Hizballah continues its takeover of Lebanon, targets Christians, says "We are the state"

A couple of troubling stories from Lebanon indicate that Hizballah, already under pressure because of its support for the Syrian regime, is acting to put more parts of Lebanon under its direct control - especially Christian areas.

Here is the story of a journalist who was assaulted and threatened by Hizballah forces:

A day after Hezbollah detained Journalist Hussein Shamas it assaulted at one of its a checkpoints near Galerie Samaan, a mostly Christian area bordering the Hezbollah stronghold of Dhahieh , Al Anwar newspaper journalist Maha al Rifai , who was beaten , cursed and insulted by the Hezbollah elements that were manning the the checkpoint .

This is all under the pretext of special security measures, that the Iranian backed militant group has been conducting in several parts of Lebanon.

Rifai , who was outraged later told her story to the Future TV. They reportedly demanded her car registration and drivers license but refused to give them back to her. When she asked about the reasons behind holding her documents and asked to contact a Lebanese Internal Security Officer she was told :” We are the state …get into your car you animal” and started cursing her .

When she insisted that a Lebanese internal police officer should attend to the matter one of the Hezbollah elements tried to hit her with an electric cane .

Minutes later a member of the Lebanese Internal security ( intelligence branch) arrived and when she threatened to report this to the media the intelligence officer gave her the car documents.

One of the Hezbollah elements then told her : “Don’t you ever think you can come back to the Dhahieh area” and continued to curse her.

Rifai concluded that Hezbollah is undermining Lebanon’s sovereignty and security, restricting freedom of speech and freedom of movement all under the pretext of special security measure following the bomb attacks in its Dhahieh stronghold

Back in 2008 it was revealed that Hizballah was wiretapping the telecommunications networks of Lebanon. Lebanese officials expressed alarm and denounced the action, but they were powerless to stop it.

Now, it appears that Hizballah's wiretapping is accelerating, especially in Christian areas:

Hezbollah is reportedly expanding its telecommunications network into the mostly Christian city Zahleh in the Beqaa region, Voice of Lebanon (100.5) radio reported on Sunday.

VOL noted that Zahleh “is witnessing an armed presence by Hezbollah members, notably in the industrial area [of the town].”

Hezbollah has been at the center of controversy over the years for the weapons it owns as well as its private communications network .

In another development Radio Free Lebanon reported that the Shiite militant party has established a wiretapping network in several towns along Lebanon’s western mountain range. It added that part of the data Hezbollah collects from this network is immediately sent to Iran.

In 2011 Beqaa’s Tarshish residents protested against the installation of Hezbollah’s network in their town using the state’s network infrastructure. MTV station reported back in October 2011 that Hezbollah threatened residents of Tarshish of a repeat of the May 2008 events after they prevented the party members from installing a telecommunications network in the town which is close to Zahle.

Of the three nominally equal Lebanese religious groups of Shiites, Sunnis and Christians, the Christians are by far the weakest. Their members have been fleeing the country for decades. It seems that Hizballah is now targeting any Christian areas near Shiite strongholds in its attempt to cement its hold on Lebanon itself.

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Whatever happened to the Arafat polonium probe?

Remember last year when Yasir Arafat's bones were dug up to see if a Swiss laboratory could determine if
he died of polonium poisoning?

Remember how the amount of polonium found on his underwear would have indicated an amount that would have killed a normal person in less than a day, although he was sick for weeks?

Remember how the exhumation of Arafat's body was far from transparent, but only a PA pathologist was allowed to touch it and how the PA insisted that Russian experts be on the scene as well - even though Russia had nothing to do with it?

At the time, we were told that it would take about four months for the Swiss to come to a conclusion about the matter.

Then the Swiss said they'd be finished by late spring. The Spectator thought the report would be released by the first day of summer.

The latest word comes from Xinhua, on August 13:

Test results of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's corpse would be handed to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the middle of September, a PNA official said Tuesday.

A Swiss lab that examined samples from Arafat's remains would complete the results around the middle of September, said Tawfiq Al-Tirawi, head of the Palestinian committee that follows the investigation into Arafat's death in 2004.

"So far, the Swiss lab did not give us any initial indications or results on the deaths of Arafat's death," Al-Tirawi told Xinhua. However, he added that there were no obstacles preventing the results from being handed down and declared next month.

Well, its the middle of September, and we still haven't heard anything..

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but if the PLO asked the Russians for help in planting polonium on the samples while onsite, it might explain the delays. It would be very difficult to plant such tiny amounts in the tissue samples and keep them consistent with each other, as well as with making it look like a slow poisoning death. If the Swiss are seeing inconsistent results they might suspect something, but they are not criminal investigators and any theories about someone purposefully planting polonium would be outside their mandate.

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When Israel pays students to post on social media, it's terrible. But what about Turkey?

