Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

An ad from London's Underground

Remember last year when the British Advertising Standard Agency banned Israeli tourism ads from showing photos of the Western Wall because that implied that it was in Israel?

Well, I just received this photo of an ad in London's Underground:

So the ASA has no problem with Turkey's occupation of North Cyprus?

(I'm fairly sure that the asterisk next to North Cyprus isn't referring to its occupied status, but rather to the fact that flights from Britain to North Cyprus stop off in Istanbul first.)

(h/t Folderol)

Egyptian protest jokes

Ma'an has a selection of jokes that are going around Egypt:

At Tahrir Square, one sign says "[Mubarak:] Leave, I miss my wife," while a second man proclaimed, "Leave already, my arm is hurting."
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When it started raining in Tahrir Square, here were the reactions from various groups:

Muslim Brotherhood: No talk with system until rain stops
[Opposition leader] ElBaradai: Regime is fully responsible for rain in At-Tahrir Square
[Opposition party] April 6 Movement: Mubarak promised us safety, but he sent the rain to sink us
Al-Jazeera: Our correspondent has informed us that thugs are responsible for rain falls
Protesters: We caught rain drops and identified them as belonging to the Interior Ministry
[Government]Nile News Channel: What the traitor channels are broadcasting is not true, there is no rain in At-Tahrir Square.
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Police are in the service of people; they boiled the water before spraying the protesters.
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A group of surgeons went to Egypt to make an operation of a one of kind conjoined twins called Hosni Mubarak - and the throne.
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Army commander to Hosni Mubarak: "Everything has come to an end, you should write a farewell speech for the people."

Mubarak: "Oh! Where are they going?"
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After the "Friday of Rage," the "Sunday of Martyrs”, and the "Week of Resistance," Mubarak might step down when it all rolled around to "Resurrection day."
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Mubarak died and met the late presidents Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser in the afterlife. They asked him: Poisoned or assassinated? He replied: Neither, Facebook!

Saeb Erekat admits that Jews could never become "Palestinians"

Saeb Erekat was on Hardtalk this week. Unfortunately many countries cannot view the full interview at the BBC site.

But this clip is available, and it betrays the bigotry of even the moderate "Palestinian" leadership.

As Erekat dismisses the idea of a one state solution, he says:

I don't think Christian and Muslim Palestinians would convert to Judaism and become Israelis. I don't think that Jews would convert to Islam and Christianity and become Palestinians.

Since there are over a million non-Jews in Israel, his first statement betrays his hate for Israel and his propensity to slander Israel on British TV by implying that it is a Jewish-only state.

But the second statement shows that Erekat believes that Jews cannot ever be citizens of a Palestinian Arab state! Only Christians and Muslims could!

He could have framed it in national terms ("I don't think that Palestinians want to be citizens of Israel; I don't think that Israelis would want to become citizens of a Palestinian state") but instead his terminology shows that the entire Palestinian Arab national project is really about keeping Jews out of "Palestine," and in the short term limiting the areas that Jews could live, not building a state.

"Honor killing" news

From IOL News:

A Jordanian court on Sunday gave a reduced sentence to a 64-year-old man for killing his wife and two daughters last year over the woman's alleged “bad behaviour”, an official said.

“The court had initially sentenced him to life in prison, but it found mitigating factors and gave him instead a 15-year jail term,” the official said.

“The convict came home one night in March last year and saw a strange man secretly leaving the house. He got enraged and shot and killed his daughters and wife after she denied seeing any man.”

The official said the husband has told police he killed his wife because of her “bad behaviour”.

Murder is punishable by death in Jordan but in so-called “honour killings” courts can commute or reduce sentences, particularly if the victim's family or relatives agree to leniency.

Between 15 and 20 women are murdered in honour killings every year in Jordan, despite government efforts to curb such crimes.

Last month, a Jordanian court gave reduced sentences to a man convicted of stabbing to death his cousin for shunning his brother, and another for murdering his raped sister.

Another court in the Red Sea port of Aqaba jailed a man in January for two years for running over and killing his wife after “she threw a stone at him because he was upset that she bought a new car”.

And, on Tuesday:

A Jordanian man was charged on Monday with the premeditated killing of his sister to "cleanse the family's honor" because she became pregnant after being widowed, a judiciary source said.

"The attorney general charged a 26-year-old man with premeditated crime for having killed his 30-year-old sister, who was eight months pregnant 18 months after being widowed," the source said.

"The crime took place on Monday and the brother handed himself in to the authorities after stabbing his sister 35 times with a knife," the source added.

Murder is punishable by death in Jordan, but the courts often grant clemency in cases of so-called honor killings.

Parliament has twice refused to amend its penal code to increase the penalty in the kingdom for such murders, which claim the lives of 15 to 20 women a year on average.

Overnight cute

A ten day old female baby Hamadryas Baboon suckles from her mother, at the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2011. Twenty year old Hamadryas Baboon named Scud gave birth to a rare red-haired female ten days ago at the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv, the first red-haired Baboon monkey to be born at the Safari Park in thirty years.

