Monday, July 12, 2010
Elder of ZiyonReal life intruding on blogging. Have fun in the comments.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Elder of Ziyon
Dar al Hayat has an article that begins to discuss the issues with the new, large natural gas fields that have been discovered or are expected to be discovered in the Mediterranean.
Briefly, gas fields have been discovered off the coasts of Egypt, Gaza ("Marine"), southern Israel ("Mary B") and northern Israel near Haifa ("Tamar.")
Chances are good that the Marine and Mary B are a shared field. Chances are also pretty good that Tamar field extends into Lebanese waters, with Lebanon technically at war with Israel with no demarcated borders - especially at sea. The Tamar field may also reach Cypriot waters.
And to make things more complicated, Turkey would assert rights over offshore Cypriot gas fields, and Syria might want to get in on the action as well.
A recent US Geological Survey indicates that the entire Levant basin might hold 227 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as well as billions of barrels of oil.
This could get very, very dicey.
Briefly, gas fields have been discovered off the coasts of Egypt, Gaza ("Marine"), southern Israel ("Mary B") and northern Israel near Haifa ("Tamar.")
Chances are good that the Marine and Mary B are a shared field. Chances are also pretty good that Tamar field extends into Lebanese waters, with Lebanon technically at war with Israel with no demarcated borders - especially at sea. The Tamar field may also reach Cypriot waters.
And to make things more complicated, Turkey would assert rights over offshore Cypriot gas fields, and Syria might want to get in on the action as well.
A recent US Geological Survey indicates that the entire Levant basin might hold 227 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as well as billions of barrels of oil.
This could get very, very dicey.
- Monday, July 12, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
A few weeks ago there were rumors, immediately denied, that Saudi Arabia would allow Israel to use its airspace (or even to build an airbase!) in order to attack Iran. While the airspace story might have some plausibility in a situation where the Saudis could maintain deniability, an analysis by a rabid Israel-hater in Dar al Hayat includes a paragraph that needs to be studied:
It takes a lot for an Arab country to accept help from the US against another Arab country - as in the case of Kuwait against Iraq. But to accept help from the hated enemy Israel? Sorry, it will never happen in any sort of public way. It is inconceivable that even Egypt or Jordan would accept military help from Israel. Under the table, away from the public, in the back rooms, with absolute deniability - perhaps. But the citizens of any Arab country, raised for generations with implacable hate against the Jews cum Zionists, would not stand for such an absolute betrayal from their leadership. The Arab hate against Israel is palpable (as can be seen in the remainder of the article linked to here.)
Perhaps the Saudi government has a thousand objections to the practices of the Iranian government. However, it would never help Israel against a Muslim country. This is impossible with Abdullah bin Abdulaziz as King, Sultan bin Abdulaziz as the Crown Prince, and with his brothers, their children, grandchildren, ministers and the entire people.
It takes a lot for an Arab country to accept help from the US against another Arab country - as in the case of Kuwait against Iraq. But to accept help from the hated enemy Israel? Sorry, it will never happen in any sort of public way. It is inconceivable that even Egypt or Jordan would accept military help from Israel. Under the table, away from the public, in the back rooms, with absolute deniability - perhaps. But the citizens of any Arab country, raised for generations with implacable hate against the Jews cum Zionists, would not stand for such an absolute betrayal from their leadership. The Arab hate against Israel is palpable (as can be seen in the remainder of the article linked to here.)
- Monday, July 12, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
James Carroll, in the Boston Globe, defines the Palestinian Arab/Israeli conflict neatly symmetrical terms that are very elegant, and very false.
Creating false equivalences does not help to solve the problem, though.
