Friday, September 18, 2009
Elder of Ziyon
I wish my readers a Shana Tova U'Metuka, a happy and sweet new year!
I will be offline until Sunday night for Rosh Hashanah. K'tiva v'chatimah tovah!
Friday, September 18, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Elder of Ziyon
antisemitism
From JPost:
(h/t
An Israeli satirical video posted on the Internet became a hit in the very countries it criticizes.It is hilarious, and catchy to boot:
The video was produced and posted by latma, a Website criticizing Israeli and international media outlets.
It was produced in the wake of a report by the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet which alleged that the IDF harvests organs of Palestinians killed in conflict for transplant in Israeli patients. The writer of the report has since admitted he had no way of ascertaining its veracity. Israel called the Aftonbladet report a "new blood libel."
Last week, Norway announced its divestment from Elbit, an Israeli Hi Tech manufacturer which is a world leader in the defense industry. Norway announced it would divest from Elbit because of the company's work on the security barrier in the West Bank.
After only two days on the air, the above clip was picked up by the leading newspaper in Sweden, DN.se, and by Swedish and Norwegian bloggers.
The clip has over 10,000 views and 500 comments, and Shlomo Blass, who runs the latma Web site it was initially posted on, said the success is overwhelming.
"We were surprised by how quickly the clip took-off, we must have hit a sensitive nerve," he said.
Many of the some 500 comments on the blog are anti-Israel and there are more than a handful of anti-Semitic and Neo-Nazi comments as well.
(h/t
- Friday, September 18, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
The last 500 hits on my blog included these entries from people typing in these phrases in search engines:
So I think we have to work harder to give it to them, no?
| 54 | 31.95% | shana tova u metuka | |
| 8 | 4.73% | שנה טובה ומתוקה | |
| 6 | 3.55% | shana tova u'metuka | |
| 3 | 1.78% | shana tova umetuka | |
| 3 | 1.78% | shana tova u'metuka! | |
| 2 | 1.18% | g'mar chatima tova new year 2009 | |
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| 2 | 1.18% | shana tova u metuka! | |
| 2 | 1.18% | shana tova u metuka meaning | |
| 2 | 1.18% | shana tova ve metuka translation | |
| 1 | 0.59% | shana tova umetuka english translation | |
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- Friday, September 18, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
Today is the last Friday of Ramadan, a day declared by the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran to be "Qods Day," where a city that Islam essentially ignored for most of the first twelve centuries of its existence is suddenly considered vitally important - only after Jews recovered control of Jerusalem.
I made a video last year on this topic, that summarizes a number of previous Al Quds posts I've written.
Here is a roundup of posts I've made to celebrate Qods Day over the years:
Introduction - An overview of how Muslims have ignored Jerusalem when they had control over the city.
The originator of Qods Day: A brief snippet of another, rather disgusting, legal ruling by the late Ayatollah.
A 1910 article showing the tremendous growth of Jerusalem in the few decades since mass Jewish return to the city, including how much land values increased and how much money Arabs were getting for selling land to Jews.
Jerusalem in Islamic art: A survey of the (non)-existence of Jerusalem in any Islamic art that pre-dates Zionism, compared to some ancient Jewish pictures of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem in Islamic poetry: A very similar posting showing every ancient Islamic poem I could find that mentions Islam's "third holiest city," plus a 12th century Jewish poem about the city.
Jerusalem in Islamic coins: Another post comparing the number of times Jerusalem was depicted in historic Islamic coins compared to ancient Jewish currency.
Jerusalem in Islamic prayer: Jerusalem, for some strange reason, is not mentioned once in Islamic prayer, but it is a central motif of Jewish prayer.
I made a video last year on this topic, that summarizes a number of previous Al Quds posts I've written.
Here is a roundup of posts I've made to celebrate Qods Day over the years:
Introduction - An overview of how Muslims have ignored Jerusalem when they had control over the city.
The originator of Qods Day: A brief snippet of another, rather disgusting, legal ruling by the late Ayatollah.