Hypocritical PA leaders have Jordanian citizenship

From JPost:

Senior Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons, have been given Jordanian citizenship, a top Jordanian politician disclosed on Tuesday.

The Palestinian leaders were given Jordanian citizenship despite the fact that the authorities in Amman have been revoking the Jordanian citizenship of thousands of Palestinians.

According to the Londonbased Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, a significant number of PA leaders are registered as full Jordanian citizens.

The paper pointed out that the leaders applied for Jordanian citizenship at a time when they were urging the Jordanian authorities to stop giving Palestinians Jordanian citizenship, in order to “consolidate their Palestinian identity.” The Jordanian government had justified its decision to strip Palestinians of their citizenship by using the same argument.

Al-Quds Al-Arabi quoted sources in Amman as saying that Abbas and his entire family carry Jordanian passports.

Other PA leaders who carry Jordanian passports include former PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei, Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh and Fatah’s Muhammad Dahlan.

The paper did not say when the Palestinian officials were given Jordanian citizenship. PA spokesmen in Ramallah refused to comment on the report.

So the would-be president of "Palestine" maintains his citizenship in another country!

Yet he encourages Jordan to strip the citizenship from his people!

(h/t TLB)

Egyptian college argues over Mubarak posters

From Al Masry al-Youm:

A heated discussion broke out between the dean and vice dean of the University of Alexandria’s Faculty of Engineering over the removal of posters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak which cover the wall of the dfean’s office.

Vice Dean Hamdi Seif had called for the removal of Mubarak posters from five faculty offices and replacing them with the Egyptian flag. Meanwhile Faculty Dean Adel al-Kurdi refused the proposal, claiming the posters were put up in accordance with official directives.

Seif said since Egypt is embarking on a new era, what he described as “outdated thoughts” must be deposed of. He went on to say that whether or not Mubarak remains in power, posters of presidents should not be hung on walls and that this practice is only found in third world countries with totalitarian governments.

“We spend thousands of pounds each year to renew the president’s posters in all institutions,” said Seif, pointing out that the Engineering Faculty alone had 15 old posters of the president in their warehouses and that replacing one poster costs LE500.

500 Egyptian pounds is about $85.

I wish I had that gig - selling posters of dictators to thousands of institutions that are forced to hang them, changing them every year, and charging inflated prices for them!

My blog for sale: only $10 million

If the Huffington Post is worth $315 million, then how much is Elder of Ziyon worth?

In terms of unique readers, HuffPo gets about 250 times the number of readers I get (unique readers per month.) So purely from that perspective, my blog is proportionately worth about $1.2 million.

But in terms of number of substantive postings, my rough estimate is that HuffPo publishes about 20 times the number of posts I make. Which would make my blog worth about $15 million.

Then again, you don't have to read a lot of fluff pieces on my blog, and no articles trying to get you to worship me the way that Arianna uses her site to promote her personal cult. I also have far more scoops that HuffPo does. So my blog's value is probably on the high end of that continuum.

Not only that, but the demographics that read my blog are an advertiser's dream. My readers generally have gone to graduate school and are older with more disposable income. Any way you look at it, EoZ is worth a fortune.

But, for you, I've got such a bargain!

For only $10 million, I'll sell my blog to any major conglomerate that wants it. I'll stay on as Chairman of the EoZ Media Group, and I would have to be able to hire a young, smart, energetic staff to work for me so that I can expand the brand and maximize your profits.

Major corporations pay big bucks for content, and I am a content generating machine. Not only that, I'm not nearly as partisan as Arianna.

So if you want a great bargain in cyberspace, look no further.

Al Jazeera tries to get into US

From the Huffington Post, by Wadah Khanfar, director general of Al Jazeera:

This has been an unprecedented month in Al Jazeera history. Transformational events in the Middle East have brought enormous demand for news about the region.

As director general of the region's largest TV network, I am proud to say Al Jazeera Network has been reporting from the region's hot spots well before they "mattered" in January 2011. From Sudan to Tunisia to Palestine to Egypt, our trademark "journalism of depth" has been on display for all who are able and care to see. ...

[I]n the United States, Al Jazeera faces a different kind of blackout, based largely on misinformed views about our content and journalism. Some of the largest American cable and satellite providers have instituted corporate obstacles against Al Jazeera English. We are on the air and on the major cable system in the nation's capital, and some of America's leading policymakers in Washington, D.C., have told me that Al-Jazeera English is their channel of choice for understanding global issues. But we are not available in the majority of the 50 states for much of the general public.

We believe all Americans, not just those in senior governmental positions, could benefit from having the option to watch Al-Jazeera English -- or not to watch us -- on their television screens.

What kind of American would be against freedom of expression? How can cable companies be so heartless?

But wait...he has another example of Al Jazeera's excellence in journalism:

Before Egypt's street protests exploded last week we made the historic presentation of the "Palestine Papers," an unprecedented leak of more than 1,600 records of secret negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The Papers were produced by the newly formed Al Jazeera Transparency Unit, and became a world exclusive for both our Arabic and English broadcasts. It was also a top story of our colleagues and partners at the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Through investigative and on-location journalism, our ultimate goal is to bring greater awareness, painting a more complete picture of the Middle East's realities. Armed with more information, we believe the people of this region and further afield can make better choices to guide their lives -- hopefully ones that will lead to a more peaceful and democratic future, regardless of where they live.

