Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 23, 2011

Linkdump - Hudson NY edition

There have been a bunch of great posts in Hudson-NY this week, so here are some of them:

Arab Apartheid by Khaled Abu Toameh

"Kairos Palestine": From Mendacity to Megalomania by Malcolm Lowe

Radical Islamic Television Arrives in Spain by Soeren Kern

Betraying Ben-Gurion by Efraim Karsh

The Muslim Brotherhood Unmasked by Herbert I. London

Turkey Reaffirms Its Support for Palestinian Cause And more from the Turkish Press by AK Group

Spain's Jew-Hating Majority by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Muslim Persecution of Christians: November 2011 by Raymond Ibrahim

Canada's State-Sponsored Fight Against State-Sponsored Anti-Semitism by Christine Williams

Arab Spring Sending Shudders Through Christians in the Middle East

Khaled Abu Toameh

From Wikipedia, first round results

Al Masry al Youm reports on the second phase of the parliamentary elections in Egypt.

As with the first round, it looks like the Muslim Brotherhood has done exceptionally well, with the more extreme Salafist Nour party in second place.

The majority of the seats were won by the MB's Freedom and Justice party. In Giza, they scored an impressive victory; in Sohag, MB combined with Nour to win most seats. In the East, the MB swept, and this was the pattern for most districts.

Tomorrow the official results of one of the run-off elections are supposed to be announced.

At the moment, the Freedom and Justice party has 49% of the seats assigned by the election. Because of the way the runoff elections work, I think it is possible that the Muslim Brotherhood can end up with an absolute majority of seats, even without a coalition with Nour.

Erdogan's ironic quote of the day

From Bloomberg:

Turkey froze political and military relations with France in retaliation for the approval by the French parliament’s lower chamber of a measure that makes it a crime to deny genocide against Armenians a century ago.

The government recalled its ambassador to Paris for consultations, canceled a joint meeting of economy and trade ministers in January and halted all programs for training and cultural affairs, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday in televised remarks in Ankara following the vote.

The quote:

“People will not forgive those who distort history, or use history as a tool for political exploitation,” [said Erdogan.]

Yes, those 1.5 million Armenians just caught the flu.

And the IHH members aboard the Mavi Marmara were wielding "peace batons" and stabbing Israeli soldiers with flowers.

Last week, Turkey's foreign minister said that Turkey's policies have isolated Israel and helped bring it to its knees. But yesterday, Israel canceled a $141 million military contract with Turkey - not exactly the actions of a nation on the ropes.

Next week the Knesset may pass a bill saying the Jewish people will never forget the Armenian genocide and asks that the Knesset mark the event with a special memorial session held every year, in a move sure to anger Ankara further.

But meanwhile Turkey is at loggerheads with its former allies in Iran and Syria, the EU has been cool to its moves and this latest French law has it in a tizzy.

Which means that Turkey's actions have isolated Turkey a lot more than it has isolated Israel.

The purposeful ambiguity of terrorists joining the PLO

Reuters reports that Hamas and Islamic Jihad plan to join the PLO.

Rival Palestinian factions took a significant step towards reconciliation Thursday as the Islamist group Hamas said it planned to join President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organization.

Abbas held a meeting in Cairo with leaders from the factions, including Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal, where a committee was formed to prepare for the inclusion of Hamas, as well as the smaller Islamic Jihad, in the PLO.

Hamas has refused to recognize Israel or renounce violence, while the PLO has signed interim peace accords. It was unclear how Hamas would be included in the PLO, given the discrepancy.

The committee will now prepare for an internal election of the PLO parliament in order to facilitate Hamas and the Islamic Jihad membership.

One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Hamas's Mashaal had told Abbas that his group was "in favor of peaceful resistance and a truce in Gaza and the West Bank at this stage".

The official offered no further explanation on what that might mean. Hamas has said in the past it would agree to a long-term truce with Israel, but remains sworn to its destruction.