Last month, the world media breathlessly reported "Students offered grants if they tweet pro-Israeli propaganda." Reaction from the usual suspects was immediate and scathing, as if somehow it sullies the idea of social media to begin with. How dare Israel take advantage of the same tools that every company on the planet is trying to exploit?

Today a story was released that will certainly get no such reactions:

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has launched a massive project to boost the party’s social media presence by hiring over 6,000 new employees for its newly formed social media team, according to daily Star.

Over 900 districts will have its own AKP social media representatives, with a 1,000 staff to be located in Istanbul, 600 in Ankara, and approximately 400 in İzmir.

The team will be responsible for converting AKP sentiments into trending hashtags, Star reported.

The move came soon after the AKP was dealt a clear defeat in social media when Gezi protesters turned websites like Twitter and Facebook into tools for organizing protests, voicing mostly anti-government sentiments.

Do you hear that? It's the sound of a big yawn when someone other than Israel tries to take advantage of Twitter and Facebook.

By the way, there was similar concern when the State of Israel put this infographic on Buzzfeed - even though the article admitted that the UK government also posts on BuzzFeed.

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Guardian reviews book on history of Jews, Arabs freak out

Last week, in The Guardian, Tom Holland wrote about a book by Simon Schama called The Story of the Jews, which has also been a recent TV series.

The book appears to be interesting although quite at odds with the rabbinical traditions of how Jewish history unfolded. Nevertheless, it accepts that Jews today are descended from the Jews of Biblical times, who lived in Judea.

This is too much for Arab newspaper Moheet, which blares on its headline that The Guardian is pushing The Big Lie that "Jews are God's Chosen People from their homeland Palestine."

Here's what The Guardian says:

How, though, are "Jews" to be defined: as an ethnic grouping or as the adherents of a god? The Bible, that titanic record of their beginnings, and without which they would surely long since have gone the way of the Moabites, blurs the question by casting them as both. Not merely a people, they are a Chosen People, united by a common line of descent from Abraham and a code of laws inherited, via Moses, directly from YHWH. Simultaneously fantastical and transcendent, this is a narrative that plays directly to one of Schama's greatest strengths. He has always had a genius for celebrating the myths he is simultaneously deconstructing. The methods of analysis he once applied to the Dutch republic and the French revolution are now applied to holy writ. Jews first become Jews, in Schama's telling of their story, by a feat of willpower. Tradition generates its own backstory, which then takes on the cast of reality. "The Hebrew Bible is the imprint of the Jewish mind, the picture of its imagined origins and ancestry."

Through the bizarre filters of the Moheet author's mind, he translates this into "Jews are God's chosen people, according to the Torah, which is why the United States is an advocate for their rights!... [The book] confirms the idea that the Bible was written in Hebrew, which indicates that it represents the imprint of the Jewish mind."

Moheet goes on:

Then the author repeats fanatical Zionist lies: that Jews survived without their Palestine, spread out in different countries governed by various historical, political and cultural laws that helped to preserve their Jewish identity.

Jewish history is now a Zionist lie!

Moheet also says the article states:

It's time to write about the history of the deep faith of the Jews, and the importance of following the Torah and the rabbis to return to their homeland and Jewish identity.

I couldn't find anything close to that quote.

In the end, this hysterical review proves that for Arabs, the threat isn't Zionism - the threat is Judaism. The very existence of Jews, conitnuing to practice a faith that predates Islam by millennia and that indeed Islam stole many of its ideas from, continuing to venerate Israel and its holy places that still exist from before Mohammed was born - that is the scariest idea in the Muslim world that must be fought tooth and nail.

Because the truth indicates that Islam isn't so special, but rather it is a pale derivative of a religion that is still going strong.

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9/15 Links: BBC Claims Egypt acted 'pre-emptively' against Israel in '73, Jerusalem’s Etrog Man

From Ian:

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BBC’s educational resource website describes Yom Kippur attack by Syria and Egypt as ‘pre-emptive’

Consider then the statement below which appears in the section titled “The Middle East from the 1880s” on the BBC’s ‘Learning Zone’ website: supposedly a resource for secondary school educators.

“During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria acted pre-emptively against Israel at the Suez Canal.” [emphasis added]

Beyond the rather obvious fact that Syrian forces were nowhere near the Suez Canal at the time, the description of ‘Operation Badr’ as a pre-emptive action is clearly inaccurate. The Israeli government had not ordered a general mobilization of reserve forces during the build-up to the Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack and the US had received confirmation from Golda Meir that no pre-emptive Israeli strike would take place.

Netanyahu: Actions, not words, will be test for Syria and Iran

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed cautious optimism over the US-Russian deal, which will begin its implementation with Syria reporting on its chemical weapons stock by the end of the week.
However, he said, the commitments had to backed up by actions, not only in Syria but in Iran as well.
“We hope the understandings bear fruit. Those understandings will be judged by the results,” he said, referring to the total destruction of Syria’s chemical arms, which should take place by mid-2014. “The test of the results also applies to the efforts by the international community to stop Iran’s nuclear armaments. There, too, not words but actions will be the deciding factor.”
Netanyahu added that Israel now needed to have the ability to defend itself more than ever.

