Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Jenny Tonge fired as health spokeswoman

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, has sacked his health spokeswoman in the Lords after she called for an inquiry into allegations that Israeli soldiers were involved in organ trafficking in Haiti.
Clegg described Baroness Jenny Tonge's remarks about Israeli troops sent to the earthquake-stricken country as "wrong, distasteful and provocative".
It is the second time Tonge has been fired as a Liberal Democrat frontbencher for making controversial comments about Israel.
The latest row followed accusations in the online Palestine Telegraph – of which she is a patron – that members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had been harvesting body parts in Haiti.
She subsequently told the Jewish Chronicle: "To prevent allegations such as these – which have already been posted on YouTube – going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti."
Fellow Liberal Democrats were said to have complained to Clegg about her comments.
In a statement last night, the leader said the peer "apologises unreservedly".
"Following discussions with the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, Lord McNally, I have decided that Jenny Tonge will stand down as Liberal Democrat health spokesperson in the Lords following her unacceptable comments suggesting an inquiry into highly offensive allegations against the IDF humanitarian operation in Haiti," Clegg said.
"The comments were wrong, distasteful and provocative and I recognise the deep and understandable distress they have caused to the Jewish community.
"While I do not believe that Jenny Tonge is antisemitic or racist, I regard her comments as wholly unacceptable. Jenny Tonge apologises unreservedly for the offence she has caused."

Is it weird that someone is quoting her as apologizing but she isn't doing it herself?

Meanwhile, the spoof TongeLashing website I may or may not have set up in response to her comments is doing well, with some 2000 hits and dozens of comments. It is also getting hits from the Liberal Democrat Voice website as well.

Interestingly, the article in the Palestine Chronicle that Tonge was referring to seems to have disappeared from that site. Were they embarrassed? A copy can be seen here.

PA minister accuses Israel of "silently massacring" prisoners

Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe has been busy lately spreading blood libels about Israeli prisons.

Palestine Press Agency quotes him as saying that there are 18 prisoners now who are suffering from incurable diseases like cancer, and says that these diseases are being injected by Israelis. He is also quoted as saying that 60 prisoners have died from serious illnesses in Israel prisons - since 1958!

That sounds like a pretty good record to me!

In addition, he calls this supposed policy a "silent massacre."

A different spokesman for the ministry last year accused Israel of "deliberately injecting sick Palestinian prisoners with infected needles, and of giving them poisonous medicines."

As usual, they have no real evidence for these accusations, but they call on the WHO and others to open up investigations. Because they know that they'll always find a Jenny Tonge to back them up.

Saudi religious police ban red items ahead of Valentine's Day

From AP:

The Saudi religious police are cracking down on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to banned celebrations of Valentine's Day.
A Saudi official says policemen are inspecting shops for red roses, heart-shaped products or gifts wrapped in red, and ordering storeowners to get rid of them.

Such items are legal at other times of the year, but as February 14 nears they become contraband.

Saudi Arabia bans celebration of Western holidays such as Valentine's Day, named after a Christian saint said to have been martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.

Most shops in Riyadh's upscale neighborhoods have removed all red items from their shelves.

Red wrapping paper is also forbidden.

The many Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia were warned not to do anything valentine-y in public on February 14th, including blowing kisses.

AP is watering down the reasons that the Saudis are against Valentine's Day. It is not strictly because it is a Christian holiday, but because (as I mentioned in a Saudi Vice episode two years ago)

As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women.

Here's the perfect gift for Saudi Valentine's Day!

PalArab press and politics personified

Mahmoud Abbas did everything he could to stop Israel's Channel 10 broadcast of various sex and financial scandals in his quasi-government, including writing a letter to Binyamin Netanyahu threatening to resign if the show was broadcast. He is also threatening a lawsuit against the channel.

He asked Hamas not to rebroadcast the show on their TV station, and Hamas agreed. Fatah official Hatem Abdel Qader praised Hamas for their "wise decision of personal responsibility," saying that censoring these programs "is in the best interest of the Palestinian people, and reflects the high sense of responsibility."

