Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 20, 2012

Hamas says it will investigate attack on human rights activist. Sure.

Ma'an reports:

The Gaza government on Thursday vowed to find the perpetrators of an attack on a human rights activist who was stabbed in Gaza City.

Mahmoud Abu Rahma was attacked by masked men and stabbed multiple times while walking back from his brother's house on Friday night, he told Ma'an.

"There were three masked men following me, I ran quickly toward the house but I tripped on the stairs and fell over. They began attacking me, stabbing me in my right thigh, three times above my right knee, my back and left shoulder, and cutting off part of my hand," Abu Rahma told MADA, the Palestinian center for media freedoms.

He had received death threats shortly after authoring an op-ed calling for legal redress for victims of misfiring and other operational mistakes by resistance groups as well as violations by Palestinian governments.

The Hamas-led government in Gaza condemned the attack, which it said violated religion, law and customs in a statement Thursday.

The Interior Ministry will investigate the incident and find the perpetrators, the statement said, adding that the government had received a complaint from the Al-Mezan human rights group which employs Abu Rahma.

The main focus of Abu Rahma's article in Gaza was Hamas itself. It is highly likely that he was attacked by one of those masked Hamas "security forces" that show up quite often in Gaza.

Hamas also has a history of attacking NGOs in Gaza, of arresting critics of its policies, and for shutting down any activity that it doesn't explicitly approve.

This should be a fun "investigation."

EoZ Facebook issue fixed

Things are now working again; people can paste links to EoZ from Facebook and you can "Like" my posts again.

Unfortunately, I had to pull some strings to get it done; I don't think FB ever read any of the complaints sent to them through their own forms.

I don't like to use my vast worldwide Zio-powers to accomplish something so trivial, but sometimes you have to bend the rules....Thanks to the members of the International Zionist Conspiracy for helping me out!

Funny Israeli commercial (Well, Iran won't think so.)

Click the CC button to read the subtitles. Not the greatest subtitles, but you'll get it.

Iranian actress told not to return home after nude photo

From The Daily Mail:

An actress who has starred with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe has been banished from her home country of Iran - because she posed nude in a French news magazine.

Golshifteh Farahani says she has been contacted by the Iranian government, telling her that she is no longer welcome in the country and advising her not to return home.

The offending photo - a black-and-white 'art shot' featuring the 28-year-old Farahani posing against a black backdrop with her hands strategically placed over her breasts - was first published in Madame Le Figaro.

Click picture to see the topless photo

Jimmy Carter blames the Jooos for Christian exodus from "Palestine"

Yeah, he's an honest broker:

I wonder how he explains all the Christians leaving Egypt, Iraq, and every other Muslim-majority area? It's got to be Israel's fault somehow; I mean, what else could all those Christian populations have in common?

And the fact that Israel's own Christian population is increasing is just more evidence for Israel's evil. You see, they are nice to some Christians in order to cover their seething hate for Christians.

Call it "crosswashing."

It is so obvious, once you know how the sickening Israeli mind works, right? Luckily Jimmy is an expert.

(h/t jzaik)

The Delilah cruise missile

From the IDF:

“Honestly, it’s the most amazing weapon in the Air Force today.” – These are the words an IAF officer used to describe the Delilah and it’s easy to understand why he is right.

For many years the Delilah was one of the IDF’s biggest secrets, quietly undergoing improvement after improvement, until it became what it is today. Delilah is a cruise missile but it possesses some very unique capabilities that set it apart from the rest.

A typical cruise missile is launched and finds its pre-programmed target with the help of its navigational system. The navigator can send the missile commands and make small adjustments in its flight path, but once the missile begins its final approach no changes can be made. If the missile attacks a target that moves in the last moment or even a wrong target, the missile simply misses with possibly devastating consequences. This is where the Delilah’s special abilities come into play.

Let’s say Delilah is approaching a target and in the last moment the navigator sees on the images transmitted from the missile’s camera that there are civilians in the target zone. All he needs to do is push a button and Delilah aborts its attack, returns to the air and keeps loitering in the target zone until it receives new instructions. Delilah can also be launched in the direction of a suspected target and be instructed to patrol the area and search for its target, effectively functioning as a surveillance drone. Once the navigator identifies the target, he instructs Delilah to approach it. If the target was correctly identified Delilah will attack. If it was not the correct target, a push of a button is enough and Delilah will abort its approach and continue to search for the real target.

