Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Clan clash!

Palestine Today (Arabic) reports:

Palestinian medical sources said that 2citizens were killed and eight others injured in a family quarrel took place today, Tuesday, the Shajaiyeh neighborhood in the east of Gaza City.

Medical sources said Subhi Mohammed Hassanein, "53 years", Ahmed Khamis Abu meal "35 years" were killed and eight others injured from both families, including two described their serious in a fight between both families signed today east of Gaza City.

Our very undercounted 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 31.

All I know so far is that the beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon has informed me that there is a terror alert. I saw nothing yet in the usual Israeli English websites.

I advised her to stay away from terrorists today; she replied "Darn, that means that my date with the really hot Hamas guy is off."

The Qassams that fall short

Palestine Press Agency reports (autotranslated):

A locally manufactured rocket landed late in the night yesterday, Monday, at the southern entrance to the town of Beit Hanoun, north of the Gaza Strip, which led to a cut in the electricity supply to the large areas north of the sector.

Eyewitnesses told the official news agency "that the rocket landed at the southern entrance to Beit Hanoun and caused major damage to an electrical transformer; it plunged large parts of the northern sector in the dark."

It should be noted that this incident is not the first, as previously many locally manufactured missiles aimed at Israeli communities fell on Palestinian homes and factories especially in the northern region of the sector and causing substantial material damage not to mention the human losses in many cases.

This small fact is severely underreported.

Also, it shows that while they have slowed down, there are still rockets being shot at Israel daily - just not all of them make it.

Moderate Jordan's religious tolerance

From Middle East Online:

AMMAN - Jordanian Christians are up in arms over the activities of foreign missionaries in the Muslim conservative kingdom which is rich in biblical sites, including the spot where Jesus was baptised.

The row erupted after the government announced last month that it had deported an unspecified number of expatriates for carrying out Christian missionary activities under the guise of charity work.

The move was welcomed by several Christian figures, with many voicing concern that foreign missionaries were seeking to upset the traditionally stable ties between Muslims and Christians in Jordan.

"Missionary groups have hidden agendas and are close to Christian Zionists," asserted former MP Odeh Kawwas, a Greek Orthodox.

Fellow Christian Fahd Kheitan, an outspoken columnist at Al-Arab Al-Yawm newspaper, said the majority of Christians are "very suspicious and worried".

"The (missionaries) target the strong beliefs of traditional churches in Jordan and try to create religious links with the Zionist movement, which is extremely dangerous," said Kheitan.

Some Christian supporters of Israel, notably a segment in the United States, believe the return of Jews to the Holy Land and the 1948 creation of the Jewish state are in line with biblical prophecy.

In February, acting Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh told parliament that "some foreign groups have come to Jordan under the cover of doing charity, but they broke the law and did missionary activities". He did not give figures.

Converting from Islam to Christianity is strictly prohibited in Jordan and foreign missionary groups are banned from seeking converts, although they can run schools, charitable organisations, hospitals and orphanages.

"For years we have been urging the government to close such Christian shops that have nothing to do with Christianity and tolerance," said Kawwas, referring to missionaries who convert Muslims in violation of the law.

"It is an old problem. They create sensitivities and provoke discord among Jordanian Christians, not to mention their threat to Muslim-Christian coexistence," the former lawmaker said.

"These groups don't belong to any church, but they try to hunt followers of other churches and trick some of our Muslim brothers to convert them," he added.

Christians represent around four percent of Jordan's population of nearly six million, including Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian and Latin rites.

They are well integrated in the kingdom, where one Christian holds a ministerial post while eight percent control seats in the 110-member lower house of parliament.

In January, the first spark of controversy was lit by a Christian news agency, Compass Direct News, in a report accusing Jordan of cracking down on expatriate Christians by deporting them or denying them residency permit.

Parliament said the report was aimed at "damaging Muslim-Christian relations in Jordan". It also insisted that Jordan's Christians "are an integral part of society, living in peace and harmony with their Muslim brothers".

