Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 01, 2009

In honor of the World Series

Nem mikh mit tsu der ball geym,
Tsum oylem lomir dokh geyn
Koyf mir di nislekh un krekerjek
Vil ikh keyn mol fun dort nit avek
Git zey mut, mut, mut, di ballshpiller
Es past nit az men farshpilt
Vayl s'iz eyns, tsvey, dray strikes, un oys
Bay der beysball shpil

The original "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was written by Harry Von Tilzer, who was born Aaron Gumbinsky.

Scenes from a Gaza rally

Islamic Jihad continues to celebrate the death of its founder. Here are some more pictures from the rally:

I don't know if this is an inflatable replica of an Islamic Jihad rocket or the real thing, but it is interesting that they print "Jerusalem" on the rocket - in Hebrew. Imagine the rioting that would ensue if anyone put the word "Mecca" on a rocket aimed at Muslims.

OK, Gaza is under siege, right? So do they import Israeli flags through Rafah tunnels or do they make these flags themselves? Because the market for Israeli flags may be more lucrative in Gaza than in Israel itself.

And what rally wouldn't be complete without the heartwarming photo of a child cradling a real weapon? (Can someone identify this for me? Looks like an AK-47 but I'm not sure what is on the barrel.)

The lack of Arab empathy

At Ya Libnan, a fairly prominent Lebanese news site, we see an op-ed that at first blush appears to be an anti-Israel polemic. The headline and subhead reads:

Can a Zionist be fair to an Arab?
There is no doubt that the Palestinian people have not been treated justly and fairly over the past sixty years or so.

This is a shame, because the article's clear conclusion is "yes," as it approvingly cites Shulamit Aloni and Richard Goldstone as Jewish Zionists who are not afraid to take pro-Arab positions. No matter what you think about them, it is clear that many Jews and Zionists will not hesitate to defend Arabs when they believe that it is the right thing to do.

This is in contrast with the Arab world, which is described in damning terms by the author, Ghassan Karam:

[The] inability to differentiate between one Jew and another or even one Zionist and another has served to inflame the Palestinian Israeli problem when a more liberal and objective understanding could have helped ease the pain and maybe even hasten an end to the suffering.
To suggest that the Palestinian Israeli problem has become the opiate of the authoritarian Arab regimes is not an exaggeration. Each and every Arab ruler is constantly engaged in grandstanding and in advocating positions that would demonstrate the opposition of his regime to everything Jewish and his devotion to everything Arab and Palestinian. That is why Arab “sham democracies” are invariably opposed to anything Jewish and why they favour supporting resistance groups and even terrorist actions. Blowing up school children in Tel Aviv is to be commended while harming those in say Damascus is barbaric. Our love for the Palestinians is best demonstrated by the squalid living conditions that we have provided for them and the severe constraints that we have placed on their ability to integrate in our societies, own property and acquire citizenship. On the other hand we are constantly proud of our ability to blame the Jew for each of our problems be it social, economic, scientific or political. It has even been reported recently that a major Hollywood producer was denied the right to land at Beirut International because his private jet had some Israeli manufactured parts.

Kharam touches upon perhaps the biggest obstacle to peace.

Jews and Zionists, even the right wing, can and do empathize with the suffering of Palestinian Arabs and in general have no desire to gratuitously cause them pain. One can argue about where to place the line between security for Israelis and fair treatment for PalArabs, but Zionists at least recognize that there is a balance between the two.

The Arab world, however, does not seem to share this basic human characteristic of empathy with Jews and Zionists. To the vast majority of Arabs, it is black and white: Jews, and certainly Israelis, are evil. Jews must be at best second class citizens subservient to their Arab superiors and Zionists must be killed, or at best tolerated until the Arab world gains enough strength to finish them off in a decade or a century.

A stark example of this thinking can be seen in an exchange of letters between a Jewish Israeli mother whose son was killed and the Palestinian Arab sniper who killed him, now in an Israeli prison.

The mother, Robi Damelin, wrote a piece in Ha'aretz before Yom Kippur saying that she forgave her son's killer. Her letter oozes pain at her loss and empathy for the family of the jailed killer.