Islamic Jihad clearly sees this as a method to restructure the PLO - away from its signed peace agreements with Israel:

An Islamic Jihad leader said Thursday that joining an "interim leadership framework" of the PLO did not necessarily mean it had formally joined the Palestinian body.

Khaled Al-Batsh told Ma’an that joining the organization requires a clear framework for how the PLO will be restructured.

He added that if there was an agreement concerning these issues, Islamic Jihad would become a member in the organization. However, if there was no agreement, the group said it was still willing to contribute.

“We’re now in the phase of national dialogue," he said. "We’re in the interim leadership framework, which will handle restructuring the PLO, and we hope to succeed.”

Batsh also said "We support reconciliation on the basis of building a unified Palestinian authority in the framework agreement on a national project that meets the need of the Palestinians, as part of upholding our right to resistance and national principles."

Hamas takes a similar stance, saying that this is an opportunity for the PLO to include all Palestinian Arab factions (meaning, terror groups) and elect new members for its national council and executive committee. Meshal also railed against the PLO's unilateralism.

Abbas and his cronies, of course, will do everything they can to present this to the West as if the PLO is not reneging on its signed agreements while they will say in Arabic that the PLO can accommodate the inclusion of unrepentant terror groups.

Their strategy will be to find an ambiguous enough formula that desperate Western leaders can embrace with their eyes wide shut, using their penchant for wishful thinking to patch over the gaping divide between Hamas and PIJ and any possible peace process and then to blame Israel for showing reluctance to negotiate with its would-be exterminators.

It might take a couple of years, but soon we will see op-eds in major newspapers asking exactly what is wrong with Hamas' idea of a "long term truce" before annihilating Israel, or saying that Islamic Jihad has embraced the peace process. Things that are still considered somewhat absurd will become mainstream thinking by dint of repetition of sound bites by the new PLO leadership.

After all, that's what happened with the PLO itself. Remember that it has been over a decade since the PLO supposedly changed its charter to remove all references to destroying Israel and armed resistance - and yet in the meantime it has never published a revised charter!

The Palestinian Arab leadership is skilled at creating just enough ambiguity to allow credulous Western leaders and pundits to mentally fill in the rest with what they fervently hope the terrorists and their supporters are saying. They know that Western wishful thinking goes a long way to help their cause.

UNESCO stops funding PalArab kid magazine that thanked Hitler

A followup to this story from Europe-Israel:

A day after a protest from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to UNESCO’s Director-General over a Palestinian youth magazine which published materials exalting Hitler, UNESCO has agreed that it « will not provide any further support to the publication in question. »

Zayzafouna, a magazine which supposedly promotes democracy and tolerance, published an article by a ten-year-old Palestinian girl who said that in her dreams, Hitler told her, “Yes. I killed them [the Jews] so you would all know that they are a nation who spreads destruction all over the world.” The article was brought to the public’s attention by Palestinian Media Watch.

A letter from the office of UNESCO’s Director-General read:

UNESCO’s attention has been drawn to the February 2011 issue of the Palestinian children’s magazine Zayzafouna. This magazine is published by an NGO of the same name under the patronage of the Palestinian National Commission for UNESCO, which is the national body set up by the Palestinian Authority to facilitate its work with the Organization. The February issue features a story written by a 10-year-old girl in which Hitler is quoted by her as stating that he “killed [the Jews] so you would all know that they are a nation who wreak havoc on Earth”. While UNESCO upholds freedom of expression as an integral part of its mandate, the inclusion in this publication of a statement that may be interpreted as an apology of the holocaust is contrary to UNESCO’s constitutional mandate and values. It is totally unacceptable.

UNESCO supported the publication of three issues of the Zayzafouna Magazine six months after the February 2011 issue. The support was provided for these issues following agreement with the editorial board that they would focus on building greater appreciation amongst Palestinians for their heritage and culture. They were to open the way for positive dialogue aimed at overcoming the consequences of the Middle East conflict, and to fight against stereotypes that may be conducive to violence. It was UNESCO’s intention to foster a positive view ofPalestinian heritage based on the values of tolerance and UNESCO’s mandate of building peace in the minds of men and women. This vision guides all of UNESCO’s activities, and we urge all partners to work in this direction.

