Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Meanwhile, in Tehran...

The Iranians seem ready to thumb their noses at any Western economic sanctions over Iranian nukes:

Tehran, 8 August (AKI) - by Ahmad Rafat - Iran has practically rejected a UN security council resolution threatening economic sanctions if it fails to suspend uranium enrichment by 31 August. And as a document obtained by Adnkronos International (AKI) suggests, Iran means to show how much the West has to loose [sic] if a boycott is imposed.

The 11-page document prepared by authorities in Tehran offers an analysis of Iran's economic relations with Western countries using data from Iran's central bank, the Bank Markazi. The document rethorically poses as its main question: "who will have the courage to boycott the Islamic Republic?"

Europe would lose some 13 billion euros in exports and 10 billion in imports a year, mainly in gas and petrol, the document estimates.

As far as Italy, Iran's main commercial partner in Europe is concerned, cutting ties with Iran would bring a loss amounting to two annual budgets, a fact recognised recently by Italian foreign minister Massimo D'Alema.

Relations between the Islamic Republic and the West however are not limited to commercial exchanges.

Iran has debts worth 27 billion dollars with European banks. Moreover, the Iranian government has 25 billion dollars deposited in banks in Europe which could be withdrawn any time soon, causing significant debts.

Ten major oil companies including Italy's ENI have invested 15 billion dollars in South Pars, the world's largest gas field in the Persian Gulf off Iran. China has signed investment accords in the energy sector worth 25 billion dollars.

Finally, the document talks about the 'oil weapon'. Today 40 oil companies, including three from Italy, import every day 2.5 million barrels of crude oil. Japan, with its 541,000 barrels imported each day, would be the hardest hit.

The economy of South Korea, whose exports to Iran in the past three years totalled 26 billion dollars, would be hugely damaged by a boycott on Tehran.

Overall, experts who drafted the document eestimated that were Iran to stop exporting crude oil and gas, the price of oil a barrel would amount to a minimum of 100 dollars but could reach 125 dollars.

Nothing would benefit the Western world more than $125/barrel oil. If that would happen, alternate fuels would become instantly affordable in comparison, which would help stop the petrodollar-fueled terror threat, as well as reduce pollution.

And Iran would stand to lose far more from sanctions than the West.

But shortsightedness will rule the day, as usual, and when Iran has the bomb there will be very little pleasure in "I told you so"s.

Baalbek was the site of a concentration camp for Jews (1948)

An interesting find as I browsed through the Palestine Post archives.

Apparently, the attitude of Lebanese towards Jews in 1948 was a bit different than that indicated in my blog post yesterday from 1946.

Contemporaneous articles on similar themes can be found here.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) - Nearly all Palestinians in the
West Bank and Gaza back Hezbollah against Israel and would oppose the unconditional release of captured Israeli soldiers to shorten the war, a poll has showed.

Hezbollah had the support of 97 percent of Palestinians, compared with three percent who said they were opposed to the group, according to the poll.

It said that 93 percent of Palestinians thought that two Israeli soldiers captured in a July 12 cross-border raid that sparked the war in Lebanon should not be released unconditionally even if it means an easing of the conflict.

Remember, previous polls showed only 4% of Palestinian Arabs opposed terror.

So no matter how the world wants to spin the Palestinian Arabs as a mostly peaceful people with a tiny minority of extremists, no matter how many politicians and clueless editorial writers say that Hamas' election was a fluke and most Palestinian Arabs only voted for them because of their social programs, just remember this.

When Arabs are killing Jewish innocents, they cheer.

MAJDEL KRUM, Israel (Reuters) - "Hizbollah has raised up our heads and lifted our spirits", said Israeli Arab Ali Manna as he mourned two nephews killed in a rocket attack by the Lebanese guerrilla group.

Despite the fact that Arabs make up a third of the 48 people killed by rocket fire on northern Israel, the sympathies of some of the Arab minority lie very much with the Lebanese group rather than the Jewish state.

Manna's nephews, Mohammad Manna, aged 25, and Baha Fayyad, 30, were killed when a rocket hit the town of Majdel Krum last week.

Although Arabs and Jews are coming under the same hail of rockets and sometimes share the same bomb shelters, the war has further strained ties between the communities.

"Hizbollah's popularity has increased immensely among the Arabs in Israel," said Rawda Atallah, head of the Arab Cultural Association in Haifa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city that has been one of the main targets of Hizbollah attacks.

"For the first time there is a sense of regained dignity. They feel for the first time a group is resisting and standing steadfast in the face of the Israeli army," she said.

