Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

PA worried about Hamas political gains, "No humanitarian crisis in Gaza"

The Palestinian Authority is rightly worried that the flotilla incident has strengthened Hamas' rule over Gaza.

From JPost:

The Palestinian Authority is concerned about Turkey’s increased support for Hamas, a PA official in Ramallah said on Monday.

The official said that the PA leadership was “unhappy” with Turkey’s policy toward Hamas, especially with regard to pressure to lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip unconditionally.

“Turkey’s policy is emboldening Hamas and undermining the Palestinian Authority,” the official told The Jerusalem Post.

“Of course we want to see the blockade lifted, but Hamas must also end its coup in the Gaza Strip and accept an Egyptian proposal for achieving reconciliation with Fatah.”

The PA is also concerned the reopening of the Rafah border crossing to Sinai would enable Hamas to tighten its grip on the Strip.

“We wish to remind the Turkish and Egyptian governments that the border crossing was controlled by the Palestinian Authority before Hamas launched its coup in 2007,” the official added. “If the Rafah border crossing is going to be reopened, that should be done in coordination with us and not with Hamas.”

Azzam al-Ahmed, a top Fatah official in the West Bank, was quoted over the weekend as saying that he was opposed to the lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip until Hamas agreed to end the dispute with his faction.

Ahmed stressed that there was no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip because the PA government was sending aid through Israeli border crossings.

At the very least, if Hamas does agree to a reconciliation it will be on terms far more favorable to Hamas.

As far as the goods now crossing the Rafah crossing, Egypt is still not allowing cement - but will coordinate the delivery of cement with Israel via the Kerem Shalom crossing to NGOs such as UNRWA.

NYT ignores Reuters photo manipulation story

The New York Times blog, The Lede, has a lengthy overview of the videos and photos that have been released by Israel and Turkey since the raid on the blockade-breaking ships, especially the photos of the Israeli commandos being held hostage. It goes into detail on a number of issues (some of which we covered, some not) about when and how various videos, audio recordings and photographs were released to the public.

Yet throughout that entire article, posted Monday evening, not a word was mentioned about Reuters' blatant manipulation of the Turkish photos that has been a lead story in much of the blogosphere for the previous 24 hours.

Isn't that interesting?

The usual suspects

2nd of June 2010: members of various NGOs gather around a donkey, wrapped in a U.S. flag, stands on an Israeli flag with people’s shoes placed on it during a protest in Karachi.

I wonder which NGOs, btw.

Original marriage in Iraq

Forward to 2:30

I know that this organization is serious business, otherwise I'd be sure this is a Monty Python sketch.

Pearls' Potus, part 2

Pearls Before Swine seems to again be discussing the piece process. Literally.

Zionist pigs attack yet again!

Palestine Press Agency reports on yet another attack of wild boars on the fields of the residents of Salfit - and their utter conviction that Jewish settlers are behind this evil.

Pigs from settlers from the settlement of "Ariel" continued their attacks on the rights of farms and houses in Salfit and surrounding villages.

Witnesses said that a swine herd consisting of twenty pigs attacked the farming communities, breaking down peach and apricot trees...

Witnesses said the pigs made scary sounds and also attacked a field of wheat belonging to farmers Imran Ahmed Khalil Masri and Abu Dar....

The farmers expressed their indignation at the repeated attacks of pigs and have shown that attempts to eliminate them and get rid of them have failed dismally.

Farmer Abu Amer blamed the occupation, saying that they deliberate disseminate pigs for the sabotage and destruction of land, which is then easily stolen by the occupation authorities to establish more settlements.

There's the missing link - I had always assumed from previous Zionist Pig stories that the Jews raised and trained these pigs purely out malice, but now I see it is to drive the Palestinian Arabs away from their land - a new form of ethnic cleansing, of course.

Another vital detail - the evil Jews did not only train the pigs to distinguish between Arab and Jewish farmlands, but they also train them to make scary noises!

And we know that Arabs have, in the past, left their beloved family homes en masse because of nothing more than loud, scary noises.

Is this a gun?

I just again looked at the 9 minute Al Jazeera Mavi Marmara video and saw something I never noticed before:

Doesn't that look like a gun that the IHH is firing at the helicopter? Or is it something else - a camera, a mic?

UPDATE: The LGFers pretty much all think it is a camera. I'm intrigued by the possibility that it was one of the initial kidnapped IDF officer paintball guns.

Proof that Gaza is too crowded

From PCHR:

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 6:00, on Sunday 6 June 2010, an unknown object exploded in a land that had been used for training by resistance groups in al-Mawasi area in the west of Rafah. As a result, Mohammed Fayez Dehleez, 15, was seriously wounded, due to which his legs and right hand were cut (amputated.)

