Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 20, 2010

Planes, trains and automobiles

I am traveling today, using all three titular methods.

This gives me the chance to do two things: create an open thread, and use the word "titular" in a sentence.

Blogging will be light through Sunday.

Two stories about theft

A truly awful story emerged today from Israel, as there appears to be evidence that some IDF members stole and sold equipment from the flotilla ships a couple of months ago, including laptops.

"This matter is very problematic in terms of values, as the incident allegedly took place after it was clear that the flotilla was a serious international affair," the source added. "An officer who under such circumstances steals equipment which does not belong to him, and then tries to sell it – it's almost incomprehensible."

The affair embarrassed the political arena as well, with Knesset members demanding that the army prevent such incidents from repeating themselves at almost all costs.

"This is an embarrassing, humiliating and infuriating act," said MK Eitan Cabel (Labor). "The IDF must handle this affair according to the strict letter of the law.

Meretz Chairman Chaim Oron called on the army to utilize the investigation to the fullest, noting that "the multiple number of incidents, in which basic values are compromised, requires the army to hold a thorough investigation into the causes."

There is no doubt that the citizens of Israel will not stand for this and will do whatever needs to be done to ensure that the guilty parties are punished and that the root causes are fixed. There is a deep, nationwide sense of embarrassment, anger and shame over the incident.

Contrast this with this story that received next to no coverage:

French aid group Help Doctors accused the Palestinian Hamas organisation on Wednesday of seizing equipment and files from one of its Gaza clinics which it closed in June.

"Four men from the (Hamas) interior ministry entered the clinic on Tuesday morning and seized computer equipment, telephones, chairs, office equipment and medical files," the organisation said in a statement.

The men left the premises without saying why the equipment was being confiscated, it said.

Will Hamas open an investigation? Will people be prosecuted? Will the doctors have an opportunity to sue?

And - why are these questions laughable to a world that has no problem saying with a straight face that the IDF is less moral than Hamas?

There are, sadly, bad people everywhere. The best way to measure the morality of a society is by seeing how everyone else acts when their own people do bad things.

Another town square named after a terrorist

A terrorist who heroically murdered a teenage girl.

From PMW:

On June 11, 2002, a Palestinian suicide terrorist walked into a restaurant in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya, and detonated a bomb that killed a girl, 15-year-old Hadar Hershkovitz, and injured 16 others.

Picture of suicide terrorist and Arafat on monument in town square in West Bank town Madama. [PA TV, May 15, 2010]

The town square in the West Bank town of Madama where the terrorist lived features a monument honoring "the heroic Martyrdom-Seeker" and his "heroic Herzliya operation." The monument has pictures of the suicide terrorist and of Yasser Arafat.

The text above the terrorist's picture is a verse from the Quran, urging Muslims to fight the non-believers and promising that Allah will "lay them low":

"Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands,
lay them low and give you victory over them,
and heal the hearts of a believing people." [Quran, 9,14]

Below his picture are the words:

"The heroic Shahada - Seeker (Martyrdom- Seeker, PA term of honor for suicide terrorists) Omar Muhammad Ziyada (Abu Samed) who carried out the heroic Herzliya operation on June 11, 2002

From the Jerusalem Post, June 13, 2002:

This coming Tuesday, Hadar Hershkowitz, 15, was to have sung and danced at her middle school graduation in a special performance of fairy tales created by the students.

Instead, friends and family members yesterday heaped her fresh grave with flowers and crowded into the Herzliya Cemetery only a few short blocks from her home to say goodbye.

Hershkowitz was killed by a suicide bomber while walking with a friend outside Jamil's shwarma grill on Rehov Sokolow. A friend, also a student at Ze'ev Jabotinsky Middle School in Herzliya, was seriously wounded in the attack.

One young speaker at the funeral said, 'We are all asking why, why was it you? ... We don't believe what happened, but still we are here to talk about our beloved friend.'

'We can still see you, hear you, and feel you,' another friend said. 'You loved life. You were nervous about starting high school, but you were still very optimistic. You were always so happy. You loved to have fun and to go out with your friends. You never liked being alone. We loved you so much and we won't forget you.'

