Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 16, 2012

Unity! Haniyeh insists that Gaza security forces will remain

At a graduation ceremony of "police" in Gaza yesterday, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh insisted that the security forces that the Hamas security forces in Gaza will remain in place no matter what. Which means that he is against any consolidation of security forces with the PA - the acid test for any real unity between Hamas and Fatah.

He also said that the "police" were "a fortress for the Palestinian people and resistance."

Here is a photo of these "police" carrying weapons and marching in ways that make them look a lot more like soldiers than policemen.

I don't know what he was supposed to have said here, but Google auto-translates part of his speech as saying

"What we have built we will not destroy, because the Palestinian people felt the fruit of construction, particularly by ending the security chaos, and the presence of police work for the home clean hands, tongue, vagina, grew up on the table the Koran."

That is some kinky stuff right there.

Abbas' alleged Israeli travel permit (photo)

AP reports:

Israel has stripped Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of VIP status and given him a watered-down travel permit that is valid for just two months, Palestinian officials charged Sunday.

The officials said that Abbas complained about the permit at an internal meeting of his Fatah Party last week.

In a speech, Abbas said the new permit, similar to those required for Palestinian laborers entering Israel, was a reflection of Israel's continued control over the Palestinians, and suggested that Israel was trying to punish him for applying for Palestinian membership in the United Nations.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because they were not allowed to brief reporters.

Maj. Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israeli agency that issues travel documents to Palestinians, said there has been no change in policy. He said the permit was the result of a technical glitch that should be resolved soon.

"Freedom of movement ... remains exactly the same as it was," Inbar said. "I deny all claims of changes in travel passes of Palestinian officials," he said. "There is no change in position or policy regarding the travel passes of Palestinian officials."

The VIP permit allowed Abbas to travel whenever and wherever he wanted. Palestinian officials acknowledged the new permit has not prevented Abbas, a frequent traveler to world capitals, from moving in and out of the West Bank. On Sunday, Abbas flew to London for talks with British leaders.

Dozens of local Facebook users spread what appeared to be a copy of Abbas' travel permit, in many cases with sarcastic comments about Abbas' weakness. "See you at the checkpoint," wrote one user, identified as Nidal Ahmed.

This photo is circulating on PalArab social media sites:

It supposedly shows Mahmoud Reda Abbas' temporary travel permit card. It says he can stay overnight in the West Bank and Gaza Strip only, and is allowed to enter Israel except for Eilat, and is not allowed to drive a car in Israel, and a handwritten note "valid despite security prevention."

It is valid for two months.

Palestinian Authority issues fake statistics, no one questions them

Ma'an reported in 2006:

The Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs has revealed that 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested and imprisoned in Israeli prisons since 1967. This means that 25% of the total population of the occupied Palestinian territory has been held in Israeli jails over the last 29 years.

In a report, the ministry pointed out that 50,000 of them were arrested during the current, Al Aqsa Intifada (which began in September 2000) and 10,300 of them are still in Israeli prisons.

Today, the Ministry has updated the figures, saying that about 800,000 Palestinian Arabs have been arrested since 1967.

We have already looked at how Addameer inflates their statistics on arrests, pulling their numbers out of thin air.

Now let's look at the Ministry's numbers.

Let's say that 50,000 were really arrested between September 2000 and September 2006, during the height of the intifada, as they claimed in 2006.

If that is true, is it remotely credible that more than double that amount has been arrested in the 5 years since then, when things have calmed down considerably?

If 100,000 were arrested in the past 5 years, that would be 20,000 a year or about 55 a day. Yet an already unreliable study published at the end of December claims only 3,300 were arrested last year, and the most arrests were in 2007 when some 7,000 were alleged.

Even those numbers seem grossly exaggerated, as the only group that seems to keep tracks of actual arrests is PCHR, and they only record about 1000-1500 arrests a year. Last week, for example, they recorded 31 arrests and 29 the week before.

Since 2006, the number of Arab prisoners in Israeli jails has decreased from about 10,000 to under 4,000.

While all available evidence shows that the number of arrests is far less than the Ministry of Prisoners Affairs is reporting, no one is questioning them (or Addameer) for their absurd inflation of these statistics.

These ridiculous numbers get accepted by the UN and by the mainstream media.

