Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 16, 2009

How Will Nassur Die? [new EoZ video]

Terrorists recycling unexploded Israeli munitions?

According to an article in the Islamic Jihad-oriented Palestine Today, the percentage of unexploded IDF ordnance in Gaza is considered a "gift from the sky:"

Abu Maaz of the resistance in the zz el-Deen al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades of the military wing of Hamas made clear that dozens of missiles and rockets by Israeli aircraft over the Gaza Strip in the recent war did not explode, and Hamas was quick to dismantle them and use the material that is inside.

He said: "After the war of aggression was stopped, we discovered dozens of rocket-propelled grenades which did not explode ... a gift from the sky. We in the resistance, we found the treasure trove".

"Abu Anas", an expert in explosives engineering al-Qassam Brigades, confirmed that the resistance is in the process of dismantling the missiles that did not explode, and making use of inside and outside.

Abu Anas noted that 5% of the rockets shot by Israel did not explode...

They go on to say that since there is a scarcity of raw materials in Gaza to manufacture missiles, these will come in very handy.

They also quote a YNet article about this phenomenon, which I could not find in English.

Does Hezbollah have anti-aircraft weapons?

The LA Times blog says:

Hezbollah said it has a right to acquire and use antiaircraft weaponry against Israeli warplanes, in a ceremony commemorating assassinated leaders of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant group.
"We have the right to possess any weapons including air defense arms, and we have all the right to use these arms if we wished to," Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah said to crowds in the southern suburb of Beirut, which is the group's stronghold.

Nasrallah did not confirm or deny whether the group had acquired antiaircraft missiles but said that Hezbollah has built its successes on the "basis of surprises."

Israeli warplanes have launched regular flights over Lebanon since the 2006 war between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.

Nasrallah said that Israel's superiority in its wars is only due to its air force, adding that Israeli ground troops have proved their weaknesses during the 2006 war and the latest offensive on Gaza.
"If the air equation changes, the equation for the whole struggle changes," he said.

Al Quds - Arabic seems to have understood Nasrallah a little differently, assuming that the autotranslation is correct:

Secretary-General suggested the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, on Monday evening that "the resistance in Lebanon has anti-aircraft missiles," saying that "resistance to the full right to possess such a weapon."

It is interesting that the Lebanese government doesn't seem to have any reaction to an extra-governmental militia gaining such capabilities.

It will also be interesting to see if UNIFIL - which is supposed to guard against such things - has any reaction.

Latest on UNRWA school casualties

Following up on the IDF report that the Arab-sourced casualty numbers from Gaza are completely wrong....

From JPost:

Amid controversy over the number of Palestinian civilians killed and wounded during Operation Cast Lead against Hamas last month, the United Nations is working on compiling its own report to determine the exact figure.

Work on the UN figures is being led by the office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO).

UN officials said Monday that researchers were scouring data on the number of casualties provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry, the IDF and Gaza-based human rights organizations. The work is complicated and will last several weeks, if not months, one official said.

Isn't it amazing that uncritical belief in bogus statistics takes no time at all, while doing actual research takes months?

Even so, the UNRWA has already told me that they stand by their figures of 30 killed initially at the UN school, without being able to tell me how they came up with that number.

"It [the IDF report] prompts inquiries," a UN official said. "The UN is researching from various sources the number of casualties to gain clarity on the number of people who were killed in the conflict."

Yet if the IDF hadn't done some research, the chances that the UN would have cared to check is somewhere between zero and none.

Defense sources also reiterated their earlier claim that three civilians and some nine terror operatives were killed in an IDF shelling near a UN school in Jabalya in early January, and not 40 or more people as was widely reported at the time based on Palestinian claims.

A New York Times report from the Gaza funeral after the incident stated that "the row of bodies [were] uncountable in the press of the mourning crowd" and cited reports that as many as 40 people were killed in the shelling outside the school. It said Palestinian hospital sources reported that 10 of the dead were children and five were women, and quoted one mourner who said she had lost nine members of her extended family, age three to 25.

The defense sources Monday said that the IDF had studied the incident and was adamant that its figures were correct.

