Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Elder of ZiyonToday, Hamas sentenced two Fatah members to lengthy prison sentences.
The crime?
"Contact with Ramallah."
The crime?
"Contact with Ramallah."
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Elder of Ziyon
MEMRI uncovers a fevered rant in an Urdu-language jihadist women's magazine. Here's part of it:
"The Jews, who dream of ruling the world, have invented different types of vaccines, drugs, and injections in an organized way to weaken Muslims in their beliefs on spiritual, practical, and moral levels, and make their bodies contaminated. The oral polio vaccine campaign is being run under a worldwide conspiracy – except in the Zionist countries. Its total focus is now on South Asian countries – India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The U.S. has already marked this area as an extremely strategic region."
"Have we ever thought why these greedy Jews and Christians are spending millions of dollars on this campaign?
1) The Pentagon, a U.S. defense institution, provides about $100,000 million for this campaign every year.
2) The WHO spends $150,000 million dollars on this campaign every year.
3) Rotary International also provides a sizable amount for this campaign. Like thousands of NGOs, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the NGO of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, has alone given $750 million for the vaccination of children in poor countries – more than double the amount that the U.S. government gave to the people affected by the tsunami. This will help the WHO vaccinate 90% of children around the world by 2015. All these organizations are known to work openly for the interest of Zionism.
..."An analysis of how the polio vaccination is prepared is sufficient in order to understand how the viruses of haram [forbidden in Islam] and unpious animals like monkeys, chimpanzees, dogs, mice, and pigs are being injected into our [Muslim] bodies.
"Experiments were carried out in different stages on 4,000 monkeys imported from India and the Philippines in 1955, at a deserted place near a river in the area of Bluffton, in southern California. After that, polio vaccines were prepared from their kidneys.
"None other than Jonas Edward Salk (1914-1995) was responsible for this achievement. Besides being a prominent bacteriologist, he was a great Jewish spiritual leader who is revered even now by Jewish religious scholars and rabbis. "
- Tuesday, January 26, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
From the Arab News:
Saudi Arabia will donate $50 million in aid to earthquake-devastated Haiti. “On instructions from Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, the Kingdom will donate $50 million to assist the Haitian people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Osama Nugali said Monday.Since the quake hit, the oil-rich nation had been strongly criticized for not donating anything.
- Tuesday, January 26, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
Hamas, which gets hundreds of millions of dollars from Iran, is not interested in paying a dime for the citizens under its control to get any electricity either.
The PA expects the EU to provide the cash, while the PA gives
an across-the-board raise to all of its workers.
But when the power plant shuts down, and the Gaza stringer photographers take their poignant pictures of Gazans in candlelight, guess who will be blamed?
An EU contract paying for fuel shipments into the Gaza Strip for its sole power plant expired on 30 November 2009, according to Kan'an Obeid, deputy manager of the Energy Authority in the coastal enclave.Missing from this story is the fact that Israel is willing to provide the fuel Gaza needs - the problem is that someone needs to pay for it. Apparently, the world's Arabs, who claim their solidarity with the beleaguered Strip daily, cannot seem to find it in their hearts to pay for their Gaza brethren's fuel.
While the EU had been providing the service after the contract expired, EU officials notified the Energy Authority that they would no longer pay for the fuel shipments unless the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah drafted a new agreement and payment scheme.
Obeid said that the fuel in Gaza will last until Thursday morning. If a new shipment does not arrive, Gaza's power plant will be forced to shut down, in turn affecting 70 percent of the population.
Hamas, which gets hundreds of millions of dollars from Iran, is not interested in paying a dime for the citizens under its control to get any electricity either.
The PA expects the EU to provide the cash, while the PA gives
an across-the-board raise to all of its workers.But when the power plant shuts down, and the Gaza stringer photographers take their poignant pictures of Gazans in candlelight, guess who will be blamed?
- Tuesday, January 26, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
Remember last October when Mahmoud Abbas made a big deal over saying he will not run in the next set of Palestinian Authority elections?