The Zionist viewpoint is not that Palestine was filled with anti-semites as Jews returned from exile. To be sure, there was anti-semitism among the Arabs - to deny that it exists is as foolhardy as to compare it to the far worse traditional European anti-semitism. Even so, today the problem is not the underlying implicit anti-semitism that still festers in the Arab world, but the explicit and festering anti-Zionism - the utter inability to accept a Jewish state under any circumstances in what they consider Arab land. That is a problem that cannot be wished away. Whether modern anti-Zionism is congruent with traditional anti-semitism is not the pertinent issue - rabid anti-Zionism, which I once termed misoziony, is in itself a roadblock to any chance for peace. When Palestinian Arabs are claiming that Jews in Israel are colonialists, it is not merely the opposite of the truth - it is a manifestation of an underlying hatred that is endemic and every bit as toxic as traditional anti-semitism.
When Carroll tries to create a symmetry between Arab views of Zionism as colonialism, and Jewish views of anti-Zionism as anti-semitism, he is missing the point. Even if anti-Zionism is not a specific manifestation of anti-semitism, it is no less hateful and no more tolerant.
Carroll also errs when he tries to imply that misoziony is merely a Palestinian Arab phenomenon - it is at the very least a pan-Arab psychosis, perhaps the only true pan-Arab mindset that exists. There is precious little else that the Arab world can agree upon.
Another problem is that Carroll (and many others) think that Zionist Jews' false understandings of the Palestinian Arab narrative is partially to blame for there being no peace, when in fact Zionism has almost always shown an almost superhuman ability to empathize with the other side. Consistently, Zionist peace plans have attempted to address the purported issues in a way that would support a win-win solution. The real problem is that the other side has shown zero interest in a solution that still allows a Jewish state to continue to exist, and these continuous attempts to compromise will inevitably fail because they are not regarded as confidence building gestures or goodwill measures, but as steps on the way to the annihilation of Israel. There is a vast gulf between the Western perception of a solution being a win-win for everybody and the Arab mentality of the zero-sum game.
The unfortunate truth is that the Arab world will never accept Israel except as an entity too strong to defeat or dislodge. The only thing protecting Israel is its strength. Pretending that there are myths on both sides that can be transcended to reach peace is not realism, but another case of wishful thinking. It assumes that peace is the goal for both sides, and that is simply not the case.
Against the usual perception, the Israeli and Palestinian stories are not contradictory but parallel. Jews and Arabs did not dig the ditch that keeps them apart.Carroll seems to be a nice guy, and he is not the first to think he has come up with a unique perspective that could help break the impasse.
To shift the analogy, Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a corner. But the walls of that corner were constructed by someone else — an unacknowledged third party. Those walls are anti-Semitism and colonialism, each of which is thought to be well understood. But their recombination begets something new — a lethal feedback loop, as the historic hatred of Jews mixes explosively with the contempt for native peoples that defined imperial expansion.
Now Europe, together with its legacy culture America, sends representatives, such as Mitchell and Blair, claiming to offer disinterested “help” to the stubbornly warring parties. Yet that broader culture is fully complicit as the source of the two momentous animosities. Because that complicity is never reckoned with, energetic diplomatic interventions, going back past Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger to successive British “white papers,” have come to nothing....
The return to the land of Israel was momentous for people who had prayed for most of two millennia, “Next year in Jerusalem.” From the Arab point of view, however, Zionism could only be taken as a manifestation of the colonialism that native Palestinians had by then every reason to detest. Just as it is wrong to take Zionism as colonialism, it is wrong to take Palestinian hatred of Jewish arrival — and, even more pointedly, of Israeli occupation — as anti-Semitism....
Creating false equivalences does not help to solve the problem, though.
The Zionist viewpoint is not that Palestine was filled with anti-semites as Jews returned from exile. To be sure, there was anti-semitism among the Arabs - to deny that it exists is as foolhardy as to compare it to the far worse traditional European anti-semitism. Even so, today the problem is not the underlying implicit anti-semitism that still festers in the Arab world, but the explicit and festering anti-Zionism - the utter inability to accept a Jewish state under any circumstances in what they consider Arab land. That is a problem that cannot be wished away. Whether modern anti-Zionism is congruent with traditional anti-semitism is not the pertinent issue - rabid anti-Zionism, which I once termed misoziony, is in itself a roadblock to any chance for peace. When Palestinian Arabs are claiming that Jews in Israel are colonialists, it is not merely the opposite of the truth - it is a manifestation of an underlying hatred that is endemic and every bit as toxic as traditional anti-semitism.