A 1910 article showing the tremendous growth of Jerusalem in the few decades since mass Jewish return to the city, including how much land values increased and how much money Arabs were getting for selling land to Jews.
Jerusalem in Islamic art: A survey of the (non)-existence of Jerusalem in any Islamic art that pre-dates Zionism, compared to some ancient Jewish pictures of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem in Islamic poetry: A very similar posting showing every ancient Islamic poem I could find that mentions Islam's "third holiest city," plus a 12th century Jewish poem about the city.
Jerusalem in Islamic coins: Another post comparing the number of times Jerusalem was depicted in historic Islamic coins compared to ancient Jewish currency.
Jerusalem in Islamic prayer: Jerusalem, for some strange reason, is not mentioned once in Islamic prayer, but it is a central motif of Jewish prayer.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
- Thursday, September 17, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
- Goldstone Report
723. The Mission considers, however, that the testimonies of the witnesses strongly suggestthat already before daybreak on 4 January 2009 the Israeli armed forces were in full control ofthe al-Samouni neighbourhood. The Israeli soldiers had taken up position on the roofs of thehouses in the area. According to several witnesses, the soldiers on the street spoke to residentswho had ventured out of their houses.410 In some cases (for instance, at the house of Saleh al-Samouni and at the house Iyad al-Samouni was in, see below), they entered the houses nonviolentlyafter knocking on the door. According to Saleh al-Samouni, the prolongedidentification of all the persons present in his house (his father identifying each family memberin Hebrew for the soldiers) took place outside. The soldiers appear to have been confident thatthey were not at immediate risk of being attacked.724. The Mission also reviewed the submission it received from an Israeli researcher, arguinggenerally that statements from Palestinian residents claiming that no fighting took place in theirneighbourhood are disproved by the accounts Palestinian armed groups give of the armedoperations. The Mission notes that, as far as the al-Samouni neighbourhood is concerned, thisreport would appear to support the statements of the witnesses that there was no combat.411Note 411: “The hidden dimension of Palestinian war casualties…”. Only 4 of the more than 100 entries in the submission refer to combat action in Zeytoun, the much larger part of Gaza City of which al-Samouni neighbourhood is a part. The incidents in Zeytoun that are mentioned reportedly occurred on 6, 7, 11 and 13 January 2009, and consist of Palestinian combatants opening fire against Israeli troops with rocket-propelled grenades, a mortar (in one case) and detonating an explosive device.
It is difficult for me to say that there was or was not military activity in the Samounis' neighborhood on January 4th. However, Goldstone takes the absence of any mention of incidents in the Al Zaytoun neighborhood (in which the Samounis lived) in an Israeli report as evidence that there was no significant fighting there on January 4th. Goldstone's other evidence is indeed Palestinian Arab witnesses.
I do not know how big Al Zaytoun is either. However, it seems pretty clear that there was still fighting in Al Zaytoun on January 4th. PCHR names:
495 Mustafa Zuhdi Mustafa Erhayem
498 Mohammed Fou’ad Mahmoud al-He
515 Mohammed Bassam Mohammed ‘Anan
530 Hassan ‘Isam Hassan al-Jammasi
580 ‘Ateya Rushdi Khalil Aal-Khuli (16 years old!)
all as militants, actively fighting Israeli forces as they were killed in Al-Zaytoun on January 4th.
In addition, (576) Ayman Mohammed Mohammed ‘Afana (policeman) was an Al Qassam Brigades member killed in that neighborhood on that day.
And the fighting continued in Al-Zaytoun on January 5th:.
639 Mohammed Mohammed Nabih al-Ghazali (PCHR)
641 Rashad Helmi Mahmoud al-Samouni (see below) (PCHR)
681 Ahmed Hassan Abdul Karim Abu Zour listed as "resister" on PMoH site (#226)
Again, this doesn't mean that Goldstone is incorrect concerning the immediate area of the Samouni house, but it does indicate that the commission ignored easily-available data that could indicate that their implication that no fighting was taking place in Al-Zaytoun is wrong.