But Islamic Jihad is not trying to reconcile with Fatah, and their Palestine Today website just published what amounts to a transcript of the Channel 10 broadcast.

With one notable exception: the whistleblower, Fathi Shabaneh, also said that Hamas was corrupt as well, and Islamic Jihad didn't bother to publish that little detail, so as not to upset their Hamas hosts.

In this way, Hamas allows Fatah to be embarrassed but doesn't do it directly, and Islamic Jihad plays its role as the "extremist" group who doesn't follow the rules - but also doesn't embarrass Hamas.

All this goes to show that while there is more freedom of the Palestinian Arab press than in the past, the media is just another propaganda tool.

Ancient Jerusalem street unearthed, PalArabs skeptical

From AP:

Archaeologists say they have unearthed a section of a stone street in Jerusalem that provides new evidence of the city’s commercial life in Byzantine times.
The discovery confirms the shape of the city in the fourth to sixth centuries provided by a map [left] earlier discovered in a Jordanian Church.
Excavation director Ofer Sion of the Israeli Antiquities Authority said Wednesday the discovery shows the current street follows the “same path as the noisy street from 1,500 years ago.”
Archaeologists have uncovered 19 feet (5.8 metres) of the pathway, which lies 14 feet (4.3 metres) below street level and once they complete restoration work, the segment will be covered because of the heavy pedestrian traffic in the area.

Even though this finding is from 1500 years ago, during Byzantine times and not when Jerusalem was under Jewish rule, the Palestinian Authority spokesman is saying that these claims are unfounded and just another lie that the Jews are using to prove the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

For a people with a supposedly ancient tie to the land, Palestinian Arabs really seem to dislike archaeology - the very science that can validate their claims.

A Saudi problem, and a potential solution

From Arab News:

The only clinic for visually impaired people in Saudi Arabia has been closed since last month because there is no trained optometrist or ophthalmologist to help run it.
The clinic’s last optometrist, who was there for the last two years, left as she received a better job offer elsewhere.
Mohammad Tawfiq Bellow, who is the founder and general manager of Ebsar Foundation which runs the clinic, says getting the right person is not easy as special training is required. Those who are trained prefer to work in hospitals because of better perks and financial security.
“Working in a voluntary organization like Ebsar requires commitment to society, which is difficult to find,” said Bellow, who founded Ebsar in 2001 after losing his job because of low vision.
“This is the missing part of our medical education system. It fails to motivate our professionals to perform community service.”

I bet that if he asks Israeli ophthalmologists to volunteer, he would not only find someone willing to work there but also a bunch of Jewish philanthropists who would happily bankroll the clinic in the interests of peace and goodwill.

The only downside is that he would probably get death threats and the clinic would likely be bombed.

Jenny Tonge asks Israel to investigate Haiti organ stealing

From TheJC:

Baroness Tonge, the Liberal peer, said this week that Israel should set up an inquiry to disprove allegations that its medical teams in Haiti “harvested” organs of earthquake victims for use in transplants.
The organ theft claims were published last week in the Palestine Telegraph, an online journal based in Gaza of which Baroness Tonge is a patron.

In a statement to the JC, she said the Israel Defence Forces were “to be commended for their fantastic response to the Haitian earthquake”.

But she added: “To prevent allegations such as these — which have already been posted on YouTube — going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti.”

Ed Fordham, the Lib Dem candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, said: “It’s abhorrent that anyone should suggest that something as perverse and sick as this should be investigated.”

Monroe Palmer, chairman of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, added: “Whilst I welcome Tonge’s approval of Israeli actions in Haiti, she is misguided to call for any investigation. On this basis, there could be calls for an investigation to discover the ‘truth’ in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Matthew Harris, Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Hendon, called it “perverse in the extreme to suggest that there needs to be an investigation of allegations to which she gives no credence”.

