Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Israel continues to send aid to Gaza while Israelis are under attack

While Gaza terror groups are showering rockets on Israeli communities in the south, Islamic Jihad's mouthpiece Palestine Today still reports, without irony, that Israel will today allow between 210 and 220 trucks to enter Gaza today, loaded with aid and items for agriculture and commercial factories. Also, cement and iron is being sent through Kerem Shalom, along with food and fuel.

A shipment of cherry tomatoes is also going to be exported today from Gaza.

All while tens of thousands of Israelis within Grad rocket range - and now, again, Jerusalem - live in fear.

Islamic Jihad admits the purpose of the rockets is terrorism

When they speak in English, the Gaza terror groups like to pretend that their shooting rockets at Israel are being done for purely military means, and that they target only soldiers and IDF bases.

In Arabic, though, they brag that the purpose of the rockets is to terrorize civilians.

Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today newspaper quotes a leader of the Al Quds Brigades, Abu Ahmed, as saying, "[We] are not standing idly by, but are responding at different intervals by shelling settlements with a number of Grad rockets, creating a state of terror in the ranks of the occupiers."

That's pretty much the textbook definition of terrorism.

The same newspaper loves publishing pictures of terrified Israelis, to show Islamic Jihad's might at being able to force Beersheva women in their pajamas to run out of their houses:

They are also very proud that classes in Beersheva schools are affected by the rocket fire.

From JPost:

An explosion took place on or near a bus in central Jerusalem Wednesday afternoon.

Police said that a bomb exploded outside Egged bus number 74 at a station in front of the Jerusalem Conference Center in the center of town.

Reports said that over 30 people were injured in the attack although the exact number was still unknown.

Magen David Adom said that no deaths were reported in the attack.

Police suspected that an explosive device inside a bag was left at the bus stop, which then exploded.

A source tells me that one person was killed, but this is not official by any means.

So far I cannot find anyone claiming credit for the explosion.

Israel Matzav and The Muqata are liveblogging. So is Challah Hu Akbar.

The Muqata has unconfirmed reports of 3 fatalities.

There was also a possible murder of an Israeli in Revava.

UPDATE: One confirmed dead, an elderly lady.

J-Street in Congress: EPIC FAIL

Here's a letter written by Representatives Steve Rothman and Steve Austria to President Obama:

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

We live in an increasingly complex world. Recently, we have been bombarded by news and images from around the globe about the popular uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and throughout the Middle East. We have seen the effects of yet another devastating earthquake, which struck Japan just days ago, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without homes and countless others dead. And we continue to live with the constant threat posed by North Korea's and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons as well as the danger of nuclear proliferation at the hands of terrorists. We write to request that, while all of these events are consuming the daily news coverage, we not take our eye off of working toward a goal that is close to all of our hearts: a peaceful and secure Jewish State of Israel.

We are sure that you share our disappointment in President Mahmoud Abbas's decision to withdraw from peace talks in October of last year and his stubborn refusal to reengage as a willing partner for peace with Israel. The continued intransigence of the Palestinian leadership is both hurtful to the prospect for a two-state solution and to a final resolution of the conflict that still plagues the Israeli and Palestinian people. Unfortunately, we live in a time when the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will rush to take credit for the horrific, inhuman, and brutal attack in Itamar against the Fogel family, including three of their children, an 11-year-old, 4-year-old, and 3-month-old. This must serve as a wakeup call that the current state of affairs is dangerous and unacceptable. In that regard, we respectfully request that you do everything possible to urge President Abbas to root out terrorism, return to negotiations without preconditions, earnestly work toward peace with Israel, and slam the door on any effort to deal with final status issues at the United Nations.