Israel: We’ve been ‘absolutely certain’ for months Assad using nerve gas

In his April address, Brun showed a photo of a child with narrowed pupils and foam coming out of his mouth. Both of these were indicative of a nerve agent, he said. He repeated those indicators in the Saturday interview, broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 news, while making plain that the IDF had other, more conclusive, sources of information.
Israeli military intelligence reportedly played a key role in providing evidence of Assad’s chemical weapons use in the August 21 attack that sparked the current crisis over Syria. On the Friday after that attack, Channel 2 reported that the weapons were fired by the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army, a division under the command of the Syrian president’s brother, Maher Assad. The nerve gas shells were fired from a military base in a mountain range to the west of Damascus, the TV report said.

Kerry briefs Israel’s leaders on Syria deal

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier Sunday expressed cautious optimism about the deal.
Officials in Jerusalem said late Saturday Israel would of course be delighted to see the regime of President Bashar Assad stripped of chemical weapons, but that Israel is extremely wary of the unfolding diplomatic framework, concerned that Assad is bent on buying time, and that the optimistic timetable set out in Saturday’s agreement will not be adhered to. Kerry will meet a “skeptical” Israeli leadership.
Kerry was to have met with Netanyahu later this week in Rome, but Netanyahu cancelled his planned trip amid the current regional tensions.

Obama: Military action still on table if Syria diplomacy fails

Obama said the United States will continue working with Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the United Nations and others to "ensure that this process is verifiable, and that there are consequences should the Assad regime not comply with the framework agreed today."
"In part because of the credible threat of US military force, we now have the opportunity to achieve our objectives through diplomacy," he added.
US forces were still positioned for possible military strikes on Syria.
"We haven't made any changes to our force posture to this point," Pentagon spokesman George Little said in a statement Saturday.

McCain and Graham Slam Syria Agreement

The two called the agreement “meaningless” and said it sends the wrong signal to Iran, which is suspected of building a nuclear weapon.
The Republican senators said the framework agreement reached by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is toothless without the UN Security Council Resolution that threatens the use of force should Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad fail to comply.

Putin Puts International Law Before War

However, Putin now certainly needs to explain the lack of "real leverage" demonstrated by the failure of those same 5 Permanent Members to agree on the terms of a resolution to end the 30 month civil war in Syria that has already claimed over 100000 lives, created 2 million refugees and displaced 5 million Syrians in their own country.
Russia needs to do its own soul searching as it continues to exercise its veto vote to paralyse all efforts by the majority of the other Permanent Members to obtain a Security Council Resolution to try and end this humanitarian outrage.
Russia cannot continue to be the impediment frustrating any resolutions to try and end this conflict - if Putin wants to be taken seriously.

Video Reveals Key Iranian Role in Syrian Civil War

Remarkable footage has emerged of Iranian military forces on the ground in Syria, fighting alongside pro-government militias.
Shia Iran is the Assad regime's closest ally, along with the Hezbollah terrorist group, and Iranian support is nothing new. But whilst Hezbollah has officially acknowledged that its fighters are actively engaged in battle on behalf of the Assad regime, Iranian officials always maintained that any Iranian presence in Syria and support for the Assad regime was limited to logistical support and "military advisers," away from the front lines.

20 trucks with Syrian chemical equipment said sent to Iraq

Twenty trucks laden with equipment used in the manufacture of chemical weapons were driven across the border from Syria into Iraq on Thursday and Friday, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal reported on Sunday.
The trucks were “heavily protected” by security forces, and were not inspected by border guards, the paper reported, adding that its sources confirmed the illicit cargo.

Guardian Jerusalem Syndrome: Giles Fraser fears Judaisation of Temple Mount

Lending polemical support to such an often repeated lie that Israel – which allows freedom of worship for all faiths at holy sites in Jerusalem – represents a threat to the Temple Mount (the holiest site in Judaism), is the Guardian’s Giles Fraser, whose latest piece at ‘Comment is Free’ is titled ‘An Israeli claim to Temple Mount Would Trigger Unimaginable Violence.’

Feiglin Challenges Waqf Control over Temple Mount

In his response, Gordon stated that the policy of Muslim control over the Temple Mount was a government decision taken immediately after the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967.
Feiglin, however, was unimpressed.
"Since I am not aware of any such government decision since 1967 to grant control over the Mount to the Waqf, I request that you supply me with a copy [of the decision," he retorted.
Feiglin went on to point out that - far from deciding to hand the site over the Muslim authorities - a number of ministerial committees clearly stated that the opposite was true.