In para. 713 and footnote 404, they list the names of every member of the al-Samouni extended family that was killed. One of them is Rashad Helmi al Samouni (male, aged 42), whom the PCHR lists as being killed a militant. (Not only that, but another al-Samouni is listed as having been killed on January 5th: Mohammed Ibrahim Helmi al-Samouni, listed in PCHR as a civilian but who was a member of Islamic Jihad.)
So one of the civlians Goldstone lists as being killed was in fact a terrorist.
At the very least, a small amount of fact checking would have uncovered these inconsistencies. Yet Goldstone says without reservation:
721. The Mission found the foregoing witnesses to be credible and reliable. It has no reason to doubt their testimony.
I think there is more than enough reason to doubt their testimony.
(UPDATE: I misread Goldstone and thought that the commission was saying that the al-Samouni deaths were on Jan. 4th. One person with that name was killed on Jan. 4 in al-Zaytoun, but as far as I can tell he was a civilian. I corrected the post above.)
- Thursday, September 17, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
Head of Ishraqa, a Gazan charitable society, Wasfi Naser, urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to freeze the society’s accounts following what he described as a takeover by the de facto Hamas run Ministry of the Interior.I wonder if it was seized by Hamas' military or charity wing?
Naser said he received a phone call from representatives of the de facto Ministry of the Interior last week telling him that they had appointed a new board of directors for the society.
Ishraqa currently supports approximately 250 orphaned children in northern Gaza by raising funds from charities in the EU, US, and Canada.
Naser asked that the Ministry of Interior restore control of the charity to the original board of directors who were elected, and always send their financial reports to the ministry.
He said he hopes there can be a swift resolution of the seizure.
- Thursday, September 17, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
- fisking, Goldstone Report, op-ed, Richard Landes
Professor Richard Landes does a superlative job fisking Judge Richard Goldstone's op-ed in the New York Times today. And while I have been spending what time I have on the minutae of the large Goldstone Report, Landes' post goes to the very heart of the topic, and shows exactly what is problematic about the entire enterprise. It casts great doubt on Goldstone's honesty, at least with regards to this topic.
It is a must-read, as are the links Landes uses to support his arguments.
- Thursday, September 17, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
Jihad organizations rarely have a purely military focus. They always have used charities and created Islamist schools to recruit new members, and those "wings" require their own procedures and people. Similarly, the larger ones also need to speak to the media and negotiate with other groups, and those people become the "political wings" of the organizations.
The critical point is that the political and social-service wings are not separate - their entire existence is to support the terrorist goals of the organization. They are subservient to the military goals, not independent of them.
For example, here are some pictures from Palestine Today showing a leader of the "political wing" of Islamic Jihad, Sheikh Nafez Azzam, greeting the backbone of the terror organization:
He reiterated that armed "resistance" is the only way to "defend" their people.
Hamas' non-military wings have grown the same way; out of a necessity to do some non-military tasks as necessary to continue the major focus, which remains jihad. For example, Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan's role was to bridge the military and non-military wings of Hamas - a purely practical role that indicates the primacy of jihad in Hamas.
Westerners stricken with a particularly extreme case of wishful thinking disease like to seize on these different "wings" as evidence that there is a huge separation of duties and goals between them. In Hamas' case. the fact that separate "security forces" report to the same "ministry" indicates that the separation is practical, not doctrinal. Add this to the fact that a majority of Palestinian Arab police killed in Gaza also belonged to Hamas' armed wing and it is clear that no real distinction can be made between the two, just as no practical distinction can be made between the fighters and the people who procure weapons within the Al Aqsa Brigades who are not directly involved.
- Thursday, September 17, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
Donald Bostrom, the "journalist" who wrote the infamous blood libel for Swedish magazine Aftonbladet claiming that Israel kills Palestinian Arabs for their organs, expanded his charges in a press conference in Algeria held by invitation of the National Federation of Algerian Journalists. They awarded him with an "Excellence in Journalism" award; it does not appear to be in th "fiction" category.
