Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 27, 2012

A leftist talks about the "Israel-Firster" label (Tablet)

From Spencer Ackerman in Tablet:

At the risk of sounding like the shtetl police, there’s a right way and a wrong way for American Jews to argue with one another. The right way focuses on whose ideas are better—for America, for Israel, for the Jewish community, and for the world. The Jewish left should be right at home with this kind of substantive debate, since I believe those ideas are better than those of our cousins on the Jewish right. But the wrong way, regretfully, is now on the rise among Jewish progressives.

Some on the left have recently taken to using the term “Israel Firster” and similar rhetoric to suggest that some conservative American Jewish reporters, pundits, and policymakers are more concerned with the interests of the Jewish state than those of the United States. Last week, for example, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald asked Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg about any loyalty oaths to Israel Goldberg took when he served in the IDF during the early 1990s. (On Tuesday, writer Max Blumenthal used a gross phrase to describe Goldberg: “former Israeli prison guard.”) The obvious implication is that Goldberg’s true loyalty is to Israel, not the United States. For months, M.J. Rosenberg of Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group, has been throwing around the term “Israel Firster” to describe conservatives he disagrees with. One recent Tweet singled out my friend Eli Lake, a reporter for Newsweek: “Lake supports #Israel line 100% of the time, always Israel first over U.S.” That’s quite mild compared to some of the others.

“Israel Firster” has a nasty anti-Semitic pedigree, one that many Jews will intuitively understand without knowing its specific history. It turns out white supremacist Willis Carto was reportedly the first to use it, and David Duke popularized it through his propaganda network. And yet Rosenberg and others actually claim they’re using it to stimulate “debate,” rather than effectively mirroring the tactics of some of the people they criticize.

Throughout my career, I’ve been associated with the Jewish left—I was to the left of the New Republic staff when I worked there, moved on to Talking Points Memo, hosted my blog at Firedoglake for years, and so on. I’ve criticized the American Jewish right’s myopic, destructive, tribal conception of what it means to love Israel. But it doesn’t deserve to have its Americanness and patriotism questioned. By all means, get into it with people who interpret every disagreement Washington has with Tel Aviv as hostility to the Jewish state. But if you can’t do it without sounding like Pat Buchanan, who has nothing but antipathy and contempt for Jews, then you’ve lost the debate.

This is tiresome to point out. Many of the writers who are fond of the Israel Firster smear are—appropriately—very good at hearing and analyzing dog-whistles when they’re used todehumanize Arabs and Muslims. I can’t read anyone’s mind or judge anyone’s intention, but by the sound of it these writers are sending out comparable dog-whistles about Jews.

(h/t CHA)

Report: Hamas has already unofficially quit Syria

From Reuters:

The leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, has effectively abandoned his headquarters in the Syrian capital, Damascus, diplomatic and intelligence sources said on Friday.

“Meshaal is not staying in Syria as he used to do. He is almost out all the time,” said a diplomat in the region who spoke on condition on anonymity.

A regional intelligence source, who also did not wish to be identified, said: “He’s not going back to Syria. That’s the decision he’s made. There’s still a Hamas presence there, but it’s insignificant.”

The sources said Meshaal would not publicly shut down the political headquarters of Hamas in Syria, where it has long been hosted by Assad and by his father before him.

“In the past month he may have only stayed five days in Syria and the rest he spent in Qatar, Turkey and Egypt,” said the diplomat. “But he did not close the headquarters in Syria in full and there are some Hamas officials still there.”

“Our belief is that Hamas will not announce a departure from Syria even if it happened,” the diplomat added.

The sources said Meshaal was currently in Egypt. But “there was no agreement to open an office in Cairo. Not yet,” said the diplomat. “The expected residence for Meshaal is Qatar where he may stay most of the time until the Syria smoke has cleared.”

A YNet op-ed says that Hamas is in trouble, losing funding from Iran and its headquarters in Damascus.

But another Yediot article in Hebrew, quoted in Arabic sources, says that Turkey has agreed to give Hamas some $300 million annually.

Hamas radicals don't want "moderate" Meshal to step down

From YNet:

Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal met with top Hamas military wing delegates in Cairo on Thursday.