UNESCO is shocked and dismayed by the content of the February issue, and has requested more detailed information and clarification from the editors of the magazine and to Palestinian Authority.

UNESCO strongly deplores and condemns the reproduction of such inflammatory statements in a magazine associated with UNESCO’s name and mission and will not provide any further support to the publication in question.

The Organization, which is deeply committed to the development and promotion of education about the Holocaust, disassociates itself from any statement that is counter to its founding principles and goals of building tolerance in the full respect for human rights and human dignity.

From what I can tell, UNESCO only funded the magazine for a few issues; the latest issues no longer had its logo.

The last issue of 2010 had a tribute to Yasir Arafat.

The issue beforehand had a story about a child visiting his father in prison, ending off with "I am aware that the enemies are the ones who prevented my father from returning home."

The previous issue to that one was the last one to have the UNESCO logo.

Chanukah Video Night 3: Chanukah Rights!

From Six13:

Muslim Brotherhood is suddenly against Egyptian protests

My, how things change after one wins an election.

Firas Press (possibly quoting Al Balad News) is quoting Muslim Brotherhood and Nour officials as saying that Egyptian security should respond to protesters "with an iron fist."

A Nour party spokesman told a rally that protesters in Tahrir Square are not innocent, but a group of terrorists that the Military Council must address "with full force."

The Nour spokesman also questioned the morality of women protesters who sleep outside the home and in public squares.

Doonesbury blames US troops for Christian exodus from Iraq

Yesterday's Doonesbury comic betrays a very interesting mindset.

AP looked at this phenomenon in 2009:

Christians first began leaving Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, during the economic sanctions and repression under Saddam Hussein, who pushed more Islamist policies. But the trickle turned to a flood after Saddam was toppled in 2003 and the violence escalated, said a prominent Iraqi Christian lawmaker, Younadem Kana.

"I hope to leave for any other place in the world," said Sheeran Surkon, a 27-year-old Iraqi woman who fled to Syria in 2004 after she received death threats, her father disappeared and her beauty salon was blown up.

Sukron awaits resettlement to another country, saying she can’t tolerate the violence and new Muslim conservatism in Iraq.

"How can I live there as a woman?" she asked.

Daoud Daoud, 70, a former civil servant in the northern city of Mosul, now spends his time waiting with dozens of others at a Damascus, Syria, resettlement center, hoping to follow his children to Sweden.

"Iraq as we once knew it is over. For us there is no future there," he said.

More than 2 million refugees of all religions have fled Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The recent ebb in violence has lured some Muslim refugees to return in small numbers.

But few Christians contemplate going back, the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees reports.

"They simply do not feel safe enough. They cannot sufficiently count on state security or any other force to protect them," said the the agency’s acting representative in Damascus, Philippe Leclerc.

In a report last year, the head of its Iraq support unit said that Christians are more likely than other fleeing Iraqis to register as refugees in an effort to emigrate to a third country.

"The vast majority of Iraqis still want to return to Iraq when the conditions permit — the notable exception being religious minorities, particularly Christians," the report said.

"When I came here to my parish in Karrada, we had 2,000 families," said Monsignor Luis al-Shabi, 70, who started at St. Joseph’s 40 years ago. "But now we only have 1,000 — half."

The situation is worse in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora to the south — where 30,000 prewar Christians fled during the six years of war. The now-quiet neighborhood has only a single church and a handful of Christians.

More troubling, when a group of Christian families recently tried to return to homes in Dora, two Christian women were killed, Iraq’s Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly said in an interview after meeting with the pope in nearby Jordan.

Execution-style killings late last year targeted Christians in Mosul, as did a string of bombings. In March of last year, the body of Mosul’s Chaldean Christian archbishop was found in a shallow grave a month after he was kidnapped at gunpoint as he left a Mass.

