Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Britain's foreign minister finds Egyptian reason to bash Israel

The Times of London writes (behind paywall):

The Middle East peace process is in danger of becoming a casualty of the revolutionary tidal wave sweeping the Arab world, and Israel is putting itself at risk by failing to compromise, William Hague told The Times yesterday. Speaking on an emergency peace mission covering five countries in three days, the Foreign Secretary issued a blunt instruction to Israel to tone down the belligerent language used by Binyamin Netanyahu, its Prime Minister, since the uprising and protests, which have spread from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond.

... Mr Hague responded to increasingly militaristic pronouncements by Mr Netanyahu, who has been urging his nation to prepare for ‘any outcome’ and vowing to ‘reinforce the might of the state of Israel’. The Foreign Secretary said: ‘This should not be a time for belligerent language. It’s a time to inject greater urgency into the Middle East peace process.’

As Melanie Phillips writes:

Belligerent? Israel is currently petrified that, if Islamists come to power in Egypt and tear up its 30-year old peace treaty as the Muslim Brothers have said they will do, it will face the nightmare of a renewed threat of war from the south as well as from Iran/Hezbollah in the north and Iran/Hamas in Gaza. It will be thus encircled by truly ‘belligerent ‘ enemies. It will have to turn its entire military and strategic thinking upside down in order to defend itself against such a grim prospect – and yes, of course it will have to reinforce its defences. Even more young Israelis will have to be called up to army service and face the risk of death to prevent their country from being wiped off the map. For William Hague to represent the warnings by Israel’s Prime Minister that his country must now prepare itself for this terrifying eventuality as ‘belligerency’ is simply obscene.

Let us hear no more nauseating hypocrisy from Cameron or Hague about how they are Israel’s staunch allies. With ‘friends’ like these, who needs enemies?

The Times illustrated the story this way (via Honest Reporting blog):

What an interesting photo choice!

The culture of submission (Ayaan Hirsi Ali)

A good piece in Financial Times (registration required) that explains well how Egyptian Muslims think - and why that makes real democracy a more difficult outcome.

Innumerable commentators have drawn analogies with the revolutions that swept eastern Europe in 1989.

This is to miss the profound difference between the western and the Muslim crowd. The people taking to the streets in north Africa and the Middle East have many motivations. But nothing unifies them more than the mass prayer of their religion – particularly the Friday prayer. It is the mosque as much as the street that is key to understanding this uprising.

...

Those who look forward to a 1989-style outcome – a peaceful transition to a secular, multi-party democracy – should remember how little experience the proponents of secular democracy have. The Muslim Brotherhood has been around since 1928, and draws on a 1,400-year-old tradition of submission....

The Mubaraks and Gaddafis of the Middle East are not an anomaly; they are the product of structural lack of freedom inherent in the crowd culture of the Islamic world. In this culture submission is instilled early on. If you are not allowed to talk back to your father, or teacher, or clergyman, submission to state tyranny becomes almost second nature. In such a setting, the methods to empower oneself – indeed to survive – are conspiracy, manipulation, intrigue and bribery. Those aspiring to positions of power fear that sharing it will weaken them and lead to humiliation. So once a position is achieved it is made permanent, from the lowliest bureaucrat to the president.

A culture that elevates individual submission oscillates between periods of apathy and occasional bouts of revolt. Arab leaders either rule for life, grooming their sons for succession, or end up having to flee.

So what can today’s Muslim crowds do to avoid the fate of all those mice who thought they glimpsed freedom but were in fact mere playthings of the cat?

The protesters must begin by acknowledging the factors that create an environment where tyrants thrive. For too long, outside forces have been the scapegoats of the Arab street. It is easy to blame the Zionists and America. It is harder to admit one’s own shortcomings.

But today’s crowds also need to articulate what they want. A participant in Egypt’s mass protests was asked on the BBC to comment on the leaderless quality of the demonstrations (February 4). His answer – “We don’t need a leader” – baffled the interviewer and no doubt most western viewers.

His aversion to leadership is understandable in the light of past Arab regime changes. Here, men who arrive as liberators have a way of morphing into dictators until the time when another man mobilises the masses to liberate the nation from their ex-liberator. The new man then rebuilds the old infrastructure of spies and torture chambers.