According to the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, the mission, headed by Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades Chief Ahmed Jabari and his deputy Marwan Issa, urged Mashaal not to step down.

The Politburo chief had recently announced that he will not seek another term as Hamas' political leader, sprouting a torrent of rumors as to his possible successor.

The al Qassam Brigades is Hamas' terrorist wing. they are not officially part of the Hamas government, although most of their members are also employed as "police" by Hamas. Of course, they draw salaries for their terrorist activities as well.

Within Hamas, there is no group more extreme than the Qassam Brigades.

So, if Meshal is so "moderate" as we are constantly told by Western analysts, why would the most hardline Hamas group want him to stay in power?

Apparently they aren't too worried that Meshal is so moderate as to do anything to cramp the masked terrorists' style. They are also not too worried about reports that Meshal would accept Israel's existence, even if only indirectly, something that is anathema to them.

While I have seen some veiled criticism of Meshal by Gaza Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, I do not recall seeing anything negative about him in the al Qassam website. The terrorists are great fans of the so-called "moderate" Hamas leader.

Perhaps they know something that Western "experts" don't know about Meshal.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that, if true, will make both the hard-core Hamas terrorists and the Western "experts" happy:

Still, earlier in the week, London's Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that Masshal had a change of heart and the he will "definitely continue to serve as Hamas' politburo chief."

The report said that members of Hamas' Shura Council, who convened in Khartoum three weeks ago, refused Mashaal's request to step down.

The UN's sleight of hand in considering Gaza "occupied"

Recently, UN Watch asked the UN to comment on why it still considers Gaza to be "occupied territory" when even Hamas has said that there is no occupation there. The UN promised to get back with a rationale.

The UN has now answered:

Spokesperson: Under resolutions adopted by both the Security Council and the General Assembly on the Middle East peace process, the Gaza Strip continues to be regarded as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The United Nations will accordingly continue to refer to the Gaza Strip as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory until such time as either the General Assembly or the Security Council take a different view.

Question: Can I follow up on that? It is the legal definition of occupation and why is Gaza considered occupied?

Spokesperson: Well, as I have just said, there are Security Council and General Assembly resolutions that cover this. For example, there was a Security Council resolution adopted on 8 January 2009 — 1860 — and that stressed that the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967. And as you know, Security Council resolutions do have force in international law.

Furthermore, there is a resolution from the General Assembly from 20 December 2010, and while it noted the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the northern West Bank, it also stressed, in quotes, “the need for respect and preservation of the territorial unity, contiguity and integrity of all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”. So just to repeat that the United Nations will continue to refer to the Gaza Strip as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory until either the General Assembly or the Security Council take a different view on the matter.

What the UN seems to be saying is that if part of the territory is occupied, then all of the territory is considered occupied, since there is are UN resolutions that declare the two territories are considered united.

This flies in the face of logic, and international law. The definition of "occupation" from the 1907 Hague Regulations - the only legal definition there is - says:

[T]erritory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.

The wording shows that "occupation" exists only in areas where there is in fact a physical occupation. Obviously an army that occupies part of another nation cannot apply the laws of occupation on the portions of that nation that are not under physical occupation, and just as obviously the Hague allows occupation of a portion of territory, no matter whether that territory is contiguous or not with other territories not under occupation.

From the perspective of the Geneva Conventions, the laws of occupation are meant to protect the citizens actually under occupation. It is impossible for an "occupying army" to protect citizens when it is not physically there.

Amnesty International expands on this:

The sole criterion for deciding the applicability of the law on belligerent occupation is drawn from facts: the de factoeffective control of territory by foreign armed forces coupled with the possibility to enforce their decisions, and the de factoabsence of a national governmental authority in effective control. If these conditions are met for a given area, the law on belligerent occupation applies. Even though the objective of the military campaign may not be to control territory, the sole presence of such forces in a controlling position renders applicable the law protecting the inhabitants. The occupying power cannot avoid its responsibilities as long as a national government is not in a position to carry out its normal tasks.

For example, the US occupied part of Iraq - but not all of it.To say that all of Iraq was "Occupied Iraqi Territory" would be laughable.

