Friday, June 06, 2008

Ma'an reports:
A member of the de facto government's police force was killed and eight others were injured when the drug squad stormed a suspected drug den in the Ash-Shuja’iyya neighborhood of eastern Gaza City on Friday morning.

Spokesperson of the de-facto affiliated police Islam Shahwan told Ma’an that Captain Jamal Abu Al-Qumsan was killed when the force stormed the den and clashed with the gang they suspect have been dealing drugs.

Shahwan announced that two of the alleged drug dealers were killed in the clashes. He named the dead man as Nawwaf and Marwan Hassanein. Six others were arrested and large quantities of drugs were confiscated.
Palestine Today updates the number of dead to 4.

Given Hamas' control of the press in Gaza, it is entirely possible that these killings had nothing to do with drugs. Either way, by my definition, these are still self-deaths so the 2008 count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other is now at 83.
  • Friday, June 06, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Firas Press reports on a horrific crime in Egypt, but its reporting indicates something even worse in Arab society.

In December, an Egyptian man from Zagazig named Hassan Mustafa Mohamed Hussein murdered his new bride, Abdullah Ahmad Bahgat, on their wedding night.

The reason? Because he thought that she wasn't a virgin.

He was just sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder.

Up until now, the story might be considered to be just another criminal story, similar to murders that happen daily throughout the world and reported as "strange but true" by wire services all the time.

The more sickening part is that the prosecutor waited for 45 days before charging Mr. Hussein in order to gather more relevant information.

The first important thing that he needed to determine was whether the groom was insane.

But the second part was to see if the bride was really a virgin. And, indeed, the forensics team determined that she was.

Clearly, if she had been found to have been a non-virgin, his sentence would have been much reduced.

Obviously no judge in Egypt would blame the murderer nearly as much in that case. Neither would the prosecutor.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

A 32-tear old woman was murdered in Rafah as an "honor killing."

Her 54-year old father admitted to police that his family members beat her to death because of her "immoral" behavior.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 79.
  • Thursday, June 05, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Two incidents of fatal clan clashes in Hebron in the past few days:
On Tuesday evening, a man was killed and 5 of his relatives were wounded when a number of gunmen opened fire at them in the context of a dispute between two clans living in the southeast of Hebron. In the same context, a child was killed on Wednesday evening during an exchange of fire between the two clans.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 17:00 on Tuesday, 3 June 2008, 5 gunmen opened fire at a number of members of the al-‘Ajlouni clan, who were near a grocery shop belonging to ‘Aayed al-‘Ajlouni in Jabal Jouha neighborhood in the southeast of Hebron. As a result, Mahmoud Sameeh al-‘Ajlouni, 31, was killed by several gunshots, and 5 of his relatives were lightly injured by shrapnel from gunshots.

At approximately 13:30 on Wednesday, 4 June 2008, Safawt Mohammed al-Salaima, 13, was seriously wounded by a gunshot to the head during an exchange of fire between the two disputing clans. Al-Salaima was with his father in al-Sahla car park in the southeast of Hebron. He was evacuated to the hospital, but medical efforts to save his life failed.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 78.
  • Thursday, June 05, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Barack Obama's strongly pro-Israel speech at the AIPAC conference did not win him any fans in the Arab world. Here's Palestine Press Agency's cartoon reaction:

  • Thursday, June 05, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
From YNet:
One person was killed Thursday morning when a mortar shell fired from northern Gaza landed in Kibbutz Nir Oz, located within Eshkol Regional Council limits in the Negev. Hamas' Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades have claimed responsibility for the fire.



Two other people were seriously wounded in the attack, two more suffered shrapnel wounds and mild injuries and several others suffered shock.

All were taken to the Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba by Magen David Adom emergency services. No details were available on their condition.

The rocket hit a Nirlat Groups facility, located in Nir Oz. the council's security director and security forces swept the area, but no further injuries were reported.
As I've noted previously, far more mortars are shot at Israel than Qassams.

This is the second fatal mortar attack in a month, and the third fatal attack from Gaza in that time period.

