Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 07, 2011

G'mar chatima tovah 5772 - גמר חתימה טובה

I want to wish all of my readers who observe the holiday a g'mar chatimah tovah, an easy fast and a meaningful Yom Kippur.

A large percentage of my recent webpage hits have been for people looking for a translation of that phrase, so here it is again:

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

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

Specifically (as enumerated last year, courtesy of The Muqata):

If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize.
If you sent me a story and I didn't publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -- I'm sorry. (I sometimes get multiple tips for the same story and I usually credit the first one I saw, which is not always the earliest.)
If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.
I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all.
I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.

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

(For those who want it, the Vidui of the Chida can be printed from here.)

Links

Tablet interviews the Columbia student who was steered away from Joseph Massad's courses

MEMRI shows us an Iranian e-book: "The Holocaust: The Jews' Greatest Lie."

Evelyn Gordon asks "How Often do Palestinians Have to Spell Out Their Goal?"

The New York Times has a fascinating account on how Zionists - and Zionist intelligence - managed to convince a hostile UNSCOP to recommend partition in 1947.

YNet looks at how to obtain atonement for a nasty talkback.

I missed this JPost piece where a German concentration camp inmate had written a Rosh Hashanah machzor (prayer book) on torn paper bags.

And, in a most inappropriate Yom Kippur eve link, the 8 best Jewish moments on South Park. You might want to wait a couple of days before clicking that one....

(h/t Ben, CHA)

American Jewish "settlers" are more liberal than messianic

From Ha'aretz:

Something strange happened among the hills and red-roofed settlements of the West Bank: Western left-leaning radicalism moved in with right-wing Zionist ideology. At least that's the claim of an American doctoral student, who says American immigrants to Israel who move to the settlements are not stereotypical gun-toting extremists but rather represent a larger and more diverse dynamic than they are given credit for.

"Stereotypes exist because they also have some elements of truth to them, but there is a much wider, more nuanced story behind that," Sara Hirschhorn, 30, said. American Jews who settled in the West Bank represent "a very heterogeneous and dynamic movement," she added. "It doesn't necessarily fit into any preexisting categories. In addition to that, I believe that my findings bring the discussion out of this typical left/right discourse that we have developed when we talk about the settler movement. There is a very wide spectrum, which certainly runs the gamut of everything you can imagine."

Hirschhorn's dissertation, which she is doing at the University of Chicago, presents the first known attempt to draw up a comprehensive demographic profile of Americans within the Israeli settlement movement. Her findings seem to imply they are somewhat overrepresented: According to Hirschhorn, who had access to confidential records from the American consulate in Jerusalem, 45,000 settlers have American citizenship, or about 15 percent of the Israeli West Bank population. In comparison, Americans make up less than 8.5 percent of all Israeli Jews, based on estimates of 500,000 Americans among Israel's 5.8 million Jews.

"Jewish-American immigrants [to the territories] were primarily young, single, and highly identified as Jewish or traditional but not necessarily Orthodox in their religious orientation," Hirschhorn said. "They were primarily political liberals in the United States, voted for the Democratic Party and have been active in 1960s radicalism in the United States, participating in the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle against the Vietnam War. This perhaps does not necessarily correspond to the idea we might have in mind about who these people were before they came to Israel."

Hirschhorn started working on her dissertation three years ago. It is based on archival research and 25 interviews with various leading American-Israelis active in the settlement movement.

"Many of them were activists in the U.S. long before they became activists in Israel," Hirschhorn told Anglo File recently in Jerusalem. "A lot of them were heavily involved not only in secular activism but also in Jewish activism, especially around Beitar and other Jewish-Zionist youth movement in the U.S., some more right wing and some more left wing."

Many Americans who moved to the settlements after the Six-Day War see what they're doing in Israel as an extension of their radicalism in the United States, Hirschhorn said. "They would also say that what some of them consider what they're doing in the territories in part as an expression of their own Jewish civil rights."

"In coming to Israel and participating in the settlement movement these American Jews continued in their radicalism," the Massachusetts native said. "While many other from their generation went back to a more conventional lifestyle - becoming soccer mommies and moving to Scarsdale [and affluent New York suburb] - here they moved to a hilltop on the West Bank."

Hirschhorn added that many Americans who move to the West Bank are trying to recapture the pioneering idealism of the state's Zionist founders, while others are driven by a Biblical imperative to settle the land.

I never thought about the link between '60's style radicalism and those who choose to live in Judea and Samaria for ideological reasons, but there seems to be something to that. I'd love to see this paper when it is published.