When Carroll tries to create a symmetry between Arab views of Zionism as colonialism, and Jewish views of anti-Zionism as anti-semitism, he is missing the point. Even if anti-Zionism is not a specific manifestation of anti-semitism, it is no less hateful and no more tolerant.
When Palestinian and Israeli negotiators finally face each other across one table, these common notes of experience should be paramount — but only for the sake of moving beyond them. Two peoples who have each defined themselves positively by negative hatred of the other have been at the mercy of a broad culture that created this very habit of mind. Jews and Arabs can renounce this history without renouncing themselves. Each can then receive the other’s account of the past, and, perhaps for the first time, hear it respectfully.Again, he is ascribing to the Zionist side the hate that exists on the Arab side. While it is undoubtedly true that Palestinian Arabs define themselves in negative terms, by their shared hate of Israel, Jewish nationalism is a far richer and naturally positive historic trend. Before 1948, and even before modern Zionism, no one doubted that the Jewish people were a nation as well as a religious group. Jew and Gentile alike recognized this fact as a given, and newspaper clippings from the 19th century are as likely to use the term Israelites as they were to use Jews. While modern Zionism was partially a reaction to anti-semitism, it was European anti-semitism that the Jews were trying to find an antidote to: Arabs were considered irrelevant to the issue, and often even regarded as potential allies in creating a parallel national movement.
Carroll also errs when he tries to imply that misoziony is merely a Palestinian Arab phenomenon - it is at the very least a pan-Arab psychosis, perhaps the only true pan-Arab mindset that exists. There is precious little else that the Arab world can agree upon.
Another problem is that Carroll (and many others) think that Zionist Jews' false understandings of the Palestinian Arab narrative is partially to blame for there being no peace, when in fact Zionism has almost always shown an almost superhuman ability to empathize with the other side. Consistently, Zionist peace plans have attempted to address the purported issues in a way that would support a win-win solution. The real problem is that the other side has shown zero interest in a solution that still allows a Jewish state to continue to exist, and these continuous attempts to compromise will inevitably fail because they are not regarded as confidence building gestures or goodwill measures, but as steps on the way to the annihilation of Israel. There is a vast gulf between the Western perception of a solution being a win-win for everybody and the Arab mentality of the zero-sum game.
The unfortunate truth is that the Arab world will never accept Israel except as an entity too strong to defeat or dislodge. The only thing protecting Israel is its strength. Pretending that there are myths on both sides that can be transcended to reach peace is not realism, but another case of wishful thinking. It assumes that peace is the goal for both sides, and that is simply not the case.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
- Sunday, July 11, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
According to Israel's Channel 2 news, George Mitchell accused Bashir Assad of transferring weapons in convoys to Hezbollah. When Assad denied it, Mitchell showed him satellite photos - and Assad still denied it.
Finally, after a number of such iterations, during which Mitchell informed Assad that he had seen incontrovertible proof, Assad asked Mitchell, "And if we are transferring - so what?"
A senior US official is quoted as saying that Assad is a liar and that it is impossible to reach an agreement with him.
But, meanwhile, Syrian weapons still pour into Lebanon.
(h/t Jed)
Finally, after a number of such iterations, during which Mitchell informed Assad that he had seen incontrovertible proof, Assad asked Mitchell, "And if we are transferring - so what?"
A senior US official is quoted as saying that Assad is a liar and that it is impossible to reach an agreement with him.
But, meanwhile, Syrian weapons still pour into Lebanon.
(h/t Jed)
- Sunday, July 11, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
From Palestinian Media Watch:
Once again we see that peace is not a goal for even the "moderate" PA. The goal is to destroy Israel; peace (or, more accurately, the "peace process") is a strategy towards achieving that goal.