Just after the start of the conflict with Hizbollah, sparked by the group's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12, some Arabs would rush out and cheer when rockets fell on neighboring Jewish towns These days, they are more likely to take cover when the warning sirens sound. But the fear of coming under fire has not discouraged those who supported Hizbollah.
Some Israeli commentators have suggested that Arabs should be stripped of citizenship if they support Hizbollah.
Israeli media have published reports alleging that Israeli Arabs are colluding with Hizbollah and even helping the guerrillas direct their rocket fire through text messages.

What kind of a sick, depraved society cheers when their own people die, as long as innocent Jews die too?

How can anyone expect a real peace when there is such abject, naked hatred?

In one sense, this is even sicker than cheering suicide terror. At least suicide bombers chose to be "martyrs" - but here, some Arab Israelis celebrate the deaths of their own relatives who did not want to be killed. This is their "dignity."

Sick, twisted bigots.

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More wire service photo bias

Today, Amnesty International organized a series of rallies worldwide. Here is how Amnesty describs the rallies:

Civilians have been targeted in Lebanon by the Israeli Defence Forces and in northern Israel by Hizbullah leaving hundreds dead.

After weeks of fighting, bombs and rockets continue to fall indiscriminately on women, children, ambulances, rescue workers and other innocent victims of this escalating conflict. These deliberate attacks violate international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes.

Only an immediate, full and effective ceasefire will protect civilians on both sides, but calls for the warring parties to obey the laws of war and protect civilians have fallen on deaf ears.

Meanwhile, governments that could exert their influence to end the crisis have chosen instead to prioritize their own political and military interests over innocent lives of civilians.

We, the international community, are not powerless in the face of this crisis. We must stand up together to protect the lives of civilians and to ensure no more war crimes are commited.

What can you do? Take action now!

1. Join Amnesty International in our Ceasefire vigil on Monday 7th August

We call for a ceasefire;
We demand that all governments stop the supply of arms to the conflict; and
We stand in solidarity with the victims and survivors on both sides of the Israel/Lebanon conflict.

I have posted before about why I believe that in the context of this conflict, even-handedness is stupid. I strongly object to Amnesty's slanderous charge that Israel is deliberately attacking civilians and is guilty of war crimes.

Nevertheless, from the text above Amnesty is exerting a lot of effort to make the rallies appear even-handed, and they are meant to protest the violence on both sides of the conflict.

Somehow, AP in Madrid interpreted the rallies a bit differently:

Candles spelling out the word Stop are seen on the ground during a vigil in central Madrid, Monday, Aug. 7, 2006 to protest Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The protest, organized by Amnesty International, called for an immediate cease-fire in the Middle East. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Most of the captions about rallies in other cities (Washington, Paris, Istanbul) reflected the intent of the Amnesty rallies, but the Madrid one was always described as "to protest Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the Palestinian territories." Interestingly, the rally had nothing to do with the Palestinian conflict. So who writes the blurbs? If the AP editors wrote them they would not have been inconsistent, so this bolsters my theory that photo stringers themselves - who are not journalists - give descriptions of photo captions to wire services and they are printed without any editorial oversight.

One other way that pictures lie are from what they don't show.

Here, for example, are two of many pictures taken by Reuters at an anti-Israel rally today in Santiago:

Pedestrians walk along a street decorated with black and Palestine flags next to an orthodox church in the Patronato neighbourhood in Santiago August 7, 2006, where members of the Palestinian community attended a mass against Israel's military offensive in Lebanon and Gaza. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado (CHILE)

And another:

From the pictures, it appears that perhaps a few dozen people were in attendance.

Compare this to this pro-Israel rally that happened in Denver today:

The article that accompanies this picture says that hundreds of people rallied for Israel. But I cannot show you the wire service caption.

Because not a single wire service bothered covering the pro-Israel rally.

I have seen pictures of dozens of anti-Israel rallies on the news wire services, and very few pro-Israel rallies. Yet I know there are plenty of pro-Israel rallies worldwide.

Now, why would wire services extensively cover one kind of rally and almost ignore the other kind?

And when newspaper editors are putting together their editions for the next day and need a photo to fill up some space - which one is more likely to be published?

Keep an eye on Houla hoopla

See update below.

This morning, something happened in the Lebanese border village of Houla. Some people probably died. But it looks like this may easily be another Qana, and news organizations should be more skeptical now before publishing outrageous claims.