The Palestinian police sources stated that they opened an investigation into the reasons of the explosion occurred in the training area, at a time when there was no training at all for any resistance group. The police added that the said site had no clear boundaries and many groups were using it.

You see, because Gaza is so small, we have a tragic situation where the large open areas used for terrorism training must be shared among multiple terror groups. Because of the Israeli siege, proper fencing cannot be built around these vast areas - each of which could comfortably house tens of thousands of people.

So until Israel cedes more of its occupied land in the Negev to Hamas, poor Gaza children will continue to be exposed to the danger of left-over munitions from militant training.The human rights of the terror groups to each have their own, separate, well -protected training areas is being seriously violated.

It is just this sort of human rights abuse that makes Westerners so upset that they must organize flotillas to aid those children in danger of being blown up. All because of Israeli intransigence.

Observation on the Reuters-cropped knives

The IDF came under some derision from skeptics who said that their publication of weapons found on the Mavi Marmara ship were of equipment that one would normally find on a ship, such as ordinary kitchen knives.

The two knives that Reuters originally cropped out do not look like any of the knives in this picture, though.

This is not a kitchen knife nor a utility pocket knife - it is a combat knife, somewhat similar in intended function (sharp point, serrated edge that only reaches to the beginning of the curved part) to this one:

Since we see evidence that combat knives were on the ship, and that they were not apparently found by the Israelis, it corroborates the testimony that the IHH thugs threw their own weapons overboard (and not just IDF weapons, as most of those on the ship have been claiming.)

A good question

Soccer Dad asks:

I was unaware of the story behind Helen Thomas's outburst against Jews.
But I wonder what was wrong about what she said.

As he points out, Thomas' comments - that the Jews should get out of "Palestine" because, presumably, they have no legitimate history there - is the exact same position held by Palestinian "moderates." They still refuse to consider Israel a Jewish state (as opposed to the old days in 1948, when they made a bit more explicit their feelings that their entire problem with Israel was that it was a Jewish state.)

Thomas' feelings are widespread in the Arab world. No one in the West expresses disgust, or even astonishment, when Palestinian Arabs say that the Temples never existed or that the Western Wall was built by the Umayyad Muslim dynasty and is a part of the Waqf. The strong reaction to Thomas' statements could not be because those who are now so offended find the statements themselves offensive. It must be something else:

Helen Thomas, then, didn't say anything offensive. The belief she espoused isn't the problem, it's that she's a Westerner who did. For some arbitrary reason, denying Jewish history is offensive for her to do; had she been a Palestinian politician there'd have been nothing wrong with her statement.

Joe Klein, (via memeorandum) who now tells Helen Thomas to go to the back of the room, regularly vilifies Israel and those defenders of Israel, who - for good reason - are skeptical about the intents of the Palestinians.

The question isn't really what was offensive about Helen Thomas's remarks, but what's innocuous about similar remarks made by Palestinian leadership? If it's wrong for an individual to say that Jews don't belong in Israel, aren't you courting disaster by creating a neighboring state founded on that very principle?

It's more than courting disaster - it is effectively legitimizing the very offensive principle, in this case, by saying that Jews have no historic ties nor religious rights to the holy places and the heartland of ancient Jewish kingdoms.

Why is denying history and historic rights offensive for Thomas and accepted for Israel's ersatz, "moderate," "peace partners?"

Egypt seizes landmines, mortars headed to Gaza

Firas Press reports that Egypt has intercepted a shipment of 100 landmines and 10 mortar shells that were being smuggled to Gaza.

This is just the latest of a long line of such seizures ever since Egypt started increased monitoring of Rafah tunnel crossings in the wake of Hamas' refusal to reconcile with Fatah.

Sheikh Tamimi sacked in corruption scandal

Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi was forced out of his job as the "Palestinian Chief Justice and Supreme Judge" yesterday.

Not because he is singlehandedly responsible for many riots. Not because of his anti-semitism or daily incitement against Jews. Not because of the lies that he habitually hurls about supposed Jewish plans to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque.

No, he is being forced out by Abbas because of an unspecified corruption investigation sparked by the whistle-blower Fahmi Shabana who went on Israeli TV to expose endemic corruption that the PA was trying to cover up.

But don't worry - Tamimi will still enjoy a full pension from the PA, with funds that come from the West to prop up the Abbas regime. And he will be free to incite and lie all he wants.

(As I wrote a few weeks ago, Tamimi has stated in the past that there is no Jewish connection to Jerusalem, that Jews are exporting AIDS to PalArabs, there were never any Temples in Jerusalem, that Jews are planning to massacre Muslims on the Temple Mount and that Jews were planning to demolish Al Aqsa last March. He's also the guy who interrupted the Pope to make a speech about Israeli genocide against Arabs.)