The killer, by contrast, has nothing but hate is response:

Hamad bluntly rejected the bereaved mother's outstretched hand. "Mrs. Robi did not explain what led the soldier David to enlist," he continues. "She doesn't know the iron fact that her son not only took part in the torture of my people, but stood at the head of the perpetrators of the killing and murder. From her letter, it appears that she is living on another planet. She forgets that the late Abu Amar (Yasser Arafat) called for peace 35 years ago. I wish to remind the mother of the soldier David that history proves that a people that does not fight an occupation with all means, including arms, cannot obtain its rights. .... You must remove your hands from our land and from our people, and if not, it is our duty to kill the murderers.

This lack of Arab empathy is hardly new; it was documented by Martha Gellhorn in 1961 in her interviews of Arab refugees at the time:

"Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this, which is what I must, know. If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine -who had fled from the war--to come back?"
"Certainly not," he said, without an instant's hesitation. "But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea."

The idea of a real peace is illusory as long as Arabs have no conception of empathy with Jews and with the rights of Jews for self-determination. The quasi-peace that exists now between Israel and some Arab countries are not a result of Arab recognition of Jewish rights, but rather of Arab recognition of Jewish strength (along with practical benefits provided by the US.) Empathy with the suffering of one's enemy and identification with the way the other side thinks are necessary preconditions to rapprochement, and the Arab psyche does not admit such thought.

HH #241

Haveil Havalim, the venerable weekly web carnival that links to the best posts of the Jewish and Zionist blogosphere, has just come out with its 241st edition over at Simply Jews.

Two of my posts are mentioned, a great honor since I never remember to nominate myself.

Check it out!

(h/t Andre, I didn't notice the second link)

An independent audit of the IDF procedures

The Goldstone report recommends that Israel set up an independent commission of inquiry into Operation Cast Lead. Israel is reluctant to do so for a number of reasons: the IDF already has an investigation procedure that is similar to those of all Western nations; if it caves on this demand then it will look like an admittance of errors, and others.

In my opinion, what is needed is not so much a commission about Cast Lead. Instead, there should be an independent audit of the IDF investigation processes and procedures.

Auditors know how to check not only whether the processes and procedures are effective (in this case, for investigations) but also whether the IDF is accurately following their own procedures. If the audit comes out clean, then the IDF procedures would be "certified."

These external audits should happen regularly, perhaps annually. They can be done by a Big 4 accounting firm without compromising Israeli security. They should happen regardless of any political events like Goldstone. They should not be done to mollify the world, rather to ensure to the IDF and the GOI that IDF procedures are effective, fair and accurately followed - which should be welcomed by all.

This would solve all the problems. If the audit comes up clean, fair minded people can look at the sanitized results of the report certifying that the procedures are valid just the way that audit firms validate all sorts of procedures. If it doesn't, the IDF and the Government of Israel would be the first to want to know how to improve their procedures.

An audit procedure would address the root issue - whether IDF investigation procedures are adequately independent, effective and adhered to. Instead of spinning up a commission for every alleged war crime that some NGO screams about, this would be a reproducible, self-correcting and certified process that is used by major corporations daily.

It is entirely possible that the IDF does this already, but if not, it should.

(I briefly discussed this idea in a comment on this blog, and I sent it to a mailing list with really smart people, and no one responded. So either it is a brilliant idea or it is incredibly stupid.)

UNRWA doesn't acknowledge a murder

On Thursday morning, there was a double murder in Ramallah. Two Palestinian Arabs were found stabbed to death.

One of the was reported to have been a UNRWA teacher in Gaza.

Usually, when UN workers are killed, there are press releases by the appropriate agencies to announce the news. For some reason, UNRWA has not yet acknowledged the murder of one of their employees.

Last night I emailed UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness, who has been busy lately making a one-man play about how horrible Israel is, asking him:

Can you confirm that this happened? Do you know the circumstances of the murder? Has there been any official UNRWA statement about this?

So far, I have not received a reply.

The cynical part of me thinks that UNRWA does not want to publicize anything that makes Palestinian Arabs look bad - even when their actions affect UNRWA itself. They've done that before.