In the same article about the latest IDF technology, you can learn about the Simon, an amazing door-breaching weapon:

What do these weapons have in common? They represent years of effort and huge sums of money to create weapons that do not kill innocent people.

How to square that simple fact with the way that Israel-haters prefer to portray the country and the IDF is left as an exercise to the reader.

(h/t JW)

PalArab newspaper reminds readers to shut up about terror orgs

Palestine Today, which is associated with Islamic Jihad, has a curious article telling its readers that some things about "resistance organizations" that must remain unsaid.

Examples of things about members of terror groups that must never be revealed:

Names, jobs and social status
Affiliation
Type of work done
Distinctive marks that could identify someone
Members' temperaments, habits
Members' routines
Where they hang out (mosques, cafes, parks)
Their relatives and friends
Telephone numbers and addresses
Details on their cars or transportation methods

As far as the organizations themselves go:

Objectives, strategies
Precautions
Where secret work is done
Where they get money from
The organization chart
How they recruit
How they communicate
Their front organizations

Somehow, I don't think a "Wikileaks" in Gaza would go over very well.

A paper on Israel-India relations

A student at Israel's National Defense College, Itzhak Gerberg, wrote a nice monograph in 2010 on "India–Israel Relations: Strategic Interests, Politics and Diplomatic Pragmatism." It discusses the reasons why India made its decision in 1992 to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, and by implication it provides a blueprint of how Israel's unique strengths position it to make diplomatic victories.

The transformation of Indian policy on Israel and the establishment of the diplomatic relations on 29 January 1992 are considered by India one of the most important steps in Indian diplomacy. The former Secretary of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs J. N. Dixit, described it thus:

I consider our establishing relations with South Africa and then with Israel as the most significant among developments in India’s foreign policy, which occurred during my period as Foreign Secretary (Dixit 1996).
To comprehend India-Israel relations it is essential to understand the change of the Indian policy towards Israel as a formative event that led to the evolving relationship between the two countries.

After the establishment of diplomatic ties, the relationship became a cornerstone of the two countries’ foreign policy, with direct implications for their national security. This was particularly notable under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments in India. In May 2004 a new Indian government, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), was formed by the Congress party headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Relations with Israel thereupon were moderated somewhat. Nevertheless, the relations of the two countries with regard to defence have continued to develop, based on the convergence of their strategic interests.

The paper describes the congruence of interests between the two states:

Military
Counter-terrorism
Intelligence
Foreign Affairs
Economic
Geo-strategic (energy and the Indian Ocean)
Nuclear power

The National Defense College itself is fascinating. It focuses on the study of national defense: the relationship between economic strength, military power, social strength, and the international status of the country. Upon graduation, students get a masters degree in political science and an NDC graduation certificate. Students are required to conduct a research, submit several papers, to write tests and to participate in simulations.

There are between thirty and forty students in the NDC. The students are colonels and lieutenant colonels of the Israeli Defense Force, and their equivalents in the government service.

The NDC inaugurated an international program in 2006, in which officers from other countries study in Israel at the NDC for one year towards receiving an M.A. from Haifa University. The students are usually colonels. There have been students every year from the United States, Singapore, Germany - and India. In addition, the NDC has taught French and Italian officers.

But, I am told, no British officer has ever attended.

(h/t Ruchie)

Security conference in Bahrain reveals Arab fears. Israel not mentioned.

There was a major regional security conference held in Bahrain this week, meant to position the Gulf Cooperation Council countries for the challenges in the new Middle East.

One of the themes of the conference was the threat from Iran:

Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief says the Iranian escalation will lead to "misadventure", stressing the readiness of the Arab Gulf States to use all options available to defend their interests.

Prince Turki al-Faisal said that "everyone heard about the provocative maneuvers carried out in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea, as well as statements by the leaders of Iran on the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the targeting of neighboring countries."

