Home stretch on the holidays - here in the Diaspora we have two more days, for Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.
Play nicely and have a good Yom Tov! I hope to be back Wednesday night.
Elder of ZiyonSecurity forces in Natanz have arrested two suspected "spy pigeons" near Iran's controversial uranium enrichment facility, the reformist Etemad Melli newspaper reported on Monday.Good job, Zionist psy-ops! While you send the obvious pigeons to be caught, the real nano-technology spy gnats are gathering up petabytes of information!One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan in Isfahan province, the report cited an unnamed informed source as saying, adding that some metal rings and invisible strings were attached to the bird.
"Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings," the source was quoted as saying of the second pigeon.
The source gave no further description of the pigeons, neither their current status nor what their fate will be.
Elder of Ziyon
Elder of Ziyon"They benefit twice," he said. "Cutting the trees down benefits the groves, and they also benefit financially because the damage supposedly was caused by settlers."Proving once again that Israeli "extremists" are people who want to live in peace with their neighbors, and Palestinian Arab "extremists" are people who want to blow up their Jewish neighbors.
Lieberman also recalled how leftists "torpedoed" an agreement between residents of the Itamar settlement and their Arab neighbors.
"Village representatives would have gone to the community and, along with Itamar residents, evaluated the crops' yield, and determined the sum Palestinians would receive for the harvest. The extreme left prevented this," he said.
Lieberman admits, however, that the so-called "hilltop youth" of the surrounding outposts often clash with the farmers.
"If we don't protect the individual rights of the Palestinians, our neighbors we will break our hold and our roots in Judea and Samaria. We have an interest in maintaining what belongs to them, and what belongs to us. They are human beings, and we must deal with them as with human beings," he said.
Orit Struk, the head of Judea and Samaria Human Rights Group, said the media's treatment of confrontations between settlers and Palestinians is hypocritical.
"More than a year ago we released a document describing hundreds of instances of Palestinians harming Jewish farmers and their property. The media wasn't interested at all, and the police weren't exactly excited either," she said.
Elder of ZiyonIsrael has to be the biggest nation of self-indulgent whiners, narcissists and gun wielding paranoid thugs on the planet.Sure enough, his audience rises to the occasion, with his first commenter posting this brilliant analysis:And delusional to boot.
Ok folks, i don't like to boast about myself a lot, because i like to be as humble as i can, i am not smart, nor a scientist nor a psychologist. However i think that am a very instinct-oriented person, and my instincts and senses tell me that Israelites want to control a great part of the world, if not the whole world.He also has a graphic on his site to boycott Israeli goods and claiming that you can tell what products are made in Israel by UPC code, which even Muslim boycotters have found out is simply not true. But since he defines himself as being part of a "fact based reality" I suppose that this is irrelevant.
Funny, but I can't help but to remember that before Israel came into existence, the US had NO enemies in the ME.Which is really funny, because the US had enemies in the Middle East since the 18th century!
Elder of ZiyonFilet mignon menu brightens fearsome West Bank wallReuters again downplays Israeli reasons for building the fence, putting "security barrier" in scare quotes as if that could hardly be the reason Israel built the wall.
It might be a while before some future U.S. president prevails on Israel to "tear down this wall," so Palestinian restaurateur Joseph Hazboon printed his menu on it instead...in waterproof colors.When Israel ran a towering concrete "security barrier" past the window of the Hazboon family's Bethlehem property a few years ago, it seemed liked the kiss of death commercially.
But Hazboon, 35, hit on the idea of transforming what was now a highly undesirable location into a lucrative attraction.
He renamed the place "The Wall Lounge" and, judging by the results, the setting is surprisingly popular with tourists.
...The barrier is made of razor wire-tipped fences, walls of the sort that block the sound from motorways, and mightier sections of concrete panels similar to those that East Germany once used to seal off the West, complete with watchtowers.
...Like the Berlin Wall, which Ronald Reagan famously demanded be torn down, the Israeli barrier has attracted artists, poets, spraypaint taggers and jokers, whose colorful works take some of the menace out of its hard gray concrete slabs.
Elder of ZiyonHarvesting olives is a laborious process, not made easier if teargas is drifting over the groves as it does most Fridays here in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli-Palestinian clashes are almost ritual.Since this is the first paragraph of the article, it sets the tone for the piece: Israelis fire tear gas and Palestinian Arab farmers therefore cannot harvest their crops.
"This happens two or three times a week maybe. But with an emphasis on Fridays," says Ram Kaho, an Israeli border police officer whose squad of 40 patrols one of the many fault-lines on the tense interface between the two communities.So Reuters is saying that the problem is both Jews having the audacity of living near Arabs, which is of course considered provocative, and Jews wanting to separate from Arabs with a fence, which is considered a violation of international law. Either way, the Arabs can't be blamed for anything.
