Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 11, 2009

Ancient synagogue unearthed in the Galilee

This handout file photo provided on September 11, 2009 by the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) shows a large carved stone found during excavations of a recently uncovered synagogue at Migdal on the north-western end of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. The synagogue, dated to the 2nd Temple period (50BC - 100AD) is one of the oldest ever found, and was unearthed at Migdal.... Archaeologists were particularly excited by the discovery of the stone depicting the menorah -- a seven-branched candelabrum -- from the Jewish Second Temple which was destroyed in 70 AD during the Roman siege of Jerusalem. (Getty Images)

In the middle of the 120 square meter main hall of the synagogue archaeologists discovered an unusual stone carved with a seven branched menorah . "We are dealing with an exciting and unique find," said excavation director and Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Dina Avshalom-Gorni.

The menorah engraving is the first of its kind to be discovered from the Early Roman period according Avshalom-Gorni who said the site joins just six synagogue locations that are know to date from the same time.

Avshalom-Gorni posited that the engraved menorah was done by an artist who had visited the main synagogue in Jerusalem known as the Second Temple where the actual menorah was believed to be kept.

3 Katyushas hit Israel from Lebanon

From Ha'aretz:

Three Katyusha rockets struck open fields near Nahariya on Friday. There have been no reports of casualties.

The rockets were fired from southern Lebanon and Israel Radio has reported that the Israel Defense Forces have launched retaliatory artillery into southern Lebanon.

Perhaps if Israel would just withdraw from occupied Lebanese territories, these sorts of incidents would stop. Hezbollah wouldn't have any incentive any more to attack Israelis.

Oh, sorry...Israel already withdrew some nine years ago.

Well, for sure, there must be some sort of valid reason for Hezbollah or their like-minded Islamist buddies to fire rockets at Israel, right? We just have to identify the just cause that Islamists are fighting for and then pressure Israel to give in, because it is an article of faith on this September 11th that people don't just attack civilians without good cause. They're hungry, they're stateless, they're disillusioned, they have poor self-esteem...if we just look hard enough I'm sure we can identify a good, defensible reason that we can blame Israel for.

Pure hatred cannot be the reason, because that is irrational, and everyone is fundamentally rational. To say otherwise makes you a bigot.

Some of my best friends are Zionists...ummm....

A comment at Solomonia by Neurodoc caught my eye:

Now, at the risk of denying Marc Garlasco any of the attention he deserves, might I point out something I have not seen mentioned about another HRW stalwart, Sarah Whitman [sic]? Am I the only one to think it noteworthy that Ms. Whitman's Facebook page identifies as a special friend of hers Adam Shapiro, the same Adam Shapiro who was a founder of International Solidarity Movement, buddy of Yassir Arafat, etc.? I don't see anyone among her friends that I recognize as an ardent supporter of Israel, matching the very much anti-Israel Shapiro.

Indeed, Sarah Leah Whitson's Facebook page includes Shapiro.

Now, I am not a big user of Facebook, so I don't know whether "friends" is meaningful at all in this context. But it may be a useful exercise to see if any of the "objective" members of NGOs like HRW have as many unabashed supporters of Israel as friends as they have unabashed haters.

This is a picture I took on the morning of September 11, 2006 from Jersey City, showing the downtown Manhattan skyline and superimposing the WTC. It is still jarring in its absence eight years later.

(My original photo disappeared from Imageshack, so I am indebted to Seraphic Secret for copying it last year.)

Two more murders in Gaza, and other news

Ramadan is such a peaceful time...

In the Ashanti camp in Gaza, gunmen shot and killed a 37-year old man and seriously wounded another as the victims prepared to eat their Iftar meal Wednesday night. Commenters in PalPress claim that this was a result of an old feud; the victim had apparently murdered another guy four years ago.

In that same camp, a family feud erupted in the murder of a 23-year old.

(I'm pretty sure these are two separate incidents. Firas Press reports them separately, although every other paper reports one or the other.)

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 186.

In other news, Palestine Today headlines a story that China provides 30% of Gaza's electricity. That would be a really stunning technological feat, but what the article means is that 30% of Gaza's electricity comes from generators made in China. Of course, that means that the fuel for the generators comes from Israel, but they aren't going to mention that part...

