Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Elder posters hit the front page of Canada's largest Jewish weekly!

From The Jewish Tribune of Canada, the largest Jewish weekly in Canada, March 31 edition (not yet online):

A full page!

And they nicely gave me credit:

I'm kvelling!

(h/t Wigg for the heads up and photos)

Egyptian foreign minister warns that peace with Israel will get colder

Al Arabiya reports that Nabil el-Arabi, Egypt's foreign minister, said said that his country would not be a "strategic treasure to Israel, as they said it was at the time of President Mubarak," and Egypt will only abide by treaties and no more.

He said that Egypt has the right to force the Israeli side to adhere to some of the issues that they claim Israel has not strictly kept from Camp David, "such as the part that said that Israel is committed to peace with the countries that wish it, and it did not happen with Palestine."

The commenters were of the "hell yeah!" type, although one of them definitely gets into the Great Moments of Autotranslation Hall of Fame. Google translates his comment like this:

I am an Iraqi, me proud to be an Arab.... We are tired of waiting for the vagina to defeat the Jews who planted the differences and hatred between us .. When the disease became ill Egypt Sadat and Mubarak sick all the Arabs and Hovoa Wayne got .. Today, Egypt is recovering ..Recover all of the Arabs and, God willing, the vagina soon.

A few links

J-Street Defends the Indefensible

Honest Reporting on Goldstone's about-face

Eichmann wasn't just "following orders"

Why do Arabs want to be citizens of that hated Zionist entity? (Where we learn an interesting fact - a Hamas leader's nephew serves in the IDF!)

FresnoZionism looks at American rabbis who love Palestinian Arabs. (He also has some great, original cartoons.)

A reform rabbi's response to Peter Beinart's thesis about young liberal American Jews.

Getty Images catches an idyllic scene from Gaza.

Hamas terrorists were in "The Playground of Death"

Here is the English-language press release from Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades after the IDF killed three Hamas terrorists on Saturday:

As Al Aqsa Intifada against the occupation assault on the Gaza Strip continues, Ezzeddeen Al-Qassam Brigades has its best men to be in the playground of death to defend their people from any attack by the enemy ... Today, Al-Qassam Brigades mourn the death of the Mujahedeen:

Ismael Ali Lubbad [35 years]

Beach refugee camp – Gaza city

Abdullah Ali Lubbad [24 years]

Beach refugee camp – Gaza city

Mohammed Mahdi Ad-Daya [31 years]

As-Sabra neighborhood – Gaza city

The Zionist fighters assassinated the mujahedeen while they were driving their car in Khanyounis city. They were martyred after a long bright path of jihad, hard work, struggle and sacrifice.

Al Qassam Brigades mourn the death of the Mujahedeen, reaffirms the commitment and determination to continue the resistance against the belligerent occupation forces.

Finally, may Allah (swt) accept him and his blessed efforts for the path of Jihad and may Allah grant his family patience and solace for his lose.

"To God we belong and to him we shall return."

Predictable: Anti-semites now attack Goldstone

From the nutty-far-left Salem News:

Many of us knew something wasn't right with Richard Goldstone from the beginning. His seeming honesty was too good to be true.

He is the experienced former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, who investigated the extended attack on Gaza's civilian population in the winter of 2008 and 2009 that left more than 1400 dead, most of whom were civilian, known as 'Operation Cast Lead'.

Considering the bond that ultimately exists between Zionist Jews, the selection of Goldstone as the man to head an investigation of Israel's Gaza War Crimes was a little like having Newt Gingrich investigate Republican wrongdoing.

...And this leads to the ultimate point about Goldstone and that is that no Zionist Jew from a country that practices apartheid so recently, should have been allowed to head the investigation.

Palestinian Arabs call to boycott Facebook. On Facebook!

Al Jazeera reports that a group of Palestinian Arabs, angry over Facebook taking down the "third intifada" page, are calling for everyone to boycott Facebook on April 15th.

And where are they organizing this campaign? Why, on Facebook, of course!

Western darling ElBaradei says he'd go to war if Israel attacks Gaza

Egypt's Masrawy and other Arabic media outlets are quoting Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohammed ElBaradei as saying that Egypt may go to war if Israel attacks Gaza.

He is quoted as saying that if he becomes President, in the event of any future attack on Gaza he would discuss ways to implement the joint Arab defense agreement, for all Arab atates to respond "in the face of Israeli aggression."

ElBaradei is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

He also is revealed in a new Wikileaks document as saying that if he becomes president he would restore Egyptian relations with Tehran that were severed after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Ma'an again quotes bogus "activists" in Hebron

On Friday, Ma'an wrote:

Israeli settlers burned a store in the center of the West Bank city of Hebron on Friday, activists said.

Protesters assembling ahead of a demonstration said settler tossed flammable materials that burned a storefront on Shalala Street.

Palestinian firefighters put out the blaze that caused damage to the stores and prevented it from spreading, onlookers said.