Despite the hot sun, friends stayed in a tight circle around her grave and lit yahrzeit candles.

School principal Aviva Moran said, 'She was at the center of her social circle. She was very attached to her friends. She loved to help them. She got so much love from her family. She didn't keep it to herself - she passed it to her friends and they passed it back to her.'

I'm sure that there are outraged protests at that square every day by residents of Madama who are incensed that such a person is being honored in their town.

I'm sure that there have been many op-eds in the Palestinian Arabic media denouncing this honor.

I'm sure that President Abbas is working to ensure that this never happens again and that he will personally apologize to the family of Hadar Hershkovitz.

Because that is how decent human beings would act. And we all know that everyday, average Palestinian Arabs are just like everyone else, and would naturally find the existence of this square to be an affront to everything they hold dear.

They are the peace partners, after all. They wouldn't call a person whose entire existence is defined by his murdering a 15-year old girl at a shwarma shop a hero. That would be unspeakably horrific.

The square, which has been up since at least May, is surely an anomaly, a mere mistake and will be dismantled any day now. In fact it is difficult to even imagine that people designed and built it, that a town approved it, and that people pass it by every day without any hint of outrage.

Or, at the very least, I'm sure I can find a single person protesting it. A single Arabic op-ed. Something.

Right?

George Will on "taking risks for peace"

George Will's latest is a keeper:

In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."

...

The intifada was launched by the late Yasser Arafat -- terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner -- after the July 2000 Camp David meeting, during which then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line.

Israelis are famously fractious, but the intifada produced among them a consensus that the most any government of theirs could offer without forfeiting domestic support is less than any Palestinian interlocutor would demand. Furthermore, the intifada was part of a pattern. As in 1936 and 1947, talk about partition prompted Arab violence.

...

Israelis younger than 50 have no memory of their nation within the 1967 borders set by the 1949 armistice that ended the War of Independence. The rest of the world seems to have no memory at all concerning the intersecting histories of Palestine and the Jewish people.

The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived. And if the Jewish percentage of the world's population were today what it was when the Romans ruled Palestine, there would be 200 million Jews. After a uniquely hazardous passage through two millennia without a homeland, there are 13 million Jews.

In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Soccer Dad)

Reuters lies on Lebanese Palestinians

Reuters-Middle East Watch picks up on a story by Mariam Karouny on Lebanon's slight easing of restrictions on what professions Palestinian Arabs can now enter, after 62 years.

One sentence is an out-and-out lie:

Palestinians themselves have repeatedly said they oppose plans to settle them in Lebanon, saying they want to go back to the villages their families fled or were forced to flee during fighting which created the state of Israel in 1948.

This is not true. What is true is that so-called Palestinian Arab leaders have said this publicly, and that the Lebanese leaders and non-Sunni citizens are also against their naturalization - but no one has done any survey or poll asking Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon, Jordan or Syria whether they would like to become citizens in the countries that they have been in for decades.

All available evidence is to the contrary.

From Forced Migration:

The Lebanese Government and the majority of the Lebanese people oppose any permanent integration of the Palestinian refugees (USCR Report, 1999: 1), under the pretext that granting citizenship to the Palestinians, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, would upset the delicate sectarian balance in Lebanon. They also blame them for the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. It is interesting to note that in the 1950s and 1960s around 50,000 Palestinians were granted Lebanese citizenship, mainly Christian Palestinians as well as some middle-class Muslim families. However, the latter achieved this by employing the services of lawyers and proving Lebanese ancestry. During the 1990s, about 20,000 more Palestinians were granted nationality (Khalidi, 2001: 16). In 1994, Shiites from the seven border villages and a year later some Sunnis, as well as the remaining Christian Palestinians who hadn’t been granted Lebanese nationality in the 1950s or 1960s became Lebanese (Peteet, 1997).