Palestine Press Agency reports that Bostrom has gone way beyond his initial feverish fantasies of Jewish evil and fills in the lies with additional details:
- * The organ thefts started in 1960.
- * Israel didn't only steal Palestinian Arab organs but also those of "martyrs of other nationalities."
- * More than a thousand bodies were harvested.
Bostrom also called for "serious international action by competent international bodies to consider these inhumane practices against a defenseless people."
As far as I can tell, he provided not an iota of evidence for these additional charges, as he didn't for the initial ones (outside pointing to stitches on a body.)
PalPress goes on to say that Bostrom met with major Algerian ministers and a representative of the Algerian president, who praised him for his courage in the face of the all-powerful Zionist lobby.
As far as I can tell, he provided not an iota of evidence for these additional charges, as he didn't for the initial ones (outside pointing to stitches on a body.)
PalPress goes on to say that Bostrom met with major Algerian ministers and a representative of the Algerian president, who praised him for his courage in the face of the all-powerful Zionist lobby.
UPDATE: English report here. And Al Arabiya reports that Bostrom's award included a payment of $5000.
- Thursday, September 17, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Today reports that Egypt sent humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing on Wednesday. 11 trucks filled with 135 tons of aid were sent through.
It is very nice that Egyptians have decided to help their Palestinian Arab brethren, and it deserves to be reported.
Lesser known is that Israel sends through ten to twenty times those amounts of aid every weekday. For example, last week Israel sent though 563 truckloads -14,562 tons -of humanitarian aid.
All of a sudden, 135 tons sent as a one-off doesn't sound quite as impressive. Yet for some reason, when the people who Gazans consider to be their enemies give huge amounts of aid, Palestine Today doesn't mention it. Perhaps Jews helping Arabs is a dog-bites-man story while Arabs helping PalArabs is a bit more unusual.
Or there is a more likely explanation for PalToday's omission....
It is very nice that Egyptians have decided to help their Palestinian Arab brethren, and it deserves to be reported.
Lesser known is that Israel sends through ten to twenty times those amounts of aid every weekday. For example, last week Israel sent though 563 truckloads -14,562 tons -of humanitarian aid.
All of a sudden, 135 tons sent as a one-off doesn't sound quite as impressive. Yet for some reason, when the people who Gazans consider to be their enemies give huge amounts of aid, Palestine Today doesn't mention it. Perhaps Jews helping Arabs is a dog-bites-man story while Arabs helping PalArabs is a bit more unusual.
Or there is a more likely explanation for PalToday's omission....
- Thursday, September 17, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Today has another article about the hordes of wild boars that sometimes descend on PalArab villages, We have already seen many of these articles, where villagers invariably accuse Israeli settlers of raising these boars and letting them loose to devour, exclusively, Palestinian Arab-own crops.
This story adds an interesting twist, though. According to "experts" interviewed, Israel introduced a new law to fine and imprison any Palestinian Arab who kills these animals, with a prison sentence of 1.5 years. (Of course we also have the PalArab fears of catching swine flu from the boars.)
How evil the Israelis are! Imagine, a fine and a prison sentence! The only thing that could make the Israelis look worse would be if the story had a shred of truth!
This story adds an interesting twist, though. According to "experts" interviewed, Israel introduced a new law to fine and imprison any Palestinian Arab who kills these animals, with a prison sentence of 1.5 years. (Of course we also have the PalArab fears of catching swine flu from the boars.)
How evil the Israelis are! Imagine, a fine and a prison sentence! The only thing that could make the Israelis look worse would be if the story had a shred of truth!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
- Wednesday, September 16, 2009
- Elder of Ziyon
I will be on the web only intermittently between now and Rosh Hashanah, so that means it's time for everyone's favorite game show: Open Thread!
To start things going, I need to mention this amazing article at Arutz-7 that says that Judge Goldstone fell asleep during a video presentation on Sderot rockets.
To start things going, I need to mention this amazing article at Arutz-7 that says that Judge Goldstone fell asleep during a video presentation on Sderot rockets.
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