What the UN is really saying here is that the name it has given to the territories is "Occupied Palestinian Territories." That name has nothing to do with the reality of whether they are legally occupied or not. (In fact, I would argue that the name has nothing to do with whether they are legally considered "Palestinian" or not.) It is a title, from which people may think that the territories are under occupation, but it is not a legal declaration that they are occupied.

After all, the ICRC says "A transfer of authority to a local government re-establishing the full and free exercise of sovereignty will normally end the state of occupation." Any way you look at it, Hamas is the government of Gaza, and not subjected to any Israeli restrictions on how it governs. The UN can declare the territories to be a single entity all it wants, but the definition of occupation is at odds with the title "Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Similarly, Area A in the West Bank is not by any definition "occupied;" because Israel transferred authority over the administration of Area A to the PA, just as it did in Gaza. This is the textbook definition of how to end occupation of a territory.

The UN's answer is a contortion meant to obfuscate reality and international law.

(h/t CHA)

Salafists in Egypt are targeting Valentine's Day

We've seen how the religious police in Saudi Arabia crack down every year on people celebrating Valentine's Day.

We've seen Hamas arrest people celebrating Valentine's Day.

Guess who is targeting the holiday this year?

The Salafists in Egypt, flexing their new political muscles, are speaking out against the holiday, which in previous years was accepted by Egyptians. Religious spokesman Abu Hussam al-Bukhaari said:

The celebration of Valentine's is a heresy of heresies that has no basis in Islam. Islam calls for love as comprehensive in its legitimacy clarified by the Messenger of Allah peace be upon him, that the Muslim loves his Muslim brother... Valentine's is a Western tradition. According to the hadeeth: 'Whoever imitates a people is one of them, original and this is what follows the ceremony of evil and forbidden things, such as wasting time playing, singing and unveiling, wanton display, men mixing with women and the emergence of women without their 'mahram,' and so taboo, which are haraam.

Egyptians seemed to like the holiday, so we'll see what happens.

Israel congratulates Egyptians; MB says "shut up"

According to Palestine Today, Israel sent a message to "bless" the Egyptian people on their revolution.

The message actually said

On the occasion of the opening session of the Egyptian parliament, on January 23rd, Israel extends its congratulations to the people of Egypt for its efforts to achieve freedom, democracy and economic development.

We send the new parliament our wishes of constructive and fruitful work for the well-being of the Egyptian public.

We trust Egypt will continue to uphold the importance of peace and stability in our region.

Much of it is the standard diplomatic protocol that nations send greetings to other nations on the latter's state holidays (which yesterday was in Egypt.) The wording is interesting, though, even as it will be roundly ignored - or worse.

As JTA notes,

A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, which garnered nearly half the seats in the newly elected parliament, said Wednesday that the government would not hold any kind of dialogue with Israel.

“The [Muslim Brotherhood] group does not have any willingness to engage in dialogue with Israel," Mahmoud Ghazlan told the London-based Arabic Asharq Alawsat newspaper in an interview. "This decision has been taken and our position is consistent and clear, and is not currently open to discussion.

“It does not make sense to launch a dialogue, any form of dialogue, in light of Israel’s current practices against the Arab people,” he added.

Yesterday, I attended a talk by Professor Eugene Kontorovich on "Disputing Occupation: Israel's Borders and International Law" at NYU. Here is a synopsis, based on my memory.

Kontrovich started off by saying what international law is not. It is not UN General Assembly resolutions. It is not advisory opinions from the ICJ (which, he pointed out, was answering a loaded question that assumed illegality when it gave its opinion on the security fence.)

The first legally important act after the fall of the Ottoman Empire that is relevant to Israel's borders is the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which noted the "historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." After the British partitioned Western Palestine from Trans-Jordan, the implication is that all of the remaining Palestine would be the area of the Jewish nation.

If the Arabs had accepted the 1947 Partition Plan, then the further partition of Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state would have legal weight. But since they didn't, the Jewish claim on all of Palestine remained in force.

The 1949 Armistice Lines (mistakenly called the "1967 borders") are emphatically not national boundaries. They are explicitly stated in the armistice agreements as "not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question" (from the Egyptian armistice,the Jordanian one says "without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.") Their position (generally) had no demographic, political or geographic significance; they were simply where the opposing armies ended up at the last truce, with some minor adjustments. From the perspective of international law, they are not borders.