Even though people worldwide panicked over his threat, others noticed that it was nothing more than a sympathy ploy and that he was going to be president for a long, long time.
Now, he's quietly made it official.
Abbas just rescinded his October call for "early elections" (according to the PA Basic Law, the elections should have been held by this week) and instead he plans to sign a new decree this week that postpones new elections until there is a consensus about when and how they should be held.
And that in the meantime, Abbas remains president. Given how the negotiations of unity between Hamas and Fatah have dragged on, chances are that he will be president for a long, long time.
Even though people worldwide panicked over his threat, others noticed that it was nothing more than a sympathy ploy and that he was going to be president for a long, long time.
Now, he's quietly made it official.
Abbas just rescinded his October call for "early elections" (according to the PA Basic Law, the elections should have been held by this week) and instead he plans to sign a new decree this week that postpones new elections until there is a consensus about when and how they should be held.
And that in the meantime, Abbas remains president. Given how the negotiations of unity between Hamas and Fatah have dragged on, chances are that he will be president for a long, long time.
Monday, January 25, 2010
- Monday, January 25, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
flood libel
The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights also blames Israel for supposedly opening up a dam in order to flood poor Gazans during torrential rains last week:
So we see that Al Mezan is lying in the first paragraph when they claim that Israel opened the floodgates in 2001; it is lying when they said that Israel opened a dam in 2010, it is lying when it says that the purpose of the "dam" is to deprive Gazans of rainwater (the water in the reservoir is piped in as purified sewage water for Israeli agriculture.)
But it means that we can now find that picture of the "dam" we were looking for, even if it was never opened - and, indeed, if it is unlikely to even have a mechanism for opening.
For the second time in the past ten years, at approximately 6pm on Monday 18 January 2010, Israel opened the floodgates of one of the dams in the Gaza Valley, which flows into Gaza from the east. As a result, dozens of Palestinian houses and properties were damaged. Israel built this floodgate to prevent the rainwater's natural flow into Gaza, depriving the Gaza aquifer from its main natural source of underground water.Here we see how trustworthy this prestigious "human rights" organization is. Since it is the second time it happened, it must tell us about the first:
A similar situation had occurred when the so-called Nahal Oz dam suddenly collapsed nine years ago, on 26 March 2001. Hundreds of donams of agricultural lands; chicken and cow farms; and rural houses were damaged.It seems we found a dam, in Nahal Oz! Yet the news stories from that date don't quite call it a dam - it is a reservoir:
A special committee has been established to investigate the bursting of a reservoir near Kibbutz Nahal Oz yesterday which caused extensive flooding and the loss of over 3 million cubic meters of irrigation water. The purified sewage water piped in from the Dan region treatment plant flooded vast tracts of arable land and swamped low-lying fields of Palestinian farmers in the nearby Gaza strip.
So we see that Al Mezan is lying in the first paragraph when they claim that Israel opened the floodgates in 2001; it is lying when they said that Israel opened a dam in 2010, it is lying when it says that the purpose of the "dam" is to deprive Gazans of rainwater (the water in the reservoir is piped in as purified sewage water for Israeli agriculture.)
But it means that we can now find that picture of the "dam" we were looking for, even if it was never opened - and, indeed, if it is unlikely to even have a mechanism for opening.
- Monday, January 25, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
Thus helping ensure that Hamas can use all the money it gets from Iran for weapons, and not to actually take care of Gazans.
The Palestinian Authority will increase employees' salaries by 4% this month, Amjad Abu Raed, head of the Union of Government Officials said on Monday.A good number of those that will be receiving this across-the-board increase live in the Gaza Strip - and don't work at all.
Abu Raed said that a 2.75% increase will be tacked on to salaries for the cost of living, and 1.25% will be given as an annual bonus.
All governmental employees will receive the raise, he said, adding that the union received a formal decision from the Ramallah government announcing the decision.
Thus helping ensure that Hamas can use all the money it gets from Iran for weapons, and not to actually take care of Gazans.
