Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Work accident!

Firas Press reports that Ahmed Mohammed Awad, of Islamic Jihad, was "accidentally" killed in Rafah last night.

It seems equally likely that he was murdered and that the accident story is just to preserve his martyrdom.

The 2008 self-death count is at 62.

Mahmoud Abbas, terrorist cheerleader

Mahmoud Abbas, who has been called a "man of courage" and a "man of peace" by George Bush, who has said repeatedly in English that "The Palestinian people desire peace, and there is no power on Earth that can prevent the Palestinian people from moving toward the peaceful solution and living and coexisting in peace," has decided to award his society's highest honor to people who he believes are worthy of emulation:

The Al Kuds Mark of Honor, the PLO's highest medal, will be given to two female terrorists who helped kill Israelis, Israel Radio reported Wednesday.

Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas affiliate serving a life sentence for driving the suicide bomber who exploded himself in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, killing at least half a dozen people, including a whole family and Amra Muna, who seduced Ophir Rahum over the Internet and then lured him to Ramallah where he was murdered, will both be awarded the medal.

Conferring the Al Kuds Mark of Honor is decided at the discretion of the Palestinian Authority's president, and he alone has the final say when choosing the Palestinians to be honored with the medal.

Yes, Mahmoud Abbas wants all young Palestinian Arab women to become terrorists just like Tamimi and Munra. And he had a lot of women terrorists to choose from, too, so it must have been a tough decision.

The EU, US and UN should harshly criticize this any minute now.

Previous examples of Abbas' love of terror:
Abbas proud of Fatah terror
Mahmoud Abbas, warmongering extremist
Abbas' support for terror
Abbas wants Israel destroyed
Mahmoud Abbas, terrorist

Censoring Jews in Lebanon

AFP reports:

Lebanon is a liberal Middle East country with unfettered Internet access, but state censorship is also rife on any topics that touch upon Israel or sensitive issues such as religion.
Oscar-winning films such as "Schindler's List," the music of late violinist Yehudi Menuhin, the songs of Enrico Macias... the list of artists and their works deemed to be inappropriate is long.
"There has been ruthless censorship in Lebanon for decades, using absurd criteria and under the pretext of national security," said Bassam Eid, production manager at movie distributors Circuit Empire.
Hollywood stars including Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman have long been banned for their perceived support for Jews or because they were in a film directed by a Jew as Lebanon scrupulously applied an Arab League blacklist boycotting Israel.
Censorship is applied in Lebanon if a work is thought to incite religious dissent, damage morals or state security or contribute to Israeli propaganda.
Music does not escape either. "About 80 percent of Death Metal is seized" because of anti-Christ content, according to one record store owner in Beirut who asked not to be named.
"To ban the Israeli Philharmonic is understandable, but not top world violinist Jascha Heifetz who's Jewish but not Israeli. Even so both Daniel Barenboim and Gilad Atzmon are OK because they're seen to be anti-Zionist!"

Normally, this would be considered anti-semitism, but that terminology seems to escape AFP.

Yemeni court terminates marriage of 8 year-old

Good news from Yemen, in a follow-up to the sick story I posted a couple of days ago:

A Yemeni court yesterday granted divorce to an eight-year-old girl who sought the help of a court judge to terminate her marriage two months after she was forced into it.
Nojoud Muhammad Nasser lodged a complaint at a court in the capital Sanaa last week against her father who forced her to marry a man 22 years her senior, and asked the judge to secure her divorce.
The girl’s lawyer and human rights activist, Shadha Nasser, said that the court “ordered the marriage to be terminated immediately because she was underage and had not reached puberty.”
The court also ordered the child’s family to pay 50,000 Yemeni rials (about $250) in compensation to the 30-year-old ex-husband.
The amount was paid by a volunteer who was attending the trial, the lawyer said, adding that the compensation was toward the dowry the husband had paid to the girl’s father.
The ruling terminated the marriage instead of granting a divorce to prevent the husband from seeking to reinstate the marriage, according to the lawyer.
Nasser, a human rights activist, said the minor had filed a suit asking for divorce and told the court that her husband had been physically abusing her and forcing her to have “sex with him after hitting her.”
Last week, the court ordered the father and husband to be arrested after hearing the girl’s testimony. The father was later released due to health problems.

Now, if they can put a little sanity in the female genital mutilation depravity....

Gazans want to leave. Badly.

A new poll in Gaza from the "Institute of Development Studies," reported in Palestine Press Agency (Arabic), shows that 80% of Gazans would seriously consider leaving Gaza if they could, while 44% would leave immediately if they could.