Jordan's sovereign claims to the West Bank were not recognized by the international community.

The next important legal document is UN Security Resolution 242 at the end of the 1967 war. (While it is a Chapter 6 resolution, Kontotovich noted that it was referred to in some Chapter 7 resolutions, meaning it might have the strength of the stronger Chapter 7 resolutions itself with respect to international law.) He discussed the famous missing "the" from the phrase "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" and noted that this was done deliberately to make the resolution purposefully ambiguous as to whether Israel must withdraw from all the territories. He noted that in the end, when Israel relinquished the Sinai and later Gaza, Israel had withdrawn from some 99% of the territories, so it cannot be accused of violating the spirit of the resolution.

He also noted that the legality of Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights is a completely different topic from a legal perspective, and he did not get into it.

Kontorovich said that there is a big question in international law about whether one can legally acquire territory via conquest in a defensive war. He looked up five sources written before 1967 on the question; 2 said yes, 2 said no and one didn't think about it. In the case of the 1967 war, as with many things about Israel, the legal issues are completely unique and anyone saying that international law says something definitively on something that never happened before is generally not to be trusted. (I asked him whether the preamble of 242 meant that the UN considered the war not to be defensive; he answered that besides the fact that preambles are not part of the law, it would not make sense to interpret it that way because in that case Jordan also couldn't lay claim on it. He concluded that it was placed there in order to encourage the parties to come up with a negotiated border, as 242 states, and not a border created by conquest.)

The next legally important event for determining Israel's borders was the 1993 Oslo Accords. This is where Israel is relinquishing part of its occupied land (he noted that from Israel's perspective the land is occupied since it was not annexed, although it is legally occupied) to give to an ultimate Palestinian Arab entity.

Here is where he said something new.

In Professor Kontorovich's opinion, at some time after Oslo, Palestine became a state under international law.

The definition of a state is given by the Montevideo Convention. I had argued, and so had others, that "Palestine" does not constitute a state under its definition:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Kontorovich didn't get into the issue of Gaza, which may seem to be a problem since it has a different government, but he argues that since Area A is unquestionably part of what is claimed to be Palestine, that West Bank entity is undoubtedly a state. Having defined territory is not the same as having defined borders, and "Palestine" has st least some territory that it can call its own.

Therefore, the professor says, the entire issue nowadays between Israel and the Palestinian Arab state is not an issue of occupation or legality - it is simply a border dispute that must be resolved the way all border disputes are resolved (or not.)

One other point, not dwelled on in his slides, is that the Fourth Geneva Conventions article 49 on transferring people to occupied territory does not apply because in Israel's case the people moved there voluntarily, and Geneva implies government organized mass transfers.

It was a very interesting and thought provoking talk, and I spoke to him afterwards; he's a really nice guy. He's doing a fellowship in Princeton now but he is based out of Northwestern University.

If you want to hear him talk, here are some upcoming presentations he is making:

Cherry Hill, NJ on Feb. 12, One State, Two State, Three State, Four: The PA Bid for UN Recognition, sponsored by the RJC Southern New Jersey Chapter:

Princeton, NJ Feb. 12: International Lawfare, BDS. and the Delegitimization of Israel, sponsored by Advocates for Israel.

University of Florida Law School, Feb 15 at 12:15, Disputing Occupation: Israel's Borders in International Law

East Windsor, NJ March 28th: Say It Enough, it Still Isn't True: Illegal Occupation, Settlement, and Apartheid, sponsored (and hosted) by Beth El synagogue and Speak Up for Israel.

The deceptions of the BDS movement (Avishai Don)

Here is an excellent op-ed in the Harvard Crimson by Avishai Don:

Next weekend, the University of Pennsylvania will host the second national BDS conference, an event that will advocate for the “growing global campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction (BDS) the State of Israel.” Last April, Omar Barghouti, a leader and spokesperson of this campaign, spoke at Harvard. He insisted that anyone wanting to learn more about the fundamental tenets of BDS should read his recently released book, aptly titled “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.”

So I followed his advice—I bought a copy of Barghouti’s book and read it from cover to cover. He writes some things in this work about the aims of BDS that lead me to believe that the movement is being far from forthright about its ultimate goals.