It would take guts for the IDF to make such a claim if there were really 30-40 dead, and their credibility would take a huge hit if they were found to be wrong. Unfortunately, one cannot say the same for the Palestinian Arab side - although their credibility for casualties has been nil for years, the press is always eager to report their accusations as facts.

Jews in Arab lands fearful

From AP:

CAIRO (AP) — Outrage at the Israel war in the Gaza Strip has turned to intimidation and even violence against Jews living in some Muslim lands, raising questions about the stability of these often tiny communities.
In Turkey, Yemen and Indonesia, Muslims have shut down a synagogue, stoned homes and used anti-Semitic slurs. Although the incidents have been isolated, the Jewish minorities in these lands are concerned.
"Before the conflict broke out in Gaza, we were very involved in the community," said Yusron Samba, whose family for years had operated a synagogue in Indonesia that shut down in fear over the war. "Of course we're afraid following strong reaction recently from some Islamic groups questioning our presence here."
The fury over Gaza has centered around the hundreds of Palestinian civilians killed in the war, in which 13 Israelis also died. Israel says it could not avoid killing civilians because Gaza militants operate from residential areas, but critics accuse it of using disproportionate force in its war to halt rocket attacks on its territory.
The steep Palestinian death toll sparked protests across the Muslim world, Europe and in Venezuela, and in some cases, the rage turned to violence. ...
In Yemen, where Islamic militancy is on the rise, anti-Israel protesters pelted several Jewish homes with rocks and smashed windows, injuring at least one person, security officials said.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh has offered to give plots of land in the capital, San'a, free of charge to Jews who want to relocate from the provinces, officials said. No one has taken him up on the offer, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the offer was made privately in a meeting between the president and Jewish leaders.
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim state, Islamic hard-liners marched to the gates of the country's only synagogue, chanting, "Go to hell, Israel."
"If Israel refuses to stop its attacks and oppression of the Palestinian people, we don't need to defend (the synagogue's) presence here," said Abdusshomad Buchori, who led the protest in the town of Surabaya and has threatened to drive out its Jews. The synagogue has been shuttered since.
In the past, Jews in Surabaya have experienced no hostility, Samba said. But increasingly — probably because of events like the Gaza war — a smattering of swastikas has appeared on the backs of buses, he said.
Because of the hostile reaction, "we're not exposing ourselves to the media right now," he said. "We also report all protests to the police."
Several dozen Jews are thought to be living in Indonesia, descendants of traders from Europe and Iraq.
The Iranian Jewish community went out of its way to distance itself from Israel during the Gaza fighting, issuing a statement expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and condemning the Israeli offensive. "The inhuman behavior of the Zionist regime contradicts the religious teachings" of the Jewish faith, the statement said.
A group of Iranian Jews, including Jewish lawmaker Siamak Mara-Sedq, protested against the war in front of the U.N. office in Tehran in late December.
Turkey is Israel's best friend in the Muslim world, but the greatest turbulence over the Gaza war has taken place there. ...
Some of Turkey's 23,000 Jews were alarmed by a government-ordered minute of silence in schools for Gaza's dead, which they fear is a sign that the Islamic-leaning government's declared intolerance of anti-Semitism might waver. Erdogan's recent observation that the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews also rankled many who took it to mean that Turkey considered them guests, not citizens.
Although Turkish fury was mostly directed at Israel, a few Turkish protesters held placards with anti-Semitic messages. Turkish media showed a photograph of three men in front of the office of a cultural association, holding a dog and a sign saying, "Dogs are allowed, but Jews and Armenians aren't."
Jewish community leaders say hundreds of anti-Semitic writings have appeared in Turkish media, and that prosecutors have failed to take legal action.
"Everyone can criticize the policies of Israel, we respect that," Silvyo Ovadya, head of the Jewish community in Turkey, told the Milliyet newspaper. "However, every speech criticizing Israel has a tendency to turn into cries of 'Damn Jews.' I don't recall such an atmosphere previously."
Erdogan has tried to reassure Turkey's Jews, who live in a country of more than 70 million Muslims, that criticism of Israel does not amount to an attack on Jews and their faith.
"There has been no anti-Semitism in the history of this country," Erdogan told ruling party lawmakers last week. "As a minority, they're our citizens. Both their security and the right to observe their faith are under our guarantee."