Not mentioned was the fact that zero percent of the neighboring Arab countries would accept a single Gazan who wants to move.

So much for "Arab unity."

Yemen's parliament refuses to outlaw female genital mutilation

This is astounding:

SANA’A, April-13 — Preventing female circumcision and pre-marriage medical tests evoked turmoil and disagreement among Parliament members (MPs) in last week’s session.

The session ended with a unanimous agreement to cancel the term 3, which would prevent female circumcision, and delay the discussion of pre-marriage tests.

...
Zid Al-Shami, an MP who suggested delaying the approval of the two terms, confirmed that such topics are “sensitive and need more awareness.”

“I suggested canceling term number three, about preventing female circumcision, for many reasons. First, the term, which was written in the draft, included inappropriate and shameful sentences. Second, female circumcision exists in few regions in Yemen, like in Hodeidah and Hadramout, so it not common practice. And finally, there is still religious debate regarding the issue, so as we have no directives by the heads of religion to forbid female circumcision, we do not have the right to ban it,” Al-Shami explained.

Wikipedia has a good overview of the Islamic debate over FGM, and showing that at least some Islamic scholars do find Islamic legal justifications for this barbarism.

Carter wanted to meet Islamic Jihad, too

Both Palestine Today and Palestine Press Agency report that Egyptian officials invited Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah to visit Cairo to meet Jimmy Carter but Shalah refused, saying that Carter is following an "American/Israeli agenda." Shalah has been harshly critical of Khaled Meshaal's planned meeting with Carter.

It would appear that Carter initiated this request to meet with the arch-terrorist. All of the reasons that Carter uses to justify meeting with Hamas - that Hamas has supposedly offered a truce, for example, or that most attacks are not initiated by Hamas - do not apply to Islamic Jihad, yet Carter apparently wants to give legitimacy to Islamic Jihad terrorists anyway.

Meanwhile, Carter plans to meet with a Hamas official in Ramallah and he has already laid a wreath at the grave of his fellow Nobel Prize winner, Yasir Arafat, a man responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who Carter admired greatly.

Palestinian Arab self-death update

Ma'an reports that a 25-year old Arab from Bidya was shot dead by unidentified gunmen, and that the killer may have been an Arab Israeli.

Ma'an Arabic mentions a 35 year old man found murdered in the formerly Jewish town of Netzarim in Gaza. He worked in the "Palestinian intelligence service" and was arrested yesterday by Hamas and tortured. Palestine Press Agency reports that "angry youths" are rioting over his murder.

On the other hand, reports of three dead last Sunday from an explosion in Jabalya seem to have been premature; according to PCHR only one was killed and two seriously wounded. So our count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other this year remains at 61.

What is "criminal" about Jimmy Carter

Compare:

Former US president Jimmy Carter toured Sderot on Monday and said the firing of Kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip at the western Negev is "criminal."
Carter, who made the comment after he was shown the remains of hundreds of rockets that were fired at the town, said he would try to promote a ceasefire in the region.

With:

The Secretary-General condemns rocket fire against Israel by Hamas... He calls on Hamas and other militant groups to cease such acts of terrorism.

To call terrorist acts "criminal" betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts and a clear bias towards the terrorists.

The only time I can find Dhimmi Carter condemning rockets to Sderot he also didn't use the word "terrorism," just using the blander "attacks" or the passive "violence" and even-handedly comparing suicide bombing to Israeli defensive actions last February:

The Carter Center condemns the recent Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket fire against Israel and calls on the Palestinian leadership in Gaza to take urgent and immediate measures to halt the spiraling cycle of violence.
At the same time, the Center reiterates its previous calls for Israel to end its siege of Gaza and urges Israel to refrain from further attacks and assassinations against Palestinians. If the Annapolis process is to have any chance to succeed in bringing a lasting peace to the region, Israel and the Hamas leadership in Gaza must negotiate an immediate ceasefire, and all sides must redouble efforts to resolve key issues to enable a viable two-state solution.

The February 4 attack by two Palestinian suicide bombers was the first such attack within Israeli borders in over a year and the first claimed by Hamas since August 2004. Hamas' claim to have resumed the use of suicide bombings against civilians as a means of resistance to Israel is strongly condemned. In addition to these attacks, recent rocket fire has maimed two children in the Israeli town of Sderot. These attacks have led Israeli authorities to call for large-scale retaliatory operations in Gaza and for the assassination of Hamas leaders. Israel retaliatory attacks in eastern Gaza have killed both militants and innocent civilians. A missile dropped on a Palestinian school killed a teacher and wounded several students.