Bodyguard saved Israeli ambassador's life during Sadat assassination

An interesting story at Al Masry al-Youm:

A former bodyguard recently recalled saving the life of the Israeli Ambassador Moshe Sasson during the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The Israeli guard, who declined to reveal his identity, recounted the experience with his back to the camera during an interview on Israel’s Channel 10 news program which aired Thursday evening.

“I grabbed the ambassador, threw him on the ground, tossed over the chair and covered him with my body,” he said. “I lowered his head and people looked in our direction. No one understood what was happening.”

While Thursday marked the 38th anniversary of Egypt’s crossing of the Suez Canal during its 1973 October War with Israel, it also marked the 30th anniversary of Sadat’s assassination in 1981 during an annual victory parade to honor the event.

During the march, Israeli ambassador sat close behind Sadat.

According to the news network, Israeli investigations conducted shortly after the assissination revealed that the body guard’s quick response – along with that of a colleague – saved the ambassador’s life.

“The shots went on for 51 seconds, which is a long time,” the body guard said. “They shot bursts from 4 AK-47s. They would just use up their ammo and reload, and there was no one fighting back from our side.”

During the military parade, six planes soared over the platform where Sadat was sitting with his retinue. The body guard says that while everyone looked toward the sky to view the display, he and a fellow body guard fixed their eyes on the street below.

“Suddenly, we saw a truck stop and an officer get out,” he said. “The officer ran toward the platform with something in his hand and threw it – people watched but didn’t understand what was happening. Then there was a big explosion.

“They were shooting people, and they were being killed and wounded - a terrible panic. Most of the bullets didn’t hit Sadat but instead struck our area. We thought it was a military coup.”

In addition to Sadat, 11 others - including a Coptic Orthodox bishop, the Cuban ambassador, and an Omani general - were killed. Another 28 were wounded, including Vice President Hosni Mubarak, four US military liaison officers, and Irish Defense Minister James Tully.

A Muslim's journey from anti-semite to Zionist

From Kasim Hafeez in TheJC:

The reality is that there is real anti-Israel and antisemitic feeling on British university campuses. How do I know this? Because until recently I was antisemitic and anti-Israel. Until recently, I was the one doing the hating.

Growing up in a Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers. My views were reinforced when I attended Nakba Day rallies where speakers predicted Israel's demise.

My hate for Israel and for the Jews was fuelled by images of death and destruction, set to the backdrop of Arabic melodies about Jihad and speeches of Hizbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah or Osama Bin Laden.

There was also constant, casual antisemitism around me. My father would boast of how Adolf Hitler was a hero, his only failing being that he didn't kill enough Jews. Even the most moderate clerics I came across refused to condemn terrorism against Israel as unjustified.

What changed? In Waterstones one day I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section. To this day I don't know why I actually pulled it off the shelf, but I picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel.

In my world view the Jews and the Americans controlled the media, so after a brief look at the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda".

But I decided to buy it, eagerly awaiting the chance to deconstruct it so I could show why Israel had no case and claim my findings as a personal victory for the Palestinian cause.

As I read Dershowitz's systematic deconstruction of the lies I had been told, I felt a real crisis of conscience. I couldn't disprove his arguments or find facts to respond to them with. I didn't know what to believe. I'd blindly followed for so long, yet here I was questioning whether I had been wrong?

I decided to visit Israel to find the truth. I was confronted by synagogues, mosques and churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities playing huge parts in all areas of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It was shocking and eye-opening. This wasn't the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about.

After much soul searching, I knew what I had once believed was wrong. I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me.

As an outsider, I ask why so many in the Jewish community are closing their eyes to the constant stream of anti-Israel hated spewed out from all facets of British society.

And while pro-Palestinian organisations burn Israeli flags, urge boycotts of Israel and protest against appearances by Israeli politicians or artists, UJS's response is shameful. It is not the time for UJS or any other group to engage in hollow flag-waving to show their "progressiveness". Let Israel's democratic history speak for itself.

Instead of meekly trying to avoid coming across as too pro-Israeli or too Zionist, it is time to make the facts known, to defend Israel against delegitimisation. It is time to stem the tide of Israel bashing before it becomes even more mainstream and consumes even more people like me.

"Palestine": A cause or a state? (Taheri)

Amir Taheri in Al Asharq al Awsat writes a provocative essay:

A recent creation, the modern state is the political expression of a nation’s existence. One must first have a nation and then look for a state to express its existence.

Is Palestine a nation, in the modern sense of the term as described by Herder at the end of the 18th century?