Kaho's sector is where the Jewish settlement of Hashmonaim rubs up close to the Arab village of Nilin -- soon to be cut off by the barrier Israel is building in the valley between.
Injuries? From what? Reuters has not yet told us. The only people at fault mentioned so far are Jews, so perhaps they are injuring themselves?
"This is an especially difficult place," he says. "In relation to other places we have lots of injuries. So it's a very problematic area."
Israeli settlements on occupied land in the West Bank are perhaps the most contentious issue in the way of a peace settlement with the Palestinians ending decades of conflict.This has been repeated so often that most people cannot notice the obvious absurdity: settlements don't stop peace; terrorism is what stops peace. Before the current Intifada, Israelis and Palestinian Arabs visited each other, shopped in each others' villages, and worked together, and the settlements weren't a factor in real-life interactions.
The Nilin clashes have been going on for about a year.Again, we have yet to be told what exactly happens in these "clashes."
In 2004, the World Court in The Hague ruled that Israel's proposed 720-km (430-mile) barrier on occupied Palestinian land -- begun in 2002 -- was illegal.But why believe them? Just because the number of successful suicide bombings has decreased dramatically since the barrier was started? Nah, it is just an unverified claim. And why should Israel's claim that lives are being saved be more important than a non-binding court ruling?
Israel says the barrier, a mix of wire fence and concrete walls, keeps suicide bombers out of its cities.
When Kaho's police hear the Friday Muslim call to prayer from the hill opposite, they brace for action. They are sure that as soon as prayers are over, some Palestinians backed by international activist supporters, will begin throwing rocks.Rocks? Who said anything about rock throwing? No, in Reuters' universe, the (potentially lethal) rocks that are thrown at Israelis is in paragraph 9, but the (non-lethal) tear gas that Israel shoots in return is in paragraph 1. Causality is a bit less than obvious.
...Half-way up the hill, a couple of young Palestinian men and their father perch on ladders, stripping blue-black olives from a tree onto canvasses spread on the ground below.Would anyone even dare to suggest that if the protesters would stop throwing rocks that perhaps there wouldn't be any tear gas? Or is the IDF more active against the olive harvesters?
They seem oblivious of the flying whiz and exploding pop of tear-gas canisters just up the slope. But the breeze soon blows acrid fumes over the small stony terrace of ochre soil where they are working.
"There would be more of us here harvesting, normally, but the soldiers make us go away. And we send our young kids home," said one of the men, who declined to give his name.Ah, we have someone here saying that Israel stops the olive pickers. Sometimes. Although not when any reporter is around.
The protesters are no match for the Israelis, who have automatic weapons and armoured jeeps. Three Palestinians have been shot dead in the West Bank over the past four days, for aiming firebombs at troops, the army says.The first sentence implies that only Israel uses deadly force and sets up the "David and Goliath" myth. The second sentence follows through, saying that Israel kills protesters, only incidentally mentioning that the "protesters" had deadly weapons themselves. The entire paragraph is structured to make Israel look as aggressive as possible and to give it no reason to defend itself against firebombs - perhaps because the IDF has jeeps?
"Here we really, really try to avoid any use of lethal force," says Kaho. He relies on an arsenal of gas and stun grenades, or "shock weapons" as he calls them, to keep the stone-throwing attackers at bay.Here we start to get a little balance - when most readers have already moved to the comics page. The major part of the article demonizing Israel is finished, now Reuters can pretend to be fair. Allow that Israel tries to avoid using lethal force after accusing Israel of killing protesters for little reason.
The olive harvesters are allowed to get on with their work but when the protesters mingle among them "we start to worry".You mean that the protesters - many from nowhere near the area - are perhaps the problem? You mean that the Palestinian Arab farmers would be allowed to harvest their olives without any problem if it wasn't for these outside troublemakers who encourage stone throwing and firebombs? Would real journalists perhaps try to expand upon this just a little bit?
Elder of Ziyon
After a number of photographs of two masked men transporting their booty from Egypt to Gaza, we finally get a chance to see what life-saving goods they brought for the starving Gazans stuck in their concentration-camp conditions. Medicines? Wheat? Rice?
Let's look a little closer....
So this is what they are starving for! The great taste of Gotcha!, a big hit of wafer layers, delicious caramel and crispy cereals in real milk chocolate!