UNRWA stands by its story

In the wake of the IDF report that only 12 were killed outside the Jabalya UNRWA school in Gaza, I asked UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness:

As I am sure you have seen by now, the IDF is claiming that there were 12 killed by shells outside the Jabalya UNRWA school on January 6, not the 30-40 that have been claimed by others. (See http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304788684&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.) The IDF is also saying that only three of the victims were civilians.

I seem to recall the UN or UNRWA saying that some 30 were killed immediately and another 10-15 died overnight from their injuries.

Does UNRWA have a list of the dead from that incident, along with their ages? If not, where did UNRWA get their numbers from - was it from local doctors, or the media, or some other source? (The PCHR mentioned 27 killed initially but did not list the names, as they usually do.)

In other words, can UNRWA show that the IDF is wrong in its account of the incident, and if so, how?

He replied, in his usual terse manner:

Let it all come out in an independent investigation. C

I persisted:

John Ging said at the time that there were 30 dead and 55 injured.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUKN06430746

Does UNRWA still stand behind that statement or are you saying now that it is unclear? And are you saying that UNRWA does not have a list of victims from the incident? Where exactly did Ging get his numbers from?

And Chris replied:

We stand by the figures and our call for an impartial investigation to see if there have been violations of int humanitarian law. C

Meanwhile, I found John Ging's email address and asked him similar questions; we'll see if he replies.

Ben-Yehuda in the comments noticed that the Kadima website was been hacked.

It does appear to have been done by hackers in Gaza, as the domain name (gaza-hacker.com) is registered in Gaza itself.

Registrant:
Mr. Mohammed AbuYousef
Palestine - Gaza
Gaza, PS 00972
IL

Registrar: DOTREGISTRAR
Domain Name: GAZA-HACKER.COM
Created on: 08-MAR-07
Expires on: 08-MAR-12
Last Updated on: 06-FEB-09

Administrative, Technical Contact:
AbuYousef, Mr. Mohammed Master@Mohammed.ps
Palestine - Gaza
Gaza, PS 00972
IL
00972599901972

Mohammed.ps is a malformed page dedicated to the "prophet" Mohammed himself.

The hacked page itself has some stupid pictures of burning Israeli flags and the like; it is playing what sounds like a PalArab national anthem; pretty boring stuff.

The gaza-hacker.com site itself is hosted by a US site called liquidweb.com. If you are so inclined you might want to complain to them:

OrgName: Liquid Web, Inc.
OrgID: LQWB
Address: 4210 Creyts Rd.
City: Lansing
StateProv: MI
PostalCode: 48917
Country: US

ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.liquidweb.com:4321/

NetRange: 72.52.128.0 - 72.52.255.255
CIDR: 72.52.128.0/17
NetName: LIQUIDWEB-6
NetHandle: NET-72-52-128-0-1
Parent: NET-72-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS.LIQUIDWEB.COM
NameServer: NS1.LIQUIDWEB.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2006-08-03
Updated: 2007-03-26

OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE551-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-800-580-4985
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@liquidweb.com

OrgTechHandle: IPADM47-ARIN
OrgTechName: IP Administrator
OrgTechPhone: +1-800-580-4985
OrgTechEmail: ipadmin@liquidweb.com

The most effective way to get rid of the cyber-arsonists is to complain to their hosts, and from their web page it appears that they have been kicked off of previous hosts as well. A polite email to abuse@liquidnet.com or webmaster@liquidnet.com should be enough.

UPDATE: That was not the official Kadima site. The real site is here. (h/t lol)

Priceless Holzberg photos, videos restored

In Judaism there is a concept of "chesed shel emet," of a true kindness that can never be repaid. It is usually said with regard to taking care of the needs of the departed, as the recipients of the kindness can never return the favor.

Here is a beautiful example.

During the massacre in the Mumbai Chabad House, the murderers not only shot the Holzbergs multiple times, but they also shot their computer.

An Israeli company has spent many hours recovering the contents of the damaged hard disk, and have now restored thousands of photos and videos of the Holzberg family - priceless memories that can now be seen by the grandparents as well as little Moishe.

Here is an Israeli TV report about this huge mitzvah. It's in Hebrew, but easy to understand even if you don't know the language, and you can also see clips of the Holzbergs that would have been lost forever, as well as the reaction of the grandparents upon seeing these photos for the first time:

Holtzberg's Computer Restored from COLlive.com on Vimeo.