You might be surprised, even angered, by this question. However, none of the dozens of political parties that have claimed to represent the Palestinians in the past seven decades ever described itself as national.

Words such as “nation” and “national” do not feature in the designation of such movements as Al Fatah and Hamas. Instead, they, and many other smaller ones, use adjectives such as “Islamic” or “people’s”. The subtext is that the Palestinians are, at most, “a people” but not a nation. They are regarded as part either of a larger, and mythical, Arab “nation” or an even more problematic Islamic Ummah.

Wedded to leftist or Islamist ideologies, Palestinian political formations systematically rejected the concept of the nation, the backbone of modern statehood.

The contrast with modern national liberation movements throughout the world is telling. For all of them the word “nation” is the key to their identity. Thus, we have the African National Congress in South Africa, and the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria. Even Communist-dominated Vietcong described itself as a National Liberation Front.

Islamist or leftist, Palestinian political movements treat Palestine as a “cause” rather than a political project.

But what is that “cause”?

This was clearly put by Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in a speech in Tehran on 3 October. “Our aim,” he said, “is liberating all of Palestine from the River to the Sea.” In other words, the cause is not to give Palestinians a state but to destroy Israel.

Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, leader of the Islamic Jihad for Palestine was even more explicit. “When we come to power we shall not allow the Zionist regime to live a single moment,” he said in Tehran.

According to the daily Kayhan of 4 October, both men paid tribute to “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei as the man who should have the final word on Palestine.

Mishal said: “The esteemed Commander of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khamenei, is our Guide and Leader. His wishes will be the cause of the Palestinians. Our sovereign and master is Khamenei.”

This, of course, is not the first time that Palestinian leaders have auctioned “the cause”. There was a time when Abdel Nasser was bootlicked as “guide and master”. In 1991, Yasser Arafat sold “the cause” to Saddam Hussein. A few years later in Oslo, he re-sold it to Shimon Peres.

In his speech, Khamenei promised that, once Israel is destroyed, he would organize a referendum in which Palestinians from all over the world and some citizens of Israel would decide what to do with “liberated Palestine”. Mischievous tongues in Tehran say that one option could be to attach “liberated Palestine” to Khamenei’s “imamate” empire. This is not fanciful. After all, Nasser, too, had hoped to annex “liberated Palestine” for his Arab Republic. Saddam Hussein had dreams of turning Palestine into Iraq’s “counter on the Mediterranean”, a scheme that would have also required the destruction of Jordan as an independent country. Hafez al-Assad fancied Palestine as part of “Greater Syria”.

Mishal and Shallah’s flattery towards Khamenei implies that there is no Palestinian “nation”. A sovereign nation would not demand that the leader of a foreign country decide its future.

The quest for a Palestinian state starts with the Palestinians themselves. They must decide whether they are a modern nation or a fragment of larger entities beyond their control.

...[A]s a member of the United Nations, a state cannot adopt the destruction of another UN member as its “cause.”

Palestine must choose what it wants to be a “cause” or a state.

I would add that Hamas explicitly calls for the creation of a pan-Islamic state of which "Palestine" would be a part.

Taheri is correct even in regards to the PLO. The PLO's charters from 1964 and 1968, even though they are titled the "Palestinian National Charter," say nothing about the "Palestinian nation" but quite a bit about the "Arab nation." Neither of them call for a "Palestinian state."

It is not news to readers here that the primary Palestinian Arab goal has always been to destroy Israel and not to build a state. But Taheri has stumbled on to a very interesting proof that a state is not their goal.

(h/t Zvi)

Report: USAID halts operations in PalArab territory

Al Quds al Arabi reports that USAID has suspended all of its projects in the Palestinian Arab territories.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee had halted some $200 million in funds for the Palestinian Arabs, it was reported earlier this week, and these were USAID funds.

Some projects have halted already, some can run for a few weeks before running out of money. According to a PA official quoted in the article, the projects that are affected include "roads, water, health and other projects related to state building."

He also said that the White House is exerting efforts to lift the ban but there is no timeframe for such a decision

Some 50 Arab employees have already been asked not to work, and a couple of hundred more will lose their jobs by November.

USAID money to the territories is earmarked for governance, rule of law, civil society, health, education, social services, economic development and humanitarian assistance.

US funds that goes directly to the Palestinian Authority has not been affected.

In the Arab world, especially in Egypt, there have been recent protests against USAID, with people charging that it is a spy agency. Egypt has recently rejected USAID funds because of conditions saying, among other things, that they cannot be used for terrorism.