Here are the claims, from the Lebanese prime minister:

An Israeli attack on a Lebanese border village killed more than 40 people Monday, the prime minister said, raising the day's death toll to 55 in heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas despite efforts toward a cease-fire.
Saniora said the attack occurred in the village of Houla, where heavy ground fighting between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israeli has been raging in recent days. The Israel army said it is checking the claims about Houla but repeated that residents in villages in southern Lebanon had been warned to leave.

Local TV stations also had reported that about 40 people were buried under the rubble of houses that collapsed after being targeted by Israeli airstrikes.

"An hour ago, there was a horrific massacre in the village of Houla in which more than 40 martyrs were victims of deliberate bombing," he said.

Saniora ripped Israel's attacks, saying: "If these horrific actions are not state terrorism then what is state terrorism?"

Right before his claims, the wire services were reporting the possibility that dozens were trapped underneath rubble from buildings that collapsed. To go from that to the certainty that more than 40 had died seems very, very fast.

Saniora has motive to exaggerate. It is clear that Hezbollah is pressuring him and his ministers to adhere to the terrorist line (notice his reference to the victims are "martyrs.") No information leaves southern Lebanon until Hezbollah allows it to leave. And, like Qana, Houla seems to be a center of Hezbollah activity, and inflating casualty figures can give Hezbollah fighters there a break from the constant battles over the past few days.

Also, with what we've learned about Hezbollah and its preparations over the past six years, along with Syrian activities, it is a reasonable assumption that Hezb is running an effective "secret service" operation throughout Lebanon, terrorizing those who disagree with it and setting itself up for a political takeover backed by KGB-like tactics.

No doubt, Sinioira's claims are newsworthy, but to accept them as fact until real reporters have a chance to go and see for themselves would be irresponsible journalism.

UPDATE:

U.N. peacekeepers at a post near Houla reported Hezbollah fired rockets toward Israel twice Monday from positions near the UNIFIL base.

UPDATE 2:

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Monday that one person was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the southern village of Houla, not 40 as he had earlier reported.

"The massacre in Houla, it turned out that there was one person killed," Reuters quoted Siniora as saying. "They thought that the whole building smashed on the heads of about 40 people ... thank God they have been saved."

Siniora had earlier told Arab foreign ministers in Beirut that the attack "was a horrific massacre ... in which more than 40 martyrs were victims of deliberate bombing."

Saniora said he had based the initial tally on unspecified information that he had received, The Associated Press reported. He offered no other explanation for the error.

Lebanon, 1946

Here is an article from the Palestine Post in 1946 that shows how far Lebanon has fallen since its early days of independence.

Wisdom from the soldiers

Interesting article from the Times of London (H/T The Thought Mill):