Baroness Tonge’s position on Israel has in the past caused embarrassment to the Liberal Democrats, but leader Nick Clegg has consistently refused to discipline her.

An Israeli Embassy spokesman dismissed the allegations as “not fit to grace even the sickest of publications”.

The allegations came in an article titled Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs by an American researcher, Stephen Lendman, who accused Israel of a “crime against humanity”.
Mr Lendman referred to a “damning” YouTube video cited by Al Manar, the pro-Hizbollah Lebanese TV station. The video offers no evidence to support the claims against Israel.

I have an idea! I'll start a new blog, called TongeLashing, and write up some made-up "facts" that Jenny Tonge is a secret child pornographer who also likes to whip Palestinian Arab children.

Then I will find some pictures of her with such children, or photoshop them, and make a YouTube video adding to the accusations.

After that, the world needs to demand that she come clean in an independent investigation that would need to be done to clear her name. She would have to open her house for "independent researchers" to enter and take apart every molecule of her residence. Afterward, she can claim that she was exonerated, but some questions will of course remain.

After all, if there is smoke, there must be fire, right?

Visit the "relaxed seaside atmosphere" of Gaza

From Al Arabiya:

For your next getaway, you might consider this: four nights and five days in sunny "Palestine: land of miracles."

It's a tough sell for a place that has become synonymous with Middle East violence, for a country not yet a country which does not even control all of its territory, let alone its major tourist attractions.

And yet the figures are up for the third year running. Palestinian tourism ministry records show that some 2.6 million tourists visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2009.

Bethlehem, home to the Church of the Nativity built on what tradition holds to be the birthplace of Jesus, is the prime attraction.

Still, despite its "Palestine: land of miracles" slogan, the Palestinian tourism ministry says it has more to offer than just holy sites.

Brochures even advise travelers to take in the sites of the Gaza Strip, renowned for its "relaxed seaside atmosphere."

Yes, Gaza is a wonderful, relaxed place to visit.

I also was a tourist who visited "Palestine" last year. Not only did I go to Jerusalem, but also I visited Bethlehem (Rachel's Tomb) and Hebron (the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which the Palestinian Tourism Ministry calls "Abraham’s Mosque – Tomb of Patriarch.") I even bought some souvenirs from a very friendly Arab shop in Hebron, where the proprietors offered coffee and gave Mrs. Elder a chance to use their pottery wheel, amid much laughter (she didn't do a bad job but we are not quite sure what she made.)

It appears, however, that the tourism ministry is counting every visitor to Jerusalem as being a tourist to "Palestine."

Desmond Travers claims that no one has critiqued Goldstone Report

I just looked at a recent interview of Desmond Travers, one of the four members of the UNHRC "fact-finding mission" to Gaza, after reading the JCPA critique of his positions yesterday. (h/t Tired of Liars)

Besides the lies that others have pointed out, like his assertion that there were only two rockets from Gaza in the month before Cast Lead and they weren't fired by Hamas (there were over 150, most of which were claimed by Hamas), he said this doozy:

The best statement I can make about that is the one that Richard Goldstone made when an American spokesperson for the State Department said it was a very biased, flawed report and he said to them by way of response, “Show us where the bias is and where the flaw is and we’ll do our best to correct it.” That invitation stands. I have subsequently issued the same invitation in a Dutch newspaper and elsewhere; so far, no substantive critique of the report has been received.

Funnily enough, I did get a reply back from a most virulently, anti-Goldstone, pro-Israeli, right-wing, blogspot saying more or less, “Travers doesn’t realise that various academics, politicians and military officers have written magnificent tracts disproving the Goldstone Report…”, but they haven’t. They’ve just written magnificent whinges.

So, what I’m saying is the critiques, if you go through them, would fill several times the volume of material compared to the report and none of them are valid. The tsunami of criticisms that have been slapped against the report funnily enough already started long before the report was published. Such early criticisms suggest, perhaps, an awareness of the guilt of the perpetrators; a question of getting one’s retaliation in first, in a manner of speaking. They are signalling their guilt.