- Monday, January 25, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
Who says that Mahmoud Abbas doesn't do anything? He is sponsoring weight-reduction surgery for this 39-year old man, who in his healthier days was able to pull cars with his teeth.As Ma'an says,
The man fearful that his obesity will cause his death is to receive two surgeries to alleviate his condition and assist his weight loss, which will be sponsored by President Mahmoud Abbas.Maybe Abbas didn't want the world to see a Palestinian Arab who somehow manages to stave off Zionist-induced starvation.
Abdul Fattah Abu Addas, 39, and from the Balata Refugee Camp east of Nablus, weighs 250 kilograms ( 551 lbs) and has lost two siblings to obesity related deaths. Abu Addas' had appealed for assistance as the procedures were deemed cosmetic surgery by the Ramallah-based Ministry of Health.
The surgeries include a gastric bypass and liposuction, worth an estimated 7,000 Jordanian dinars.
Abu Addas has not been able to move unassisted for several years and is unable to have children as a result of his obesity.
Previously Abu Addas was an athlete, participating in competitive tug of war matches and winning a number of accolades, in addition to pulling cars with his teeth.
Abbas has ordered that the surgery be carried out immediately.
- Monday, January 25, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
- honor killing
The Lancet is one of the world's most prestigious medical journals. In recent years, however, it has moved a bit from medical to political, and the results are that it has become a purveyor of idiotic social science studies as well.
The latest version is a study that looks at Palestinian Arab men who beat their wives ("intimate partner violence") and who is to blame for it.
Take a wild guess.
Here is the abstract:
So the study, meant to demonize Israel, was partially funded by the Palestinian National Authority - and the samples were chosen by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, which is paid by the same Palestinian National Authority.
Anyone see a problem here?
This is not theoretical. It appears that the PCBS chose people for the study that were not close to a random sample of Palestinian Arabs in the territories. Look at this table, entitled "Exposure to violence perpetrated by occupation forces or settlers in 2005:"
3% of the surveyed people claim to have had their homes demolished by Israel in 2005, and 6% to have had land confiscated. 8% claim to have had their home broken into by either IDF soldiers or "settlers." 1% of the husbands were "made fugitives." Almost 1% had family members killed by Israel in 2005!
These numbers are so out of whack with reality as to be laughable - but for the "social scientists" who only hear about house demolitions and land being stolen, they seem eminently reasonable. For all of the talk in the study about "adjusted multinomial logistic regression models" used, none of them looked at these numbers and concluded that it seems a bit strange to think that 15,000 adult men became "fugitives" in the territories in 2005.
So either the PCBS skewed the "random samples" in a huge way, or we have a large number of survey respondents who are simply liars in claiming to be direct victims of Israeli violence in 2005.
And people who are likely to lie in that way are also people who would blame all of their problems on others - and, very likely, the same kind of people to take their frustrations out on their wives.
But the Lancet study cannot imagine such a scenario. Instead, it relies on equally flawed previous studies and a healthy dose of political correctness to say things like
There is a more fundamental problem with the very way that the study was framed. It looks at "exposure to political violence" as a purely passive phenomenon. The Palestinian Arab men are judged, a priori, as being innocent victims of Israeli violence, who had done nothing on their own. The 1% of the sample who were "made a fugitive" or the 2% who were "detained" are assumed to be exactly the same psychological makeup as those who are more indirectly affected by Israeli policies. In fact, those who are directly exposed to such "political violence" are the ones who are much more likely to be the ones who cause political violence, i.e., members of terror groups. It is not surprising that people who are more violent towards Israelis would also be more likely to be violent towards their wives. Yet the study didn't even consider this very obvious observation!
In other words, this study is worse than worthless. It obscures more than it reveals and it unintentionally shows how a pre-existing bias can, and does, skew science and statistics. It is a case study in poor research techniques. It proves that social scientists can easily find the answer that they are predisposed to find, rather than seek the truth.
The latest version is a study that looks at Palestinian Arab men who beat their wives ("intimate partner violence") and who is to blame for it.
Take a wild guess.