On May 27, 2003, the Lebanese Shura Council ordered the Ministry of Interior to re-examine the files of around 150,000 people who have been granted Lebanese citizenship according to Decree No. 5247 of June, 1994. The timing of this ruling is significant, as according to Lebanese law a period of 10 years has to elapse before new Lebanese citizens are granted full civil rights. The Minister of Interior has declared that he will revoke the Lebanese citizenship of Palestinians and others who have obtained the citizenship by false means.

So on at least two occasions, tens of thousands of Palestinian Lebanese were given the chance to become citizens - and they took advantage of it. As far as I can tell, none that had that opportunity spurned the offer, saying that they would prefer to go back to the villages they lived in before 1948 and would rather stay in miserable Lebanese camps.

Yet Reuters airily says, without any attribution or proof, that the entire population of "Palestinians" have repeatedly opposed such plans.

Tell that to the Youssef Ahmad, interviewed in the New York Times this week, who said "If I am going to live and die here, then I want all my rights." It sure doesn't sound like he opposes settlement in Lebanon.

Too bad Reuters felt it necessary to push this lie that keeps hundreds of thousands of human beings in misery.

Hamas deducting wages to pay for electricity

Hamas says that it will deduct 170 shekels ($45) from everyone's wages this month in order to pay for the fuel for Gaza's electric plant.

There are about 30,000 government employees in Gaza, meaning that in theory some $1.3 million will be available to pay the bills every month.

A plan was floated last month to garnish the wages of PA employees in Gaza for the same purpose.

However, the head of Gaza's electric company complained that he had no infrastructure to track the customers and the payments, and it sounds like this will turn into a new debacle.

Gaza's electric company is $1.3 billion in debt.

Another Lebanese army officer accused of spying for Israel

From Ya Libnan:

Judge Saqr Saqr of Lebanon’s military court on Wednesday charged Colonel Antoine Abu Jaoudeh with spying for the enemy (Israel), meeting with Israeli Mossad agents abroad and providing them with information on the resistance and army in exchange for money from 2006 until his arrest earlier this month.

This brings to four the number of active duty army personnel arrested on charges of espionage.

More than 100 people have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel since April 2009, including members of the security forces and telecom employees.

Five Lebanese have been sentenced to death for spying for the Mossad so far, including two who were sentenced Tuesday.

Some of the comments are fascinating.

As bad as this sounds, I really dont see any difference with this colonel spying for isreal or SSNP spying for syria, to be quite honest, wahab, beik, aoun and the rest of the spies should meet the same fate as abu jaoudeh. It shouldnt make any difference who the country you are spying for is, its treason! and its harming your own country and its people.

More Lebanese were killed by the Lebanese warlords like Gaega, Bashir Gemayel, Jumblat, Berri , and others like them, than even Those killed by Syria and Israel Combined. I wish all of us will start doing some self examinations. Look each other in the eye, and have the guts to admit the mistakes we’ve made. Look at the leadership we have, and tell them that they are killers. Stop following, blindly, the same leaders who are producing more of themselves. Stop the sectarian instigation, and start looking at ways to improve our political structure so we can have a better Lebanon. Our Problems didn’t start with Iran or Syria. They started when we adopted a sectarian system that forced every sect to seek support and protection in a different country. Iran wasn’t around when Israel started attacking Lebanon back in the 40’s and 50’s. Syria wasn’t in Lebanon either. ...Where will all the hatred take us? Another civil war? We’ve been there, and we know ( I hope) the pain of that.

Indeed, h/a [Hezbollah] are worst than the israelis. They are supposed to be lebanese citizens, not agents for syria and iran. Let’s be realistic, do you think in this life tha israel will cease to exist as iranians, syrians and h/a are touting.What part of NO you do not understand youssef. Israel is not the doing of Lebanon, however the Lebanese are paying the highest price. If iran and syria are so adamant about liberating palestine why don’t they do that. Cowards, they bark from the other side of the fence and lick their tails once the action starts.

Those racist settlers exploiting Arab football players

How else can the Western media spin this story?

Amotz from Psagot passes the ball to Ramzi from Beit Hanina, who in turn passes it to Oria from Neve Daniel. Oria scores a touchdown and runs to hug Ayoub and Moussa. A hopeful vision if a new Middle East? Not really. This is the day-to-day reality in the Judean Rebels football team, one of nine teams in the Israeli league.