Somehow, I don't think that there will be any angry requests from the White House demanding that Abbas explain or disown his statements. They reserve those actions for things that are really heinous, like announcements of Jews building houses in their capital city.
The PA daily reports that Abbas said this at a meeting with writers and journalists in the home of the Palestinian Ambassador to Jordan.I saw this on Friday and couldn't find the original article in Al Hayat al Jadida online, so I emailed PMW, who provided me with a facsimile of the print page, with the quote highlighted in yellow:
The following is the transcript from the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida:
"'We don't accept the statement [of Hamas]: a [Palestinian] state of resistance and refusal. What we hear from everyone is that the basis is negotiations, at a time that the entire world agrees about this, despite the absence of other options, we either have negotiations or no negotiations, what has put Israel in the corner.
We are unable to confront Israel militarily, and this point was discussed at the Arab League Summit in March in Sirt (Libya). There I turned to the Arab States and I said: 'If you want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don't have the ability to do it.' He [Abbas] said: 'The West Bank was completely destroyed and we will not agree that it will be destroyed again,' in addition to 'the inability to confront Israel militarily.'"[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah), July 6, 2010
Once again we see that peace is not a goal for even the "moderate" PA. The goal is to destroy Israel; peace (or, more accurately, the "peace process") is a strategy towards achieving that goal.
Somehow, I don't think that there will be any angry requests from the White House demanding that Abbas explain or disown his statements. They reserve those actions for things that are really heinous, like announcements of Jews building houses in their capital city.
- Sunday, July 11, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
I just received an email from JCPA, the excellent Israeli think-tank, bragging about its Internet success:
Which Israel-Based Think-Tank Leads the Pack on the Internet?
After a decade of concentrated effort on the front lines of the Internet, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs headed by former Israeli UN Ambassador Dore Gold leads the pack of Israel-based think tanks, according to data from Alexa.com, an independent website traffic ranking service owned by Amazon.com.
A comparison of 17 think tanks in July 2010 shows that the Jerusalem Center ranks much higher than better known and more lavishly funded institutions such as the Israel Democracy Institute, Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, the Shalem Center, and the Peres Center (see table).
Rank Website World Ranking
1 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs 368,054
2 NGO Monitor 605,446
3 One Jerusalem 752,482
4 Daily Alert 962,386
5 Institute for Counter-Terrorism, IDC Herzliya 978,644
6 Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv University 1,093,413
7 Israel Democracy Institute 1,302,090
8 Reut Institute 1,735,615
9 Van Leer Jerusalem Institute 1,878,871
10 Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information 2,205,274
11 Peres Center for Peace 2,594,697
12 Ariel Center for Policy Research 2,761,903
13 Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress 3,312,665
14 Shalem Center 4,859,252
15 Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University 5,812,872
16 Rabin Center 6,365,319
17 Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 8,419,974
So I looked up my Alexa rank:
209,116.
I am speechless.
I don't know whether to be proud that my ranking is so high, or upset that these professional think-tanks - with full time staff and salaries, filled with stellar content - cannot do better.
Maybe, if they would hire me full time, I could make aliyah and increase their ranking!
(Just for context - newspapers and magazines do much, much better than my little blog, and these sites don't generally have daily news updates, but still....)
(Just for context - newspapers and magazines do much, much better than my little blog, and these sites don't generally have daily news updates, but still....)
- Sunday, July 11, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
Haaretz reported last week:
Mexico foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to establish a network in South America, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Tuesday.Hezbollah's activities in Central and South America are a bit more long-term and entrenched, however. From The Sunday Paper, May 21, 2007:
Hezbollah operatives employed Mexicans nationals with family ties to Lebanon to set up the network, designed to target Israel and the West, the Al-Seyassah daily said.
According to the report, Mexican police mounted a surveillance operation on the group's leader, Jameel Nasr, who traveled frequently to Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hezbollah commanders there.
Police say Nasr also made frequent trips to other countries in Latin America, including a two-month stay in Venezuela in the summer of 2008.
Nasr was living in Tijuana, Mexico at the time of his arrest, the report said.