In Travers' twisted mind, the very fact that there are so many criticisms of the Goldstone Report is proof that it must be completely true.

Later, he says

What I found was that the quality of the criticisms was appalling. Nevertheless, they self-perpetuated. If it was from an academic or a political or a senior military figure it would tend to regurgitate every now and then in a different shape or form or in a different blog or email or website or newspaper. So the obvious PR strategy by those who would defend Israel at all costs was to keep slinging mud in the hope that sooner or later the sheer volume of it would stick or wear people down. [But the actual level of the critique was]… zero, non-existent.

So instead of responding to the in-depth criticisms written by Dershowitz, Landes, Matas, Israel itself, Lozowick, CAMERA, the IDF, and over twenty posts by yours truly, not to mention countless others, Travers just dismisses them as being worthless.

He doesn't even deign to describe exactly what is wrong with them, just that their quality is "appalling."

But he still claims that he is more than willing to correct any cases of bias in the Goldstone Report.

Well, he can start by explaining why the conclusions of the report mention Israel hundreds of times and barely mention Hamas at all:

Nah, no bias there!

The explosive Iran/Hamas connection

This morning saw another Hamas "work accident" where a 23-year old Al Qassam Brigades member was "martyred" in a "task of jihad." This was the sixth known such death this year, and the 12th in the past four months.

Ma'ariv has an article this morning that indicates that there has been a lot more cooperation between Hamas and Iran's Revolutionary Guards, that have resulted in a number of explosions, although it is unclear how many of them are so-called "work accidents" and how many were targeted.

For example, according to Palestinian Arab security officials, the Syrian bus explosion last December did not kill "pilgrims" but in fact killed five members of the Revolutionary Guards and three members of Hamas.

Similarly, an explosion in Beirut in December killed two more Hamas terrorists, inside Hezbollah-controlled territory.

The PA security officials say that an explosion last week in a residential basement in Gaza, that was blamed on a gas canister exploding, was really a weapons lab explosion. Immediately after the explosion, Hamas sealed off the area. The names of the victims were not released. The next day, Hamas announced the death of a "martyr" without mentioning the circumstances, and according to these reports he was known as being an explosives expert. In addition, the PA sources say that four Iranian Revolutionary Guard members were killed in the same incident.

Saudi scholars agree - Israel must be destroyed

From Arab News:

Saudi scholar Mohasen Al-Awaji has caused controversy by saying he is prepared to appear on Israeli television.

And why is that?

Interviewed on Al Arabiya news channel last week, Al-Awaji said that although he has not been invited by any Israeli TV channel he would be willing to appear purely to tell the Israeli viewing public about the threat posed by Zionism. He added that appearing on Israeli TV was the right move and would help counter Israeli propaganda.
“The aim is to expose the crimes the Zionists have committed. Debating with logic and evidence and using their media and appearing on their television channels will be effective and allow us to reach a wider audience. At the same time it will show the Zionists that we are willing to talk to them on their own ground,” he said.

But even such a move as going on Israeli TV and telling Israelis how evil they are is way too liberal for others:

There has been strong opposition to Al-Awaji’s offer. Other Saudi scholars fear that it will inevitably be seen as a step toward normalizing relations with Israel.

“What Al-Awaji has proposed is a great mistake,” said Dr. Mohammad Al-Nujaimi, a member of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy and professor of comparative Fiqh at the High Institute for Judicial Studies at Imam Muhammad bin Saud University in Riyadh. He said Al-Awaji’s call goes against all the fatwas the ulema have issued that normalization with Israel in all its forms — politically, economically, socially and in terms of media — “is not permissible at all.”

Al-Nujaimi said there could be no normalization of relations with Israel which, he said, has for many years broken all international agreements and sabotaged every peace initiative. He said that nothing will work with it except jihad, including boycotting all of its media networks and cultural activities.