Since then it got worse:

Abdullah al-Nawfali, who heads the Christian endowments fund, says there has been a sharp increase in the number of Christians leaving Iraq since the October 31 suicide attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad.

More than 50 Christians, including two priests, and seven policemen were killed when Iraqi security forces stormed the Baghdad church in which Islamic terrorists wearing explosive vests were holding worshippers hostage.

Nawfali says the number of Christians emigrating from Iraq in November -- immediately after the church siege – more than doubled from the previous month, and the rate of increase in December was even higher.

He says these statistics suggest that Iraq is in danger of losing its Christian community, which has lived for centuries alongside Muslims and other ethnic and religious groups.

To artist Garry Trudeau, Islamists aren't to blame for murdering and persecuting Christians. Iraq's government and army are blameless for not protecting their religious minorities. No, it is America's fault! Life was so great under Saddam Hussein - why can't we go back to running Iraq with a homicidal dictator?

When Copts inevitably flee Egypt for similar reasons, is Trudeau going to write any comics wishing that Mubarak was back in power? Or will he find a way to blame that on America as well?

We all know who is behind persecution of religious minorities in the Middle East. But some people just can't stop themselves from blaming Big Satan (and, inevitably, his little brother.)

Using Trudeau's logic, the publishers of the Mohammed cartoons are to blame for the people killed in the ensuing riots. Which is an interesting position for a political cartoonist to take.

Nour party spokesman claims he was "ambushed" by Israeli reporter

From AP:

Al Nour spokesman Yusri Hammad

The spokesman of Egypt's ultraconservative Islamist party told Israeli Army Radio in unprecedented remarks broadcast Wednesday that the group is not opposed to the country's historic peace treaty with Israel.

Yousseri Hamad's interview with the Israeli broadcaster is unusual for followers of the Salafi Islamic trend, who typically shun Israel for its policies toward Palestinians and its annexation of east Jerusalem, home to Islam's third-holiest site.

The interview countered Israeli fears that Islamist parties would seek to cut ties with Israel.

In his remarks to the Israeli station, Hamad said the Salafi Nour Party is committed to agreements signed by previous Egyptian governments, including the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
"We are not opposed to the agreement, and we are saying that Egypt is committed to the agreements that previous Egyptian government have signed," he said, noting that if Egyptians want changes on the treaty, "the place for that is the negotiation table."

In response to the interview, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the comments were worth considering.

"This is certainly food for thought and we will of course keep observing very attentively developments in Egypt," he said.

Salafi Muslims follow a strict interpretation of Islam similar to that practiced in Saudi Arabia. The Salafi Nour Party in Egypt has so far won a quarter of the seats in Egypt's parliamentary elections, placing it second only to the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood.

After the interview aired, Hamad told The Associated Press that he did not know he was talking to Israeli Army Radio, and he was told only it was for an Israeli broadcaster. He claimed that had he known, he would not have agreed to the Army Radio interview because "they occupy our Palestinian brothers."

He also said that his party "without doubt" supports changes to the agreement, including raising troop levels in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Israel. He also said that there need to be guarantees for Palestinians.

"We call for full Sinai rights for Egypt and for our brothers in Palestine and occupied lands, and we see this as directly related to the agreement," he told the AP.

Al Ahram's account contradicts AP's:

Hammad, however, later said he had been "ambushed" by the Israeli reporter that conducted the interview, who, says Hammad, had introduced himself as an Iraqi journalist.

The interview had prompted surprise in Israel – and outrage in Egypt – that a member of Egypt’s hard-line Salafist movement would grant an interview to an Israeli media outlet, especially one associated with the military.

He made the same claim to Al Arabiya:

Hammad told Al Arabiya.net that he received an anonymous phone call and when he started the conversation with the caller, the Israeli journalist at first presented himself as an Iraqi one and spoke with him in Arabic.

