Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Egyptian military says videos of protester beatings were faked

Jimmy Carter reports on his trip to Egypt:

Tuesday morning we received detailed analyses by experts on the election process and political affairs, and then had a thorough discussion with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the SCAF and acting as de facto president of Egypt.

I was received with a friendly welcome as I congratulated the military leaders for what seemed to be a successful election, and then asked a number of questions. It seemed that the SCAF had full confidence that there would be accommodation to their demands by the Muslim Brotherhood and their coalition partners as the new government is formed. Instead of the reported 12,000 mostly political prisoners being held for trials in military courts, the Field Marshal stated that there were no more than 3,000, all of whom were guilty of criminal acts and being tried in civilian courts. He stated that the widely promulgated videos showing military attacks on demonstrators and a woman "with the blue brassiere" were all falsified. He said the soldiers were actually helping the woman re-clothe herself with what was provocative attire.

Here's the video. I had no idea that Egyptian animators were this good to make the event look so real.

Carter, of course, shows no skepticism at all towards Tantawi's claim.

Bizarre: Iran offered Syrian MB power over Syria?

From Al Arabiya:

Iran has offered the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood a deal that includes giving the Islamist opposition group all of the government, but under the condition that President Bashar al-Assad remains as the country’s premier, an official said in a newspaper interview published on Wednesday.

Mohammed Taifour, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s Deputy Superintendent and one of its representatives in the country’s main opposition group, the Syrian National Council, told the London-based al-Hayat Newspaper that via a Turkish businessman he knows three Iranian merchants requested to see him.

Taifour, who rejected negotiation with the Iranian businessmen citing Iran’s support of the Syrian regime, said their deal offer started first with giving the Islamist group four ministerial positions and ended with giving them the entire government, as long as Assad kept his leadership position.

The initiation of the first deal offer came three months ago, said Taifour.

Taifour rejected the notion that Hamas had played an intermediary role, saying that his group’s relationship with Hamas is almost nonexistent.

Iranian businessmen negotiating Syria's leadership with Syria's opposition?

I guess when hard facts are in short supply, people will publish whatever rumor they can find.

Mass graves discovered at Treblinka

From The Daily Mail:

Treblinka victims

A British forensic archaeologist has unearthed fresh evidence to prove the existence of mass graves at the Nazi death camp Treblinka - scuppering the claims of Holocaust deniers who say it was merely a transit camp.

Some 800,000 Jews were killed at the site, in north east Poland, during the Second World War but a lack of physical evidence in the area has been exploited by Holocaust deniers.

Forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls has now undertaken the first co-ordinated scientific attempt to locate the graves.

As Jewish religious law forbids disturbing burial sites, she and her team from the University of Birmingham have used 'ground-penetrating radar'.

Her work at the site, where the Nazis tried to destroy all traces of industrial-scale killing, is being followed in forthcoming Radio 4 documentary The Hidden Graves Of The Holocaust.

Sturdy Colls said: 'All the history books state that Treblinka was destroyed by the Nazis but the survey has demonstrated that simply isn’t the case.

'I’ve identified a number of buried pits using geophysical techniques. These are considerable in size, and very deep, one in particular is 26 by 17 metres.'

The programme’s presenter says that the pits contain the burnt remains of thousands of bodies.

The forensic archaeologist, who has now presented her findings to the authorities responsible for the memorial at Treblinka, added: 'I really hope this is the first stage in a long-term programme to seek out those hidden graves of the Holocaust.'

Also, a book was just released of 32 detailed sketches drawn by an apparent worker at Birkenau which was hidden in a bottle, depicting parents being separated from children and other scenes from the camp.

(h/t Dan)

Yiddishe dabba do!

A freilach alt tzeit:

(h/t Jacob Richman tweet)

"Thousands of SAMs smuggled into Gaza"

Buried in a CNN article:

"We have smuggled thousands of shoulder-launched (surface-to-air) SAM missiles to Gaza through the tunnels for a transporting fee only," a Bedouin leader from Tarabeen tribe told CNN.

But not all those weapons may have gone to the Palestinian territory. The same man claimed Bedouins would turn some of those weapons against Egypt's military-led government unless their demands were met.

"We saved some for us ... stockpiles of RPGs, machine guns. And I personally have ten 14.5 mm anti-aircraft guns that I bought at $12,000 a piece.

"We have declared war against the military and will not wait for them to kill us all," he said.

There is no way to verify the tribal leader's claims, but an Egyptian national security officer, Usama Emam, told CNN that weapons from Libya and Sudan had arrived in Sinai by sea.