Israeli Health Care of Palestinians

Once again Israel is coming under attack from a foreign government financed NGO, this time claiming Israel is ignoring its humanitarian obligations with regard to the taking care of the health of the Palestinians.
In spite of the constant calls for Israel’s destruction and the culture of hatred and demonization that permeates Palestinian society at all levels, Israel is, in fact, meeting its humanitarian obligations in respect of the Palestinians, albeit under circumstances fraught with danger.

Border Police Come Under Attack in Anata

A video has been released showing Border Police unit coming under attack during a routine patrol on Yom Kippur. The unit was driving through the Arab town of Anata, near Jerusalem, when local youths attacked with concrete blocks, bottles, and buckets of paint.
A local man filmed the attack and uploaded footage. The video shows the reality of “rock attacks,” which often involve heavy concrete blocks thrown from upper floors of buildings.

Putin to visit Iran for first time in six years

“Putin has been invited to Iran, and he will certainly take advantage of this kind invitation,” the Interfax news agency quoted spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Friday. “The dates of the visit will be agreed upon through diplomatic channels.”
The announcement came on the heels of a report that Russia had agreed to sell to Iran the advanced S-300 air defense system and construct a new nuclear reactor at the Bushehr site.

New IOC head to resign from controversial Arab-German trade group

Thomas Bach, a German sports functionary who was elected Tuesday for an initial eight-year term at the helm of the IOC, is the chairman of Ghorfa, the Arab-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Founded in 1976, the organization is accused of helping companies make sure they avoid any trade with Israel. Since Bach’s election last week in Buenos Aires, several Jewish groups have called on Bach to step down from his position at the trade group.
Bach also came under fire from Jewish groups for opposing a minute of silence for the Israeli victims of the Munich 1972 terror attack during last year’s Olympic Games in London.

Tel Aviv University, China’s Tsinghua University to Create XIN Life Sciences Center in China

In a statement reported by Israel’s Globes business daily, the two universities said they plan to create a research center to be called XIN, which means “new” in Chinese. They will dedicate “hundreds of millions of dollars” to set up the research institute which will focus on life sciences and nanotechnology, and co-ordinate frequently with high-tech industry.
The agreement between the two educational institutions comes as China seeks to harness Israeli innovation, in major ways, including establishing a technology incubator in Israel and beefing up the frequency of flights between the two countries to facilitate business interaction.

Sapiens wins 2 financial services contracts for NIS 80m

One contract with Clal Insurance Enterprises Holdings Ltd. (TASE: CLIS), which selected Sapiens Life & Pensions software to manage its pensions portfolio, in a multimillion dollar deal.
The second contract is a follow-on deal with that LV= Ltd., the UK's largest friendly society and a leading financial mutual, with more than five million members, which renewed its maintenance and services contract with Sapiens for five years. The contract is worth $10.5 million (NIS 38 million).

Meet Jerusalem’s Etrog Man

If you’ve ever been to the century-old Jerusalem marketplace Machane Yehuda and haven’t stopped by the booth of third-generation Yemenite healer Uzi-Eli Chezi, it’s time for a return visit.
Click below to see how Uzi-Eli has built his citywide reputation on drinks and cosmetic preparations using native plants including the fragrant etrog, or citron, which is better known for its starring role in the Sukkot holiday.

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Ian Lustick's science fiction in the New York Times

Science fiction does not only deal with fantasies about the future. It also sometimes includes alternate history, describing how events would have unfolded had something different happened years ago.

Ian Lustick in the New York Times shows his anti-Israel bias by writing both alternate history and a fantasy future in his article against the two-state solution. Not to mention some old-fashioned fiction:

Israeli governments cling to the two-state notion because it seems to reflect the sentiments of the Jewish Israeli majority and it shields the country from international opprobrium, even as it camouflages relentless efforts to expand Israel’s territory into the West Bank.

No, the Israeli government supports a two state solution because of a combination of worries about a mostly mythical demographic time-bomb and because of relentless pressure from the US. These are pretty basic facts. Does Lustick really think, after so many years, that Israel would make decisions like this only to shield itself from criticism? He must have been asleep during 1967, Entebbe, Osirak, and a couple of times in Gaza.

American politicians need the two-state slogan to show they are working toward a diplomatic solution, to keep the pro-Israel lobby from turning against them and to disguise their humiliating inability to allow any daylight between Washington and the Israeli government.

Ah, it's all because of the Jewish Lobby. It isn't the Us driving the current peace talks, but AIPAC controlling, um, the State Department.

I'm sorry. I shouldn't make fun of an "expert."

It is true that the Oslo process is a sham. It is true that the current conventional wisdom that "everyone knows" what an eventual solution will look like has been dead wrong for at least 12 years, ever since the PLO rejected the Clinton parameters and chose to start a terror war instead.