“If I knew [the caller being a journalist from the Isareli army radio station], I would not have talked to him,” he said, adding “this is a media deceit and I reject such approach.”

The spokesman said only at the end of the interview the journalist said that he is Israeli.

Speaking of Nour, Hudson-NY has a must-read piece saying that the party isn't really Salafi - but Wahhabi.

Financial Times refuses to correct Hamas claim

The Financial Times wrote earlier this week:

The Islamist Hamas movement celebrated its 24th anniversary last week, with a mass rally in Gaza City that carried a clear and defiant message. “Armed resistance is the way, and it is Hamas’s strategic choice to liberate Palestine,” declared Ismail Haniyeh, the movement’s leader in Gaza.

The same day, as if to remind the world of its violent heritage, the military wing published a list of its bloody achievements since 1987. Among other boasts, it claimed to have killed 1,365 Israeli soldiers, fired 11,093 rockets and mortars at Israel, and carried out 87 suicide bombings.

Honest Reporting called them out on the claim that Hamas had killed 1,365 Israeli soldiers - when in fact most of the dead are civilian,and obviously targeted as civilians - but the Financial Times refused to issue the correction:

thank your for your email, which I followed up with Tobias Buck , our Jerusalem bureau chief, and we don’t feel a correction is warranted. The column clearly attributes its claims to Hamas in Gaza. The statement was carried on the official Qassam Brigades website and referred to “1385 Zionist soldiers”. We and all other outlets tend to translate “Zionist” into “Israeli”, since that is what they mean. Hamas was clearly not talking about civilians.

Honest Reporting correctly notes that since they didn't quote "Zionist" accurately it is disingenuous for them to quote "soldiers" without explanation.

But there is another small point that needs to be emphasized.

The English-language Qassam website did say that Hamas killed 1365 "Zionist soldiers." But at least one Hamas press release in Arabic simply said "Zionists."

From the Hamas-run Palestine Times:

The Information Office of the Qassam Brigades, military wing of Hamas, published today the official statistics on the number of martyrs and wounded, and the jihad operations carried out since the start of the Hamas movement, which started on this day December 14 twenty-four years ago. The Qassam Brigades said in a statement obtained by "Palestine Today." It states: "1848 martyrs, while killing 1365 Zionists and wounding 6411 others." The battalions confirmed they have been carried out 1117 the jihad operations, including 87 martyrdom operations, adding that "it bombed Zionist targets and settlements with 11,093 rockets and mortars." The Al-Qassam Brigades promised, in memory of the people, to start to move forward in the way of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine.

The Arabic al-Qassam website does say "soldiers" though, so I don't know if Palestine Today received a different copy or if they edited it to mean what everyone knows it means - except readers of the Financial Times.

(h/t Honest Reporting)

Jews peacefully visit their holiest site, Muslims freak out

Once again, Muslims are up in arms over several groups of Jews visiting the Temple Mount, site of both historic Jewish Temples.

Palestine Press Agency quotes the always histrionic Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation, as they try to incite anger in the teeming Muslim masses by claiming that the "intruders," including students from Jewish schools, were "performing Talmudic rituals" for Chanukah at the holy site.

Even more outrageously, the groups were led by tour guides who explained the details of the destroyed Temples.

The article helpfully adds that "there was an atmosphere of tension and suspense in Al-Aqsa Mosque" during these awful events where the "settlers" were said to "storm" the Mount. Walking peacefully is considered "breaking in" and "storming" in the parlance of the Muslim supremacists who demand exclusive control over the Mount.

Sheikh Kamal Khatib, an Islamic leader in the territories, underscored the point by saying that "Masjid al-Aqsa is ours and ours alone."