But is it realistic to have a leaderless revolution? In my view it is not. In the absence of leadership – which means not just one man but a legitimate command structure, as well as some kind of explicit manifesto – these protests will never achieve the truly revolutionary changes we saw in Europe in 1989.

Instead we shall see chaos and instability followed by a new era of authoritarianism; a brief democracy followed by a coup or a sharia government led by the Brotherhood.

So the crowd must become a real movement. They have to build civil institutions. They must hurry and compose a list of demands before they are dispersed. It is not enough just to ask for the despot to go. There need to be amendments to existing constitutions or new ones need to be written. And here America and Europe can offer help.

But when it comes to changing the culture of submission no one can help the Arabs but themselves. It is not their inexorable fate to be ruled either by dictators or by religious fanatics. They will achieve true freedom, however, only when they emancipate themselves from the peculiar power structure imposed on the Muslim crowd – by itself.

(h/t Silke)

Egypt bans Palestinian Arabs from entering country

The number of visitors to Egypt has dropped precipitously:

Minister of Civil Aviation Ibrahim Mannaa said on Wednesday that flights to Egypt have declined by 70 percent, which led to a sharp drop in profits.

Sources at Cairo International Airport said 14 of the international airlines canceled their flights to Cairo on Wednesday due to a lack of passengers.

“Passengers boarding EgyptAir flights have dropped to 54 percent,” added Mannaa. “Losses during the past two weeks can only be calculated after all losses are identified.”

But there is one group of people that Egypt doesn't want at all:

Immigration officers have been instructed to bar Palestinians from entering Egypt, an official at Cairo airport said on Wednesday after 12 travellers were sent back.

"There are instructions to stop Palestinians entering Egypt. Twelve Palestinians were sent back to the places they came from on Wednesday," the official told AFP, on condition of anonymity.

A second airport-based official told AFP that airlines had been told not to bring Palestinian passengers to Egypt.

Of course, the Arab world will unanimously condemn this blatant discrimination against Palestinian Arabs, whom they care about so deeply.

Any time now.

(h/t Herb G)

Morning snippets

Just in case you don't already have enough to read....these will keep you busy all day.

Martin Sherman in YNet:

...[W]hy the Palestinians find themselves in the miserable state in which they are today: a chronic and cavalier disregard for the truth; an enduring propensity to blame others for their fate; and an obdurate refusal to take responsibility for their own actions - and inaction.

European Foundation for Democracy (German):

The Iranian rulers see in the new mass protests in Arabic states the reawakening of Islam and speak of the "new axis of Islam in the Middle East." They think that the Islamic revolution of 1979 was the beginning of the protests against the western and "Zionist" supremacy.

Shiraz Maher interview at Harry's Place:

[T]he Brotherhood might be marginal but it is neither bumbling nor benign. It is an astute movement watching [the West] betray the legitimate sentiments of young, ordinary Egyptians. That is what the Ikhwan is waiting for so it can pounce. A marginal movement could very suddenly find itself in the mainstream. I have good evidence from Alexandria that this is already starting to happen, and it is worth bearing in mind that the Brotherhood is much better organised there than in Cairo.

PMW translates the Muslim Brotherhood in their own words:

- "...Jihad for Allah is not limited to the specific region of the Islamic countries, since the Muslim homeland is one and is not divided, and the banner of Jihad has already been raised in some of its parts, and it shall continue to be raised, with the help of Allah, until every inch of the land of Islam will be liberated, the State of Islam will be established,..."

"... despite this, the [Muslim] Brotherhood is not rushed by youth's enthusiasm into immature and unplanned action which will not alter the bad reality and may even harm the Islamic activity, and will benefit the people of falsehood..."
- "... one should know that it is not necessary that the Muslims will repel every attack or damage caused by the enemies of Allah immediately, but [only] when ability and the circumstances are fit to it."

Khaled Abu Toameh in Hudson-NY:

Jordan's King Abdullah II has good reason to be worried about the future of the monarchy in the Hashemite Kingdom. If he fails to implement real political and economic reforms, Jordan could easily fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood group or turn into a Palestinian state.