Keep in mind that the proposed anti-missile systems Israel is working on do not protect against mortars. And that the latest mortars from Iran are deadlier and have their own propulsion, similar to rockets.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

  • Wednesday, June 04, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon


A number of weeks ago a Saudi man went to a barber shop and heard something that made his skin crawl.

At least, he claims that he did. It is possible that he was in a bad mood, or that he got into an argument with the barber, or that he just didn't like his haircut.

At any rate, he knew that he had legal recourse. He immediately contacted our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, and told them that his Turkish barber had blasphemed Mohammed (PBUH.)

The Muttawa sprang into action. They immediately went to the barber shop and arrested the suspect, named Ersin Taze.

By an amazing coincidence, some 15 months ago another Turkish barber, Sabri Bogday, was arrested in Saudi Arabia by our same heroes for exactly the same offense.

In this case, the Turkish Embassy intervened and asked the Saudi justice system to expedite the trial, and the case against Mr. Taze was dismissed for lack of evidence.

Mr. Bogday, on the other hand, remains in jail, convicted and sentenced to death, as his appeals have not all been filed yet. Bogday got into an argument with his neighbor, an Egyptian tailor, and he was arrested after the tailor told the police that he had sworn at God. While Bogday has been in prison for over a year, the Egyptian who made the allegation has disappeared.

Mr. Taze is using his newfound freedom to get out of Saudi Arabia.

Our heroes at the Muttawa have therefore managed to get one blasphemous creature off the streets and another one out of the Kingdom.

A job well done, boys!
  • Wednesday, June 04, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
From the Saudi-based Arab News:
JEDDAH, 4 June 2008 — A man walked in with a machine gun and opened fire on a group of people holding talks to reconcile an ongoing land dispute in Al-Sail near Taif, killing six and injuring seven others on Tuesday, police said yesterday.

The incident took place during reconciliation talks between two tribes involved in the dispute. The man was arrested shortly after the killing spree. Capt. Turki Al-Shahri, spokesman of the Taif police, yesterday declined to provide more details, citing sensitivities related to the dispute.

According to an eyewitness, the man killed three brothers and another man on the spot, while two others succumbed to gunshot wounds at King Abdul Aziz Hospital in Taif later.

Reconciliation talks are common in Saudi Arabia. They are often conducted — with the help of a government committee or nongovernmental mediators — in situations related to negotiating blood money and settling inter-tribal feuds.

If this is how intra-Arab peace talks go, imagine how they would treat non-Arabs.
  • Wednesday, June 04, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Although the newspaper is framing it somewhat differently:
The Adresseavisen, published in Trondheim, on Tuesday ran a cartoon of a man with a bomb-belt around his waist and a T-shirt emblazoned with the text "I am Mohammed and no one dares to publish me."

Managing editor Arne Blix said the cartoon did not depict the prophet "but was a comment on events in Islamabad," referring to the bombing Monday of the Danish embassy in Pakistan that claimed six lives, including two Pakistani nationals employed by the embassy.

Some Muslim representatives in Norway said they expected protests over the drawing while Blix said the publication was "important for the innocent victims impacted by terrorism and for freedom of speech."
Well, you can judge for yourself. Here's the original cartoon from The Adresseavisen (autotranslated page):
The bomb belt might not be as offensive to Muslims as the minute anatomical details.

At least one Arabic newspaper chooses to interpret this as an insulting caricature of Mohammed.
  • Wednesday, June 04, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Mahmoud al-Hams, award-winning AFP photographer, was assaulted by Hamas forces while covering a story in Gaza yesterday.

It will be recalled that Hams is an unapologetically biased journalist.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
  • Wednesday, June 04, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Press Agency reports a Petroleum Authority officer was seriously injured after a Qassam rocket fell in a warehouse in the Al-Shojaeya neighborhood of Gaza.

That section of Gaza has seen a number of Qassam rockets hitting buildings and causing damage, injuries and sometimes deaths. I only see reports of Qassams that cause damage in Gaza; it is unclear what percentage of those fired land in Gaza without any damage.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

  • Tuesday, June 03, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
In Jordan, if a man kills a woman for reasons of "honor," his sentence may be as light as six months in prison. But if a woman murders a man for similar reasons, things are a little different.