Another military intelligence official told CNN: "There are advanced anti-tank missiles that come to Sinai and go to Gaza through tunnels, but I don't have information on the SAMs coming through."

The Washington Post reported on the SAMs last October:

Large caches of weapons from Libya are making their way across the Egyptian border and flooding black markets in Egypt’s already unstable Sinai Peninsula, according to current and former Egyptian military officials and arms traders in the Sinai.

Egyptian security officials have intercepted surface-to-air missiles, most of them shoulder-launched, on the road to Sinai and in the smuggling tunnels connecting Egypt to the Gaza Strip since Moammar Gaddafi fell from power in Libya in August, a military official in Cairo said. Arms traders said the weapons available on Sinai’s clandestine market include rockets and antiaircraft guns.

No problem, though. All these weapons are moderate.

(h/t Ian)

Britain's chief rabbi defends Christians - and capitalism

From FrontPage:

British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks visited with Pope Benedict XVI last month in Rome and defended Europe’s Judeo-Christian heritage, including the “religious roots of the market economy and of democratic capitalism.” In a speech there, he urged that Jews and Christians to work together to “help Europe recover its soul.”

Separately, in a speech to the British House of Lords, Sacks denounced increasing persecution of Christians by radical Islam, warning that the “fate of Christians in the Middle East today is the litmus test of the Arab Spring.”

“If Europe loses the Judeo-Christian heritage that gave it its historic identity and its greatest achievements in literature, art, music, education, politics, and economics, it will lose its identity and its greatness,” Sacks warned during his Rome speech. “When a civilization loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future. For the sake of our children … we – Jews and Christians, side-by-side – must renew our faith and its prophetic voice.”

He critiqued Europe’s secularism and materialism while pointing out that biblical religion created the foundations of prosperous market economies. “When Europe recovers its soul, it will recover its wealth-creating energies,” he said. “But first it must remember: humanity was not created to serve markets. Markets were created to serve humankind.”

“We are very concerned obviously with the soul of Europe, I mean Europe was built on Judeo-Christian foundations, even the market was built on Judeo-Christian foundations,” Sacks told Vatican Radio. In his Rome speech, he described the West’s democracy and prosperity relying on biblical understandings of “dignity of the human individual,” respect for property rights and labor, job creation over charity, and creation of wealth so as to become “partners with God in the work of creation.” He noted that ancient rabbis “favored markets and competition because they generate wealth, lower prices, increase choice, reduced absolute levels of poverty, and extend humanity’s control over the environment, narrowing the extent to which we are the passive victims of circumstance and fate.”

Sacks quoted a Chinese scholar who realized why the West had surpassed once wealthier and technologically superior China centuries ago: “The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics.” The Chief Rabbi noted that Europe’s religious values had facilitated “hard work, industry, frugality, diligence, patience, discipline, and a sense of duty and obligation.” They created capitalism as a “moral enterprise” that “generated wealth, softened manners, tamed unruly passions, and diminished the threat of war.” Capitalism “enhanced human dignity, leaving us with more choices and a longer life expectancy than any generation of those who came before us.”

Sacks lamented that Europe is today “more secular than it has been since the last days of pre-Christian Rome” thanks to “aggressive scientific atheism tone deaf to the music of faith.” He suggested Jews and Catholics serve together as “creative minorities” to restore morals, culture and civic life. And he concluded: “The Judeo-Christian heritage is the only system known to me capable of defeating the law of entropy that says all systems lose energy over time.”

Sacks also has urged defending international religious liberty. “It is important that Jews, the British Jews, the European Jewish community stand in solidarity with Christians where they face persecution,” he told Vatican radio. In his speech to the British House of Lords, Sacks’ declared that “as a Jew in Christian Britain,” he was grateful to “this great Christian nation, which gave us the right and the freedom to live our faith without fear.” And he asked: “Shall we not, therefore, as Jews, stand up for the right of Christians in other parts of the world to live their faith without fear?” The Chief Rabbi quoted Martin Luther King, Jr: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”

Both the speech in Rome and an article in the Times of London (that this article refers to as a speech to the House of Lords) are online and well worth reading.

For those who are uncomfortable with the phrase "Judeo-Christian," he says "Admittedly the phrase 'Judeo-Christian tradition' is a recent coinage and one that elides significant differences between the two religions and the various strands within each." And he goes on to point out the importance of the market system in Jewish thought:

There is, though, enough common ground to speak, at least here, of shared values. First there is the deep biblical respect for the dignity of the human individual, regardless of colour, creed or class, created in the image and likeness of God. The market gives more freedom and dignity to human choice than any other economic system.