Oh, I'm sorry again. Lustick seems, throughout this entire 2200 word essay, to have ignored the intifada as being something that might be blamed on Palestinian Arabs. Instead, he obliquely blames Israel, starting his alternate history segment with:

Had America blown the whistle on destructive Israeli policies back then it might have greatly enhanced prospects for peace under a different leader. It could have prevented Mr. Begin’s narrow electoral victory in 1981 and brought a government to power that was ready to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians before the first or second intifada and before the construction of massive settlement complexes in the West Bank. We could have had an Oslo process a crucial decade earlier.

He speaks about a "peace process" in 1980 which didn't exist.

Indeed, Lustick seems to be peculiarly one-sided in assigning blame for the failure of Oslo. Terror, incitement, intransigence on the part of the PLO simply is not worth mentioning. Only Jews wanting to live in the homeland of their ancestors is the obstacle.

Lustick then turns to more traditional science fiction, as he describes his hopes and dreams of how shuttering the peace process today will ultimately bring about a better Middle East:

With a status but no role, what remains of the Palestinian Authority will disappear. Israel will face the stark challenge of controlling economic and political activity and all land and water resources from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The stage will be set for ruthless oppression, mass mobilization, riots, brutality, terror, Jewish and Arab emigration and rising tides of international condemnation of Israel. And faced with growing outrage, America will no longer be able to offer unconditional support for Israel. Once the illusion of a neat and palatable solution to the conflict disappears, Israeli leaders may then begin to see, as South Africa’s white leaders saw in the late 1980s, that their behavior is producing isolation, emigration and hopelessness.

Fresh thinking could then begin about Israel’s place in a rapidly changing region. There could be generous compensation for lost property. Negotiating with Arabs and Palestinians based on satisfying their key political requirements, rather than on maximizing Israeli prerogatives, might yield more security and legitimacy. Perhaps publicly acknowledging Israeli mistakes and responsibility for the suffering of Palestinians would enable the Arab side to accept less than what it imagines as full justice. And perhaps Israel’s potent but essentially unusable nuclear weapons arsenal could be sacrificed for a verified and strictly enforced W.M.D.-free zone in the Middle East.

You see? If we just abandon Oslo, then the ugly face of Jewish Israelis can be revealed to the world! Right now, articles like Lustick's in small papers like The New York Times aren't enough to demonize Israel - we need to set the stage for Israel to start killing lots and lots of Arabs, who will naturally and nobly start terrorizing Jews as is their right under oppression.  The international pressure can properly blame Israel for its awful apartheid-like policies of trying to defend its civilian population and we can get rid of this ridiculous idea of a Jewish state once and for all.

Palestinian Arab insistence on a capital in Jerusalem, on the 1949 armistice lines and on the "return" of millions of Arabs into Israel are  "key political requirements." Israeli insistence on an undivided Jerusalem, defensible borders and a Jewish state are "maximizing Israeli prerogatives."

Lustick's foray into science fiction moves more towards fantasy in his next paragraph:

In such a radically new environment, secular Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank could ally with Tel Aviv’s post-Zionists, non-Jewish Russian-speaking immigrants, foreign workers and global-village Israeli entrepreneurs. Anti-nationalist ultra-Orthodox Jews might find common cause with Muslim traditionalists. Untethered to statist Zionism in a rapidly changing Middle East, Israelis whose families came from Arab countries might find new reasons to think of themselves not as “Eastern,” but as Arab. Masses of downtrodden and exploited Muslim and Arab refugees, in Gaza, the West Bank and in Israel itself could see democracy, not Islam, as the solution for translating what they have (numbers) into what they want (rights and resources). Israeli Jews committed above all to settling throughout the greater Land of Israel may find arrangements based on a confederation, or a regional formula more attractive than narrow Israeli nationalism.

Every one of Lustick's  scenarios betrays either a remarkable ability to write speculative fiction or a remarkable blindness to the Arab, Muslim, Zionist and Jewish psyches, all at once.

And so it goes. An extremist position to dismantle Israel and eventually replace it with another Arab state (albeit with a large Jewish minority), spiced up with wishful thinking of a bizarre utopian fantasy where Jew-hatred is not an inherent part of the Arab and Muslim mindset so the resultant state will treat Jews as honored citizens with equal rights, is published in the New York Times.

The fantasy fiction of Ian Lustick will be discussed over brunch this morning in New York and Washington as if it makes all the sense in the world.

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Arabic Jew-news roundup

Al Wafd, newspaper of a secular Egyptian party, accuses Hamas of being behind a lot of the Sinai jihadist "Instead of fighting the Jews, Hamas turned to fight the Egyptians."

This was the illustration fot that article

attacks, which is a usual motif in the Egyptian press lately. (I have seen very little verifiable evidence of this, although there is evidence that some Gaza groups are helping Sinai jihadists.) It chastises Hamas by saying that the organization spout slogans but doesn't do anything about the Jews.