Goldstone Report inaccuracies, part 23

The Goldstone Report has a section about the booby-trapping of Palestinian Arab houses by Hamas.

If Hamas booby-trapped houses in civilian neighborhoods, that would violate the principle of distinction, which is a major claim that Goldstone accuses Israel of routinely violating during the operation. It would mean that Hamas disregarded the lives of its own people to at least the same extent that the report claims the IDF forces did.

Goldstone looks at the evidence, and starts off with an absurd paragraph:

461. In chapter XIV the Mission will report on different incidents in which witnesses have described the circumstances in which they had been used by the Israeli armed forces during house searches and forced at gunpoint to enter houses ahead of the Israeli soldiers. These witnesses testified that they had been used in this way to enter several houses. None of them encountered a booby trap or other improvised explosive devices during the house searches. The Mission is also mindful of other incidents it has investigated that involved entry into civilian
houses by Israeli soldiers in different areas in Gaza. None of these incidents showed the use of booby traps.

Goldstone begins his analysis of whether Hamas booby-trapped houses and civilian areas by saying that none of its eyewitnesses, who were handpicked by the Commission to prove the worst allegations of Israeli abuses, verified that they saw any Hamas booby-traps - while they were detailing highly suspect testimony that Israel used these witnesses as human shields.

Besides the fact that these people were not chosen to investigate booby-trap claims, Goldstone is implying that since they didn't see the booby traps, there is no direct evidence that such traps existed. One does not have to be a military expert to realize that if Hamas did booby trap homes, they would not have wired up every house in every neighborhood; rather they would only choose a sample of homes that they would try to lure IDF soldiers into. Saying that supposed witnesses did not see any booby traps is, literally, meaningless as proof one way or the other.

In addition, it also proves that Goldstone did not set out to investigate Hamas war crimes, and only would report on things that the commission found out about while they were investigating alleged Israeli crimes.

Goldstone then allows that there were reports of booby-traps:

462. The Mission, however, recalls the allegations levelled in the reports that it has reviewed. The Government of Israel alleges that Hamas planted booby traps in “homes, roads, schools and even entire neighbourhoods”. It adds, “in essence, the Hamas strategy was to transform the urban areas of the Gaza Strip into a massive death trap for IDF forces, in gross disregard for the safety of the civilian population.”317 The Mission notes that the existence of booby-trapped houses is mentioned in testimonies of Israeli soldiers collected by Breaking the Silence. One soldier recounts witnessing the detonation of a powerful explosion inside a house as a bulldozer approached it. A second soldier stated “many explosive charges were found, they also blew up, no one was hurt. Tank Corps or Corps of Engineers units blew them up. Usually they did not explode because most of the ones we found were wired and had to be detonated, but whoever was supposed to detonate them had run off. It was live, however, ready…”.318 Also the reports published by Palestinian armed groups, on which the submission to the Mission on the tactics of Palestinian combatants by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs is based, suggest that booby-trapped civilian houses were a frequently used tactic.319 According to the Israeli Government, “because roads and buildings were often mined, IDF forces had to target them to protect themselves”.320

So after writing an initial paragraph whose only purpose is to cast doubt on any claims of Hamas booby traps, Goldstone briefly lists some damning evidence that such devices did exist. The Breaking the Silence testimonies, which Goldstone accepts uncritically when it slams the IDF, is quoted as having "mentioned" seeing booby traps, and terrorist websites themselves bragged about using such tactics. By any reasonable standard, this would appear to be real proof, not simply "allegations." Yet Goldstone places it after a paragraph that starts off the discussion by casting doubt that such devices existed and clearly downplays all of this evidence by lumping it all together into a single paragraph.

His final paragraph on the topic shows the unbelievable bias that the Commission had:

463. While, in the light of the above reports, the Mission does not discount the use of booby traps by the Palestinian armed groups, it has no basis to conclude that civilian lives were put at risk, as none of the reports record the presence of civilians in or near the houses in which booby traps are alleged to have been set.