This is not some NGO without any oversight issuing these numbers. This is the Palestinian Authority, funded with billions of dollars from the West, and using that money to issue ridiculous lies back to those same Western countries.

Isn't it time that someone calls them on these fabrications?

"Israeli prisons worse than Nazis'"

Today's disgusting statement by a Hamas minister:

Palestinian Minister for Captives Affairs Ataollah Abu Sabah said Palestinian prisoners are suffering harsh and inhuman conditions in Israeli jails, and stressed that Israeli prisons are much more horrible than those of the Nazis'.

Speaking to FNA, Sabah said that almost 4,400 Palestinian prisoners are incarcerated in Israeli jails, and added that those prisoners who are sentenced to long terms of imprisonment are kept in central prisons whose conditions are gravely inhume and terrible.

"These prisons lack sanitation and are overcrowded," he said, and added that Israel is using the harshest methods of suppression against Palestinian prisoners in these jails.

He added that conditions in Ketziot Prison, where many Palestinian political prisoners are held, are even harsher than the conditions tolerated by prisoners in the Nazi Germany.

Sabah added that prisoners in Ketziot are not safe from night torture.

Palestinian prisoners have always voiced complaint about the torturing and mistreatment of prisoners by Israeli guards.

In July, more than 20 Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli Negev jail were poisoned after eating meals served in the prison's canteen, prisoners reported.

They explained that after eating burger sandwiches from the canteen the prisoners suffered from diarrhea and vomiting after which they were carried to the prison's clinic but the administration did not tell them about their condition.

They asked the Red Cross to intervene and demand their transfer to hospital for adequate checkup.

Canteens? Burgers? Red Cross? Treatment in a hospital?

Not to mention TV, free college education, smuggled cell phones, Halal meals...the list of evil Zionist torture devices goes on and on.

As far as overcrowding is concerned...when Dachau was liberated, the Americans found 32,000 people in 20 barracks - 1600 per barrack - each designed to hold 250 people.

I would not mind one bit if Abu Sabah finds out what real torture is, first hand.

By the way, if you want to do a social experiment, the PressTV version of the interview said that there were 44,000 prisoners, not 4,400. Do a search to see how many webpages reproduce that version without giving it the slightest bit of critical thinking.

(h/t CHA)

What does it mean for Jews to be pro-Israel today? (Expanded)

I gave a little more thought to the question asked in Moment magazine of "What does it mean to be pro-Israel today?" that I briefly answered on Friday.

I would like to expand the answer, and to narrow the question a little bit, to "What does it mean for Jews to be pro-Israel today?"

If you are Jewish, then you are more than just someone who shares a belief system with other Jews. You and the Jewish people also share nationality, culture, and a long-standing emotional ties to the Land of Israel with your fellow Jews. As Jews colloqually say, you are a "member of the Tribe."

You are, effectively, family. And family members, when they are not dysfunctional, are expected to love each other unconditionally.

Of course we fight. Of course we argue. Of course we get passionate, and angry, and emotional. But the undercurrent of all these actions is love. We want what is best for our family, for our people, for our nation, and we are willing to fight for what we believe is right, even when most others disagree.

Israel, both in its geographic and its political incarnation, is our home. We can disagree and argue over what is best for Israel, and in fact we do. And as long as the dominant emotion behind the disputes remains love, all is fair.

But there are two things that family members do not do to each other.

One is that they do not air their disagreements in public. They do not go to media outlets outside of their community to disparage their own. They especially do not tell their family's sworn enemies that they agree with them and disagree with their own people. When one does that, it indicates that he or she is more interested in their own selfish agenda than in bettering their people. It is effectively a declaration of independence from the family, a statement that one believes that the family's actions are so reprehensible that one does not want to be associated with them anymore.

Anyone is free to do this, of course. But their actions show that they are not behaving out of love, but rather out of spite. It shows that they are taking themselves out of the community and that they respect their own people so little that they cannot stomach trying to fit in anymore.

That is not how family members behave.

And the other thing that loving family members do not do to each other is to assume that when others within the community do anything seemingly disagreeable, that they are automatically guilty.

When anything happens in Israel that looks bad on the surface, the vast majority of the time it can be shown to have been misunderstood or even fabricated. The psyche of Israelis is one of morality; while there might be exceptions one cannot fairly say that Israel is an immoral country. There is always another side to the story, one that sadly does not get the publicity of the seemingly bad one.