This sounded fishy to me, as Israelis are simply not allowed in most of Hebron. So I asked someone who lives in the area whether this was possible, and he responded:

It's an area behind Beit Hadassah where we have no access at all. I gave David Wilder a call to double check since it's up by him. He said no chance.

How many times must we document that anti-Israel "activists" lie before the media starts to show some skepticism on their wild and unfounded claims?

And when will Ma'an actually do some real reporting and verify facts instead of mindlessly repeating any anti-Israel drivel anyone claims? It is not hard to reach out to Jews living in Hebron.

March rocket calendar

G=Grad
Q=Qassam
M=Mortar
P=Unidentified projectile
S=Fell short in Gaza
F=Fatality (Green-Gaza, Red-Israel)

March 2011

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
		1	2	3 1P	4 2Q	5 1Q
6	7	8	9 1Q	10 1Q	11 1Q	12
13	14	15	16	17	18 10M	19 50M
20 3Q (1G) 1M	21 1Q	22 4Q 4M	23 3G 7M	24 6Q 2G 6M	25	26 3Q
27	28	29 2QS	30	31 1Q

Elder poster sighting: North Miami Beach

At the JCC in North Miami Beach:

(h/t to the globetrotting Junior Elder)

UC Davis newspaper says it will allow EoZ ad - under certain conditions

On Friday, I reported that the California Aggie newspaper by the students of the University of California-Davis had rejected my "Apartheid?" ad because it was too "controversial" - even though it says nothing controversial at all.

The sponsor of the ad received a clarification from the newspaper:

Hi XXXXX,

First of all, I'd like to apologize for any inconvenience The California Aggie has caused you. I've talked to a few of my staff members and I've decided that we will run your ad on two conditions:

1) We put the words "Paid Advertisement" at the top of the ad.
2) The Aggie will run a box next to the ad giving readers their response options (Where to buy an ad of their own, where to send a guest opinion, etc...)

If you think these sound reasonable, let Kevin [the advertising manager] and I know as soon as possible and he'll help you finish the ad-placement process.

Again, I apologize if my decision to not run your ad caused any problems.

My preference is that The Aggie takes no sides in issues like this, but there is no harm in running your ad if we make sure to point out that anybody can write a guest opinion or run an ad.

Thank you for your time,
--
Mark Ling
Editor in Chief
The California Aggie

I personally have no problem with the first condition, although from looking at back issues it seems the only time they included the words "Paid Advertisement" was for full-page ads. They have plenty of smaller ads without that disclaimer.

But the second condition again presupposes that somehow a pro-Israel ad is "controversial" and the newspaper must go out of its way to allow those that hate Israel to have ample opportunity to respond. Would a similar pro-Canada ad have the same conditions attached? Or an ad made by a pro-choice group?

The sponsor of the ad replied:

Thank you for writing to me.

You said that The Aggie would run my ad on two conditions, and you asked me to tell you and
Kevin whether I thought those conditions were reasonable.

Before answering that question, I have several questions of my own:

(1) What other ads have met those conditions in the past?

(2) For what other ads have those conditions been required in the past?

(3) For what other ads will those conditions be required in the future?

(4) Who has approved requiring that my ad meet those conditions?

I hope that you will let Kevin and me know the answers as soon as convenient.

I'll keep you posted.

Half a cheer for Goldstone

Richard Goldstone backtracks somewhat concerning his already infamous report in a Washington Post op-ed:

We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

...Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.

Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants. The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).

Goldstone's admission, welcome as it is, is disingenuous.

Certainly the worst part of the report was in the many parts that he is now retracting, that the IDF purposefully targeted civilians. He now says that the "fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion" when the report was written. But in reality, if he had looked at both the history of how the IDF acts in war in general, the specifics that were known about how the IDF acted in Gaza, and how wars in urban combat zones are generally waged (i.e., in Iraq), of he was fair he would have easily concluded that the IDF was not purposefully targeting civilians and that they went out of their way, indeed even above and beyond, to avoid targeting real civilians (while Hamas was dressing up its fighters in civilian clothing.)

It appears that now, two years later, he is impressed that Israel is conducting investigations into acts of individual soldiers. Yet this is how the IDF always acted.

His belated retraction also doesn't note that much of what his report said was known to be false at the time the Goldstone Report was released, as I and others have documented quite exhaustively. His report had a clear and consistent bias where Israeli claims were treated skeptically but Hamas claims were believed without reservation. To come back 18 months later and lamely admit that Israeli claims were indeed found to be accurate just shows how biased he was in accepting problematic testimony then.

For example, he writes now:

Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants. The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).

But this blog as well as others had, already at that time, documented that hundreds of so-called "civilians" were in fact Hamas combatants, based purely on Hamas' own admissions in Arabic.

So while it is nice to see that Goldstone realizes his report was mistaken in its key accusation against Israel, his admission is way too little - and comes way too late.

His Washington Post op-ed is not going to get nearly the same publicity that the report did, and the damage cannot be undone.