Again, if Hamas placed live bombs in civilian areas, they are violating international law. Yet this report soft-pedals this war crime by saying that there is no evidence that any civilians were nearby - in civilian neighborhoods! Goldstone seems to be adding a new caveat to the Geneva Conventions - saying that civilian objects can be used by terrorists if there is no evidence that any civilians are there at the time they are planted. Perhaps Goldstone did not envision the civilians ever returning to their houses and opening their own front doors. This is mind-boggling.

While Israel is castigated by Goldstone for not being specific enough in dropping hundreds of thousands of flyers warning civilians to leave areas before they bombed. Hamas booby traps buildings in these same areas, and does not warn residents to leave at all - yet their actions are not condemned at all!

If using civilian areas as a base of attack in order to protect the attackers is illegal under international law, shouldn't the purposeful use of civilian objects themselves as weapons (something that Geneva didn't seem to imagine) be considered even worse?

This pseudo-legal stretching to absolve Hamas of responsibility for booby traps is not even the most egregious problem. These three paragraphs constitute the entirety of Goldstone's investigation into this topic. Yet Goldstone ignored the most obvious evidence of Hamas' use of booby traps.

One is the well-known video of the booby-trapped zoo and school in Gaza that the IDF discovered:

Another is this map, captured by the IDF, that showed the placement of booby traps in the Al-Atatra neighborhood:

The map shows placement of bombs in houses and near gas stations.

In addition, here is a photograph (from a JCPA PowerPoint) of a booby trap in a house:

Both the video and the map were well publicized during Cast Lead, and it is not possible that the Commission would have been unaware of this evidence.

In short, this short section on booby-traps shows Goldstone's bias against Israel, his bias towards Hamas, his playing fast and loose with the law, and his purposeful ignoring of evidence that goes against his apparently pre-formed conclusions.

Islamic Jihad celebrating defeats

Islamic Jihad today is holding a festival to commemorate both the 14th anniversary of Israel's assassination of its founder, Fathi Shikaki, as well as the 9th anniversary of the beginning of the second intifada.

In other words, it is celebrating two major defeats.

And while most of the photos it is publishing seem to show lots of people attending these celebrations, one of the photos at Palestine Today betrays that they were expecting a lot more people than they got, based on all the empty seats:

To be consistent, maybe next year they will celebrate the first anniversary of this massive rally.

Those wily Israelis and their Katyushas

On Tuesday, a Katyusha rocket was launched from Lebanon into Israel.

Who could have shot it? Hezbollah? A different terror group?

According to Lebanese president Michel Suleiman, of course not:

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman on Thursday put the blame on Israel regarding the Katyusha attack on northern Israel on Tuesday night. According to him, an "Israeli agent" was responsible for the action. "This work is a pretext for Israel to continue to violate Lebanese sovereignty, and a swift interpretation of what it had said about an expansion of intelligence activity in Lebanon because of Hizbullah's presence," Suleiman conveyed.

Meanwhile, an al-Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for the attack:

A group linked to Al-Qaeda claims it fired the Katyusha rocket attack from Lebanon that hit northern Israel earlier this week, a US-based group that monitors jihadist websites said on Thursday.
The Brigades of Abdullah Azzam, Battalions of Ziad Jarrah, said it was responsible for Tuesday's attack, according to a statement released on Thursday by the Al-Fajr Media Centre, SITE Intelligence Group said.
The group said it had prepared five rockets but only fired one, adding that the attack was to protest a Sunday raid by Israeli police on Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
"The occupying Jews have dared to repeatedly raid the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque ... In response to this aggression, a battalion among the Battalions of Ziad Jarrah" fired the Katyusha, it said.

Which is, of course, more proof that Al Qaeda is really a Zionist group.

Rachel's Tomb and the making of an Arab lie

Today was the traditional anniversary of the death of the matriarch Rachel, and thousands of Jews went to Rachel's Tomb to pray. Ma'an reported it this way:

Thousands of Israelis, most of them ultra-Orthodox Jews, descended on the tomb of the Biblical matriarch Rachel in a militarized compound in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Thursday.

