Brigadier General Nissim Peretz, the commander of the Israeli military's logistics division, as saying.

The socks, which will be distributed to all new infantry recruits beginning in March, also prevent athlete's foot -- "a nuisance with which every soldier is very familiar," the paper said.

The fabric includes metal components to keep bad odours and fungal infections at bay, it said.

Or, as Jimmy Fallon said, "they've created the socks my college roommate thought he had."

Hamas responded that they purposefully require their men to wear the same socks for months at a time, as their scientists are trying to weaponize them.

Iran nervous about upcoming anniversary

When Iran is nervous, it tries as hard as it can to hide its fears with false bravado.

Iran's latest statement is that its upcoming celebrations to mark the 31st anniversary of the revolution will be a "punch" to the West.

Iran's all powerful supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution would be a "punch" to the world's "arrogant" powers that would stun them.
"The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned," Khamenei, who is also Iran's commander-in-chief, told a gathering of air force personnel.

However, Iran is very nervous that the anniversary will be marred by protesters that will rain on their Islamic Revolution parade:

This year's anniversary is expected to become a flashpoint between security forces and supporters of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who have triggered one of the worst crises facing the Islamic republic since it was founded.
Opposition supporters are expected to stage anti-government protests on Thursday when the traditional regime-sponsored marches to mark the revolution take place across the country.

Ahead of the anniversary, the regime arrested a group of people it accused of having Zionist and CIA ties:

Seven people, including some accused of having ties to a U.S.-backed Farsi-language radio station, were arrested in Tehran, according to Iranian media reports.

The seven "worked as liaisons for anti-revolution satellite organizations and Zionist media," the semi-official Iran Labour News Agency (ILNA) reported Sunday. The people were connected "with the conspiracy," ILNA said, referring to recent anti-government protests in Iran.

The arrests came in an "intelligence ministry operation," ILNA said. "These people were connected with Radio Farda and had gone through the process of selection and training in Dubai and Istanbul and some of them had been officially employed by the U.S. intelligence service."

However, Radio Farda's director, Armand Mostofi, told CNN Sunday it has no employees inside Iran. Radio Farda is based in Prague, Czech Republic, and in Washington. It is affiliated with Radio Free Europe, and broadcasts from Prague. Mostofi said he first heard of the arrests in Iranian news reports.

"A lot of our news comes from the relationships with our listeners," he said. "It's a two-way relationship. Hundreds of thousands of our listeners call in to inform us of what is going in Iran."

He said Iran has consistently blocked the station's Web site and has tried to jam their satellite signal.

"The crackdown of journalists in Iran has worsened in the aftermath of the presidential elections," Mostofi said. "Iran used to be the largest prison for journalists in the Mideast, and unfortunately, has become the largest prison in the world for journalists."

Iran's state-owned Press TV reported the seven included "two Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives." The group planned to "stoke unrest and violence on a march scheduled for February 11," according to the report. That date marks the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah.

Yeah, they are nervous.

Nutty Israel-haters: "Underwear bomber was Zionist"

Jeff Gates, an unhinged Israel hater who writes obsessively about the object of his disgust on many far left and pro-PalArab websites, has uncovered proof that the Christmas Day underwear bomber was really tied to Israel and the FBI!

The results of his crazy investigation can be seen at the equally nutty Palestine Think Tank site. It proves that when someone seeks a conspiracy, it doesn't take too much for them to find it.