To be pro-Israel is to start with the assumption that Israel is right, and to be skeptical when things look otherwise. In the end, perhaps the explanation will not be satisfactory, but one needs to make the effort to at least find out what it is. If you are truly pro-Israel you would first do everything possible to find out the truth. That is what support means. And that is what family members do for each other.

When you start assuming that your family's actions are abhorrent before you even investigate their side of the story, you are placing yourself outside the community.

These two metrics show who is pro-Israel and who is not. Criticizing Israel or Jews is not inherently anti-Israel or anti-semitic, but criticizing them in the pages of Al Akhbar or the Guardian is. Lobbying your own community institutions to change is admirable; lobbying outside parties to force your community to change is reprehensible. Doing that shows that you care more about pleasing the rest of the world than about your own people. It doesn't matter that Israel's enemies can read our criticisms of each other in Ha'aretz - what matters is that the intended audience is your own people. Nothing needs to be hidden, but publicly disparaging your own people in venues that are not friendly to them indicates that you do not believe you are a member of your people any longer.

Similarly, hearing a rumor or a report that makes it sound like your relatives did something bad and jumping to the conclusion that it is symbolic of an inherent evil that pervades your own people is not what a loving family member does. They would find out the truth, and trust what their own relatives say above what a newspaper says, all else being equal.

In short, being pro-Israel means treating it the way you would treat your own loving family.

Any member of the Jewish community is free to leave. They are free to cut all ties with their family. But they are not free to claim that they are criticizing out of love when their actions show that they have no love for Jews or Israel. When they act against the family as a whole, they should not be surprised to no longer be treated like a family member.

Israel building more "Talmudic Gardens", says PA

The official PA Wafa news agency reports that Israel is building new "Talmudic gardens" all around Jerusalem:

Israeli bulldozers Sunday increased its work speed to establish Talmudic gardens between Damascus Gate and Herod’s Gate (Bab el-Amoud and Bab al-Sahira in Arabic, respectively), two of the most famous gates of the Old City of Jerusalem, aiming to judaize the city and change its historical and cultural character, according to WAFA correspondent.

He said that several Israeli bulldozers increased their work pace more than usual, after finishing the first part of work in the area near the Damascus Gate and in Sultan Suleiman street, adjacent to the Old City's walls, which character was completely changed through the establishment of car parking lots, a Talmudic garden near Sulaiman cave (Mgharet Sulaiman) in Sultan Sulaiman Street.

Similar works are under way in Tantur Faron, an area south of Al-Aqsa mosque, which is considered an archaeological area that extends back thousands of years.

The committee for the defense of Silwan uncovered the building of fake Jewish graves in Tantur Faron area in an attempt to seize the land permanently to connect it to nearby settlement outposts.

In addition, similar works are also under way in Wadi al-Rababa, an area in Silwan south of Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to establish Talmudic gardens, near al-Bustan neighborhood in Silwan.

What exactly is a "Talmudic garden?"

Are they growing Mishnah flowers, Baraita bushes and Tosefta trees?

As we mentioned the last time we came across this term, it seems that the Arabs use the word "Talmudic" as an epithet when they really, really hate something. So we hear about, for example, "Talmudic rituals" being practiced by Jews who visit the Temple Mount.

Most archaeological tourist sites in Jerusalem show a Jewish presence in Israel that far pre-dates the Talmud (which itself pre-dates Islam.) The mention of the "Talmud" in relation with these shows that what the PA hates and fears more than anything is Judaism - not Zionism, not Jews, but actual living Judaism that shows an unbroken connection to the Land for thousands of years.

After all, the Mishna and Talmud Yerushalmi were all written in Israel - well after the destruction of the Second Temple. They show that there was a vibrant Jewish community in Israel up until the Muslim invasion. The recent discovery of a Menorah stamp in Acre, apparently to tag bread as kosher, was created in the 6th century.

When you include Talmudic times in the Jewish history of Israel, it is the Muslim presence that appears to be anomalous and temporary - not the modern manifestation of Jewish statehood.

This might be why the word "Talmud" gets the Arabs so riled up. It reminds them that they are the interlopers, invaders and colonialists - not the Jews.