The Penn conference states that the purpose of the global BDS campaign is to isolate Israel economically “until it complies with its obligations under international and human rights law.” Understanding this to mean ending the Israeli occupation and fostering a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, a number of Zionists—that is, individuals who believe in the Jewish state’s right to exist—have either joined the BDS Call or implicitly sanctioned it. Two years ago in the Los Angeles Times, for example, an Israeli professor insisted that he supports BDS because it is “the only way to save his country.” Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization composed of both “Zionists [and] anti-Zionists,” considers itself “proud to be a part of the BDS movement.” Last year, J Street, an American liberal Zionist organization, held a panel at their national conference on the efficacy of this movement’s tactics “as a means to end the occupation.” Although J Street does not endorse the BDS movement, J Street’s presidentdescribes it in his book as a group of “activists who seek to raise pressure…against Israel to end the occupation.”

Clearly, these individuals have not read Barghouti’s work.

“A few Israeli and international activists have a tendency to make the [BDS] struggle Israel-centric, arguing that ending the occupation is good for Israel, above everything else,” Barghouti writes. “We totally reject that ‘save Israeli apartheid’ view.” He goes on to say that although BDS should coalesce with diverse political forces, “caution should be exercised in alliances with ‘soft’ Zionists, lest they assume the leadership of the BDS movement in the West, lowering the ceiling of its demands beyond recognition.”

So what, then, are BDS’s demands? Although Barghouti insists that BDS is neutral on the debate about a one-state versus two-state solution, even a cursory glance at Barghouti’s book reveals that this movement considers the existence of a Jewish state in the region patently unacceptable. For example, Barghouti explains that his movement cannot ally with Israeli peace groups, because even “the most radical Israeli ‘Zionist-left’ figures and groups are still Zionist, adhering to the racist principles of Zionism” that “maintain Israel’s character as a colonial, ethnocentric, apartheid state,” which BDS seeks to dismantle.

If the BDS movement were more open about its aims to purge the Jewish state from the Middle East—rather than just end some of its policies—I could have written an op-ed decrying the movement for its distortion of international law rather than its duplicity. I could have asked, for example, how the movement could possibly believe that a liberal democracy cannot have an ethnic identity when democracies across Eastern Europe—including members of the European Union like Finland, Slovenia and Germany—explicitly privilege one ethnicity over others in areas like immigration and culture. I could have also noted how odd it is that the movement vocally opposes the ethnic nature of the Jewish state, yet says nothing about the myriad Arab states that surround it.

But the BDS movement hides its ultimate goal of dismantling the Jewish state behind its public rhetoric. As a result, it has co-opted numerous individuals—and quite possibly donors—who desire to see both a Jewish and Palestinian state flourish into supporting its campaign. Although some members of the movement might actually support the Jewish state’s continued existence, as Barghouti makes abundantly clear, the Palestinian BDS National Committee—the “reference and guiding force for the global BDS movement”—cannot do so under any circumstances.

So because this movement will not broadcast its ultimate aims loud enough, I will do it for them. If you support the BDS movement, you are supporting an organization that is actively working to undermine the Jewish state. Utilizing the vocabulary of international norms, the movement actually systematically attempts to undermine the international consensus that recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. And if you support this right—regardless of your politics, regardless of your stance on the occupation, and regardless of your feelings towards the current Israeli right-wing government—then there is only one moral option. Boycott the BDS movement.

Hackers apologize for taking down Ha'aretz website

Yesterday, the Ha'aretz Hebrew website (and maybe the English one as well) was taken down by a denial of service attack in the tit-for-tat attacks that anti-Israel and pro-Israeli hacker groups have been launching.

The group AnonPS that claimed the attack, and tweeted:

@AnonPSFree Anonymous

haaretz.co.il Tango Down :) #Palestine #anonymous #Israel

I tweeted in response:

Pro-Palestinian hackers aren't too bright if their target is Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/pro-palestinian-hackers-bring-down-haaretz-hebrew-website-1.409198

Apparently, the hackers ended up agreeing with me! They apologized:

@haaretzprint we are sorry , we didn't know that haaretz is a good newspaper,we sorry about this , and be sure no one will attack u again .