Second is the biblical respect for property rights, as against the idea prevalent in the ancient world that rulers were entitled to treat property of the tribe or nation as their own. By contrast, when Moses finds his leadership challenged by the Israelites during the Korach rebellion, he says about his relation to the people, “I have not taken one ass from them nor have I wronged any one of them.” The great assault of slavery against human dignity is that it deprives me of the ownership of the wealth I create.

Then there is the biblical respect for labour. God tells Noah that he will be saved from the flood, but it is Noah who has to build the ark. The verse “Six days shall you labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” means that we serve God through work as well as rest.

Job creation, in Judaism, is the highest form of charity because it gives people the dignity of not depending on charity. “Flay carcasses in the market-place,” said the third century teacher Rav, “and do not say: I am a priest and a great man and it is beneath my dignity”.

Equally important is Judaism’s positive attitude to the creation of wealth. The world is God’s creation; therefore it is good, and prosperity is a sign of God’s blessing. Asceticism and self-denial have little place in Jewish spirituality. By our labour and inventiveness we become, in the rabbinic phrase, “partners with God in the work of creation”.

Above all, from a Jewish perspective, the most important thing about the market economy is that it allows us to alleviate poverty. Judaism refused to romanticize poverty. It is not, in Judaism, a blessed condition. It is, the rabbis said, “a kind of death” and “worse than fifty plagues”. At the other end of the spectrum they believed that with wealth comes responsibility. Richesse oblige. Successful businessmen (and women) were expected to set an example of philanthropy and to take on positions of communal leadership. Conspicuous consumption was frowned upon, and periodically banned through local “sumptuary laws”. Wealth is a Divine blessing, and therefore it carries with it an obligation to use it for the benefit of the community as a whole.

The rabbis favoured markets and competition because they generate wealth, lower prices, increase choice, reduced absolute levels of poverty, and extend humanity’s control over the environment, narrowing the extent to which we are the passive victims of circumstance and fate. Competition releases energy and creativity and serves the general good.

The Globe and Mail's praise for a "moderate" terrorist

The Globe and Mail is upset because Khaled Meshal is ending his term as Hamas leader - because, they say he was so, so moderate:

Hamas leader to step down just as his relative moderation most needed

Mr. Meshaal will leave office at a sensitive time, just when his relative moderation may most be needed.

The quiet, intense man has been pivotal in efforts to reconcile with the secular Palestine Liberation Organization, and even has prodded Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad to usher in political reforms rather than attack his own people. His strategy has led to Hamas’s estrangement from its long-time benefactor, Iran.

Compared to Sheik Yassin and Dr. Rantisi, both refugees in Gaza camps, Mr. Meshaal, born in a village north of Ramallah in the West Bank, is a moderate, and this may explain his voluntary swan song now.

This moderation became evident in early January, 2009, in the middle of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, which followed a Hamas campaign of firing rockets into Israel.

With hundreds of Gazans killed by Israeli aerial bombing, rocket and mortar attacks and few Israeli casualties, many thought Hamas would bring out the one weapon in its historic arsenal to have claimed many Israeli lives and struck fear in the whole country – suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Beginning in 1994 and ending in 2005, Hamas had carried out several dozen such attacks and inspired other groups to do the same.

But Hamas members of parliament said that Mr. Meshaal had ordered an end to such attacks in 2005. Despite the pummelling Hamas was enduring in Gaza, he had no intention of resorting to the deadly tactic that gave Hamas its notoriety for violence, according to those parliamentarians.

Indeed, not during that time, nor any time since, has Hamas carried out a suicide attack against Israeli civilians. It’s now coming up to seven years.

As long as you don't count the suicide bombing murder of 73-year old Lyubov Razdolskaya in 2008. Its Hamas mastermind was killed by Israel a few months later. Shhhhh.

As Honest Reporting notes, the reason that suicide bombings has gone down because of Israeli security measures, including the security fence, a fact acknowledged by Islamic Jihad.

But forget that. In the twisted minds of Western journalists, people who support shooting thousands of rockets at Israeli cities, targeting innocent civilians, can be called "moderate." People who continue to brag about their suicide attacks are "moderate." Shooting a laser-guided missile at a school bus, killing a teenager, and bragging about it - not even claiming it was a military target - is a mark of "moderation."

In defense of the reporter, Patrick Martin, he did try to make sure he threw in the word "relative" most of the times he said "moderate."

That's what makes his report is only moderately disgusting.