Firas Press reports a woman in Jordan found out that her husband was planning to marry another woman and she poisoned his milk, killing him.

She is sentenced to death by hanging.

Apparently, "honor" is not a mitigating factor for women who kill. Perhaps they are considered as if they have little honor to begin with.
Professor Abdelwahab Elmessiri of Ain Shams University in Cairo has just won the Jerusalem Prize from the General Union of Arab Writers.

His major work is the (Arabic-only) "Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism and Zionism," which was published in 1999.

I found a four-part article by this professor in Al-Ahram where he summarizes his theses of the encyclopedia, and it is pretty much what one would expect - a ridiculous analysis based more on his own biases and perceptions than on any reality, all dressed up is pseudo-scholarly garb.

To summarize his thinking, he defines the concept of a "functional group":
Functional groups, defined as a group of people, usually a numerical minority, either imported from outside the society or recruited from within its ranks, and generally defined in terms of a definite, limited, abstract function (profession, etc.), rather than their complex, concrete, and full humanity. They are entrusted with certain jobs or functions which members of the host society (the majority) either cannot or will not perform for a variety of reasons. Among the characteristics of these groups, besides those mentioned in the first part of this series, are: Separateness from time (history) and place (homeland) and the illusory feeling of a separate identity.

The following are examples of functional groups:

1. Hebrew and Macedonian mercenaries in the Hellenic states.
2. Armenian merchants in the Ottoman empire.
3. Gypsies in Europe.
4. Eunuchs in the Chinese and Ottoman courts.
5. Chinese in Southeast Asia.
6. Arab traders (especially Lebanese) in Africa.
7. Huguenots in England and Canada.
8. Mamelukes in the Islamic Middle East (especially Egypt).
9. Cossacks in Tsarist Russia.
10. Janissaries in the Ottoman empire.
11. Ethiopian prostitutes in Africa.
12. Jews in Europe, especially Eastern Europe.
Jewish communities, especially in Europe, are a prime example of the functional group. The Hebrew Kingdom of David and Solomon, and the United Kingdom of Judah and Ephraim, were not characterised by high technological standards. Therefore, they failed to offer job opportunities to the population. This forced large numbers of people to emigrate, forming functional groups in new host societies. Due to their weakness, and consequently their failure to afford protection to their population, the Hebrew Kingdom and the United were the source of thousands of captives who worked as mercenaries or merchants. The idea of Zion, a country of origin, was deeply entrenched in the Hebrew imagination, which loosened the ties binding Hebrews (and later Jews) to the countries they lived in. The Mediterranean and the ancient Middle East were dominated by a number of powerful empires which recruited members of the Jewish communities as mercenaries, settlers, and spies. But the decisive reason that contributed to the transformation of the Jewish communities into functional groups is the very nature of Western feudal society. Commercial and financial activities were not subsumed under the two main normal activities of this society, agriculture (the peasantry) and warfare (the knights). Therefore, they had to be assigned to a group of people imported from outside the society.

What complicated matters was the nature of land ownership in Western feudal societies. There were laws prohibiting members of the Jewish communities (as well as monasteries and churches) from owning land. Due to this, members of the Jewish communities were concentrated in the commercial and financial sectors, and their status as middlemen was firmly established. By the 13th century, they were largely landless, which made their transformation into functional groups almost inevitable.
This is all very interesting in an abstract sense, and one gets the clear impression that the author used his perception of Jews as the paradigm for this concept and then shoe-horned in his other examples so as to make it appear universal.

What he pointedly fails to address is the idea that Jews' historic separation from their host countries during the diaspora is more a function of the oppression imposed from without rather than a role that the Jews embraced from within. To Elmessiri, this persecution is a minor point, while in reality Jews have been more than willing to assimilate into their adopted homes when given the chance. He implies that ancient Israel and Judah disappeared because of Jewish voluntary emigration in order to fulfill this strange will to be a "functional group" rather than because of attacks from without.

In other words, Elmessiri is trying very hard to turn Jews into the architects of their own misery, which might not be classically anti-semitic but is clearly a biased and warped perspective.