Both the Israeli government and Hamas, which has repeatedly stated in the past that it is willing to negotiate a truce with Israel, should take immediate steps to end the tragic cycle of retaliation.

This is obscene.

Carter equates Israeli actions with those of Hamas,
he attempts to paint Hamas as more interested in peace than Israel by repeating Hamas lies about its interest in a temporary "truce",
he refusese to label even Palestinian suicide attacks as "terrorism,"
he implies that Hamas has been innocent of any terror acts in a 3.5 year period,
he implies that Israel assassinates - purposefully targets - innocent Palestinian Arabs and not only the terrorists,
he seems to be upset about the maiming of two Israeli children only because Israel might retailiate -

--these are all examples of his clear leaning towards the terrorists. Moreover, even though at the time of this press release it was known that the "school" that Israel shot at was a launching pad for Hamas rockets - a war crime - Carter doesn't mention it.

It is sickening.

Rockets being shot at civilians in Sderot is not merely a criminal act, and to label it as such is to downplay it. Jimmy has a rich record of downplaying Arab terror and demonizing Israeli actions, and this is yet another example.

How Israel can win the symbolic war

Palestine Today reports (autotranslated):

Iranian press reports quoted a prominent leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah that the next confrontation between the party and Israel - when it occurs - will be transformed from the defensive to the offensive, where elements of Hezbollah will be fighting the Israelis "behind the lines" "For the first time since the year 1948 Within Palestine itself. "

The anonymous official, who is "a member of Hezbollah's Shura Council," threatened the transfer of clashes to the cities, towns and Israeli settlements themselves.

Ya Libnan reports it as well, with a caveat that Hezbollah saying that it will not begin hostilities:

A high-ranking Hezbollah official has said the party would launch an offensive on Israel in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 in case the Jewish state wages a new war.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, made the statement in an interview with Syrian magazine "al-Hakika," the Iranian News Agency Fars reported.

"We would not initiate war but in case they wage any war in the future ...there will be a counter attack behind the front lines...and for the first time since 1948 in Palestine itself," the official reportedly said.

As with all the recent wars, the value is symbolic and not strategic. Being able to step foot in "Palestine" would be one more step in erasing Israel's psychological deterrence towards the Arab world's aggressive wishes. Just as when Fatah began, the terrorists want to goad the larger Arab world into attacking Israel and a major means to achieve that is to make Israel look like it is vulnerable and can be defeated. Breaking through the blue line would go a long way towards that goal.

Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations also need to recruit members from the tens of millions of radical Muslims worldwide and in order to do that they need to convince them that it is possible to win. This is one reason (besides the ever-important Arab pride) why every war that Israel wins in a less decisive manner than 1967 is spun as an Arab "victory".

Israel's defense forces need to understand that they need to win not only military victories but also symbolic victories. This is not easy when the Arab bar for "victory" has been lowered as far as it has.

This is why Israel needs to work harder on the symbolism front.

The words that the PA's Abbas Zaki said recently on Lebanese TV point towards what Israel has to do. He said, "The important thing is that in any operation, Israel will pay a price. We don't want cases in which you don't kill even a chicken, but Israel kills 20 of you. I salute any operation that makes Israel pay a heavy price."

This means that Israel need to make sure that every operation hurts the terrorists and their supporters, not only in a military sense but also in a symbolic sense. The rules need to be changed in order to accomplish this. And the easiest, most painless, most humane and most effective way to do it would be to take land each time Israel is forced to respond to attacks. The amount isn't important, the symbolism is. If this policy is done consistently and automatically, the incentive for terror attacks decreases dramatically. It is simply Pavlovian - the Arab people would see that every attack is counterproductive and that they lose something tangible after every outrage. It is a real implementation of "land for peace."

Hezbollah considers Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon to be a victory; a reoccupation of even a square kilometer cannot be spun away. Hamas likewise would need to re-evaluate the rocket weapon if each one resulted in the loss of territory, even if the land is bare desert. Just the fact that Israelis move the fence - a completely symbolic move - would cause many terror supporters to think twice before the next attack. Right now all they are losing is people - a commodity that they do not value; in fact a commodity that is worth more to them dead than alive. People are nothing more than manufactured weapons to them.