2 Arabs arrested for the double murder of the Palmers

From YNet:

Two Palestinians from Halhul were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion they murdered Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan near Kiryat Arba last month. The two were arrested following an investigation involving the police, the Shin Bet and the IDF.

Asher Palmer z"l

A gag order has been placed in the identities of the detainees and the details of the investigation.

During their interrogation, the suspects admitted to throwing the stone which caused the deaths of Asher and Yonatan. The stone was hurled from a driving car. Police are also looking into the possibility that the two are behind 17 other cases involving stones being hurled at Israeli vehicles.

Initially the police had described it as a tragic car accident.

The stone was large enough to shatter the windshield and break the steering column. To hurl that from a moving car can only be described as premeditated murder. Of course, the Palestinian Arab leadership condones stone throwing (and Molotov cocktails) as "non-violent resistance."

Indeed, no Palestinian Arab official has condemned the murders.

"Iran's Bushehr will be the next Chernobyl"

From Fox:

The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a "tragic disaster for humankind," according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower.

There is a "great likelihood" that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document, which has been passed to The (London) Times by a reputable source and is attributed to a former member of the legal department of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by "second-class engineers" who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world's most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has "no serious training program" for staff or a contingency plan for accidents.

The document's authenticity cannot be confirmed, but nuclear experts see no reason to doubt it. It also echoes fears in the nuclear industry about the safety of a secretive project to which few outsiders have been granted access.

There was a similar story about the lack of safety precautions at Bushehr in the Telegraph last January:

The Russian scientists' report to the Kremlin, a copy of which has been seen by The Daily Telegraph, concludes that, despite "performing simple, basic tests" on the Bushehr reactor, the Russian team "cannot guarantee safe activation of the reactor".

It also accuses the Iranian management team, which is under intense political pressure to stick to the deadline, of "not exhibiting the professional and moral responsibility" that is normally required. They accuse the Iranians of having "disregard for human life" and warn that Russia could find itself blamed for "another Chernobyl" if it allows Bushehr to go ahead.

And from Bloomberg in March:

The 1000-megawatt power plant at Bushehr combines a German- designed plant begun under the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in the 1970’s and Russian technology installed over the last decade. Safety questions have raised concern among some nuclear-power experts and in neighboring countries such as Kuwait, which is vulnerable in the event of a radiation leak since it is downwind about 170 miles (275 kilometers).

Nuclear experts cite potential safety issues due to the hybrid design, Iranian nuclear inexperience, the Islamic state’s reluctance to join international safety monitoring programs, and the unknown reliability of some of the original components.

Bushehr also sits at the junction of three tectonic plates, raising concerns that an earthquake could damage the plant and crack its containment dome, or disrupt the electrical supply needed to keep it safe, said Dr. Jassem al-Awadi, a geologist at the University of Kuwait. Bushehr was hit with a 4.6 magnitude temblor in 2002.

However, I received an email last March from someone who knows a great deal about a great many things who said:

Nuclear engineers are consistent that Bushehr can't produce the Chernobyl effect because it's water cooled and not graphite moderated. It was the use of graphiteto moderate the Chernobyl reactor's heat regime that enabled it to yield the high-energy explosion and spew radiation around the globe. The VVER-1000 former-Soviet design reactor isn't as full of failsafes as most Western designs, but nuke-heads say the model has been much improved. Under earthquake conditions like those besetting Japan, it would be likely to perform much like the Daiichi complex at Fukushima -- that is, key systems might well fail, but exposure of the core is next to impossible.

(h/t Silke, Daled Amos, JD)

PLO ambassador in Brazil: "Israel must disappear"

From Reinaldo Azevedo in Veja-Brazil, Brazil's most popular magazine:

Imagine the scandal if an Israeli diplomat said: “The Palestinian Authority should disappear.” On Friday, Alzeben Ibrahim, the Palestinian ambassador in Brazil, told a group of university students that “Israel should disappear.”

To leave no doubt as to what he meant, he added, "And this is not the ambassador of Iran or President Ahmadinejad who is speaking."

Thus it was evident that he did not mean Israel must disappear from the West Bank, but wiped off the map as Ahmadinejad preached.

Knowing that Hamas, which also says that Israel must disappear, will not stop shooting rockets into Israel, Alzeben said: "Israel is preparing provocations for a new conflict. Be skeptical of the origin of the next rocket departing from Palestine. " So he is saying he has counterintelligence information where Israel is infiltrating agents into Gaza to fire missiles at Israel itself, understand?

By saying that "Israel must disappear," Alzeben illuminates the nature of the "struggle" which many experts, including ours, refuse to admit.