Elmessiri's descent into pure fantasy can be seen by his definition of Zionism:
In attempting to define Zionism, I did not follow the normal course, namely choosing one or two definitions. Instead, I developed what I term the "basic comprehensive Zionist formula". This formula, in my view, includes all the elements of Zionism that form the basis of Zionist consensus, regardless of the strain of apologetics (socialist, religious, liberal, fascist, etc.) used to justify it. This formula could be summarised in the following elements:

1. The Jews form an organic people (a Volk) that is organically attached to Palestine, and therefore does not belong to Western civilisation.

Why exactly are the two mutually exclusive? Obviously, Zionism is the most Western of all Middle Eastern nationalisms.

2. They are also a functional group without a function, a pariah Volk, a parasitic people in Zionist or anti-Semitic parlance.
Not a "persecuted" people, but a "parasitic" people.

3. To transform this parasitic people into a useful one, it should be transferred to any area outside Europe (Palestine eventually became the targeted area, on account of its strategic importance to the West).

Even though he admits Jews' historic connection to the Land of Israel, here he denies it as irrelevant, in order to fit his pre-conceived notions of "Jew as colonialist." Considering Zionist Jews as revenants would destroy his theory.

4. The pariah Volk would then be settled there, replacing the indigenous population (that should be either exterminated or expelled, as is always the case with similar settler colonial projects).

Again, he considers this concept as being "Zionist consensus," not bothering to notice the million Arabs who live in Israel as citizens under this Zionist rule.

5. In its new habitat, the pariah Volk would reconstitute itself as a state that would serve as a base for Western powers and a fortress defending Western interests in the region. In exchange, Western powers would support the new state and guarantee its survival and continuity, as long as it discharged its function, namely serving Western interests. In this way, the Jewish Volk would achieve through the Western imperialist formation what it failed to achieve through the Western cultural formation.

The idea that Jews wanted to move to Israel in order to serve Western interests, as opposed to their own, is the height of Arab fantasy.

But it is dressed up in lots of big words, and it also fits a comfortable Arab formula of how to look at Jews and still appear intellectual and nonbiased, so this encyclopedia of drivel is worthy of awards and praise.
Ma'an continues to ludicrously claim that settlers from Ariel have been releasing wild pigs to harass Palestinian Arabs.

But now the pigs are getting smarter:
Herds of wild pigs dumped in the outskirts of the West Bank city of Salfit by residents of the nearby Ariel Israeli settlement, are preventing civilians from leaving their homes in the evening, for fear of being attacked.

Eyewitnesses from the Al-Freiz neighborhood near the settlement said that in the evening after the sunset prayer the pigs attack gardens.
Not only do the pigs know to attack only Arabs, but they know when the exact prayer times are!
  • Tuesday, June 03, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Another Palestinian Arab has been killed in a tunnel collapse:
The body of a 40-year-old Palestinian man was pulled out of the debris of a tunnel collapse on the Gaza-Egypt border on Monday evening.

Medical sources said Ramadan Hilmi Ramadan died when the tunnel caved in near the As-Salam neighborhood of Rafah.

Four Palestinians were hospitalized following after the tunnel that runs under the Gaza-Egypt border collapsed at 11.30 am on Monday.
Egypt has recently found more large caches of weapons and explosives meant to be smuggled to Gaza in those same tunnels:

"We found 27 plastic bags loaded with ammunition, a number of rockets, anti-tank missiles and bombs, which were hidden in the mountains in the Al-Roda area" of north Sinai, the official said.

Authorities also found another cache containing 100 kilogrammes (220 pounds) of TNT about four kilometres (2.5 miles) west of the Gaza border, the official added.

On Saturday authorities said they found a cache which included about 30 anti-aircraft missiles, 3,000 bullets and rifles.

Meanwhile, terror groups continue to shell the crossings that provide them with food and fuel, with no condemnation from within or without Gaza:

The Nahal Oz crossing was shelled by Fatah three times on Sunday and five times on Monday by the PRC.

The Sufa crossing was mortared twice on Thursday by Fatah.

For the first time, a Russian-manufactured Katyusha rocket was shot from Gaza at Israel. Earlier Grad rockets were made in Iran.

Our 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 76.

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