The church also voiced its concern.

Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem and Jordan said recently that some foreign missionaries "have undeclared political positions and we do not want the image of Christianity to be distorted."

Translating this into English, this means that Christians in Jordan - the same types of Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians who are often quoted in Gaza and the West Bank as feeling secure and happy even as their co-religionists abandon their homes in droves because of Islamist pressure - happily embrace their dhimmi, second-class status. The very idea that they might believe that their religion is superior to Islam has been stricken from their thoughts.

As the article makes clear, Jordan systematically discriminates against its Christian population, as Muslims are free to proselytize but Christians are not.

A better idea of how Christians in Jordan fare come from this article:

WE MEET ONE MORE Christian on our pilgrimage--a Catholic shopkeeper in Madaba, a historically Christian town in which Christians are still a significant minority (30 percent). ...
I ask him if Christianity will still exist in Jordan in 50 years. He pauses, frowns and begins shaking his head. "My [Muslim] neighbor has two wives and 10 children. My children and nieces and nephews are gone." He lets us do the math.

We ask whether evangelicals would be welcome in Madaba. He frowns again. "They seem strange to us," he says--clearly he has more in common culturally with his Muslim neighbors, though more in common socioeconomically with Westerners. It is a complex identity. "It is very hard for Christians here." Then, as if just realizing he is talking with reporters, he insists: "But don't write that. Write that the government is very good for Christians here. That's important to say."

Israeli researchers help Arab kids learn classical Arabic

From Ha'aretz:

How do you say "I want" in Arabic? How do you say "now"? And "he started"? Every Arab child no doubt knows how to answer those questions, yet the answer is not simple.

During their first years in school, Arab students face what is known as "diglossia," sharply divergent formal and informal variations of the language. At home and with friends, the pupils speak spoken Arabic, but in their textbooks, they encounter literary Arabic, which has different structures and vocabulary.

Diglossia is present in all the Arabic-speaking countries and communities in the world, as well as other communities.

Israeli Arab educators blame diglossia for Arab students' particularly low scores on reading tests. This is true around the Arab world, as well as in Israel, where Arab Israelis score significantly lower in reading than their Hebrew-speaking peers.

The Center for Educational Technology sponsored a study on the connection between the spoken language, Palestinian Arabic, which preschoolers speak fluently, and the literary language they learn in school. The researchers tried to facilitate learning the literary language by using the spoken vocabulary.

In the 2006 study, some 100 preschoolers from Nahaf, Nazareth, Kafr Kara and Rahat were recorded speaking for two hours. The researchers then recorded their speech, building a vocabulary list of thousands of words. In addition, they noted the different pronunciations in the different communities - the letter "qoof," for example, can be pronounced as a gutteral "q," an "a" or a "g."

In parallel, the researchers examined the most commonly used Arabic language textbook, "Al-Raid," and selected some 700 words that first-graders found difficult. These words, including "I want," "now," and "he started," will serve as the basis for a dictionary between spoken and literary Arabic. Unlike all existing Arabic dictionaries, this one will be arranged by alphabetical order, and not based on word roots, in order to help the children find words.

The study found that the children's spoken vocabulary is richer than that in "Al-Raid." However, the researchers note that to date, there have been hardly any studies on the spoken language, which is considered inferior to its holy "big sister." One of the central reasons for this is the belief that the language of the Quran - literary Arabic - is perfect and cannot be emulated.

Dr. Elinor Saig-Hadad, a lecturer in the linguistics and English literature departments at Bar-Ilan University, headed the study. She says that nowhere in the Arab world has someone tried to bridge the gap between the spoken and the literary language.

"It is impossible to pretend the spoken language does not exist," she says. "There is a gap between the spoken language and the written language in every dialect of Arabic."

Hawala Sa'adi, who is in charge of the project at the Center for Educational Technology, says the dictionary will help children learn the written language. "To this day, people have ignored what the children bring with them from home. The new study materials will help the children close the gap, while getting to know their language," she says.