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The Jordanzad news site has an op-ed saying that the current talks between Israel and the PLO is really a talk between Jews...and Jews. Mahmoud Abbas, the writer says, has turned his job into doing whatever the Israelis tell him to do.

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Al Hadath News reports on the recent Washington Post interview with Brigitte Hoss, daughter of Rudolf Höss, Kommandant of Auschwitz who was found to be living in a Washington, DC suburb. While the WaPo article described the horrors of Auschwitz along with the interview, this Arab paper quoted only the parts of the interview that could be used to cast doubt on the Holocaust:

She questions that millions were killed. “How can there be so many survivors if so many had been killed?” she asks.

When I point out that her father confessed to being responsible for the death of more than a million Jews, she says the British “took it out of him with torture.”

The article also quotes her saying “I am still scared here in Washington. There are a lot Jewish people, and they still hate the Germans. It never ends.”

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Another JordanZad piece adds a wrinkle on an old conspiracy theory. You see, Israel installed cameras on the Temple Mount, and they allow Jews to visit "al-Aqsa." The reason is that they are planning an earthquake, and they want to bury Jews in the rubble, to make the world sympathetic with the dead Jews and no one will think about the destruction of the Al Aqsa Mosque.

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The Christian-Muslim Commission for support of Jerusalem, one of the many anti-Jewish groups out there, came out with a press release that was published verbatim in some Arab media outlets. It warns that Jews plan to march in the streets of Jerusalem during the upcoming Sukkot holiday and calls for Arabs to wake up and take action against it. This has been a motif that has been increasing lately in the Arab press, as organizations such as this one and the Al Aqsa Foundation are desperately trying to incite Arabs to revolt.

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Al Quds Educational TV notes that Yom Kippur brought Jerusalem to a standstil as thousands gathered for prayers at the Kotel, another unforgivable crime. The organization described Yom Kippur as the "anniversary of the 1973 October war."

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Yemen newspaper: "Jews are the natural enemy of Muslims"

Mainstream Yemen newspaper Al Masdar has an antisemitic op-ed today.

Starting off with the idea that Jews are Freemasons who have endeavored to destabilize the Muslim world for centuries, the piece claims that Jews are behind the turmoil and revolutions in all Arab countries, using the playbook of - you guessed it - the Talmud.

"Jews are the natural enemy of Muslims," the article continues, as they have been behind the murder of the Prophets. Now they are using their money to control the minds of weak Arab leaders. (It is unclear if he is referring to Yemen itself, which has seen lots of civil wars over recent decades.)

Now Arab rulers are themselves in the lead, "under the Masonic tunic," to destroy the Muslim 'umma.

But make no mistake - Jews are behind everything, their dirty fingers involved in all the strife in the Middle East.

The sad part is, international focus on Israel from the UN, US and EU - where leaders routinely declare that the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict is the core issue of the region - shows that the world's viewpoint is not too different from what crazed Jew-hating Arab op-ed writers believe.

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Egypt's siege of Gaza continues

From Ma'an:

Egyptian authorities kept the Rafah crossing with Gaza closed for a fourth consecutive day on Saturday.

There have been frequent closures of the terminal in recent weeks due to political unrest in Egypt and violence in the Sinai peninsula.

The Palestinian Authority ambassador to Egypt, Barakat al-Farra, urged Gazan students enrolled in Egyptian universities to send their details to the embassy in Cairo so that arrangements can be made to obtain special permits to allow students to cross into Egypt.

The ambassador told Ma'an that his team will contact Egyptian universities to try to delay examinations for Palestinian students who are not able to cross into the country.

This being Ma'an, they have to throw in some anti-Israel lies as well:

The crossing is the only way most Palestinians in Gaza can enter or leave the territory. Israel imposes an air and sea blockade on the enclave, and its border is closed to Palestinians.

Well, in July Israel allowed 4002 people through Erez, including 1000 patients and family members plus many businessmen (34% of total, although I don't know how many of those live in Gaza. Many certainly do, though.)

It seems likely that more Gazans crossed Erez Shalom in August than crossed Rafah.

Still don't see any anti-Egypt flotillas, though. Funny, that.

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Big Bad Wolf IDF blows poor Arabs' houses down: report

A real headline in the official PA WAFA news agency:

Wind Caused by Israeli Helicopter Blows Away Homes in Jordan Valley

Wind caused by landing Israeli military helicopters Thursday blew away three Palestinian canvas tents used as homes in an area in the Jordan Valley, according to witnesses.

They said the Israeli helicopters landed in the middle of an area where Palestinian herders reside causing three tents to be blown away due to the wind caused by the helicopter blades, displacing three families who were left without shelter.

"I'll huff, and I'll puff..."

Even though this happened on Thursday, not even the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) or B'Tselem have bothered mentioning this on their site, perhaps because they know quite well that a high percentage of Arab stories are completely bogus, and they'll only publicize those that have at least a tiny grain of truth.