The report follows warnings from the United States that Hezbollah and its backer Iran are stepping up operations in the region.
In June, a U.S. congresswoman wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to warn that Hezbollah was increasing its presence in Central and South America.
In her letter, Congresswoman Sue Myrick called on the U.S. to work with Mexican forces, as there was intelligence that Hezbollah was working in conjunction with Mexican drug cartels on the U.S.-Mexico border.
In 2009 a U.S. commander tasked with overseeing U.S. military interests in the region said Hezbollah was linked to drug-trafficking in Colombia.
Argentina linked Hezbollah to the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and the Argentine-Israeli Community Center in 1994, both in Buenos Aires. A car bomb loaded with 300 kilograms of explosives was used to execute the latter attack, which killed 81 people.Hezbollah's international reach is barely reported in the MSM, as it continues to morph Western perceptions of the organization from a worldwide terrorist group into just another Lebanese political party.
In February 2000, Paraguayan authorities arrested Ali Khalil Mehri, a Lebanese businessman with financial links to Hezbollah, in the country's Tri-Border Area, so called because Brazil and Argentina's borders meet Paraguay's there. In November of that year, Paraguayan authorities arrested Salah Abdul Karim Yassine, a Palestinian who allegedly threatened to bomb the U.S. and Israeli Embassies in Paraguay, and charged him with entering the country illegally.
As reported by the Washington Times on Aug. 21, 2001—less than a month before Sept. 11—U.S. Special Forces were training Paraguayan soldiers here in anti-drug operations "that closely resemble counterinsurgency operations," while hundreds of U.S. soldiers spent four months in Paraguay which had "long been a home to Arabs linked to the Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad militias."
As reported in international Spanish newspaper El Pais in November 2001, an investigation by the National Direction of Civil Aeronautics determined that 16 foreigners enter Paraguay illegally on a weekly basis via the airport of Ciudad del Este, paying some $5,000 in advance, but many more are believed to enter by land.
According to the state department, since 2003, "al-Said Mokhles was extradited from Uruguay to Egypt, Ali Nizar Dahroug was convicted in Paraguay of tax evasion and sentenced to 6.5 years in prison, and Assad Ahmad Barakat, the Hezbollah financial kingpin in the Tri-Border Area, was extradited from Brazil to Paraguay also to face tax evasion charges."
[Quoting Forbes] Iran is the biggest patron of Hezbollah, delivering $100 million or so a year to the terrorists ...Last year, Rady Zaiter, a Lebanese citizen, was arrested in Colombia for allegedly heading a cocaine smuggling outfit in Ecuador that sent most of its profits to Hezbollah … The Party of God gets $10 million a year from the area where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet.
- Sunday, July 11, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
From Ya Libnan:
One Lebanese MP noted on Friday, “It is shameful that Israel grants Palestinians their rights while Lebanon stands idly by.”
Yet even he was dead-set against the possibility of granting full citizenship rights to Palestinians.
Central News Agency (CNA) has reported that MP Walid Jumblatt has agreed to withdraw his bill, that grants Palestinians civil rights and allows them to buy property in Lebanon, in favor of a humanitarian bill that was worked out between al Mustqbal , March 14 Secretariat and and the Lebanese Forces that will grant the Palestinians the right to work in Lebanon.There was fierce opposition to the idea of Palestinian Arabs being able to purchase land in Lebanon.
The new humanitarian bill was formulated following discussions with Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir , former PM Fouad Siniora and Phalange party leader Amin Gemayel and was also approved by Speaker Nabih Berri and MP Michel Aoun.
MP Nuhad Mashnouk has been commuting between Jumblatt, Aoun and Berri to get consensus on the new bill.
During an interview with CNA Mashnouk said, "Wwe have reached consensus on a bill that will grant the Palestinians the right to work on condition that this action will not add any burden to the state of Lebanon (either through social security, subsidies or through any other funds)."
Mashnouk added ”The international community should bear some responsibility in this regard.”