Dr. Michal Shleifer, the language department head at the educational technology center, says one of the aims of the study is to improve children's written language ability through educational materials, rather than having it pushed aside by the spoken language.

"We do not want to interfere with the status of the written language, but rather to help the children acquire it," she says. "The question is how to do that, and that is the importance of the research."

Imagine that - Israeli Jews working to be in the forefront of children's Arabic language education.

two minor blog milestones

Today I published my 4000th post.

Tomorrow (or possibly tonight) I will get visitor number 222,222.

A student stands behind a podium as a video of Hezbollah's Leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah plays during a pro-Palestinian meeting at a cultural centre in Tehran March 9, 2008. Students agreed on a one-million dollar reward for the murder of three Israeli commanders, Ehud Barak, Amos Yadlin and Meir Dagan. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl (IRAN)

A "pro-Palestinian" meeting? Let's see what we know about this meeting:

1) The video being shown is of Hassan Nasrallah, a Lebanese-born terrorist who has never been in Israel or Palestine in his life. His goal, nonetheless, is the destruction of Israel - not the building of a Palestinian Arab state.

2) At this meeting, students agreed it would be a good idea to murder three Israelis. Not to help Palestinian Arabs, but to murder Israelis.

3) On the podium it helpfully says "Israel must be wiped off the map."

So, is this a "pro-Palestinian" meeting - or an anti-Israel meeting? Is anything being discussed that would help the Palestinian Arabs' lives - any fund raising for medical equipment for Gaza, for example? Apparently not.

So if Reuters is labeling this a "pro-Palestinian meeting" that means that Reuters does not distinguish between "pro-Palestinian" and "anti-Zionist."

Reuters apparently does not believe in a peace process that would result in a Palestinian Arab and Zionist state side-by-side, and it believes that the mainstream of "pro-Palestinian" opinion is similar to the sentiments being displayed here in Iran. So either Reuters does not believe that the "peace process" is "pro-Palestinian," - or they believe that even the "moderate" Palestinian Arabs view the "peace process" as being an anti-Israel movement, with the same goals as shown here.

Which is it?

Staged Gaza photos of the day

AP's Gaza photographer Eyad Baba published a series of pictures showing how barbaric Israeli airstrikes are:

Palestinian children play on the ruins of a building destroyed in a recent Israeli air strike, in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, March 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

A Palestinian walks through the ruins of a building destroyed in a recent Israeli air strike, in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, March 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

A Palestinian boy looks on as he stands in the ruins of a building destroyed in a recent Israeli air strike, in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, March 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

A Palestinian rides his bicycle past the ruins of a building destroyed in a recent Israeli air strike, in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, March 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

Palestinian children play on the ruins of a building destroyed in a recent Israeli air strike, in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, March 10, 2008.

Any photographer knows that a picture of a building by itself has no soul. One needs to add people to make it interesting.

Now, it is entirely possible that Mr. Baba, knowing that he wants to get a good shot, would wait for just the right moment that people happen to walk past some ruins before clicking his shutter. But here we have five pictures of buildings - all with people in and around them! What a fortunate coincidence!

Either Gazans really like to play and examine dangerous buildings that can collapse at any time, or the photographer asked them to please walk/play/ride their bike/stand right where the photo would be the most likely to win an award - and make Israel look as awful as possible.

After all, he must illustrate that everyday normal innocent Palestinian Arabs are forced to live next to buildings that were inexplicably, randomly destroyed for no reason at all that AP can find.

AP might get more than it bargained for

LGF links to a posting at Confederate Yankee where AP defines "fair use" a bit better for bloggers to stay on the right side of the law:

AP licenses its works (photos, news stories, video and so on) to newspapers, Web sites and broadcasters for the purpose of showing news events and to illustrate news stories or commentary on the news events.
If the entirety of the work is used (such as when a whole photo is reproduced), that is considered a substantial “taking” under fair use law. If there are many photos used, that is a substantial taking of AP’s photo library.