(h/t CHA)

Let's reframe the Israel debate (Point of No Return)

From the Point of No Return blog, currently behind a paywall at JPost:

We need to explode the misconception, commonly held on the Left, that Israel is an outpost of western colonialism and imperialism. Jews were indigenous to the region 1,000 years before the Islamic conquest, with an uninterrupted presence not just in Palestine, but all over the ‘Arab’ world. The Arab invasion turned native Jews and Christians into minorities in their own lands, converting them to Islam, appropriating their shrines and erasing their history. Jews ‘stealing Arab land’ is an offensive inversion of reality. Jews in 10 Arab countries were stripped of their rights and in most cases dispossessed of their property.

The terms we use undermine Jewish rights to our ancestral homeland. ‘Settlements’ and ‘West Bank’ reinforce a sense that the land has always been Arab, and paint Israelis as colonialist imposters. Yet, until their ethnic cleansing in 1948, Jews had always lived beyond the Green line. Yet it must be said that to talk of Judea and Samaria, and Israeli ‘communities’, not settlements, in no way precludes an Israeli withdrawal as part of a peace deal.

We need to restore a vital context to the discussion: the conflict is not between the Israeli Goliath and the Palestinian David. It pits six million Israelis against 300 million Arabs. In terms of values, the battle is between pluralistic, democratic Israel and the jihadists of Islam. The Palestinians are not independent agents. Economically they are propped up by international aid; strategically, they represent a pan-Arab, and increasingly pan-Islamic cause; politically, they are controlled by external regional forces.

We need to emphasize that half the Jews of Israel never left the region - they were uprooted from the Arab and Muslim world to a tiny sliver of land on the Mediterranean. If these Jews are now full and free Israeli citizens, it is largely because Israel offered them unconditional refuge from pre-existing Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism.

...We must convince western libertarians to see the self-determination of a small, indigenous Middle Eastern people – the Jews – as a progressive cause. Rejectionism of Israel is rooted in a religious and cultural view of ‘dhimmi’ Jews and Christians as inferior, forced to surrender their rights to the Muslim overlord. For a non-Muslim people to rule itself, still less Arab Muslims, is anathema. By supporting the Palestinian campaign against Israel – deceptively cloaked in the language of human rights - western liberals have become unwitting agents for the re-establishment of Arab and Muslim supremacy over a ‘dhimmi’ people.

Israel represents the national liberation of the Jews, one of the most ancient of native Middle Eastern peoples. If we are to win hearts and minds, we must reframe the debate.

Read the whole thing.

IDF Bedouin family proud to serve their country

From The Jewish Press:

(h/t Yerushalimey)

PLO admits it is not taking talks with Israel in Amman seriously

Pan-Arab Al Hayat reports (via PalPress) that even while the PLO is going through the motions in attending Quartet-sponsored meetings in Jordan with Israel, it has no real interest in reaching any agreement and is planning its next stage of de-legitimizing Israel.

The PLO is expecting to hold these cosmetic talks until January 26, after which it is planning a diplomatic offensive to get UN Security Council members to vote to call for a halt in Israeli building across the Green Line.

Abbas is already meeting European leaders to urge them to pressure Israel to stop the settlements and to agree to the "1967 borders" as the basis for negotiations. He is also planning a meeting with Arab leaders next month in light of the "failure" of the current negotiations that he has not yet even begun.

As usual for Arab leaders, when he talks to the West he is blaming his people for his intransigence, saying that the Arab citizens of the territories would never accept any negotiations while Israel continues to build in the settlements. Of course, his people never said a word about it when Abbas himself was negotiating with Israel without any building freeze - it is a pre-condition he created himself around 2008.

It needs to be repeated that Israel only allows building within existing settlement lines, and there is no official support for building in new areas. In fact, just last week the IDF demolished three outposts considered illegal - including one raid at 3 AM - not that this was covered by the mainstream media.

Tuba-Zangaria resident: "No way a Jew torched this mosque" (updated)

Three months ago, a mosque was burned in the Israeli Arab village of Tuba Zangaria.

Graffiti scrawled on the mosque seemed to indicate that it was done by Jewish settlers in a "price tag" revenge attack against Arabs. Israel's leaders condemned the attack and many came to the village to show solidarity in the face of the Jewish terrorists.

I noted last month that an Israeli blogger, Gal Chen, went to see the situation for herself and unearthed some serious inconsistencies between the official story.

Now, Israel's Channel 2 went back to Tuba Zangaria three months after the supposed "price tag" attack and asks some of the same questions Chen did.