As part of that, President Abbas must fully renounce any and all Palestinian incitement against Israel and the Jewish people. On March 8, 2009, a number of us sent President Abbas a letter calling on him ³to truly end anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement,´ but clearly there needs to be further pressure. However, Palestinian incitement continues and there is almost no effort by them to promote coexistence and peace. We would like to bring to your attention a report recently released by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office entitled ³Culture of Peace and Incitement Index,´ that unfortunately shows that Palestinian incitement continues. Television programs run by the Palestinian Authority and textbooks in government schools continue to praise martyrdom and terrorists and call for an armed struggle against the Israelis. Incitement,especially by official institutions, damages the prospects of reaching a peace agreement betweenthe Palestinians and America's strategic partner and indispensible ally, the Jewish State of Israel,and only encourages terrorism.

It is our hope that an independent Palestinian state can be realized, living in peace alongside the Jewish State of Israel. While the United States must not and cannot impose a solution, our country has an important role to play in encouraging the two parties to restart direct negotiations. We respectfully request that you and your administration do all in your power to insist that President Abbas reenters peace talks, without preconditions, and demand that President Abbas eliminate all vestiges of incitement coming from his government, Palestinian entities, or officials.

Sincerely

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN Member of Congress

STEVE AUSTRIA Member of Congress

The letter is perfectly accurate and reflects longstanding US policy.

Yet J-Street opposes it!

From JPost:

J Street’s opposition to a congressional letter criticizing Palestinian incitement has led more members to sign on, according to Hill sources tracking the issue.

The letter to US President Obama, written by Rep. Steve Rothman (D-New Jersey) and Rep. Steve Austria (R-Ohio) in the wake of the Itamar murders, charges that “Palestinian incitement continues and there is almost no effort by them to promote coexistence and peace.”

It calls for the White House to “do everything possible to urge [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas to root out terrorism, return to negotiations without preconditions, earnestly work toward peace with Israel, and slam the door on any effort to deal with final status issues at the United Nations.”

In response, J Street sent an email to members of the US House urging them not to sign it and issued a statement attacking the its contents as “containing material omissions and misrepresentations of fact and presenting a biased and inaccurate picture.”

The statement specifically criticizes the letter for not acknowledging the PA leadership’s efforts to end incitement and blaming incitement for the impasse in peace talks.

“Contrary to the letter’s accusations, the current Palestinian Authority leadership has taken great political risks and shown real willingness to end the conflict,” J Street states.

While the letter was originally circulated only among members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and House appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, J Street’s email was circulated more widely and prompted many additional representatives to express interest in the letter. A final count isn’t yet available because the deadline for signatures has not yet passed.

“J Street’s opposition to the Rothman-Austria letter has only increased the willingness of members to sign on. It begs the question of what are J Street’s goals,” said one congressional staffer. “If J Street’s goals are to have fewer people sign onto the letter, they’ve already failed.”

J-Street's opposition to the letter also shows how hypocritical the group is. They oppose the letter in part because it isn't balanced - it shows a "biased ...picture" and doesn't mention the other side of supposed PA moves to end incitement.

Yet J-Street supported the one-sided, anti-Israel Security Council resolution on the settlements. It had no problem with bias then! To J-Street, the only party that has to compromise, and the only party that needs to be pressured by the US, is Israel. Not exactly how friends of Israel act!

Not only that, but the letter is correct. The PA continues to incite through its own media, as abundantly documented by Palestinian Media Watch. J-Street's refusal to acknowledge that shows, once again, that it is not a "pro-Israel" organization.

The good news is that Congress has caught onto J-Street's facade.

(h/t My Right Word)

NYT reports fairly on yesterday's accident

The New York Times' coverage of yesterday's accidental deaths of four Gaza civilians, writeen by Fares Akram, is actually fair to Israel:

An Israeli attempt to hit Palestinian militants who had fired rockets at Israel went horribly wrong on Tuesday, with mortar shells killing three youths playing soccer and a 60-year-old grandfather leaving his house.