Al Jazeera's coverage of the Palestine Papers was riddled with lies, and with even more omissions. It was not journalism - it was advocacy. It was meant to embarrass both the Palestinian Authority and Israeli negotiators. They selctively quoted the papers to push their agenda.

While their Egypt coverage was quite dramatic, and frankly was great TV, Al Jazeera is acting in no less an advocacy role there as well. Perhaps it is a role that Americans are more naturally inclined to identify with, but it is still advocacy, not journalism.

It is also well known that the network will not say anything remotely critical of its sponsor, the Qatari emirate. Its news is skewed but AJ-English's bias is subtle enough that most casual TV viewers would not notice that they are being brainwashed.

So while Al Jazeera is recruiting useful idiots to push their pseudo-democratic cause, expanding their presence in America is not a good idea.

I am happy that Al Jazeera is on the web, and I visit their site. But to legitimize them as a major news network in the US on par with the others would be a big mistake. Their biased and anti-American views do not belong on US cable systems.

The Telegraph takes a page from The Guardian

From The Telegraph:

Mr Suleiman, who is widely tipped to take over from Hosni Mubarak as president, was named as Israel's preferred candidate for the job after discussions with American officials in 2008.

As a key figure working for Middle East peace, he once suggested that Israeli troops would be "welcome" to invade Egypt to stop weapons being smuggled to Hamas terrorists in neighbouring Gaza.

The details, which emerged in secret files obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to The Daily Telegraph, come after Mr Suleiman began talks with opposition groups on the future for Egypt's government.

Did Suleiman really say that Israel was welcome to invade Egypt? Does that even make sense?

Let's look at the memo, from December 17, 2007:

A serious political commitment, supported by dedicated and properly trained personnel, is key to progress. The Egyptians claim that they respond aggressively to Israeli intelligence leads, while both sides bicker over whether and how Egypt could deploy more Border Guard Forces. Meanwhile, the Egyptians continue to offer excuses for the problem they face: the need to "squeeze" Hamas, while avoiding being seen as complicit in Israel's "siege" of Gaza. Egyptian General Intelligence Chief Omar Soliman told us Egypt wants Gaza to go "hungry" but not "starve." Minister of Defense Field Marshal Tantawi and the Director of Military Intelligence MG Mowafy both pressed recently for the return of EUBAM monitors to oversee the crossing between Gaza and Egypt of Palestinians with urgent humanitarian circumstances. In their moments of greatest frustration, Tantawi and Soliman each have claimed that the IDF would be "welcome" to re-invade Philadelphi, if the IDF thought that would stop the smuggling...

The Philadelphi Corridor they are talking about is on the Gaza side, not Egypt (hence the terminology "re-invade.") Israel controlled the corridor before the disengagement from Gaza, when they handed it over to the PA, and then Hamas took it over when they took Gaza.

Certainly Suleiman made statements that would not endear him to the Arab street, such as saying that Egypt wants Gaza to go hungry but not starve (a statement that mirrors one that Dov Weisglass said in 2006 and was slammed for.) But it is absurd to say that Suleiman would welcome an invasion of his country!

For the Telegraph to push this lie is simply more Guardian-type advocacy journalism - misrepresentations of primary source documents specifically meant to influence Egyptians into thinking Suleiman was an Israeli patsy.

Arabs use Israeli technology to filter the Internet

From AllGov, picked up later by Al Arabiya:

The government of Egypt’s attempted crackdown on mass protests has been aided by an American firm that sells telecommunications software that allows the authoritarian regime to spy on citizens’ emails and cell phone communications.

Narus, located in Sunnyvale, California, sold the Egyptian government Deep Packet Inspection equipment, a content-filtering technology used to inspect, track and target content from users of the Internet and mobile phones.

According to a Narus executive, owners of the software can record everything that goes through the Internet in their country, allowing them to read emails and attachments, view browsing histories and even reconstruct phone calls made over VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol).

Founded in 1997 by Israeli security experts to create and sell mass surveillance systems for governments and large corporate clients, Narus is now owned by Boeing.

The Al Arabiya article (original link missing, copy here) says that Narus technology was used to shut the Internet down in Egypt altogether, which does not appear to be the case. I have no doubt that it is being used to monitor the network, though.

Moonbats have already started protesting at Narus offices.

Narus' website mentions that they help protect a number of service providers, including Telecom Egypt and Saudi Telecom.

Five Hamas members arrested in Egypt with weapons

Multiple Arabic media sources are reporting that police in El Arish, Egypt arrested five Palestinian Arabs and are holding them for 15 days.

They are charged with possession of weapons and ammunition, and attempted acts of sabotage that threaten the security of the state. They were also accused of infiltrating the Egyptian territories.

They were picked up on Saturday when they were traveling in a Mercedes. They were found with five hand grenades and three weapons that were marked "Al-Qassam Brigades - Hamas."

On Sunday, Hamas denied media reports that it was trying to fuel tension in Egypt.