(h/t Atlas)

Work accident! (correction)

From Ma'an:

A Palestinian was killed on Monday morning and four others were injured in a mysterious explosion in the northern Gaza Strip, medical sources reported. One Palestinian, identified as Rajab Usama Subuh, 25, was killed in the blast, while two of four others injured in Beit Lahiya were in critical condition just before noon on Monday.

Earlier, Gazans had claimed this came from an Israeli artillery shell, but the IDF denied any activities in the area. The PalArab self-death count in 2009 is now at 29. UPDATE: This was not a work accident, just an apparent case of stupidity:

Palestinian hospital officials say a 25-year-old Gaza man has been killed and five people have been wounded in a blast along the border with Israel.
Palestinian security officials say the explosion in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya was caused when people who were melting down scrap metal for recycling inadvertently threw an explosive device into the fire.

This no longer falls into my definition of self-death (although, as Richard from Augean Stables points out in the comments, it is a Darwin Award candidate,) so we are back down to 28, unless more information comes out.

(h/t PTWatch)

Two degrees of separation, carnival edition

I was linked to in Soccer Dad's weekly Shiny Happy Dhimmi #13. Soccer Dad and I are two degrees separated from each other by both of us knowing Elie.

I am also included in the two hundred somethingth edition of Haveil Havalim, this week hosted by Leora of Here in Highland Park. There is very little doubt that she and I know at least a few people in common, making us also two degrees separated.

And I recently found out that I am also two degrees separated from Jameel at The Muqata, through his brother. Whether I can parlay that into waffles remains to be seen.

PalArab news roundup 2-15-09

A 46 year old Palestinian Arab woman was shot and killed in Gaza, as terrorists were training in the former Jewish settlement of Nitzarim and a stray bullet hit her in the chest.

A man who was abducted by Hamas in early January died from his injuries last week.

Hamas claims that they have body parts of an Israeli soldier. Interestingly, this sounds like the same fake soldier that Hamas claimed to have abducted and kept for two days, yet they cannot produce his name or any identifiable information about him.

What do the settlements and Gilad Shalit have in common? They are both considered "obstacles to peace!" According to the DFLP, Israel's insistence on the release of Shalit is making a truce so much harder, and of course (as with the settlements) it is Israel's fault that there is no peace.

The rumors of an imminent agreement, including the release of Gilad Shalit and Marwan Barghouti, have been going on for weeks now; they seem to be accelerating. I haven't been talking about it much because it is still pure rumor, but just letting you know that the stories have been coming out every day about breakthroughs in negotiations. Similarly, there are also stories about negotiations on the verge of collapse.

Muslim leaders continue their daily accusations of Israeli attempts to destroy Al Aqsa. Today they claim to have seen cracks in the ceiling, and they are blaming Israeli excavations that they are convinced are going on beneath the Temple Mount.

A programming glitch seems to have caused a number of SMS messages to be sent to Jordanian cell phone users saying, in English and Arabic, "Welcome to Israel. We wish you a pleasant stay. We hope you enjoy the roaming services we provide." I'm sure that someone will use this as proof that Israel is planning to attack Jordan.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count rises to 28.

The UNRWA school story was a lie

The Jerusalem Post has seen the (still incomplete) IDF list of people killed in Gaza, and the story that Hamas (as well as the Palestinian Health Ministry, UNRWA and PCHR) have been telling the media are absolute lies:

While the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose death toll figures have been widely cited, reports that 895 Gaza civilians were killed in the fighting, amounting to more than two-thirds of all fatalities, the IDF figures shown to the Post on Sunday put the civilian death toll at no higher than a third of the total.

The international community had been given a vastly distorted impression of the death toll because of "false reporting" by Hamas, said Col. Moshe Levi, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), which compiled the IDF figures.

As an example of such distortion, he cited the incident near a UN school in Jabalya on January 6, in which initial Palestinian reports falsely claimed IDF shells had hit the school and killed 40 or more people, many of them civilians.

In fact, he said, 12 Palestinians were killed in the incident - nine Hamas operatives and three noncombatants. Furthermore, as had since been acknowledged by the UN, the IDF was returning fire after coming under attack, and its shells did not hit the school compound.