EoZ Facebook problems continue

Despite weeks of complaints to Facebook, it is still banning links to this blog:

Sorry, this post contains a blocked URL

The content you're trying to share includes a link that's been blocked for being spammy or unsafe:

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

For more information, visit the Help Center. If you think you're seeing this by mistake, please let us know.

This is costing me thousands of hits that I normally get from FB.

It is also stopping people from "Like"-ing any of my posts on the blog itself.

Chances are someone who didn't like my opinions decided to shut me down by complaining that the blog is spam.

For those who are frustrated and want to share EoZ links on Facebook, my suggestions are:

Click on the "let us know" link and fill it out every time; maybe someone will actually do something
When you paste a link from this blog, replace "elderofziyon.blogspot.com" with "eoznews.com" in the URL. Hardly ideal - FB doesn't show the beginning of the post nor any pictures - but at least it works.
Switch to Google Plus and join my page there :) (Unfortunately, I cannot update that page automatically so it is usually behind.)

For some reason, links that are generated from my Tweets are still allowed in Facebook, so you can subscribe to my FB page and click on my links from there successfully.

And following me on Twitter will also allow you to see all my posts as well as my tweets - and there are tweets every day to interesting items I never get around to blogging (like this, for example, that came from a comment here by Shtrudel).

Thanks for all the people who have been emailing me about this. I appreciate the support.

Deceiving Palestinian Arabs for 63 years

From a report from The [American] Consul at Jerusalem (Burdett) to the Secretary of State, marked "Secret," October 29, 1949 (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Volume VI, page 1457:)

Better informed refugees now realize that repatriation in the sense contemplated by the December 11, 1949 [sic] resolution of the General Assembly is out of the question and they no longer think the United Nations will enforce the resolution. However, no one dares to say so openly for the great mass of the refugees has been nourished on this illusion and a frank statement of the extent of the deception might kindle an explosion. It would certainly eliminate the chances of leadership of the person making the first announcement.

Nothing has changed.

Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon, Syria and around the world are still told the lie that they will one day "return" to land they never lived in, and no one has the ability to tell them that they have been fooled for 63 years and to find another solution for their own children and grandchildren.

Which is why they will remain stateless for the next 63 years as well.

Recall that an outgoing UNRWA official stated the truth a while back, in an episode remarkable for its rarity. Andrew Whitley said

If one doesn’t start a discussion soon with the refugees for them to consider what their own future might be – for them to start debating their own role in the societies where they are rather than being left in a state of limbo where they are helpless but preserve rather the cruel illusions that perhaps they will return one day to their homes – then we are storing up trouble for ourselves....We recognize, as I think most do, although it’s not a position that we publicly articulate, that the right of return is unlikely to be exercised to the territory of Israel to any significant or meaningful extent...It’s not a politically palatable issue, it’s not one that UNRWA publicly advocates, but nevertheless it’s a known contour to the issue.

Whitley was slammed for his statement by UNRWA, the PA and Jordan, forcing him to recant.

Sounds exactly like what the Consul predicted six decades before!

So many countries and leaders and organizations are wedded to the myth of Palestinian Arab "return." Everyone knows it is a myth, and everyone has known this since 1949 - but no one is willing to stand up and say the plain truth out loud.

The misery of the Palestinian "refugees" will be prolonged for generations to come because their leaders, and those of the world community at large, are made up of cowards.

It's time for Iran's "Hollywoodism" conference!

Last year, Iran held its first "Hollywoodism and Cinema" conference, where we learned lots of new things, such as the fact that Hollywood is the "most active section of the U.S. and Israel military industry."

Yes, somewhere buried in the Pentagon budget, is hundreds of millions of dollars to produce the next Transformers movie.

The conference was such a smashing success that another one is planned for this year:

Organizers of the 30th Fajr International Film Festival will be holding the second conference on “Hollywoodism and Cinema” to review the influence of the Zionist regime on Hollywood.

Over 40 foreign experts and cinema critics are invited to attend the second edition of the conference running from February 2 to 4, Culture Ministry official Gholamreza Montazemi said in a press conference held here on Monday. The names of the guests will be announced later.

The Foreign guests invited to the conference, which is being held on the sidelines of Fajr festival, are due to discuss the impact of Hollywood in the world of cinema and how to resist this impact, Montazemi added.

Cinema of Hollywood is trying to promote the idea of conciliation between Satan and man, this is while Iranian cinema is the cinema of awakening, he said at the conference.

He continued that several topics are to be discussed at the conference including the world awakening, the influence of Hollywood on public opinion, the destruction of family and humane values, and how to fight against this influence.