So is Al-Awaji more liberal than Al-Nujami?

Despite his willingness to appear on Israeli television, Al-Awaji told Arab News that he is impressed and delighted at the negative response. He said that it drove home the fact that the Arab and Muslim worlds “are not and never will be ready to have relationships with the Zionist body, and that this foreign body among us is not accepted, especially following its barbaric attacks on Gaza.”

Notice that he doesn't say that "as long as Israel occupies..." or "as long as Israel oppresses..." or anything like that. The controversial scholar agrees 100% with his critics that Israel will never be accepted by the Arab world, no matter what it does.

But wishful-thinking Westerners will always cling to that absurd hope that if they only get Israel to make one more concession, then there will be peace.

Pure anti-semitism in Islam Online

Khalid Amayreh, a true anti-semite and prolific writer in Arab and far left sites, puts some pure Jew-hatred in an article in Islam Online.

The upshot is that Jews are acting as Nazis so righteous people like him have an obligation to reveal that to the world. He even uses the term "Judo-Nazis."

It's not even worth fisking, but it is worth reading, if only to see the depth of hate that Jews have to put up with as well as the sickening comments supporting him from around the world.

I wrote a comment; we'll see if it gets flagged as being abusive:

I could easily write an article using the same appalling "logic" of Amayreh to "prove" that Muslims are today's Nazis.

Ethnic cleansing? Check. Mass murder? Check. Jew-hatred? Check. Islamic supremacists? Check. Imams who use Sharia law to justify terrorism? Check.

Amayreh's total inability to see things clearly can be seen in these two sentences:

"In short, Israel's ultimate goal behind the exaggerated and never- ending regurgitation of holocaust rituals is not really to remind humanity of the extent to which man can be cruel to his fellow man. Rather, it is to obtain a license, or even a carte blanch, to torment and savage the Palestinians, destroy their homes, steal their land, and expel them to the four winds."

I have news for you, Khalid. Jews and Zionists are not nearly as obsessed with Palestinians as you are with Jews. To even consider that Holocaust memorials are purely a cover for Jews desiring to annihilate Palestinian Arabs shows such a breathtaking, self-centered distortion of reality as to be laughable - if it wasn't for the fact that you would happily send these evil "Judo-Nazis" into the sea as your ancestors stated explicitly time and time again before there was such a thing as "occupation."

It is a discredit to Islam Online to host such pure garbage.

You might want to throw in your two cents as well.

UPDATE: I couldn't resist another comment:

1971: Jordan murdered thousands of Palestinian Arabs in Black September.
1975: Hundreds of Palestinian Arabs killed in a single day, December 6, by Lebanese Phalangists.
1985-86: Syrian troops murdered thousands of Palestinians in Lebanese camps (War of the Camps.)
March 1991: 400,000 Palestinians are expelled from their homes in Kuwait - in a single week.

These are only crimes against Palestinians Arabs. I'm not even talking about things like Syria's massacre at Hama or Egypt's use of chemical weapons in Yemen, both with thousands of Arab victims.

I'm not even mentioning non-Arab victims of Arab aggression!

So, are the Lebanese, Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians and Kuwaitis also Nazis? Because they do a much more efficient job of murdering and displacing Palestinian Arabs than Israel could ever dream of doing. And no Arab country except for the partial exception of Jordan allows Palestinian Arabs to become citizens - even if they want to!

Face it: Amayreh is calling the Jews "Nazis" because he simply hates Jews, not because of anything they've done. Because if he is honest with himself, Israel has treated Palestinian Arabs no worse than their Arab brethren have - and he would never dare call them Nazis.

Former Jordanian diplomat argues for Arab claim to Haifa

The government-aligned Jordan Times has an op-ed by Hasan Abu Nimah, who is Jordan's former UN ambassador and as such cannot be considered a mere flake. The article, however, argues that the Green Line is not a valid border of Israel, either:

[The idea of a land swap including the large settlement blocs] is based on the common, but false notion that the June 4, 1967, demarcation line separating Israel from the West Bank (then part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) is the legitimate border of Israel and should therefore be the one along which the conflict should be settled.