After rockets were fired from a citrus grove behind houses in eastern Gaza City on Tuesday afternoon, the Israelis fired mortar rounds at the source. Three shells landed on a sandy street in front of a home about half a mile from the border, killing three members of the Helou family and a neighbor.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed regret at the deaths of civilians, adding, “It is regrettable that Hamas continues to intentionally rain down dozens of rockets on Israeli civilians even as it uses civilians as human shields.”

The Israeli military also said it regretted the loss of civilian life and placed the blame on Hamas. “We do not target civilians,” Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman, said by telephone. “This was not our initiative. It was reactive.”

Relatives and neighbors were unusually open about the fact that the Israeli mortar attack was an attempt to hit militants firing rockets from the nearby grove.

“We heard the sound of four mortars being fired by militants from a grove just beyond our house,” said Hassan, the older brother of Mohammed Harrara. “A few minutes later, the Israeli shells landed in the area.”

But the Washington Post simply repeats Hamas lies:

Tahar al-Nounou, a spokesman for Hamas's government in Gaza, said that no one had fired rockets from the area targeted by Israel on Tuesday. "The Palestinian government condemns strongly the awful crime that was committed by the Zionist occupation this afternoon,'' he said in Gaza.

See also Meryl Yourish's excellent comparison of AP's reporting of this incident versus the Fogel massacre.

(h/t David G)

Reports that Gaza terrorists used anti-aircraft missiles

Palestine Press reports:

Media and witnesses in Gaza said that resistance fighters this morning fired a surface to air missile targeting an Israeli Apache [helicopter] over the central region [of Gaza.]

Witnesses said out that the helicopter left Gaza and went back to the Israeli border without being hit. Israeli sources did not confirm this news.

Syria kills 12 people - in a mosque

From Haaretz:

Syrian forces killed 12 people on Wednesday in an attack on a mosque in the southern city of Daraa, site of unprecedented protests challenging President Bashar Assad's Baathist rule, residents said.

Those killed included Ali Ghassab al-Mahamid, a doctor from a prominent Daraa family who went to the Omari mosque in the city's old quarter to help victims of the attack, which occurred just after midnight, said the residents, declining to be named.

Before the attack, electricity was cut off in the area and telephone services were severed. Cries of "Allahu Akbar [God is the greatest]" erupted across neighborhoods in Daraa when the shooting began.

Can't wait for the UN to condemn this.

Oh, I'm sure that Iran and Hezbollah will be on the condemnation bandwagon as well since they have been so outspoken about Arab government repression lately.

(updated with latest numbers, h/t Challah Hu Akbar)

Back on the floor: An amazing Israeli success story in Haiti

Meet George, a professional dancer whose left leg was severely injured in Haiti - and whose right leg was amputated.

Thanks to an Israeli rehabilitation team in Haiti, he is dancing again.

(h/t Israpundit via Cher)

Entire poster series here.

(h/t Sshender)

Wikileaks: How the Muslims took over the UNHRC

A series of memos released by WikiLeaks exposes how the Organization of the Islamic Conference took over the then-new UN Human Rights Council in 2008. For those who are fans of the arcane world of negotiations, here is how the OIC managed to outmaneuver Western states on one resolution:

AN OIC TRIUMPH
--------------

OIC efforts to amend -- and in effect subvert -- the Freedom of Expression resolution had been a dominant subtext throughout the Council's seventh regular session. With support from the U.S., the EU and others, Canada, as chief sponsor, had sought to fend off an OIC amendment that would instruct the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression to report on "instances in which the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination." The OIC, taking advantage of its internal discipline, had held firm throughout. China, apparently angered by criticism during the Council's March 25 meeting of its behavior in Tibet, floated its own killer amendments two days before the vote. Canada rejected these as having been raised too late in the game.