A seminar on Islamic Awakening is also to be held on the sideline, in which experts are to discuss the issue of Islamic Awakening.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth, who has converted into Islam, is expected to attend the Islamic Awakening seminar.

One of the films to be screened at the festival is the very appropriately named "The Anti-Semite," a joint Iranian/French production.

See also Israellycool's take.

Hamas forces beat 20 Shi'ites in Gaza (updated)

From PCHR:

[A]t around 18:30 on Monday, 14 January 2012, large numbers of security officers wearing military uniforms and helmets, and some being masked, stormed a house in Beit Lahiya, where about 20 Palestinians were performing Shiite rituals. The security officers used clubs to severely beat the persons in the house, and then transferred them to the main police station in the northern Gaza Strip. The detainees were placed under interrogation and they were questioned about personal information and the reason why they were in that house. Then the detainees were beaten again and a number of them sustained fractures and bruises as a result. Those who sustained injuries were transferred to Balsam Hospital and Kamal Odwan Hospital.

There have been reports that Iran had cut their funding of Hamas because of Hamas' reluctance to take the regime's side in Syria.

This story might mean that those reports are true. Hamas wouldn't dare anger its main sponsor by attacking Shi'ites unless it had nothing to lose.

UPDATE: Avi Issacharoff in Ha'aretz adds:

The Hamas-run government is convinced that Iran is expanding its influence in Gaza by means of Islamic Jihad.

Gazan sources told Haaretz that Islamic Jihad now contains a group of converts to Shia Islam. The group is led by Iyad al-Hosni, also a convert, who was ousted from Islamic Jihad but recently reinstated, probably under Iranian pressure: Islamic Jihad's leadership visited Iran two months ago, and afterward, al-Hosni was appointed a senior officer in its military wing.

Some of the men arrested on Friday issued a statement on Sunday urging Iran to stop funding Hamas due to its persecution of Shi'ites.

Tehran has already reduced its support for Hamas, among other things because Hamas has refused to support embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Becoming Shi'ite is a growing trend in the Gaza Strip: Hundreds of Sunnis, both Islamic Jihad activists and ordinary people, are known to have converted.

(h/t T34)

Hindustan Times calls on India to go public with Israel ties

From the Hindustan Times:

India and Israel is the bilateral relationship that dare not speak its name. If one were to go by New Delhi's official rhetoric, nothing has changed between the two countries. India continues to casually denounce Israel on the Palestinian issue, keeps mum when Iran or others promise to destroy the Jewish State, and still tends to vote against Israel in the United Nations or other multilateral fora. If one were to go by substance - security, trade and technology - there are few bilateral relations to match it in the world. Israel can be counted on to be the first or second largest provider of arms to India every year. Bilateral trade and investment runs into several billions of dollars on the civilian side. Israel, one of the great tech hubs of the world, is a close partner of India in software, pharmaceuticals and renewable energy. It says something about the trust that exists between the two countries that their closest links are in the most sensitive of areas: intelligence, counterterrorism, defence technology and even nuclear weaponry.

Bringing the public and private relationship with Israel in sync has been a particularly tortuous business with the UPA government. The government's first term was hostage to the ideological demands of the leftwing parties - the political formation most hostile to Israel. Half of its second term had to pass before New Delhi sent the foreign minister on a State visit. A prime ministerial or presidential visit, in either direction, continues to be the stuff of dreams - and solely because New Delhi has political nightmares at the thought. This is unbecoming of India: a constant and running act of hypocrisy by a country that sees itself as deserving of global influence and emulation. Israel has repeatedly stepped up to the plate when India is under threat, most notably during the Kargil crisis.

Some will shrug that this is the reality of India. But the evidence says this 'reality' is actually a bouquet of illusions. The most common claim is that a more public relationship will cause an eruption among the Muslim population. The truth is that an Indian Muslim is as pragmatic as the next one and has better things to worry about than the historical conflicts of the Levant. When politicians have raised the Israel-Palestine issue, they have come up empty-handed. The other claim is that India will lose standing with the Arab world. The opposite has proven to be the case: countries like Saudi Arabia sought to strengthen relations with India in part because the latter normalised relations with Israel. India's relations with Israel are spreading into other areas of existential importance to the country. Israel is a key partner in agriculture, and being the world's most-efficient liquid recycler, in water as well. If Israel becomes a major natural gas exporter in a few years, there will almost no missing links in the relationship. And the present official stance will lose any semblance of pragmatism and be merely a veil of the absurd.