Elder of ZiyonSony has been touting LittleBigPlanet as one of its biggest holiday release titles. But the company announced it would delay the worldwide launch, which had been scheduled for Oct. 24, because one of the background music tracks in the game might be offensive to Muslims.The song in question can be downloaded from iTunes, as it is freely available and was sung by a devout Muslim. Although it has been out for a while, it had never been criticized before.The company’s European games division put out a statement that said that the music, licensed from a record label, has “two expressions that can be found in the Qur’an.” It also apologizes for any offense. I’ve actually got a finished copy of the game and so it’s clear that Sony had already been moving ahead with manufacturing of disks for the launch. Now it will have to create new disks without the music.
That’s a big setback for Sony. game promises to be a mass market hit because of its appeal to both hardcore gamers. It isn’t clear when the new disks will be ready for launch. The game has a very high rank on GameRankings.com, which aggregates review scores, of 94.5 percent. It is the highest ranked recent game on the list.
To: Sony Computer Entertainment & Media MoleculeIt is remarkable that the gaming industry, which has no concerns about offending anyone else with ultra-violent and sexual scenes in its games, is suddenly so sensitive to one segment of the population.
While playing your latest game, "LittleBigPlanet" in the first level of the third world in the game (titled "Swinging Safari"), I have noticed something strange in the lyrics of the music track of the level. When I listened carefully, I was surprised to hear some very familiar Arabic words from the Quran. You can listen to part of the track here:
http://mt14.quickshareit.com/share/preview/soundclip22503c0.wav
The words are:
1- In the 18th second: "كل نفس ذائقة الموت" ("kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: 'Every soul shall have the taste of death').
2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "كل من عليها فان" ("kollo man alaiha fan", literally: 'All that is on earth will perish').
I asked many of my friends online and offline and they heard the exact same thing that I heard easily when I played that part of the track. Certain Arabic hardcore gaming forums are already discussing this, so we decided to take action by emailing you before this spreads to mainstream attention.
We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending. We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately via an online update, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.
We would also like to mention that this isn't the first time something like this happened in videogames. Nintendo's 1998 hit "Zelda: Ocarina of Time" contained a musical track with islamic phrases, but it was removed in later shipments of the game after Nintendo was contacted by Muslim organizations. Last year, Capcom's "Zack & Wiki" and Activision's "Call of Duty 4" also contained objectionable material offensive to Muslims that was spotted before the release of the final games, and both companies thankfully removed the content.
Elder of ZiyonIsrael’s closure of Gaza crossing points continues, with only a slight increase in the number of truckloads allowed entry... The number of truckloads of imported goods allowed into Gaza increased slightly compared to August 2008....imports for the month were slightly up from the August figures.And what does "slightly" mean? It means that the number of truckloads of goods increased from 3565 to 4049, an increase of 13%.
There was a noticeable decline in the number of truckloads carrying hygiene and cleaning supplies (82% less than in August), industrial/electrical appliances (33% less) and the non-edible consumables (39% less).If that is true, it must mean that some other goods increased more than the 13%, but the UN doesn't bother to break those down. It is apparent that Israel increased the amount of food, cement, gravel and fuel sent to Gaza significantly, but the UN doesn't mention this fact in its attempts to make Israel look as bad as possible.
In light of the inability of many Gazan businessmen to conduct trade through Gaza official crossings (Karni, Sufa and Kerem Shalom), Rafah tunnels have become a vital lifeline to obtain needed goods over the last year. Media reports estimate the number of tunnels to be in the hundreds, employing up to 6,000 Palestinians. On 25 September, the Hamas authority police introduced new regulations to control trade through the tunnels. A list of conditions were announced, among which was that all tunnel operators must meet certain standards in order for their tunnels to be licensed and allowed to operate. Numerous tents covering tunnel entrances are visible in the Rafah area and the industry is increasingly becoming open and controlled. The extent of the tunnel network is a direct result of the continued restrictions on access.Notice how the UN carefully refuses to mention the possibility of Egypt allowing trade to occur legally through Rafah.
While the number of settler-related incidents decreased in September, there are concerns that settler violence will increase during the October olive harvest as has been the case during past harvests.Invariably, if something good happens the UN spins it to make Israel look bad.
On 15 and 16 September, Erez crossing was closed, except for emergency medical and humanitarian cases, in response to the firing of a homemade rocket from Gaza towards Sderot.The adjective "homemade" is purely meant to trivialize the threat of the rockets towards Israel, and the implication is that Israel must not bother to defend itself.
Access for more than 60% of the Palestinian population to pray at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem was denied during the holy month of Ramadan (1-29 September). Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were denied entry, while the access of West Bank ID holders was regulated by a special permit regime, valid only on the four Fridays during the month.The absurdity of counting Gaza residents as part of the "60%" who were denied entry to Al Aqsa is self-evident, but it serves to make Israel once again look evil - for not allowing a large, unrepentantly hostile mass of people to cross though Israeli territory.