Here is the abstract:
Background
Intimate-partner violence might increase during and after exposure to collective violence. We assessed whether political violence was associated with male-to-female intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory.Methods
A nationally representative, cross-sectional survey was done between Dec 18, 2005, and Jan 18, 2006, by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. 4156 households were randomly selected with a multistage random cluster design, from which 3815 ever-married women aged 15—64 years were identified. We restricted our analysis to presently married women (n=3510, 92% participation rate), who completed a short version of the revised conflict tactics scales and exposure to political violence inventory. Exposure to political violence was characterised as the husband's direct exposure, his indirect exposure via his family's experiences, and economic effects of exposure on the household. We used adjusted multinomial logistic regression models to estimate odds ratios (ORs) for association between political violence and intimate-partner violence.Findings
Political violence was significantly related to higher odds of intimate-partner violence. ORs were 1·89 (95% CI 1·29—2·76) for physical and 2·23 (1·49—3·35) for sexual intimate-partner violence in respondents whose husbands were directly exposed to political violence compared with those whose husbands were not directly exposed. For women whose husbands were indirectly exposed, ORs were 1·61 (1·25—2·07) for physical and 1·97 (1·49—2—60) for sexual violence, compared with those whose husbands were not indirectly exposed. Economic effects of exposure were associated with increased odds of intimate-partner violence in the Gaza Strip only.Interpretation
Because exposure to political violence is associated with increased odds of intimate-partner violence, and exposure to many traumas is associated with poor health, a range of violent exposures should be assessed when establishing the need for psychosocial interventions in conflict settings.Funding
Palestinian National Authority, Core Funding Group, Program in Health Disparities Research at the University of Minnesota.
Anyone see a problem here?
This is not theoretical. It appears that the PCBS chose people for the study that were not close to a random sample of Palestinian Arabs in the territories. Look at this table, entitled "Exposure to violence perpetrated by occupation forces or settlers in 2005:"
3% of the surveyed people claim to have had their homes demolished by Israel in 2005, and 6% to have had land confiscated. 8% claim to have had their home broken into by either IDF soldiers or "settlers." 1% of the husbands were "made fugitives." Almost 1% had family members killed by Israel in 2005!These numbers are so out of whack with reality as to be laughable - but for the "social scientists" who only hear about house demolitions and land being stolen, they seem eminently reasonable. For all of the talk in the study about "adjusted multinomial logistic regression models" used, none of them looked at these numbers and concluded that it seems a bit strange to think that 15,000 adult men became "fugitives" in the territories in 2005.
So either the PCBS skewed the "random samples" in a huge way, or we have a large number of survey respondents who are simply liars in claiming to be direct victims of Israeli violence in 2005.
And people who are likely to lie in that way are also people who would blame all of their problems on others - and, very likely, the same kind of people to take their frustrations out on their wives.
But the Lancet study cannot imagine such a scenario. Instead, it relies on equally flawed previous studies and a healthy dose of political correctness to say things like
The feminist perspective is relevant to understanding the occurrence of intimate-partner violence because patriarchal ideologies and institutional practices underpin violence against women.28 Pre-existing gender inequalities are exacerbated and traditional gender roles are challenged in environments in which forms of collective violence persist.3 Occupation policies and interactions with occupation forces entail continuous humiliation for men and renders them unable to protect and provide for their families, potentially leading to frustration and violence against people with less power—namely, women and children.26, 29 From a resource-theory perspective, violence might be used to reassert men's socially established position of power in the family.30And this:
From a psychological perspective, the frustration encountered in living under the control of the Israeli occupation could lead to aggression via negative affect.31 Various negative mental health sequelae have been associated with exposure to political violence in the occupied Palestinian territory32 that are also associated with an increased risk of perpetrating intimate-partner violence, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.33 Humiliation, which takes place frequently in the occupied territories,32, 34 is associated with depression;35 hence, it might also be a mediator of the relation between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence.The two footnotes that supposedly talk about how frequently Arabs are humiliated are a bit suspect. Footnote 32 refers to this book that has no chapters on humilation. Footnote 34 refers to a study of 10th and 11th grade students in Ramallah by Bir Zeit University that may mention the frequency of "humilation" among that sample but whose purpose was not to measure that number.