Most of its players reside outside the Green Line in Jewish communities such as Psagot and Efrat, as well as in Arab neighborhoods like Beit Hanina and Shuafat.

Four Arabs played for the team this season: Cameron, Ramzi, Ayoub and Moussa who grew up in Colorado and Miami. When their grandfather fell ill three years ago, the four arrived in Israel with their families. While looking for a football team to join, they never imagined they would end up with the Judean Rebels.

"I was walking in Jerusalem one evening. Suddenly I saw a group of thugs. I asked whether they were into football, and they said: 'Sure, but you should know that we're Arabs,'" says Shlomo Barya Schachter, the team's captain and coach. "The Arabs said they attempted to join another team, but were told it would create tension with the fans and other teammates."

"I told them we didn't care, so long as they agree to keep politics off the playing field," Schachter said.

The four showed up at practice and immediately fit in. "This team represents the real Judea and Samaria. No one cares where you're from," Moussa says enthusiastically.

Last season, the team finished fourth in the league. Their fans mostly comprise Gush Etzion residents as well as a group of Breslov Hassidic followers who follow the team wherever it goes, armed with a sign which reads "Revolution."

"We talk about politics sometimes, issues such as settlements and terrorist attacks, but never in an argumentative way and always as part of a respectful debate. I don't mind them living in settlements so long as they don't mind me being from Beit Hanina. After all, a good person is a good person," Moussa says.

Some of the players, including Moussa, are applying for football scholarships overseas. The team has sent videos of their games to various universities on his behalf.

A month ago, a problem emerged after coach Schachter invited the players to a special practice at the Kraft Stadium in Jerusalem. The four Arab players had moved to the eastern side of the ssecurity fence over the summer and have applied for a Palestinian ID card. This means they need the security establishment's approval to attend practice sessions or games. Thus far, their requests have been rejected.

Consequently, the four failed to attend the opening practice and the following sessions.

"I have a major problem on my hands," Schachter says. "Where in all of Judea and Samaria will I find a player like Ayoub? They were excellent defense players, especially brothers Moussa and Ayoub Elayyan."

Yes, those "racist Jewish settlers" are lobbying the IDF to allow Arabs to go into Israel to play American football.

(h/t Joel)

Send a message to Gilad Shalit

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has set up a website where you can send Gilad Shalit birthday wishes (August 28) and Rosh Hashanah greetings. They plan to take these messages to the ICRC and demand that Hamas allow the ICRC to visit Gilad and deliver the messages, in accordance with international law.

Go sign up.

(h/t Israeligirl)

Irish student abused for supporting Israel

From Irish Central, August 10:

A Cork student is complaining she is the victim of a 'hate campaign' after volunteering for the Israeli Defense Force.

Cliona Campbell, a 19-year-old Cork student, took the unusual step of volunteering for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and says she has now become the victim of a hate campaign.

Campbell returned to Cork after two months working with the IDF to what she called public abuse, including emails and text messages telling her to 'keep her head down' after writing a piece for the local paper based on her experiences.

'I came back after two months and wrote a piece on my experiences. Now I am getting hate mail and being targeted. I went into a clothes shop where I live and the security guard came up to me abusing me. My Facebook page link was posted online in a forum and I started getting emails telling me to keep my head down from now on. My friends started getting abusive emails soon after that too.'

Campbell says she is surprised and upset at the personal insults that have also been sent to her.

'There were guys online as well saying that I was 'rough' in terms of my looks and bringing it all to a new, personal level as well. If I was a man coming back from being in the IDF, there would be none of that. That is the upsetting part.'

Campbell says most of the reaction has been because she spoke highly of her time with the army and maintains her own strong beliefs about their work.

'I got on really well with the soldiers. They were all there for their own reasons and had their own stories as to why they were there. I have a huge interest in the Jewish people and always have had so I had no hesitation about going out there.'

Campbell took the unusual step of joining the IDF after applying through Sar-El, a volunteering project that agreed to send her over to work for eight weeks.