Right-wing religious groups petitioned Israel’s highest court in 2004 to re-route the wall to include the tomb on the western side. To this day the site, formerly known as the location of the Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque, is accessible only from the Israeli side.

Was Rachel's Tomb ever really known as the Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque?

The answer is, of course, no. That name was created relatively recently - believe it or not, in the 1990s!

As Nadav Shragai revealed in a 2007 article:

In 2000, after hundreds of years of recognizing the site as Rachel's Tomb, Muslims began calling it the "Bilal ibn Rabah mosque."20 Members of the Wakf used the name first in 1996, but it has since entered the national Palestinian discourse. Bilal ibn Rabah was an Ethiopian known in Islamic history as a slave who served in the house of the prophet Muhammad as the first muezzin (the individual who calls the faithful to prayer five times a day).21 When Muhammad died, ibn Rabah went to fight the Muslim wars in Syria, was killed in 642 CE, and buried in either Aleppo or Damascus.22 The Palestinian Authority claimed that according to Islamic tradition, it was Muslim conquerors who named the mosque erected at Rachel's Tomb after Bilal ibn Rabah.

The Palestinian claim ignored the fact that Ottoman firmans (mandates or decrees) gave Jews in the Land of Israel the right of access to the site at the beginning of the nineteenth century.23 The Palestinian claim even ignored accepted Muslim tradition, which admires Rachel and recognizes the site as her burial place. According to tradition, the name "Rachel" comes from the word "wander," because she died during one of her wanderings and was buried on the Bethlehem road.24 Her name is referred to in the Koran,25 and in other Muslim sources, Joseph is said to fall upon his mother Rachel's grave and cry bitterly as the caravan of his captors passes by.26 For hundreds of years, Muslim holy men (walis) were buried in tombs whose form was the same as Rachel's.

Then, out of the blue, the connection between Rachel, admired even by the Muslims, and her tomb is erased and the place becomes "the Bilal ibn Rabah mosque." Well-known Orientalist Professor Yehoshua Porat has called the "tradition" the Muslims referred to as "false." He said the Arabic name of the site was "the Dome of Rachel, a place where the Jews prayed."27

Only a few years ago, official Palestinian publications contained not a single reference to such a mosque. The same was true for the Palestinian Lexicon issued by the Arab League and the PLO in 1984, and for Al-mawsu'ah al-filastiniyah, the Palestinian encyclopedia published in Italy after 1996. Palestine, the Holy Land, published by the Palestinian Council for Development and Rehabilitation, with an introduction written by Yasser Arafat, simply says that "at the northwest entrance to the city [Bethlehem] lies the tomb of the matriarch Rachel, who died while giving life to Benjamin." The West Bank and Gaza - Palestine also mentions the site as the Tomb of Rachel and not as the Mosque of Bilal ibn Rabah.28 However, the Palestinian deputy minister for endowments and religious affairs has now defined Rachel's Tomb as a Muslim site.29

On Yom Kippur in 2000, six days after the IDF withdrew from Joseph's Tomb, the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida published an article marking the next target as Rachel's Tomb. It read in part, "Bethlehem - ‘the Tomb of Rachel,' or the Bilal ibn Rabah mosque, is one of the nails the occupation government and the Zionist movement hammered into many Palestinian cities....The tomb is false and was originally a Muslim mosque."30

Indeed, the earliest reference I can find to such a name is from the BBC in 1997, and for the rest of the 90s that is the only news outlet I can find that ever used that terminology.

Looking at some old books, I see it was called "Kubbet Rahil" by Muslims in 1901. This travelogue from around 1880 says:

...We came to Rachel's tomb, a small square whitewashed domed building, part of which dates back to the twelfth century. It stands by the side of the road, a mile short of Bethlehem. It is in possession of the Jews, and is only opened on Thursdays; but we looked in through a small aperture on the south side.

Many other 1800's-era books do describe Rachel's Tomb as a mosque or as a place of worship for both Jews and Muslims. But none of them give any Arabic name that doesn't include the word "Rachel" in some form. And certainly none of them describe the spot as being exclusively Muslim.