The only major site to republish this "news" is, of course, Mondoweiss, since their editorial policy is "if it is anti-Israel, it requires no fact-checking."

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9/14 Links: Poll-Obama Unable to Handle Iran, Ban Ki-moon-UN has Failed Syria, Gas Pipeline to Turkey

From Ian:

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Israeli Poll: After Syria, Jewish State Can’t Trust Obama on Iran

In a new Israel Hayom poll, a majority of Israeli Jews—66.7 percent—characterized U.S. President Barack Obama’s handling of the Syria crisis as “not successful.” Meanwhile, 65.3 percent said that given Obama’s conduct regarding Syria, he would not be able to successfully deal with the Iran nuclear program.
A plurality of Israeli Jews—49.7 percent—said Obama’s decision to delay a military strike against Syria was wrong, while 32.8 percent said he made the right choice.

Karl Vick’s Latest Dispatch From Jerusalem is Just Laughable

According to Vick, Israel then fell in love with President Obama. He is now “being hailed as a model of principled resolve, a Churchillian figure,” he claims.
“Rather than focusing on what Obama could not do — line up anywhere near a Congressional majority for a military strike — Israelis focused on what he did: Use the consistent threat of military force to extract a promise from Syria and its most powerful patron, Russia, to remove tons of chemical weapons from Israel’s northern border,” Vick writes.
Unashamedly, the backup for his grand pronouncement on the consensus, mood and ultimate “verdict” of “Israelis” amounts to a series of handpicked opinion quotations from a total of two notoriously left wing Israeli newspapers.

Mark Steyn: American Ineffectualism

Every American ally is cringing with embarrassment at the amateurishness of the last month.
For generations, eminent New York Times wordsmiths have swooned over foreign strongmen, from Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer-winning paeans to the Stalinist utopia to Thomas L. Friedman’s more recent effusions to the “enlightened” Chinese Politburo. So it was inevitable that the cash-strapped Times would eventually figure it might as well eliminate the middle man and hire the enlightened strongman direct. Hence Vladimir Putin’s impressive debut on the op-ed page this week.

Guardian publishes essay on Oslo by one-stater who blames Jews for antisemitism

The 20 year history of Oslo, Shlaim claims in his CiF essay, has vindicated Edward Said’s characterization of the agreement “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles”, and predicts that “as long as Netanyahu remains in power, it is a safe bet that no breakthrough will be achieved in the new round of talks.”
Shlaim, it should be noted, perfectly represents the Guardian’s institutional hostility to Zionism, as the Oxford affiliated new Israeli historian (who’s been roundly criticized for his shoddy research) has characterized Zionism as the greatest single threat to Jews, blaming Israeli Jewish behavior for the upsurge of anti-Semitism throughout the world.

United Nations' Syria chemical weapons report "overwhelming," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says

The secretary-general said it was a "failure" that the U.N. couldn't resolve the ongoing conflict, a statement that sent some shock waves around the corridors of U.N. headquarters.
"It's an incredible situation that the Security Council has not been able to adopt any single resolution, even humanitarian, even humanitarian issues, not to mention political and security issues," said Ban. "They are divided. I am very much troubled by this. This is failure by the United Nations."

Obama amenable to toothless Syria resolution, say officials

Senior White House officials said Friday that President Barack Obama may be open to a UN resolution to secure Syria’s chemical weapons that does not include the threat of military force for failing to abide by the agreement.
The officials say Obama retains the authority to launch a strike, but Russia is expected to veto a resolution that includes a military trigger.
The officials also outlined for the first time a timetable for negotiations with Russia over Syria’s chemical weapons. The officials say they will know within a few weeks whether that effort has the necessary traction.

Syrian opposition: Don’t let Assad stall while he keeps on killing

Syria’s main opposition group in exile was “deeply skeptical” Friday about Damascus signing an international treaty banning the production and use of chemical weapons, saying a U.N. resolution was needed to enforce compliance.
Syrian President Bashar Assad told Russian TV that his government would start submitting data on its chemical weapons stockpile a month after signing the convention.

Thriving Nazi Memorabilia Auction Business Highlights ‘Perversity’ of Collectors, ADL’s Foxman Says

The twisted niche entered the mainstream in the U.S. when Bill Panagopulos’s auction house, Alexander Auctions, then located in Stamford, Connecticut, sold journals written by concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele during his exile in South America. Now Panagopulos has resurfaced, this time near Washington D.C, and his business is doing better than ever.
Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust survivor, told The Algemeiner, “Nazi memorabilia is best understood in context, and we would prefer to see it permanently housed in a museum on the Holocaust.”