Yoel Guzansky in Meria Journal:

The Gulf states' policy towards Iran's nuclear ambitions has combined elements of appeasement with a fundamental reliance on the United States as a defending and deterring force. Most Gulf states lack strategic depth, have small populations, and small, untrained armies. Moreover, their significant oil and natural gas reserves have made them the potential target for aggression and dependent on outside forces for defense. Despite the great wealth and inherent weakness of the Gulf states, they have remained largely on the sidelines in the international effort to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Jackson Diehl on how the White House ignored warnings on Egypt:

The White House was warned, publicly and repeatedly, that Egypt was approaching a turning point and that the status quo was untenable - not by an intelligence agency but by a bipartisan group of Washington-based experts who pleaded, in vain, for a change of policy.

The Working Group on Egypt was formed a year ago to sound the alarm about Mubarak's crumbling regime. The first sentence of its opening statement: "Egypt is at a critical turning point." The group is still issuing detailed proposals about how to handle the crisis. On Monday, it warned that the administration "may acquiesce to an inadequate and possibly fraudulent transition process in Egypt." Sadly, the administration is still not listening.

Also in WaPo see George Will.

Nick Cohen in "Jesus, I'm Turning into a Jew!"

British Jews are living through a very dangerous period. They are the only ethnic minority whose slaughter official society will excuse. If a mass murderer bombed a mosque or black Pentecostal church, no respectable person would say that the “root cause” of the crime was an understandable repulsion at the deeds of al-Qaeda or a legitimate opposition to mass immigration. Rightly, they would blame the criminal for the crime.

If a synagogue is attacked, I guarantee that within minutes the airwaves will be filled with insinuating voices insisting that the “root cause” of the crime was a rational anger at the behaviour of Israel or the Jewish diaspora.

Evelyn Gordon in Contentions:

Only a pathological obsession with Israel could lead administration officials to blame America’s economic woes of late 2009 on a minor war fought by a marginal trading partner a full year earlier. And curing such pathology lies more in the realm of medical science than political science.

Nevertheless, it’s vital to understand just how deeply it runs. For it is shaping, or rather misshaping, the West’s foreign policy every day.

Arabs again digging on the Temple Mount - and destroying priceless treasures.

Richard Cohen in WaPo:

Certain pro-democracy advocates in the Western media envision a transition period of months that will produce democratic bliss in the region. Not likely. The Middle East must first pass through somewhat the same process as did Central and Eastern Europe. Before World War I, it had no democracies. The region was ruled by monarchies.

After the war, nearly every state (the Soviet Union was the most prominent exception) was a democracy and one, the most culturally and politically advanced of them all, had an exemplary constitution and a resplendent bouquet of political parties. Nevertheless, this country reeled from Weimar Republic to Nazi dictatorship in virtually no time at all.

The rest of Central and Eastern Europe was different only in degree, not in kind. By the end of the 1930s, these countries were mostly right-wing dictatorships of one sort or another. It took another World War, a Cold War and lots of help for democracy to take root. Even so, some of these countries show twitches of recidivism.

To think that the Middle East will vault this process is endearing but dotty.

Jeff Jacoby:

If Egypt is to have any hope of a transition to a genuine constitutional democracy, the Muslim Brotherhood must not be treated as a legitimate democratic partner. For more than 80 years, it has been a fervent exponent of Islamic, not secular, rule; of clerical, not popular, sovereignty. Its credo could hardly be more explicit, or more antidemocratic: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

Myths and Facts:

Europe, of course, has the right to demand and ensure that before it accepts Turkey as a member of its Union, that country is capable of economic independence and stability and that it lives up to standards of democracy and rule of law, civil, political and social rights.

Israel has just as much right to demand from the EU and other Quartet members not to be forced into accepting a Palestinian Arab state on its borders which they themselves would not accept as a functional country.

At present, the international community, including the EU and the rest of the Quartet, is adopting a disturbingly low standard by which to judge PA readiness for statehood and should it continue upon its present course, it is highly unlikely that the creation of such a state will lead to the stability and prosperity so badly needed by the Palestinian Arab people, let alone bring about an end to the regional conflict.

The Guardian shows Wikileaks cables that indicate that Saudi Arabia does not have as much oil as it has claimed - it actually lied to get Western investments - and very soon it will not be able to pump as much oil as it needs to.

And, finally, Proud Zionist presents a new fictional BBC documentary in "Normal Israelis."

Any of these is worth their own blog post. I wish I had more time!

(h/t Zach N., Silke, DWM, SoccerDad, Yaacov L, DJK, Richard B, Emet)

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."
----
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.