This assumption is wrong; the 1967 border has no legitimacy and should not be taken for granted.

He then engages in a nice piece of historical revisionism here, forgetting that Israel accepted the 1947 partition and that the Arabs are the ones who attacked first:

The [partition] resolution was never implemented, however. Immediately after it was passed, Zionist militias began their campaign to conquer territory beyond that which was allocated by the partition plan. Vastly outgunned Palestinian militias resisted as best as they could, until the belated intervention of Arab armies some six months after the war began. By that time it was too late - as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had already been ethnically cleansed, expelled from their homes. Israel, contrary to myth, was not brought into being by the UN, but by war and conquest.

The highlighted statement is an outright lie. Arabs attacked Jews immediately after the UN vote - the first massacre was less than 24 hours after the resolution passed. The Haganah waited months before going on the offensive, as it became clear that this was the only way to defend the Jews from being slaughtered. And the first wave of Palestinian Arabs to leave the country went quite voluntarily, mostly the upper class running away to Lebanon, where they thought they could wait out the fighting and return home the same way they did during the 1936-9 Arab riots.

The 1949 Rhodes Armistice, which ended the first Arab-Israeli war, left Israel in control of 78 per cent of historic Palestine and established a ceasefire with its neighbours, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Until the second round - in June 1967 - Arabs had been calling for the abolition of the "illegal Zionist entity" planted by colonial powers like a dagger in the heart of the Arab nation. They also waited for the United Nations to implement its many resolutions redressing the gross injustice inflicted hitherto.

He is right in one aspect: before 1967, Arabs never considered the Green Line to have any legitimacy. And, in fact, they pretty much still believe that Israel has no legitimacy and continues to exist solely as a "dagger in the heart of the Arab nation." The only grudging admission they give towards Israel's existence is based on the utter inability to destroy her, not a change of heart about the borders or right of Israel to exist.

However, they generally keep these opinions to themselves. The West does not take kindly to their arguments that Israel should be completely destroyed, so they instead couch their arguments in terms of "settlements" and "occupation" and "international law," when in fact their real aim has not changed, and is only delayed by what they perceive as the quirk of temporary Jewish military strength and Western support for the "colonialists."

He ends the article saying that

...if Israel tells the Arabs that the West Bank settlements of Ariel and Maale Adumim are part of Israel, then the Arab position can be that Haifa, Jaffa and Acre are still part of Palestine.

Again, this is not some crazy nutcase writing for the Electronic Intifada (where this article was quickly reproduced.)This is a former Jordanian ambassador, writing for a semi-official Jordanian newspaper.

It reveals the truth about how far away a real peace truly is, and it proves that Israel is not going to gain any legitimacy in even the so-called "moderate" Arab states by giving up its land for an illusory peace.

Egyptian newspaper blames US allies for killing Nasser

Al Masry Al Youm has an editorial, titled "Who Killed Nasser?," that ends with this sterling logic:

The US allies' hatred of Nasser, which drove them to assassinate him, physically or morally, requires that we probe further into his murder, both criminally and politically. But until such an investigation is actually launched, we can say that Nasser was killed by Washington's Arab and Zionist allies.

In other words, "Since we have no data to support our wild suppositions, we just have to assume that they are completely true."

One other great part of the article:

Recently released documents belonging to the US, British and Israeli intelligence reveal the involvement of the rulers of some major Gulf countries in plans to defeat Nasser before the 1967 war. Those documents also uncovered secret communications with Israel to assassinate Nasser or defeat him--which is exactly what happened in 1967.

You see, Israel defeated Egypt because some Gulf countries asked them to!

Arab diplomat annuls marriage to bearded bride

From Al-Arabiya:

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"?