British Jewish Group Knocks Campaign Criticizing Israeli Medical Treatment of Palestinians

Great Britain’s largest Jewish representative body on Friday criticized a campaign in England that focuses on the negative impact of security precautions on Palestinian patients seeking to enter Israel for medical treatment.
The Zionist Federation said the campaign launched by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) last week was done so “without providing any necessary context, or mentioning that thousands [of Palestinians] are admitted (to Israel for treatment) every year.”

Pro-Israel New Yorkers Hold Symbolic UJA-Federation Check Burning

On Thursday evening, September 12, a group of between 50 and 75 staunchly pro-Israel New Yorkers attended the latest effort to publicly expose what they are calling Donor Fraud in the institutional Jewish community.
Their campaign is called, “Close Your Wallets,” and they are hoping to encourage Jews to withhold their donations to Jewish institutions until specific guidelines regarding the use of that money are adopted.
The loosely organized group whose leader is Richard Allen, head of JCC Watch, has been gathering outside Jewish institutions on a regular basis for several years. They do this in an effort to draw attention to the use by large Jewish institutions of Jewish charitable donations to support anti-Israel activities and anti-Israel individuals.

Turcas Petrol Proposes 470 KM, $2.5 Billion Pipeline to Connect Israel’s Leviathan Gas Well to Turkey

Turkish pipeline operator Turcas Petrol has proposed to develop and construct a $2.5 Billion, 470 km pipeline to connect the country to Israel’s Leviathan natural gas platform, Israel’s Globes business daily reported on Friday.
Speaking at an international energy conference held in Paphos, Cyprus, on Thursday, Matthew Bruyza, a senior executive at Turcas Petrol and a former U.S. diplomat, said the pipeline could transport 16 billion cubic meters of gas from Leviathan to the southern Turkish ports of Cekisan or Mersin.
Bruyza said the pipeline would be an attractive venture, despite the political risks arising from the strained relations between Israel and Turkey. He said, “Our company and other companies are prepared to take the risk on themselves if the venture is hurt or even torpedoed by political developments.”

Study shows Yom Kippur’s empty roads make for cleaner air

Few, if any, Israelis drive their cars on Yom Kippur, especially in large cities. For those not attending services in synagogue, the preferred method of transportation is biking (many of those bike riders aren’t eating; recent polls show that close to 60% of Israelis fast on the Day of Atonement). The bottom line is that the biggest source of air pollution, the exhaust generated by vehicles, disappears for the day.
According to Levy’s study, the impact on pollution levels is almost immediate. Levels of nitrogen oxide (the building block of smog) drop by 83–98% at different sites in the Tel Aviv area, ozone levels fall significantly, and nitrogen dioxide levels fall as well. The research takes 15 years’ worth of pollution data and analyzes it in order to come to its conclusions.

The Jewish Hunger Games – Released in Time for Yom Kippur! (VIDEO)

The Jewish Hunger Games: Kvetching Fire, a spoof of The Hunger Games, posted to YouTube Thursday by actor Jonathan Rudnitsky, follows Katniss Everstein, Peeta Hummus/Effie Trinketson and more as they try to overcome their temptation to…eat.
On its surface this may seem a trivial challenge, but just tell that to a Jew. As the lead character—whose male companion tells her, “It’s only 24 hours of fasting, it can’t be that bad,”—says,”You don’t get it, you’re a gentile.”

US customs warns Sukkot travelers their etrogs face inspection

U.S. authorities’ new travel guidelines for Sukkot allow passengers to bring the traditional “four species” on board airplanes, but customs regulations warn travelers that their etrogs (citron fruit) face inspection and that European willow twigs are banned.
“TSA’s screening procedures do not prohibit the carrying of the four plants used during Sukkot – a palm branch, myrtle twigs, willow twigs, and a citron – in airports, through or security checkpoints, or on airplanes,” the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement, noting the dates of this year’s Sukkot holiday, from Sept. 18-25. The TSA notice noted that all passengers undergo security screening at checkpoints.

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G'mar chatima tovah 5774 - גמר חתימה טובה

I will slightly update my Yom Kippur message of previous years:

Since a high percentage of my traffic is from people asking about the phrase "G'mar Chatima Tova," here is its translation:

Literally: A good final sealing
Idiomatically: May you be inscribed (in the Book of Life) for Good

I unconditionally forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

Specifically (as enumerated in previous years, courtesy of The Muqata from a few years back):

• If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize. It is sometimes hard for me to answer everyone as I get busier, but I am sorry.
• If you sent me a story and I didn't publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -- I'm sorry. (I sometimes get multiple tips for the same story and I usually credit the first one I saw, which is not always the earliest. And I cannot publish all the stories I am sent, although I try to place appropriate ones in the linkdumps, or tweet them. Whether I like it or not, I am an editor, as well as a writer, graphic designer, video producer, layout editor....so I really can't post everything.)
• If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.
• I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all.
• I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.

May this be a year of life, peace, prosperity, happiness and security.

I wish all of my readers who observe Yom Kippur an easy and meaningful fast.

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