Nice to know that Israel haters know who their friends are!

Meanwhile, the anti-Israel hackers attacked a couple of Israeli hospital websites. So moral!

In case you don't know, it takes zero skill to perform a denial of service attack. It is the cyber equivalent of having a hundred phones calling up the same phone number over and over again so that legitimate callers get busy signals. Calling this a "cyber war" is absurd; it is cyber-graffiti at worst.

(h/t Honest Reporting media cheat sheet)

Islamic Jihad leader calls for "third intifada," dismantling PA

Last month, in a very under-reported story, Fatah invited Islamic Jihad to be part of the PLO leadership.

Today, as always, Islamic Jihad is demanding that the PA be dismantled and that a third intifada be declared.

PIJ leader Sheikh Khader Habib spoke at a festival in solidarity with a prisoner who is on a hunger strike. He said that the PA was a "disaster for our people" and called for a new "jihad" against Israel.

He said that the PA was a "Zionist occupier of our political system," meaning that their joining the PLO is meant to replace it with an Islamist version.

But according to some idiots, its joining the PLO must mean that it is "moderating."

Women sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square

From Bikya Masr:

Heather still doesn’t know how she made it home on Wednesday night after being in Egypt’s Tahrir Square. The Arab-American arrived back at her Cairo flat without pants, having had them torn off downtown. She and her two roommates were victims of a mob attack by people in the iconic square on Wednesday, as protesters demonstrated against the military junta.

According to Heather, an Arab-American living in the Egyptian capital, she and her Swedish and Spanish roommates took to Tahrir as thousands were converging there to mark one-year since the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak.

“They started fighting over who was going to do what,” Heather told Bikyamasr.com in an exclusive interview. She came forward after seeing the report on a foreign woman who was stripped naked and assaulted only hours after her own incident.

“My roommates and I fell to the ground when they attacked us. The people pulled our pants off even as we yelled and tried to fight,” she continued.

The incident occurred around 7:30 PM local time, just as night was taking hold of the city. Heather said the attack happened “in the center of Tahrir.”

She said that after the men pulled their pants off, they continued to grab and grobe the women’s bodies. “It is disgusting. They put fingers up my ass,” she revealed.

Luckily, the women were somehow pulled from the violence by a man and a woman and taken to safety. She said she doesn’t recall exactly how she was saved from the violent attack.

“I was shaking and crying and the man and woman just grabbed us and pulled us out and took us out of the square.”

Later in the night, the issue of sexual violence toward women was sparked after an eyewitness reported on the micro-blogging site Twitter that a foreign woman was stripped, groped and assaulted by another mob of men in the square.

The woman, who’s identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident.

“I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness.

What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.”

There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands.

Throughout the day, sexual harassment towards women has been increasing and more and more reports of women being grabbed and groped began being reported.

Heather said that she came forward to talk about what happened to her “because people need to know what goes on. It is the only way to start making it a problem that will have to be dealt with.”

However, many people told her to not reveal what happened to her because she was told, “it would hurt the image of the revolution.” But Heather said after seeing the reports of others and their assaults, “I felt it was right to say something.”

According to studies conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Right (ECWR) in 2008, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment in Egypt.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of Egyptian men confessed to harassing women and 53 percent of Egyptian men faulted women for “bringing it on.”

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar@Israellycool)

Iran considering pre-emptive ban of oil exports to EU; China blasts sanctions

From Al Arabiya:

Many Iranian lawmakers and officials have called for an immediate ban on oil exports to the European bloc before its ban fully goes into effect in July, arguing that the 27 EU nations account for only about 18 percent of Iran’s overall oil sales and would be hurt more by the decision than Iran.

“The bill requires the government to stop selling oil to Europe before the start of European Union oil embargo against Iran,” lawmaker Hasan Ghafourifard told the parliament’s website, icana.ir. Debate on the bill is to begin on Sunday, he said.

18% is pretty high, actually, certainly enough to make a noticeable dent in the Iranian economy.

Meanwhile, China blasts the planned embargo:

China said Thursday EU sanctions on Iran announced earlier this week in response to Tehran’s suspected nuclear drive were “not constructive,” state media reported.