HRW sends out the sockpuppets (UPDATE)

Earlier this evening I received a comment from "Dash F.", about the Garlasco story, saying:

This is total nonsense. It's malicious and defamatory and borderline libelous, to be honest. The mere fact that someone collects a certain kind of military artifact does not make them loyal to what those artifacts represent. Saying Garlasco is a Nazi b/c he owns Nazi medals is like saying someone interested in cave paintings is a neanderthal. It simply makes no sense! Instead of dragging this man's name through the mud, perhaps it would be better to consider his record, his position at a leading Human Rights NGO (which, despite claims to the contrary, is not anti-Israel since they criticize Israeli and Palestinian tactics alike when either cross the line of legality), and the fact that he COLLECTS stuff. That's as far as it goes. People study and write about and read about and are interested in every evil figure and vile empire that ever existed, Nero, Ghengis Khan, Sadam Hussein, Stalin, Hitler. This interest does not equal acceptance or agreement or support in any way and to argue otherwise is totally illogical!

Five minutes later, on a different thread, I received another missive from "Tom K." who pasted HRW's press-release defense of Marc Garlasco.

Both of them happen to have the same IP address.

And that IP address happens to resolve to ....HRW.org!

Is this HRW's idea of how to win friends and influence people in the new media? Because, to my mind, they just did the opposite. Sock-puppet messages are considered a gross breach of netiquette, and it indicates a certain dishonesty, not to mention puerility.

HRW? Dishonest? Juvenile? Non-professional? Perish the thought!

UPDATE: Commenter Max notices that "Dash F."'s comment was repeated, verbatim, at Solomonia under the name "Sue." I wonder how many other blogs got visits from our pals at Human Rights Watch under different handles?

Meanwhile, Helena Cobban, who is on the HRW Middle East advisory committee, seems as disgusted with Garlasco as the rest of us are.

UPDATE 2: "Sara" wrote an identical message at the Z-Word blog. When it was mentioned, a person who answered her wrote, "Yay, I was debating with CTRL-C + CTRL-V!"

Saudi religious leader bans swine flu pamphlets

This story is just weird:

The Director of Endowments and Mosques (Auqaf) in Jeddah, Sheikh Fuhaid Bin Muhammad Al-Barqi, has announced that swine flu information leaflets containing images of living creatures have been banned inside mosques for conflicting with the Shariah.

“These images are impermissible inside people’s houses, let alone in the houses of Allah,” Al-Barqi said.

The Endowments and Mosques Department is, according to Al-Barqi, taking part in spreading awareness of the dangers of swine flu, with Imams having been instructed to cooperate in that regard.

“There is no objection to distributing swine flu awareness leaflets inside mosques as long as they do not have images of living beings. The ones with pictures can be distributed outside the mosque after prayer,” Al-Barqi said.

Former editor of Al-Watan newspaper, Qainan Al-Ghamdi, wrote of the prohibition of the leaflets Wednesday saying they were an “attack on the ministry volunteers handing out the leaflets, which will move on to the Ministry of Health itself and later the State.”

Al-Ghamdi compared this “attack” to the “takfeeri fatwas” (edicts accusing Muslims of infidelity) of two decades ago.

“When there are warnings of the danger of these sort of things, there is always someone who will justify it and one ends up in a tangle of fiqh [jurisprudential] arguments,” Al-Ghamdi wrote. “In the end, the Ministry of Health might well back down in the face of this stronger current of thought.”

I can sort of understand a Sharia rule against images of living beings. Weird, yes; extreme, yes; but at least it is a rule that probably has some sort of Quranic basis.

But what I cannot understand is the contradiction between the two bolded statements: if the pictures are forbidden, even in houses, why are they allowed to be distributed outside mosques?

Moreover, if pictures of living beings is forbidden in Sharia, why do Saudi newspapers have such pictures? Are newspapers forbidden to be read at home?

And notice the last paragraph. Saudi society - even a person who one would expect would fight the hardest for freedom of expression - has apparently surrendered to the veto power of the most extreme versions of Islam.

Latest Garlasco update

I'm trying to find time to post on other topics, but this one keeps getting more interesting...

Daled Amos uncovers some stuff that Garlasco has said in the past that seems somewhat, um, inconsistent with his attitude towards Israel:

"I don't think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they're not killing civilians," Garlasco points out.

"If so much care is being taken why are so many civilians getting killed?" Pelley asks.

"Because the Taliban are violating international law,” says Garlasco, “and because the U.S. just doesn't have enough troops on the ground. You have the Taliban shielding in people's homes. And you have this small number of troops on the ground. And sometimes the only thing they can do is drop bombs.”

Daled Amos finds another quote from Garlasco in that same interview concerning his previous life working with the US military:

Garlasco says, before the invasion of Iraq, he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets -- Iraqi officials.

But he says none of the targets on the list were actually killed. Instead, he says, "a couple of hundred civilians at least" were killed.