Land is not something they can be as cavalier or cynical about. The symbolic value of losing land as a result of evil makes that evil act much less palatable. The symbolic value of re-establishing a Jewish community in Gaza - explicitly as a result of X number of ongoing terror attacks - would be incalculable, and would do more to stop terror than killing 10,000 terrorists.

Britain in even worse shape than I realized

It is one thing to read blog entries about how some Islamists plot to take over the world; it is another thing to read their professional, English-language flyers:

This came from a blog called shariah4britain.wordpress.com.

One of the commenters who attended said:

Alhamdulilah the conference went very well. The speakers got the point across to the audience. Insha’Allah there will be more to come….Untill the flag of Islaam is flying high over the shores of britain (Insha’allah).

The West tends to think of religion as a private, personal matter. To Muslims, however, religion is a political system as much as it is a belief system, as is evident by the quotes in the poster above (emphasis in the original):

“It is he (Allah) who has sent His Messenger (SAW) with guidance and the religion of truth, in order for it to be dominant over all other religions, even though the Mushrikoon (disbelievers) hate it.”
(EMQ at-Tawbah, 9:33)

“Verily Allah has shown me the eastern and western part of the earth, and I saw the authority of my Ummah (nation) dominate all that I saw.”
(Saheeh Muslim, hadeeth no.2889)

As Allah (SWT) has said, this religion (i.e. Islam) is the only religion of truth; and the reason why He has sent us this Deen is, “…in order for it to be dominant over all other religions.” Thus, Allah (SWT) never sent us this Deen as a mere spiritual belief. This Deen has been sent to us by Almighty Allah (SWT) in order for it to be implemented and for the whole of mankind to abide by it.

So while I have been ambivalent about things like Shari'a banking, if the purpose is not to accommodate Muslims but as a means to control non-Muslims it is a completely different matter.

And Great Britain has been showing a very worrying willingness to bend its citizens to Sharia law, as this story of "Muslim men-only swimming hours" at a British public pool shows.

Today's AFP media bias: "Hardline Jews"

The phrase "hardline Jews" appears at least twice in recent AFP reports.

One is in a discussion of Peace Now:

Loathed or loved by many Israelis, Peace Now this week marks 30 years as a movement which has deeply influenced public opinion but not achieved its vision of peace with the Palestinians.

...The peace movement was a counterforce to hardline Jews who settled the West Bank and Gaza Strip after their occupation in the 1967 Middle East war.

Their usage of language certainly makes clear what AFP thinks of Peace Now and of "hardline Jews." You will never see them refer to Peace Now as an "extreme Left group" or as being comprised of "hardline terrorist enablers," both of which are more accurate than to consider them a "peace" group.

Today, we see the identical phrase used in a more curious manner, in a headline, no less:

Hardline Jews make night pilgrimages to West Bank tomb

NABLUS, West Bank (AFP) — Headlights pierce the misty night as the armoured bus packed with hardline Jews winds down the road from a hilltop settlement into the heart of the Palestinian town of Nablus.

Their destination is the burial place of the biblical patriarch Joseph, a pilgrimage site that has become a grim symbol of the region's intractable conflict.

Nearly 100 men wearing black hats or skullcaps and clutching prayer books huddle in the bus, some reading prayers by the light of mobile phones.

"This is a path of devotion for God. I have gone this way dozens of times and will continue doing it," says Benjamin Makhleb, a 23-year-old member of the Hassidic Breslav movement who had come from Jerusalem.

The tense silence that grips this cloak-and-dagger mission gives way to raptured singing and praying as the two buses pass through the checkpoint at the entrance to Nablus, under heavy military escort.

It is just past 2 am.

"This is the cradle of our existence as a Jewish people. Joseph's Tomb is part of every Jew and it is shameful to see us having to sneak in here like thieves in the night," says 23-year-old Nathan Azur.

"It saddens and angers me to see this," says the bearded student from a town near Tel Aviv.

Everyone makes the journey for religious reasons, but for many extreme right-wing Israelis it is also an affirmation of what they see as the Jews' right to control and govern their sacred sites in the Holy Land.

So the desire to have Jews control Jewish sacred sites is the definition, according to AFP, of being an "extreme right-wing Israeli." Of course, this definition works well for those who want to see historic Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria - where essentially every major Jewish shrine lies - to be Judenrein.

Would AFP consider any Muslims who travel to pray at the Al Aqsa mosque in territory controlled by Jews to be "hardline Muslims" or would that be considered a normal, and normative, human right? Would AFP consider Palestinian Authority members who advocate the Arabization of all of Israel to be "extreme Palestinian nationalists"?