And at least one Tuba Zangaria resident says he is certain that the arsonists came from the village itself:

"No Jew came to burn this mosque"

"The one who burned this mosque is one of us - I am not afraid to say so."

The report goes on to mention what Chen said: that no Jew knows where that mosque even is, that there are three mosques on the way, and that the way that "price tag" was written indicates it was done well after the arson.

UPDATE: A few hours after this report was aired, the house of the resident shown here, Bassan Saweid, was sprayed with automatic gunfire.

(h/t Yoel)

Hezbollah's leader mocks UN. No one is bothered.

Intransigence without penalty:

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah dismissed on Saturday a United Nations call for his movement to disarm, saying it was determined to maintain a military capacity to defend Lebanon.

"I affirm today, firmly, decisively and with the greatest conviction ... the choice of armed resistance," Nasrallah said. "These weapons, along with the Lebanese people and army, are the only guarantee of Lebanon's protection."

Mocking a demand by visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that Hezbollah lay down its weapons, Nasrallah said he was happy that Hezbollah's military prowess was a cause for concern.

"Your concern, Secretary-General, reassures us and pleases us. What matters to us is that you are worried, and that America ... and Israel are worried with you," he said in a televised speech marking a Shiite holy day.

Ban, speaking in Beirut on Friday, said he was "deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hezbollah" and the lack of progress in disarmament. "All these arms outside of the authorized state authority, it's not acceptable," he declared.

There are a lot of people out there who defend the UN and express righteous indignation when it is perceived to be disrespected.

I haven't heard anything from them about this.

Hamas building tourist hub on beach, displacing residents

From The Media Line via JPost:

If the plans proceed on schedule, [Gaza's] Al-Rashid Road, popularly known as the Beach Road, will be transformed into a scenic seaside promenade, or corniche, in the style that has made the meeting between land and sea in places like Beirut, Alexandria and Nice tourist attractions and a gathering place for their residents.

Sami Abu Hamdah, one of the project supervisors, talks enthusiastically about the corniche and its surrounding infrastructure, which will cut a swathe of 40 meters (130 feet) over two kilometers (1.2 miles), as well as plans to extend it deeper into the city in the next phase.

The narrow asphalt strip will be widened to a grand boulevard helping to ease the traffic congestion. Sidewalks along both sides of the street will be widened and a seafront promenade 11 meters across will run along the length of the beach. Parking areas are being built for visitors as well as a series of tunnels that will deliver beachgoers to the seashore away from the noise and cars of the street.

Once this phase is done, says Mugani, officials have ambitious plans to turn large parts of the city side of Beach Road into parks and gardens that will encourage tourism projects in Gaza.

But widening the road and adding new attractions has to come at a cost, and Abu Mahmoud Al-Ara’ir is one of the people paying it.

More than a decade ago he squatted on a piece of shorefront property, building a small house out of simple materials and fencing off the area around it with pieces of plastic and wood. The fence has come down as Abu Mahmoud is undertaking a strategic retreat in the face of warnings from the city to surrender all his property.

“After all, I don’t own this land and the municipality isn’t even obliged to compensate me according to the law,” he told The Media Line. “But the fact that I have been living here for the past 11 years makes me the owner, I think, even if I don’t have ownership papers or actually paid for it.”

Not all of the area’s residents are taking their loss with such equanimity. While the beachfront would normally be desirable real estate, many of those living in the area are poor.

Interviewed by The Media Line, many expressed the view that they should be entitled to squatters’ rights and that even if the authorities compensate them with other land, they don’t have the money to build themselves new homes on it. “Don’t we have the right to accept or refuse or even choose the location or compensation? Why can’t they just leave us alone and do this project somewhere else?” asks one.

Gaza’s municipal government is not sympathetic. In a statement issued in response to the complaints of angry beachfront residents, it said: “Ninety percent of these ‘owners’ don’t actually own their land. They took it and built simple houses on it over the last 10 years. The governments left them there because they had no place to live and the lands weren’t needed. So we aren’t obliged to offer compensation.”

I have a feeling that the people who are up in arms about Israel evicting Bedouin squatters who build illegal housing will not say a word about Gaza's government doing the same.

At least future anti-Israel activists will have a nice promenade and park benches from which to write their eyewitness accounts of the horrors in Gaza.