In the case of criticism, the commentary or criticism has to be about the protected work, not commentary or criticism in general – not using, as in the case of Snappedshot.com, protected photos to illustrate something on which the blogger was commenting. One cannot post a copyrighted photo of President Bush to illustrate commentary criticizing the policies of his administration, for example.

This makes a certain amount of sense, but what is going to happen is what I did in a previous posting today: make a story about something outrageous that happened into a story about media bias, by criticizing either the staging of the picture or the caption, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

So, for example (this one was on LGF as well):

Palestinian Hamas activists take part in an anti-Israel rally organized by the Hamas movement in Gaza March 7, 2008.

Not only am I showing how civilized Gazans are in tolerating a march of people dressed as suicide bombers in their midst, but now I must also mention how (in this case Reuters) calls these people "activists", on par with people who work hard to open libraries on weekends!

So a higher percentage of my blog posts, and those of others, are going to necessarily end up pointing out media bias that has been largely ignored because it is so widespread, in order to keep to the correct side of the "fair use" issue.

Another example coming up!

Algerian volunteer suicide bombers going to Gaza

From AKI (h/t Watcher):

Eight would-be suicide bombers left eastern Algeria a few days ago and are reportedly heading to the Gaza Strip to commit suicide attacks against Israeli soldiers, reported pan Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat on Monday.

The young men reportedly left their homes days ago without saying anything to their families.

Reportedly, their intent is to join Hamas' armed wing, the Izzadin al-Qassam brigades, considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.

It is reported that the eight were driven to go to Gaza after the grim images broadcasted by Arab satellite TV stations showing the dead, following Israel's military operation against alleged Palestinian rocket crews.

The report said that after a few days, two of the would-be bombers reached Gaza and called their parents saying they were in good health and that they wanted "to carry out a suicide attack against the Jews."

I wonder if Egypt would kill Algerian terrorists going to Gaza the way they kill refugees from Africa going to Israel.

Israel builds driverless jeep

From Ha'aretz:

The Israel Defense Forces are set to introduce an unmanned jeep into the ongoing conflict with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

While pilotless drones are already common in the Israel Air Force, this is the first time a driverless jeep will be used by the army's ground forces.

Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries jointly developed the guardian for the IDF, and it is expected to be deployed this summer along the security fence with the Gaza Strip, replacing many manned vehicles.

Of course, the only reason Israel needs to spend millions on saving its own people's lives is because its opponents consider their people's lives to be nearly worthless.

Video available at Ha'aretz (sorry, I couldn't figure out how to stop it from playing automatically.)

Iranian threat merits Reuters pictures but no story

Reuters has a series of interesting pictures this morning from Iran that look like this:

A student stands in front of a banner with pictures of Israeli commanders, Head of Aman (IDF) Amos Yadlin (L), Director of Mossad Meir Dagan (C) and Defense Minister Ehud Barak during a pro-Palestinian meeting at a cultural centre in Tehran March 9, 2008. Students agreed on an one-million dollar reward for the murder of the three Israeli commanders. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl (IRAN)

So where is the story that can fill in the details?

Not from Reuters. Apparently an explicit assassination threat against Israel coming from Iran is just a photo-op. The only place one can find details right now is a South African newspaper:

Iranian hardline students have offered rewards totalling a million dollars for the "execution" of three Israeli military leaders after Israel's deadly strikes on Gaza, the student news agency ISNA reported on Monday.

The group is even encouraging Iranians to donate their kidneys to increase the bounties on the heads of Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Mossad spy agency director Meir Dagan and military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.

The rewards were announced by the Justice Seeking Students Group on Sunday at a ceremony in Tehran entitled "setting the bounty for the revolutionary execution of the designers of state terrorism," ISNA said.

The bounty for Barak is set at $400 000 while those for Dagan and Yadlin are $300 000 each, the report said. It is not clear where the money is coming from.