Similarly, in 1949 the UN listed major holy sites according to religion. Here is what they said about Rachel's Tomb as being claimed by both Muslims and Jews:

Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin, when Jacob was travelling from Bethel to Hebron. A pillar was set up over her grave, and the spot was a familiar landmark in the time of Samuel. Several medieval writers refer to it as a Jewish Holy Place. The Arab writer Mugeir-al-Din described it as built of "eleven stones and covered with a cupola which rests on four pillars, and every Jew passing writes his name on the monument."

The tomb lies on the Jerusalem-Hebron road just before it enters Bethlehem. It consists of an open antechamber and a two-roomed shrine under a cupola containing a sarcophagus. The building lies within a Moslem cemetery, for which it serves as a place of prayer. The tomb is a place of Jewish pilgrimage. The Jews claim possession of Rachel's Tomb by virtue firstly of the fact that in 1615 Mohammad, Pasha of Jerusalem, rebuilt the Tomb on their behalf and by a Firman granted them the exclusive use of it; and secondly, that the building, which had fallen into decay, was entirely rebuilt by Sir M. Montefiore in 1845. The keys were obtained by the Jews from the last Moslem guardian at this time.

The Moslem claim to own the building rests on its being a place of prayer for the Moslems of the neighbourhood and an integral part of the Moslem cemetery within which it lies. The Moslems state that the Ottoman Government recognized it as such and further that it is included among the Tombs of the Prophets for which identity signboards were issued by the Ministry of Waqfs in 1328 A.H. They also assert that the antechamber was specially built, at the time of the restoration by Sir M. Montefiore, as a place of prayer for the Moslems. The Moslems object in principle to any repair of the building by the Jews although (up to the recent war) free access to it was allowed at all times.

In 1912 the Ottoman Government permitted the Jews to repair the shrine itself, but not the antechamber. Three months after the British occupation of Palestine the whole place was cleaned and whitewashed by the Jews without protest from the Moslems. In 1921 the Chief Rabbinate applied to the Municipality of Bethlehem for permission to repair the shrine. This gave rise to a Moslem protest, whereupon the High Commissioner ruled that, pending appointment of the Holy Places Commission provided for under the Mandate, all repairs should be undertaken by the Government. However, so much indignation was caused in Jewish circles by this decision that the matter was dropped, the repairs not being considered urgent. In 1925 the Sephardic Community requested permission to repair the Tomb. The building was then made structurally sound and exterior repairs were effected by the Government, but permission was refused by the Jews (who had the keys) for the Government to repair the interior of the shrine. As the interior repairs were unimportant, the Government dropped the matter, in order to avoid controversy.

The claim that Moses Montefiore built a mosque at Rachel's Tomb is laughable. Montefiore was a religious Jew, and he and his wife, who could not have children, identified so strongly with the biblical Rachel that they now lie in a replica of Rachel's Tomb that he built in England.

As far as the Muslim cemetery surrounding Rachel's Tomb is concerned, it is also relatively recent. Photographs of the area from the early 1900s show no such cemetery.

Once again, we have a case of where Muslims claim shrines of other religions as being their own. In this case, they added a completely new reason to venerate the site - specifically to take away the obvious fact that Rachel herself is associated exclusively with Jews.

Work accident!

Hamas' Al Qassam website reports that Suleiman Abu Hassanein was killed this morning in a "special Jihad mission" in Rafah.

"Special Jihad mission" almost always translates to "accidentally blew himself up," although I suspect that on a couple of occasions it has meant "got killed by a co-terrorist."

Either way, time for another round of sweets!

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 207.

Two shot at LA synagogue

From AP:

LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles police have detained a man near the North Hollywood synagogue where two people were shot in the legs.
Officer Rosario Herrera says she was unsure if the arrest was connected with the shooting Thursday at the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic synagogue.
Police say a black man with a handgun entered the building at about 6:20 a.m. and shot two Jewish people. Police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime.
The victims were taken to a hospital.
It was not clear how many people were in the building at the time.

The shul has a minyan at 5:30 and at 6:15 AM, so one would expect at least 10-20 men there at that time in the morning.

UPDATE: Many more details from the LA Times.