When the Palestinian Authority refuses to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state" and wants to make the return of the so-called "refugees" this is a cause for future generations to be guided. When it cannot eliminate "that Israel" using weapons, it is dreaming to one day eliminate it via demographics.

(h/t Daily Alert via Honest Reporting.)

Some good news stories about Israel

A new report came out ranking the world's leading nations for innovation and technology. Some of the results:

The first map charts the percentages of economic output countries devote to R&D investment. The U.S. ranks sixth. Israel is in first place, followed by Sweden, Finland, Japan, and Switzerland, which make up the top five. South Korea, Germany, Denmark, and France round out the top ten. Canada ranks 13th.

The second map charts scientific and engineering researchers per capita. The United States ranks seventh. Finland takes the top spot, followed by Sweden, Japan, Singapore, and Denmark. Norway, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand round out the top ten. [For some reason, Israel is not listed at all in the full report in this category, probably the authors could not get complete data. -EoZ]

The third map plots innovations, measured as patents per capita. Now, the United States takes first place, followed by Japan, Switzerland, Finland, and Israel. Sweden, Germany, Canada, Denmark, and Hong Kong round out the top ten.

By combining all three of these measures, we end up with an overall Global Technology Index, a broad assessment of the technological and innovative capabilities of the world’s leading nations. The United States ranks third. Finland takes the top spot, followed by Japan. Israel’s fourth place finish may come as a surprise to some. But as Dan Senor and Saul Singer argue in Start-up Nation, Israel has relentlessly pursued an economic development strategy based on launching innovative firms. Israel has the highest concentration of engineers in the world—135 per 10,000 people, compared to 85 per 10,000 people in the United States. Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Korea, Germany, and Singapore round out the top ten.

From Business Week, September 22:

Never mind the collapse in confidence in Europe, the Palestinian proposal for United Nations recognition and heightened tensions with neighboring Egypt and longtime ally Turkey. The Israeli economy just keeps growing faster than the rest of the developed world.

The International Monetary Fund this week raised its forecast for the country and cut its estimate for the global economy on the impact of the European debt crisis. Israel's gross domestic product will expand 4.8 percent this year, according to the Washington-based lender. That's up from an April forecast of 3.8 percent and triple the pace for the average of the 34 advanced economies.

Citigroup Inc. said on Sept. 18 it would establish a new Israeli research center and Standard & Poor's a week earlier raised the country's credit rating. It cited the discovery of two gas fields off the coast of Israel that hold an estimated 25 trillion cubic feet of the fuel. Mellanox Technologies Ltd., the 12-year-old Israeli adapter maker part-owned by Oracle Corp., says sales will grow 80 percent in the third quarter.

“The Israeli economy is very vibrant,” Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said in a Sept. 20 interview with Bloomberg Television. “We enjoy very low unemployment and nice economic growth and this is mainly because we managed to develop very advanced high tech industries and very strong exports.”

Israel ranks third in terms of projected growth this year among MSCI's list of 24 developed economies, after 6 percent for Hong Kong and 5.3 percent for Singapore, according to the IMF.

“Israel's exports are high-added value exports like informatics and technology,” said Jean-Dominique Butikofer, a fund manager who helps oversee about $1 billion of emerging- market debt at Union Bancaire Privee in Zurich, including quasi- sovereign Israeli bonds. “They're not exporting Gucci bags. If there's a slowdown, these are the kind of assets that are good to have.”

Venture-capital backed Israeli technology companies raised $364 million in the second quarter of this year, a 77 percent jump from the $206 million raised in the year-earlier period, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Moneytree report. Seventy-six companies raised funding in the three-month period, compared with only 60 last year, the report said.

“One reason that the economy continues to do well is the component of innovation and ability to adapt to a changing environment,” Citigroup Israel Managing Director Ralph Shaaya said in explaining the New York-based bank's decision to locate a research center in Israel. ‘There is a rich pool of talent in the high tech sector. The propensity for innovation is high.”

From Israel HaYom:

Israel is the only country in the Middle East with universities on the Top 200 World University Rankings list from Times Higher Education (THE), which is released annually in conjunction with the start of the new school year.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem ranked 121st and Tel Aviv University placed 166th.

I am getting more and more convinced that Israel's long-term security is best served by having a strong economy, one that not only serves the needs of Israelis by keeping it economically independent but one that has such a large impact on the world that nations would themselves directly feel the loss if Israel is not secure.

Think of it this way: China's human rights record is abysmal, but because the economic potential there is so gigantic the world overlooks that issue. So even if Israel is losing the PR battle to BDS-supporting haters, a strong economy would go a great way towards muting their whining.