"These sums will be given to any person or their families who could punish these individuals in any part of the world," the organisers of the event announced.

Pictures taken at the ceremony showed a banner bearing pictures of the three Israelis against the backdrop of an Israeli flag, with rifle sights stencilled onto the foreheads of the trio.

"Israel must be wiped off the map," read a quote from Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini printed on the top of the banner.

Nothing to see here. Just a cute little picture of Israeli officials being threatened with assassination. Just part of Iran's right of free expression when it comes to genocidal plans for Israel.

Is Juan Cole going to write to this student group to tell them that their translation from Farsi to English is incorrect?

Kuwaiti strategist wants Israel to attack Iranian nukes

From Iran's PressTV:

Senior Kuwaiti strategist Sami al-Faraj says an Israeli military strike on the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities is not a bad idea.

In a Sunday interview with the daily Al-Siyassah, the former government adviser said Iran's nuclear program has become a major concern for all Persian Gulf littoral states and therefore an Israeli attack may be an appropriate solution.

The question is what would it do if it were a nuclear nation? We have to call a spade a spade and say that burying the military nuclear Iranian project is in the interest of PGCC states, said al-Faraj, who heads the independent Kuwait Center for Strategy Studies.

He added that it would be 'less embarrassing' if Israel cripples Iran's nuclear program rather than the US.

Honestly speaking, they would be achieving something of great strategic value for the PGCC by stopping Iran's tendency for hegemony over the area, he said.

Palestinian Arab newspaper gleefully prints massacre pictures

Who needs the Government of Israel to distribute pictures of the Mercaz HaRav massacre?

The "Palestine Today" newspaper/website is happy to do it for free, printing no less than 26 pictures, under the headline "Photos show the heroic Jerusalem operation which killed 10 Jews and injured dozens of extremists"

And notice that their pride is in killing Jews, not Zionists, in cold blood - so much so that they exaggerate how many were murdered.

(After the Snapped Shot debacle, does anyone want to sic AP or Reuters lawyers on Palestine Today? I strongly doubt that they pay for the rights to reproduce these.)

Israel to distribute pictures of yeshiva horror (Hasbara failure #3)

From YNet:

Israel has decided to take advantage of Thursday's bloody terror attack in Jerusalem in order to launch an aggressive campaign against Hamas.

Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that the political echelon instructed the Government Press Office to distribute the shocking images from the yeshiva shooting worldwide, including pictures of holy books perforated with bullets, a blood-stained praying shawl and the terrorist's body inside the yeshiva.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni decided that the Foreign Ministry would work to convey the Israeli messages to the international community.

This, more than my last two posts, underlines the sheer incompetence of Israeli efforts to get its message out.

The massacre at Mercaz HaRav already has made headlines worldwide. The pictures have already been in the front pages. When Israel decides to "take advantage" of the massacre it smacks not of giving a message as much as opportunism. It is a third-rate version of Zaka's innovative campaign a few years ago of bringing the wreckage of a bombed bus to major European cities.

That idea was smart, because it showed thousands of people first-hand what terror looks like, using an object that they could relate to - a bus. Showing off bloody tzitzit, on the other hand, may evoke a reaction among Jews but to the world it could make Israel look like another fundamentalist theocracy. Beyond that, it just looks like propaganda, not new information.

In other words, Israel's insularity and isolation has made it unable to see things how others see them, which is a crucial skill needed when trying to master public relations. People are more sophisticated than they were thirty years ago and they know when they are being manipulated.

Israel needs to publicize stories like the ones I previously posted today. Stories that are either underreported or completely ignored, that show the terrorism for what it is, stories that educate the world rather than beat them with crude imagery and those that, above all, can be related to. The facts are on Israel's side but seemingly no one is interested in getting the facts out to the people who need to read them - the large numbers of people who are not overtly anti-Israel but just misinformed by years of good Arab publicity and poor Israeli PR.

The GOI together with the Israeli English-language media needs to wake up.