The peaceful cleric also issued a veiled threat that the entire Muslim world would go to war if Jews continue to visit the Har HaBayit. "More than once in history, the Al Aqsa Mosque was the torch that destroyed the hopes of empires, and the Al Aqsa Mosque will be the flame in extinguishing the illusions of the Zionist project, because the Al Aqsa Mosque is part of the faith and doctrine of the hearts of 1.5 billion Muslims, not merely 13 million Palestinians. I advise Israel to realize that the continued violation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque...will translate into action for Arabs and Muslims, in true defense of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and we will never allow [the Jews] to continue desecrating and insulting it... It is not in [Israel's] favor and it will not benefit its people; especially considering the new reality and the changes that are occurring in the region."

Interestingly enough, I have never heard any EU member denounce words like these. I've never read an op-ed in the mainstream media about how Muslim supremacism and fanaticism regarding the Temple Mount is a recipe for a never-ending war. On the contrary - in the face of threats like these, the usual reaction is to agree with the Islamists that it is better not to upset the apple cart and risk angering hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Muslims see that their threats cow the liberal Westerners who pretend to be at the forefront of religious freedom for all.

This Western fear of irrational Muslims starting a holy war at the slightest pretext has a long history.

Which is why threats and terror will continue to be effective.

This has been an amazing year for the blog, and it is all thanks to you for reading, Tweeting, Like-ing on Facebook, +1-ing on Google, linking and emailing the posts you liked.

This year the blog broke out of the mold of most websites and went in some new directions. It is no longer a blog - it is a one-person multimedia empire:

I gave a couple of lectures about Hasbara and received great feedback. You can watch one of them here.
I created two very popular poster series, "Apartheid?" and "This Is Zionism." They went viral. The blog received tens of thousands of pageviews, but beyond that, they were reproduced and printed worldwide, translated into many languages, and sent in email chains by many people.
I also created a number of cartoons to illuminate the situation in the Middle East with some humor.
I had a regular writing gig for NewsRealBlog; unfortunately that site closed down.
I partnered with the excellent StandWithUs organization to help spread some of my posters.
I continued to create original videos and reproduce hard-to-find videos on my YouTube channel.
I started doing video interviews of newsmakers, like Alan Dershowitz and Danny Ayalon.
And I also managed to blog! About 3000 posts, many with original reporting, analysis and scoops. I am fairly certain that most mainstream reporters would love to have dug up and reported as much information as was introduced on this blog.

Although I am not great at self-promotion, somehow EoZ keeps gaining fans.

This year I've been quoted and linked to by journalists, pundits and news sources like Roger L. Simon, Melanie Phillips, CAMERA, Fox News NY, Israel Today, Honest Reporting, the GLORIA Center, the Algemeiner Journal, PJ Media, Hot Air, The Propagandist, The Jerusalem Post, The Philadelphia Jewish Voice, Commentary, The Spectator (UK), and The National Interest as well as numerous mentions in Memeorandum. (Not to mention the memorable time that the anti-Zionist +972mag thought they could ridicule me - when the joke was on them.)

A book due out early next year actually thanks me by my blog name, which may be the first time an anonymous blogger is acknowledged in a book!

Technorati, using its opaque algorithm, ranks this blog at the moment as #3 out of of all 16,000 World Politics Blogs they follow, and it is #31 out of 15,000 Politics blogs. Not bad for a one-person operation!

My Twitter followers have been steadily increasing, now at over 1850. About 2000 subscribe to the blog via SMS or email. Not huge, but growing, with more and more of my hits coming from social networking sites.

By the end of the year I will have gotten 1.7 million page views.

As you can imagine, I spend thousands of hours on these activities. And I have some plans for 2012 as well.

If you believe that all of this is worthwhile, please consider donating. Due to a boneheaded move on my part I lost my Google AdSense revenue and as I said I had made a little from writing for a website that no longer exists, so right now asking for money is the main way for me to get a little bit back for the huge amount of time I spend. I do not like asking for money, believe me.

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Thanks so much for all your support and the very kind compliments, and have a (choose appropriate wish for your circumstance) wonderful Chanukah, a Merry Christmas, a happy Kwanzaa, a joyous winter solstice, a tremendous Festivus and a Happy New Year!