AT FIRST light they filtered from the undergrowth, camouflaged, laden with captured hunting rifles and crested Lebanese scimitars, and high-fiving with relief at still being alive.
After nearly a week of vicious ditch-to-ditch fighting with Hezbollah fighters in the village of Taibeh, hundreds of exhausted Israeli soldiers slipped back across the border early yesterday after the hardest fighting they had ever experienced.
As they trudged across the brow of a hill in broken single file they were indistinguishable in their battle fatigues and green face paint — some even black out their teeth in Hezbollahland — and all were drunk on adrenalin. “I was hoping to go in and kill Hezbollonim. I killed three,” one shouted as he embraced colleagues from the Nahal Brigade.
As soon as they reached the outskirts of an Israeli hilltop town, which cannot be named for security reasons, they stopped and cleared their M16 automatic rifles in unison — the last task before they could relax. Some then reached inside their huge battlepacks for their mobile phones to call families and girlfriends. Others collapsed with exhaustion, washing away their fear with bottles of cola and lungfuls of cigarette smoke. A few grabbed newspapers to find out how their war was going. “What is happening in other places? What is happening in Gaza?” one asked The Times.
Down a sidestreet a cluster of Israeli tourist buses waited with drinks and packed lunches. Slowly the soldiers began morphing from death-bringers to nice Jewish boys preparing for the Sabbath, peeling off clothes and cavorting halfnaked with each other beside the bougainvillea.
As they did so, all the rainbow shades of Israeli society began to re-emerge — secular, Orthodox, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Sabra, Ethiopian, Russian, Brooklyn. To their matted hair they pinned all types of skullcap — knitted, military-green, Braslav, settler or none at all. But on one thing they were unanimous: the prowess of their foe.
“It was hell. They are really well trained. They’re not suckers, they know how to fight,” said one, slumped on the pavement. “You’re scared the whole time over there. We didn’t get any sleep the whole week.” There was not a voice of dissent.
The soldiers told how they had worked their way through the dry, scrubby hillsides towards Taibeh, facing continual attacks from Hezbollah sniper and anti-tank missile positions concealed in houses, farms, underground bunkers and seemingly deserted streets.
To counter this they called in frequent support from 155mm artillery batteries on the Israeli side of the border, which pounded Taibeh sending huge plumes of smoke into the sky.
“We killed ten, and the artillery must have killed thirty or forty,” said a soldier who, like his colleagues, was not allowed to give his name. He had simply lost count of Hezbollah’s attacks. “Many, many, it was very bad because you don’t know where they are coming from. But we succeeded.”
Another soldier said that serving in the Palestinian militant stronghold of Jenin in the West Bank, as he had, was nothing compared with fighting Hezbollah’s guerrillas. “It was horrible,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like, with every second a rocket- propelled grenade shooting over your head.”
A third soldier said: “All the time, they fired missiles at us. They never come face to face, just missiles. When we find them we kill them. It’s just not right, the way we are doing it. Our air force can just bomb villages and not risk our lives fighting over there.”
Another, slugging cola as his friends posed for photos, added: “It feels good to do the job. And come out alive.”
More than 40 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the 25 days of fighting.
Watched by bemused Thai immigrants, who, post-intifada, have replaced the cheap Palestinian labour upon which the Israeli economy once relied, one soldier shouted: “I love this country.”
Some of the returned fighters were optimistic. “We will defeat all the Arabs,” said one.
But others, chastened by their experiences north of the border, were less sure. “It’s a lose-lose situation,” said one. “They’re a bunch of terrorists. We are an army. We can never beat them completely because we have to obey certain rules. They operate from within civilian populations, and can do whatever they like. They don’t give a shit about these things.
“So it doesn’t matter if we are there for another couple of days or two weeks. But what is very important is that this is a just war on our part. Because they are a bunch of f***ing terrorists.”

A few facts to highlight just from this vignette:

Hezbollah's claims of minimal casualties on their side is complete garbage, yet the media continues to report it as true.
Even in the heat of the hardest battles these soldiers have ever seen, they remain committed to keeping the rules of war, at the risk of their own lives.
Hezbollah likes to pretend that it is doing so well at hand-to-hand fighting but they are avoiding engaging the IDF directly.
Hezbollah continues to use civilians as shields and the world does not hold them responsible.
Say what you want about internal divisions in Israeli society, but everyone knows that this is a just war and everyone is working together.

Don't believe your eyes if Reuters takes the picture

We always knew that Reuters was tilted towards the terrorist side of every story. But over the weekend, a remarkable thing happened.

The blogosphere destroyed the integrity of Reuters' photographs.

On Saturday, Little Green Footballs noticed an obvious and poorly-done Photoshop edit of a picture showing smoke over Beirut, to make it appear that the smoke was worse than it really was.

This caused the blogosphere do what it does best - experts started looking at other photos to see other inconsistencies. And so far, two major ones were found:

EU Referendum (which did an amazing job showing that the Qana photos were staged) found that the same photographer Photoshopped another picture of an Israeli plane, adding what he thought were missiles. This was doubly troubling - first because he faked another picture, and who knows how many others that have been printed in major newspapers, but also because he supplied a caption that was clearly wrong. (See also Jawa Report.)
Drinking from Home showed a woman "grieving" over the loss of her home - twice, in two different locations and two weeks apart. (At least it was two different photographers.)

As EU Referendum points out, while photo manipulation can be detected when done poorly, who fact-checks the captions? When stringers are employed as photographers, presumably they provide the captions or at least the context of the photograph - and they probably have even fewer ethics than the journalists who work for wire services.

For example, using the same Photoshopping photographer, here is a picture he took on July 14 and the caption:

A rocket fired by Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group makes its way to hit an Israeli naval vessel off Beirut July 14, 2006. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj (LEBANON)

How exactly does he know where the rocket will land? How does he know that this is the one missile that will hit the Israeli boat? Or was this a case where he had a nice night-time shot of a rocket/missile/flare/firework and chose a caption that would be the most dramatic?

We have already seen how Hezbollah not only manipulates the press in Lebanon, but even threatens them. As Tom Gross reported:

Writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton, casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: “To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”

But not only do we have to worry about slanted coverage from journalists who want to save their necks, and not only do we have to worry about staged scenes from terrorists where photographers don't know enough to dig beneath the surface to get at the truth, but we also have to worry about journalists and photographers who knowingly lie to advance their agendas.