“To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches,” the foreign ministry was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency, in response to a question on the EU measures announced Monday.

China ̶ a key ally of Iran and its top trading partner ̶ has consistently opposed the use of sanctions, and advocates resolving disputes through “dialogue and consultation” instead.

Beijing’s economic ties with Tehran have expanded in recent years, partly thanks to the withdrawal of Western companies in line with sanctions against the Islamic republic over its nuclear drive.

The Asian powerhouse also depends a lot on Iranian oil, and has strengthened its presence in the country’s oil and gas sector by signing a series of contracts worth up to $40 billion in the past few years.

"Dialogue and consultation?"

But this does bring up the question that if China is increasing its dependence on Iranian oil, could this eventually translate into military cooperation with Iran as well? while China has sold weapons and technology (and even perhaps chemical weapons technology) to Iran's military, as far as I can tell it has not allied with Iran militarily. Could this be an unforeseen consequence of Western sanctions on Iran?

Geopolitics is like a three-dimensional chess game where half the pieces are invisible and sometimes they move for no apparent reason.

New meme: Daily aid to Gaza proves it is a "ghetto"

Ma'an reports:

Israeli forces partially opened the Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza on Thursday in order to allow in 300 truckloads of commercial and agricultural goods.

Israel has also allowed two trucks of flowers and strawberries to be exported from the coastal enclave, Palestinian border crossing official Raed Fattuh told Ma'an.

Twenty-two cars will also enter Gaza together with communications equipment and cement for international projects, he said.

This is pretty much a daily event. Although Ma'an didn't mention it, yesterday there were 270 to 280 trucks loaded with aid and both commercial and agricultural supplies, including 12 trucks loaded with cement and iron for construction and 48 truck of gravel for UNRWA and USAID projects, as well as the construction of a French cultural center. On Tuesday there were 227 trucks of aid.

The amount of aid going through Kerem Shalom has been steadily increasing over the past year, almost doubling.

So how to the commenters at Ma'an view this?

Sarah from Holland says "Whenever I read this kind of messages, I think: feeding time! Say thank you! The zionists are so sick. They really forgot the holocaust, the getto's, how it feld to be humiliated and treated like animals. Zionists are NO Jews."

"AKeenReader" from the UK adds: "sarah/holland - your views are absolutley spot on. It seems they are taking revenge against the Palestinians for what happend to them, although if one experience such terrible acts you would expect them to understand human suffering. Seems they haven't learnt any lesson. Shame as they are digging their own grave. Maybe Iran's attitude towards Israel is to give some comfort to the Palestinains because Iran can deal with Israel unlike defenceless Palestinians. Soon time will tell."

These aren't Arabs saying this - they are "cultured" Europeans who are often more anti-semitic than the Arabs are. But their Jew-hatred is buried under the pretense of caring about Gazans, most of whom are doing economically better than the Egyptians just over the border (whom they naturally don't give a damn about. Guess why?)

By the way, Egypt closed Rafah yesterday to celebrate the January 25th revolution, and on Tuesday Gazans were complaining that there were extra restrictions on them passing through Rafah. Sounds like Egypt is imprisoning Gazans and treating it like a "ghetto," but you won't hear these European human rights defenders say a word about that. (They used to, claiming that Egypt was following Israeli policy, but they can no longer do that - so they just ignore it.)

Fatwa against driving a Chevy

From Now Lebanon:

A Salafi sheikh in Egypt has reportedly issued a fatwa that buying [or driving] a Chevrolet vehicle is haram because the American brand’s logo looks like the Christian cross.

Prominent Egyptian TV presenter Amr Adeeb takes the sheikh’s joke-of-a-fatwa to task, saying, “We’ve reached a really strange place with this.”

“The car’s been around [for a century] and only now did you notice there’s a cross on the car?”

Adeeb also notes that the car is not used or presented as a form of religious iconography: “Do we hold mass for it? Do we pray for it?” And his guest chimes in with a comment about the self-centered nature of the fatwa itself: “As if the people who came up with the logo were thinking that we want to put this special logo on the car just to piss us [Muslims] off?”

The TV presenter concludes, “With all of the problems in Egypt, you’re concerned about the cross?... We’re calling for unity [in the country] and then you come up with [fatwas] like this?”