Let see, that's a ratio of, very roughly, zero percent of the dead that were the intended targets. The worst you can say about the IDF in Gaza is about 45% with equally tough circumstances. (Is this sorry record what makes him a military expert?)

Perhaps we should ask HRW to investigate whether Garlasco should be charged with war crimes.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, The Guardian has picked up on the story, even mentioning little ol' me:

Several of the websites that have been running with the Garlasco story, Human Rights Watch says, are the same websites that have been attacking its reporting of the Gaza war. They include Elder of Ziyon, NGO Monitor and Mere Rhetoric.

Sounds vaguely conspiratorial, no?

HRW/Garlasco roundup from NGO Monitor

NGO Monitor does a nice job rounding up all the latest findings about Human Rights Watch's Marc Garlasco and his fetish for WWII German memorabilia.

Hamas leader brags about weapons smuggling

Palestine Press Agency quotes Khaled Meshal, on a trip to see his buddies in the Sudan, bragging that Hamas still managed to smuggle weapons into Gaza despite the Israeli blockade:

"Despite the siege and closure, harassment, and conspiracies of the East and West to prevent us from getting weapons, we thank God we buy weapons and smuggle arms and make weapons [ourselves]"

It is telling that this is Hamas' priority - smuggling weapons. Not food, not paper, not clothing - but explosives and arms. The fact that their obsession with killing Jews is hurting a million Gazans doesn't bother them at all; on the contrary, it provides the opportunity for their pals in the media to do their part and pretend the tunnels are merely for toys:

Yesterday, a Hamas terrorist was killed, and others injured, in a smuggling tunnel under Rafah on what they called a "jihad mission." That doesn't make the news, only pictures like this one.

This is something the media misses when they talk about Gaza. Hamas is not a government in the sense that they try to protect and serve their people. On the contrary, Hamas is concerned with only two things: staying in power and building a terror infrastructure. To them, Gazans are pawns to be used as needed, and sometimes that means they like to see the people killed for propaganda purposes.

Islamic Jihad, as radical as ever

There is an interview with the Islamic Jihad spokesman in Gaza in Palestine Today. Here are some excerpts:

We in the Al-Quds Brigades reject [any thought about a Palestinian Arab state in the 1967 borders next to Israel], and confirm that Palestine has well known names and borders, from the sea to the river by God's orders.

As far as Jerusalem and all the occupied Palestinian cities: what was taken by force will be restored only by force.

We also need to rearrange our ranks and take advantage of our mistakes to be ready to face any new Zionist crap.

What is happening today to stop the martyrdom operations, but there is a particular tactic is being studied by Al-Quds Brigades, and perhaps that the barriers and the apartheid wall and security coordination between the power of Oslo West Territories and the Zionist intelligence services, all of which had prevented the implementation of dozens of suicide bombings, particularly in the last war.

What is happening today to where we have stopped the martyrdom operations, but this is a particular tactic is being studied by Al-Quds Brigades. Perhaps the barriers and the apartheid wall and security coordination between the power of Oslo West Territories [PA] and the Zionist intelligence services, all of which had prevented the implementation of dozens of suicide bombings, particularly in the last war.

We emphasize that the Al-Quds Brigades suicide bombers can enter into the heart of the Zionist entity. It is difficult but not impossible to send suicide bombers and car bombs everywhere in our territory. There are soldiers at the disposal of the House the political and military leadership, and it depends on what is happening on the ground of the violations, as required by the Palestinian interest.

With God's grace our technical and manufacturing division is developing missile capabilities. If [we desire,] the lives of members of Zionist settlements - all of them - will be hell, God willing.

Besides the fact that PIJ will never moderate and can veto any agreements made by any other Palestinian Arab party, I once again marvel at Palestinian Arabs' grasp of geography.

Before 1920 or so, Palestine was considered to be on both sides of the Jordan. The "river to the sea" mantra has nothing to do with restoring any fantasy of an ancient land called Palestine and everything to do with destroying Israel.

At least Islamic Jihad is honest about it.

From the German Combat Awards forum. The members are introducing themselves, and HRW's Marc Garlasco posts this picture of himself. The discussion afterwards:

Skip: Love the sweatshirt Mark. Not one I could wear here in germany though (well I could but it would be a lot of hassle)

Flak88: Everyone thinks it is a biker shirt!

Skip: Yeh, were you come from but imagine walking around in Berlin with "das Eisene Kreuz" written across your cheat. Either you get beaten to pulp by a group of rampaging Turks or the police arrest you on suspicion of being a Nazi

Yeah, this is what a serious military historian looks like on his day off.