The decisive action on the freedom of expression resolution and its amendments came on the session's last day. We had joined Canada and others in efforts to sway moderate OIC members, but these had fallen short. Meanwhile, Canada had sought to find compromise language that would avoid the OIC amendment. When those efforts failed, and with the session having been extended beyond its scheduled 6pm closing time, the OIC called for a vote on its amendment, which passed (27-17-3). The U.S., Canada, the EU and others dropped their co-sponsorship. With the momentum clearly favoring the OIC and its allies, Cuba then pulled an unexpected move, proposing an oral amendment underscoring "the importance for all forms of media to report and to deliver information in a fair and impartial manner." That amendment passed (29-15-3). Canada and the EU failed in last minute procedural efforts to head off the fully amended resolution, which then passed (32-0-15).

The Ambassador's April 2 meeting with like-minded ambassadors to take stock of the session provided additional insights into the dynamics behind the last-minute maneuvering. Canada's ambassador expressed frustration at the African Group's solidarity with the OIC. Madagascar and Angola, for instance, had expressed discomfort with the amendment in conversations with the Canadians but had eventually been pressured into voting for it. The OIC had also exerted immense pressure on others during the end game, he reported; Bosnia and Herzegovina, for instance, had been pressed hard, although it had ended up voting against the amendment. Both the Canadian and Danish ambassadors expressed particular resentment toward China: though the Chinese had ostensibly kept their promise, made on the session's last day, not to put forth an oral amendment, they had clearly struck a deal for Cuba to do so.

In an April 1 extension of the seventh session to allow for closing statements, several OIC members defended the newly amended resolution. Pakistan argued that the OIC amendment had done nothing beyond providing an "add-on" that made the resolution more "comprehensive and holistic," in order to protect the stability of multicultural societies. Sri Lanka echoed that theme and expressed hope that the decisions on the freedom of expression mandate would not leave the Council as a "house divided." The U.S. was among several delegations that sharply criticized the amendments.

The OIC had scored an earlier victory with adoption of a resolution on defamation of religions (21-10-14). It also succeeded in rescheduling the Item 7 discussion of the Occupied Palestinian Territories to early in the Council session in order more quickly to condemn Israel's response to rocket attacks from Gaza. In addition to the resolution passed on that occasion, the Council also passed three other anti-Israel resolutions. One of these, on Israeli settlements, passed 46-1-0, with only Canada voting against it.

Another memo ends off with the observation that the EU has given up and decided to support the OIC:

The prevailing political and negotiating dynamics at the Human Rights Council must be broken if that body, which is still taking shape, is to address human rights problems in a serious and substantive way. Instead of seeking the support of the U.S. and other sympathetic delegations in its efforts to hold violators to their international human rights obligations, the instinct of the EU appears to be to bend over backwards to accommodate the concerns of the violators and their supporters. The result is not pretty. South Africa, which serves as the driving force behind the Durban process and has a tunnel-vision interest on issues of racial equality, appears to have made common cause with the OIC and its parallel tunnel-vision interest in ensuring the alleged rights of the collective in Muslim societies. This vision is fundamentally incompatible with the interests of Western democracies. Until the EU can be made to see that its paramount goal of ensuring its internal unity, with its predictable lowest-common-denominator results, will rarely hold anyone accountable for anything, our efforts to see the HRC evolve into an effective and respectable human rights mechanism are likely to go unrewarded. The U.S. made a greater effort in this short session to influence events, but this level and manner of engagement simply were not enough to have a significant impact.

Today is World Water Day.

All the "Real Liberals" series can be seen using the Real Liberals tag..

Rock star calls BDSers "fools"

From AP:

Kiss' Israeli-born singer-musician Gene Simmons is shouting out loud at the string of musicians who refuse to perform in his homeland.

The legendary bassist says "they're fools." He spoke to The Associated Press in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

He says artists who avoid Israel — such as Elvis Costello, the Pixies and Roger Waters, who joined the movement after appearing in Israel in 2006 — would be better served directing their anger at Arab dictators.

Simmons is making his first return to Israel since he left the country as a child more than 50 years ago. He described the visit as an emotional "homecoming."