There is a more fundamental problem with the very way that the study was framed. It looks at "exposure to political violence" as a purely passive phenomenon. The Palestinian Arab men are judged, a priori, as being innocent victims of Israeli violence, who had done nothing on their own. The 1% of the sample who were "made a fugitive" or the 2% who were "detained" are assumed to be exactly the same psychological makeup as those who are more indirectly affected by Israeli policies. In fact, those who are directly exposed to such "political violence" are the ones who are much more likely to be the ones who cause political violence, i.e., members of terror groups. It is not surprising that people who are more violent towards Israelis would also be more likely to be violent towards their wives. Yet the study didn't even consider this very obvious observation!
In other words, this study is worse than worthless. It obscures more than it reveals and it unintentionally shows how a pre-existing bias can, and does, skew science and statistics. It is a case study in poor research techniques. It proves that social scientists can easily find the answer that they are predisposed to find, rather than seek the truth.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
- Sunday, January 24, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
I just received two books I had ordered (alas, not that I was sent for free.)
Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle should be a fun read, and Hillel Cohen's Good Arabs is a follow-up on his very illuminating book "Army of Shadows" that I reviewed two years ago. I hope to get to find the time to read and review them in the next month or so.
What interesting books have you been reading?
Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle should be a fun read, and Hillel Cohen's Good Arabs is a follow-up on his very illuminating book "Army of Shadows" that I reviewed two years ago. I hope to get to find the time to read and review them in the next month or so.
What interesting books have you been reading?
- Sunday, January 24, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
From Iranian FARS News Agency: (you might not want to click on the link; it does weird things to your browser)
This was of course a reaction to the news that Iranian officials shook hands with the Israeli tourism minister in Madrid last week. Mousavi again denied that story.
A senior Iranian tourism official said that the Israeli regime is striving to block growth and expansion of Iran's tourism industry by hindering tourist travels to the country.Yeah, we Zionists are kept up at night worrying about how to hurt the Iranian tourism industry.
"Zionists fear the arrival of even one tourist in Iran and have employed all their propaganda and media capabilities to fill the world people with pessimism about conditions in Iran to impede tourist travels to the country," Deputy Director of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization Reza Mousavi added.
This was of course a reaction to the news that Iranian officials shook hands with the Israeli tourism minister in Madrid last week. Mousavi again denied that story.
- Sunday, January 24, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
A Hamas jeep in Gaza City was blown up by unknown assailants. No one was injured.
One was killed and dozens injured in an Arab clan clash that made it to east Jerusalem. Shops were torched and a bus was shot at. Israeli police are trying to calm things down.
Hamas leader Dr. Khalil Al Hayya said that Iran supports Hamas "financially, politically and morally." He pointedly did not say "militarily," not that he has to.
Hamas welcomed the new UNRWA Commissioner-General, Filippo Grandi. Interestingly, Hamas asked him to move the stranded Iraqis of Palestinian Arab origin from under the aegis of UNHCR (where they have a chance of becoming citizens of other nations and of not remaining "refugees" for generations) to UNRWA (where they will be added to the pawns being used as cannon fodder against Israel.)
One was killed and dozens injured in an Arab clan clash that made it to east Jerusalem. Shops were torched and a bus was shot at. Israeli police are trying to calm things down.
Hamas leader Dr. Khalil Al Hayya said that Iran supports Hamas "financially, politically and morally." He pointedly did not say "militarily," not that he has to.
Hamas welcomed the new UNRWA Commissioner-General, Filippo Grandi. Interestingly, Hamas asked him to move the stranded Iraqis of Palestinian Arab origin from under the aegis of UNHCR (where they have a chance of becoming citizens of other nations and of not remaining "refugees" for generations) to UNRWA (where they will be added to the pawns being used as cannon fodder against Israel.)
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