'I took a crash course in Hebrew first and spent ages preparing. It was a massive culture shock, but very worthwhile. A lot of the days would be spent re-mantling guns and working with the soldiers out in the 42-degree heat.'

Campbell also added that she joined a protest against the flotilla to Gaza in May during which the IDF shot dead nine passengers on board one of the boats.

'I was a bit sad to be coming home, and now I've come back to all this discussion,' Campbell says. 'Some of the people writing to me and about me say they now see me as a terrorist and that they don't even see me as Irish anymore. I stand up for what I believe and I get hate mail and abuse, and I wouldn't mind if half of those people could back up what they are saying with a logical argument.'

Her original article is here. It is no surprise that anyone who shows real love for Israel will be so insulted by Israel-bashers - because they cannot argue with love.

You might want to "friend" her on Facebook.
(h/t Silke)

Is there a new blockade-breaking ship from Algeria to Gaza?

JPost reports:

Another aid ship meant to break the IDF naval blockade on Gaza sailed out of Algeria, Channel 10 reported on Thursday.

The ship reportedly left Algeria in the early afternoon, and is sponsored by the government. Religious and political figures are on the vessel, along with food, and educational and medical supplies.

The ship was organized by the Muslim wise men organization in Algeria, and funded by business men, according to Channel 10. The organizers said the ship's purpose is to "show identification with the Palestinian nation."

However, according to this Algerian paper, the ship is headed to El Arish, Egypt where the aid will be transferred into Gaza via Rafah.

I cannot find the ship's name, to be able to track its progress.

Fascinating newsreel of Dimona, 1962

From Point of No Return blog:

Rivka has just arrived with her family from Karachi, Pakistan. They brought only the 30 kg they could take with them. One of 4,000 children now being schooled in Dimona, she sings a song in a mixture of Hebrew and her native tongue. In 2010 Rivka is probably an 'old-timer' with grandchildren in the IDF.

It may look like a Soviet propaganda video, but this clip (Hebrew only, regrettably) by the late film-maker Yaacov Gross, and just released by his son Nathan, is exhilarating to watch. It brings home the enormous hurdles overcome by refugees arriving in Israel in 1962, and the determination they showed to rebuild their lives.

An elderly man in a North African galabiya watches another man unloading sacks of cement. They are building, building, building in Dimona, without let up. Dimona is today a leafy, settled town of 33,000: in 1955 when it was founded, there was literally nothing but Negev sand.

Yet, the video gives a sense that everything is possible with energy and determination. Don't understand the language? You'll learn. Don't have any work skills? You'll learn, and soon you too will be beavering away in Dimona's spanking new workshops and factories, and still find time to twist and jive the night away.

Under the direction of the all-powerful Histadrut, buildings start sprouting 'like mushrooms after the rain', and the wooden huts of the ma'abarot that first housed the new arrivals are soon replaced by apartment blocks. Never mind if yours is unfinished - at least you've got a mattress to sleep on! All you need is patience, brother, patience.

Other videos by Yaacov Gross

The contrast between how the poor immigrant Jews - most of them refugees - acted in building their country to how Palestinian Arabs have acted between 1948 and now could hardly be starker.

The town of Dimona didn't exist in 1954. It was, quite literally, sand. The energy, effort and enthusiasm of the arriving Jews are what built the town. It was not built by any UN agency; the residents didn't sit back and complain that the world wasn't doing everything for them; they all understood that if something was going to be done then they are the ones to do it. Of course there were problems - but nothing that couldn't be solved with thought, planning and execution. (And, if the video is to be believed, dancing.)

Watch what Dimona turned into in a mere seven years. Contrast that with how the PA has acted within Area A, under PA control for more than twice that time. Has the PA worked to dismantle any of the "refugee" camps in their areas of control over the past decade and a half? Has it built a single new town with the hundreds of millions of dollars that it begs for annually? Has it started any initiatives to recruit Jordanian Palestinians, for example, to move into the West Bank to help build "Palestine"?

When a people want to build a country, they act accordingly. If the "state" they want to build is really, fundamentally meant only to destroy another, they also act accordingly.

(h/t Solomonia)