"From the beginning, Hamas claimed that 42 people were killed, but we could see from our surveillance that only a few stretchers were brought in to evacuate people," said Levi, adding that the CLA contacted the PA Health Ministry and asked for the names of the dead. "We were told that Hamas was hiding the number of dead."

This is so amazing that I decided to go back to the PCHR website and see exactly what they reported that day from the UNRWA school, since they typically give the names of the dead:

At approximately 15:35, IOF tanks fired 4 shells at Jabalya refugee camp. On the shells hit a house belonging to Samir Shafeeq Deeb, 43, Killing him and his mother, Shamma Salem Deeb, 70; three of his children: 'Essam, 12, Mohammad, 23, and Fatima, 20; five of his brother's children: Nour, 2, Mustafa, 12, Mohammad, 17, Aseel, 7, and Alaa', 19; and his brother's wife, Amal Matar Deeb, 34. The other three shells hit al-Fakhoura School which was sheltering approximately dozens of families who fled their homes in Beit Lahia, Killing 27 civilians instantly, including 8 children, 2 brothers ans a man and his son, and wounding at least 50 civilians. IOF claimed that the school was used by Hamas to launch attacks on Israel. UNRWA sources and eyewitnesses completely refuted this claim. However, the justification used by IOF implies they deliberately targeted the civilians inside the school, which constitutes a war crime under international law.

While PCHR is most willing to list the names of the Deeb family - which did appear (as far as I know) to have been a tragic accident - notice that they simply say that 27 were killed at the school, without listing names, and that the shells hit the school (which we know is not true.)

The entire episode as originally reported was a lie: Israel didn't hit the school, 40+ civilians didn't die (as I mentioned that the time, that is a huge death count for tank shells), and most of the death were in fact terrorists.

The JPost article continues:

Basing its work on the official Palestinian death toll of 1,338, Levi said the CLA had now identified more than 1,200 of the Palestinian fatalities. Its 200-page report lists their names, their official Palestinian Authority identity numbers, the circumstances in which they were killed and, where appropriate, the terrorist group with which they were affiliated.

The CLA said 580 of these 1,200 had been conclusively "incriminated" as members of Hamas and other terrorist groups.

Another 300 of the 1,200 - women, children aged 15 and younger and men over the age of 65 - had been categorized as noncombatants, the CLA said.

Counted among the women, however, were female terrorists, including at least two women who tried to blow themselves up next to forces from the Givati and Paratroopers' Brigades. Also classed as noncombatants were the wives and children of Nizar Rayyan, a Hamas military commander who refused to allow his family to leave his home even after he was warned by Israel that it would be bombed.

The 320 names yet to be classified are all men; the IDF has yet complete its identification work in these cases, but estimates that two-thirds of them were terror operatives.

The CLA gave the Post the names of several fatalities who it said had been classified by the Palestinians as "medics," but who it stated were Hamas fighters, including Anas Naim, the nephew of Hamas Health Minister Bassem Naim, who was killed during clashes with the IDF on January 4 in the Sheikh Ajlin neighborhood of Gaza City.

Following the clashes, the Palestinian press reported that Naim was killed and that he was a medic with the Palestinian Red Crescent. The Gaza CLA, however, produced photographs of Naim posing holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and a Kalashnikov assault rifle that had been posted on a Hamas Web site.

...As a consequence of the false information, the IDF was considering setting up a "response team" for future conflicts whose job would be to collect information, analyze it and issue reports as rapidly as possible that refuted Hamas fabrications.

CLA head Col. Moshe Levi acknowledged on Sunday that all this information - on both such specific incidents as the UN school and the overall classifications of the dead - would probably be largely ignored today, since it was being made available so long after the fighting ended. But Levi explained that the IDF was not prepared to issue information unless and until it was confident of its accuracy, no matter how grievous the damage to Israel's image, and the consequent political pressures caused by the delays in contesting inaccurate facts and figures.

Unbelievable. This report is coming out four weeks too late but at least it is coming out. Reporters should have been skeptical from the start about the Gaza "atrocity" stories given the Palestinian Arab penchant for lying.

I hope that the IDF starts showing this report to other journalists.