Elder of ZiyonSF Bay Area IMC is founded on the principle of open publishing. Reality dictates that the editorial collective will at times decide to hide posts and comments. This is not a decision that is taken lightly, however, and the editorial collective does its best refrain from hiding. Our vision for the function of the newswire, and the general framework in which all decisions to hide will be made, are as follows:Here are two comments that were made that Indymedia, that bastion of free speech, felt went over the line:Members of the Editorial Collective are permitted to hide posts or comments as long as that person's decision is based on at least one of the following three points:
- The newswire is intended to be a community media resource, a space free from spam and abuse in general; and
- That space will not contribute to the oppression of traditionally oppressed and marginalized groups.
The editorial collective may remove copyrighted material on request of the copyright owner. At any time another Editorial Collective member may dispute the hiding of a post or comment, based on our Principles of Unity or this policy.
- The post or comment constitutes abuse of the newswire (see note below);
- The post or comment undermines the Principles of Unity of the SF Bay Area IMC; e.g., right-wing propaganda or hate speech; or
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Comments, questions, and feedback regarding this policy are highly encouraged. Please write us at sfbay-web@lists.indymedia.org.
Both these comments were silently deleted.Why I am posting a commentby YerushalimeyThursday Oct 16th, 2008 11:10 AMI discovered your site when I visited Elderofziyon, where it was pointed out that whoever is putting these stickers on products is breaking Federal Law. I wanted to see for myself the kind of people who flout the laws of the country they live in and feel morally, ethically obliged to improve the behavior of people in other countries.
I discover that the people who call for support a boycott of hummus lack the integrity to boycott Israeli products like cell phone and computer technology or pharmaceuticals - presumably because it would inconvenience them.
And, when I returned to this site, I discovered that comments offering opposing opinions are soon deleted.
So I am writing to suggest you are a bunch of criminal hypocrites who cannot tolerate criticism, naively hoping that I will touch your conscience and you will let this comment stand.Boycott the racist, apartheid states of the Arab world!by Yehudi HazakThursday Oct 16th, 2008 11:11 AMFor the mother of all racism, xenophobia, sexism, and homophobia in the Middle East look at the "Arab" states many of which have large non-Arab minorities suffering under systematic discrimination and racist policies that keep them suppresed, such as the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, the Berbers in Morocco (where they actually outnumber Arabs) and Algeria, or the Assyrians in Iraq, or the black African and Christian southern Sudanese who suffered genocide at he hands of the the Arab Musims of northern Sudan over a horrific 20 year war that killed 2 million people. And where is indybay' conern about the genocide of non-arabs in Darfur? Oh, I forgot, taking the side of Arab nationalists in that one, too. And indybay's concern for the plight of LGBT in Arab and Muslim lands? Non-existent. Indybay's concern for gender equality, freedom of choice for women in the Arab and Muslim worlds? once again, non-existent.
You are all a bunch of moral hypocrites, obsessed about Israel, & willfully blind to the horrendous human rights disasters in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and as such your silence aids and abets the oppressors of the Middle East's non-Arab and non-Muslim minorities, women and LGBT.
BTW, you don't have to worry about the Jewish minorities in the Arab world: the Arab already ethnically cleansed 99% of the "their Jews" since 1948. Any concern by indybayers for this massive human rights crime? Likely not.
Putting your own labels on commercial packaged food is a crime...by ZionistThursday Oct 16th, 2008 12:07 PMPunishable by up to 3 yrs in prison. Enjoy!
But seriously, you bring up the 'don't let the evil Zionists distract you with their talk of other problems in the world!', but the truth is, the international 'left' is sick with a virus that has Jew-hatred at its core. Your obsessive focus on perceived injustice in Israel does definitely come at the expense of all the people who are suffering in other conflicts around the world. And on top of that, your understanding of the history of the conflict in the Middle East is hopelessly ignorant and filled with the evil lies that have been propagated by others before you.
But that's just my opinion, so carry on.
Elder of ZiyonSettlers attempting to impede Palestinian olive harvests initiated a bizarre new tactic on Thursday, apparently leaving flocks of sheep at olive groves to feed on the small trees.It may appear at first glance that using a resource like sheep to eat foods that are not part of any sheep's diet - and to train them to stay away from the grass and eat young trees, hurting their digestive systems and therefore ruining them as a cash crop - would be a highly inefficient method of harassing Palestinian Arab farmers.
Residents told Ma’an that Israeli settlers “dumped dozens of sheep” on Palestinian farmland neighboring the illegal settlement of Itamar, where the animals damaged and devoured dozens of olive and fig trees.
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