Mashnouk also confirmed that discussions are ongoing between all the concerned groups over granting Palestinians the right to own property in Lebanon.
One Lebanese MP noted on Friday, “It is shameful that Israel grants Palestinians their rights while Lebanon stands idly by.”
Yet even he was dead-set against the possibility of granting full citizenship rights to Palestinians.
- Sunday, July 11, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
A ship from Libya headed towards Gaza left Greece last night, filled with food that Gaza does not seem to be lacking. Israel Matzav notices that the "charity" that is running the ship once received some $200,000 from - the Obama administration.
Hamas' amnesty program for "collaborators" ended over the weekend, and they claim to have gotten many key spies to turn themselves in. Some are wondering what will happen now if anyone else decides to "repent" after the deadline...
The new head of Al Azhar University in Cairo said that he would not repeat the mistakes of his late predecessor, and would not consider shaking hands with Shimon Peres or meeting with any delegation of rabbis.
It is not only UNRWA and Hamas running summer camps in Gaza. Islamic Jihad has a system of 51 camps for kids 11-16, where they "prepare a generation armed with faith and awareness that is capable of carrying burdens and challenges."
Hamas' amnesty program for "collaborators" ended over the weekend, and they claim to have gotten many key spies to turn themselves in. Some are wondering what will happen now if anyone else decides to "repent" after the deadline...
The new head of Al Azhar University in Cairo said that he would not repeat the mistakes of his late predecessor, and would not consider shaking hands with Shimon Peres or meeting with any delegation of rabbis.
It is not only UNRWA and Hamas running summer camps in Gaza. Islamic Jihad has a system of 51 camps for kids 11-16, where they "prepare a generation armed with faith and awareness that is capable of carrying burdens and challenges."
- Sunday, July 11, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
From NYT (h/t Soccer Dad):
Can't these women just go the old fashioned way and meet the mujaheed of their dreams from a Muslim dating site?
After Cast Lead, Hamas actually offered $3000 to anyone who would marry a wife of a "martyr,", and at least some took advantage of this program - using these women as second or third wives - in a mass wedding last July.
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia recently issued a fatwa telling its fighters to marry the widows of those who have fallen.
In Diyala Province east of Baghdad, the fatwa has produced about 70 marriages in a little more than three weeks, according to members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and their relatives and associates. They spoke to an Iraqi reporter conducting interviews for The New York Times.
While Diyala is one of the group’s last remaining strongholds, the mere fact that so many people would rush headlong into marriages to strangers seemed to reflect how far the American military and the Iraqi government remain from their goal of eliminating the organization.
Some members say they are taking third or fourth wives, but many new husbands are from among the group’s most dedicated fighters — confirmed bachelors previously wedded only to the work of killing invaders and their Iraqi allies.
Can't these women just go the old fashioned way and meet the mujaheed of their dreams from a Muslim dating site?
Saturday, July 10, 2010
- Saturday, July 10, 2010
- Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
We can be sure that activists will be all over this case of human rights abuses done by the Palestinian Authority security forces. After all, we know how inhuman such punishments are, especially when applied so capriciously. How dare they make so many people suffer!
Obviously the murder was an excuse to repress these people, yearning to be free.
Right?
Palestinian Authority forces imposed a curfew in the northern West Bank village of Salem in the Nablus district after a man was killed overnight, police said.After only a single incident, and entire village is forced to suffer from inhumane collective punishment. People cannot freely move in and out of their community because of the harsh, repressive measures taken in the name of "security."
Locals said Issa Ahid, 30, sustained critical wounds after being stabbed several times with a sharp object. The victim was taken to the Rafedia Hospital, where he died of his injuries.
PA security forces deployed in the village shortly after the incident occurred, placing movement restrictions on residents while investigations were underway, locals said.
We can be sure that activists will be all over this case of human rights abuses done by the Palestinian Authority security forces. After all, we know how inhuman such punishments are, especially when applied so capriciously. How dare they make so many people suffer!
Obviously the murder was an excuse to repress these people, yearning to be free.
Right?
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