The agenda isn't always "Israel is evil." Often it is "What can make this story more interesting?" Or, more cynically, "What can I get an award for?" Either way, it is rarely in Israel's interest for a journalist to be completely honest and provide a full context for the story.

3 Palestinian Arab kids killed. Oops!

Last Thursday, 3 Palestinian Arab kids were shot to death in Jenin.

For reasons that are unclear, there was no international outcry. Their deaths were barely mentioned in the newspapers. There were no UN condemnations, no shows of anguish from the EU, no peace protesters demonstrating, no pictures of crying mothers in the Reuters wire photos,, no huge funerals demanding justice.

Here's why:

Last Thursday, three children were killed in a wedding celebration during which gunshots were fired in celebration. PCHR's preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 21:15 on Thursday, 3 August 2006, three children were killed in a wedding ceremony when a gunman lost control of his assault rifle as he was shooting in the air in celebration. The killed children are Naser Salim El-Asmar (13), Ahmad Samir Abu Jilda (15), and Ala Adel Faris Hardan (17). The wedding ceremony was in El-Marah Quarter in the eastern part of Jenin. Several gunmen were firing in the air during the wedding.

Ah, I forgot. People only care about dead Palestinian kids when they can blame Jews for their deaths.

Even when one tries to explain to these moral midgets that Israel is never aiming at the civilians and that their deaths are accidental, they always retort with "Every human life is precious! They are just as dead! How could you be so inhuman!"

But for some reason, dead Palestinian Arab kids who are killed by Palestinian men with assault rifles are not worth anything. Their blood isn't just cheap - it is worthless, based on how much the world ignores the phenomenon of Palestinian Arabs killing their own. After all...who in their right mind would demand that Arabs stop firing rifles at weddings? That would be imposing Western values on them!

So, these kids plus two more PalArabs who were killed in a "clan clash" means the PalArab self-death count since the end of June is now at ...46.

Jordan's Abdullah shows his support for terror

Like the wimp he is, Abdullah waited a few weeks before he decided that declaring support for Islamists who want to take over his kingdom is a smarter strategy than coming out against terror:

Amman, Aug. 6 (Petra)--His Majesty King Abdullah II said the core of the problem in the region is the continuation of the Israeli occupation of the Arab lands.

Addressing distinguished students from Jordanian universities at the Royal Court, the King said that Jordan's position on the Israeli aggression was frank and clear, indicating it condemned the aggression, and called for an immediate ceasefire and for full sovereignty of the Lebanese government on all Lebanese lands.

He linked the continuation of resistance with the continuation of occupation. "As long as there is occupation, there will be resistance," the King added.

His Majesty said that efforts he has been making over the past weeks and months on more than one level, were designed to crystallize and Arab position on events and the conflict in the region.

I guess none of the "distinguished students" bothered asking him some basic questions:

If occupation is so bad, how come Jordan occupied the territories and didn't bother giving Palestinian Arabs a state before 1967?
When he says "occupation" is he referring to only the West Bank or all of Israel, as Hezbollah does?
Is he acting out of fear for what would happen to him if he came out against unprovoked Islamist attacks against Israel?
Is it abundantly clear to him that he can never afford to offend radical Islam, but he can afford to offend Israel and America with impunity?
Does he have the ability to condemn any Jewish or Israeli deaths, ever?

Someone should ask Abdullah these questions. But no one will.

Pakistani women protestors wear headbands reading 'stop the killing children' and raise machine guns during a rally to show their support for Hezbollah and condemn the ongoing Israeli strikes against Lebanon and Palestinian territories, Sunday, Aug. 6, 2006 in Lahore, Pakistan. (AP Photo/K M Chaudhry)

Somehow, I don't think Israeli children are included.

If anyone thinks that this characterization is unfair, I will happily post pictures of any Muslim rally worldwide that condemns the deaths of all children including the ones murdered by Hezbollah.

I've looked at hundreds, and here is the closest I've ever seen, to the credit of at least one woman in Jordan who implies that Israelis are human:

Jordanians attend a silent sit-in against Israeli air strikes on Lebanon and Gaza Strip outside the United Nations office in Amman August 6, 2006. REUTERS/Ali Jarekji (JORDAN)

And not to be cynical, but the absence of hijabs makes me think that these women are more likely the American women from Code Pink who visited Jordan this weekend.