Quoted by the local media Wednesday the senior prince stated that "the increasing escalation and tension may lead to a misadventure or a military confrontation." Prince Turki stressed that the Gulf states are not part of the conflict between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear program, however he noted that the GCC countries are fully committed to "legitimacy and international laws."

Many of the speakers talked about the challenges of economic disparities and some speakers floated the idea of a federation between the six GCC states in the face of external threats. Women's rights were also a minor topic.

(One of the less serious speakers was our old friend Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan, General Commander of Dubai Police, who had his fifteen minutes of fame with his bizarre announcements after the assassination of Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai. He said that the Muslim Brotherhood was no less dangerous as Iran is. He also criticized US policy in the Gulf.)

The Bahrain News Agency summarized every speech.

And it is most interesting that in a major Gulf conference of the priorities for regional security, neither the word "Israel" nor the word "Palestine" was mentioned once - but Iran was mentioned in the summary 50 times.

When these same leaders speak to Western leaders and newspapers, they always position Israel as the single biggest threat to the world's security, and pretend it is their top priority. But when they are speaking to their own, they show their true feelings and fears. They aren't afraid of Israeli "aggression" because they know that Israel is not a threat to them, directly or indirectly.

They fear the Islamists, they fear Iran, and they fear modernization sprinting ahead of their own abilities to lead their people.

But they don't fear Israel.

UPDATE: Ma'ariv reported that a Gulf country communicated with Israel that sanctions against Iran will not help, "and in the end we will all go to Heaven." (h/t Yoel)

The godmother of today's Jewish defamers of Israel

Sol Stern in City Journal writes a long and excellent article, "Hannah Arendt and the Origins of Israelophobia." Here are some excerpts:

In last year’s extensive commentary marking the 50th anniversary of the Eichmann trial, one name—Hannah Arendt—was mentioned nearly as often as that of the trial’s notorious defendant. It’s hard to think of another major twentieth-century event so closely linked with one author’s interpretation of it. Arendt, who fled Nazi Germany at 27, was already an internationally renowned scholar and public intellectual when she arrived in Jerusalem in April 1961 to cover the trial for The New Yorker. Arendt’s five articles, which were then expanded into the 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, proved hugely controversial. Many Jewish readers—and non-Jews, too—were shocked by three principal themes in Arendt’s report: her portrayal of Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion as the cynical puppet master manipulating the trial to serve the state’s Zionist ideology; her assertion that Eichmann was a faceless, unthinking bureaucrat, a cog in the machinery of the Final Solution rather than one of its masterminds; and her accusation that leaders of the Judenräte (Jewish councils) in Nazi-occupied Europe had engaged in “sordid and pathetic” behavior, making it easier for the Nazis to manage the logistics of the extermination process.

Since the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem, serious scholars have debunked the most inflammatory of Arendt’s charges. Nevertheless, for today’s defamers of Israel, Arendt is a patron saint, a courageous Jewish intellectual who saw Israel’s moral catastrophe coming. These leftist intellectuals don’t merely believe, as Arendt did, that she was the victim of “excommunication” for the sin of criticizing Israel. Their homage to Arendt runs deeper. In fact, their campaign to delegitimize the state of Israel and exile it from the family of nations—another kind of excommunication, if you will—derives several of its themes from Arendt’s writings on Zionism and the Holocaust. Those writings, though deeply marred by political naivety and personal rancor, have now metastasized into a destructive legacy that undermines Israel’s ability to survive as a lonely democracy, surrounded by hostile Islamic societies.

...When you review Hannah Arendt’s voluminous writings on Jewish affairs in the decades from 1942 to 1963, it is shocking to discover how mistaken she was on so many issues. She was wrong on the charge of “fascism” leveled against Jabotinsky, Bergson, and Begin; she was wrong in her judgment that the Soviet Union was protecting Jewish national rights; she was wrong to remain silent about the Roosevelt administration’s abandonment of the European Jews; she was wrong about Israel’s ability to defend itself in 1948 without foreign intervention; she was wrong in insisting that the binational approach provided a realistic solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict; and, above all, she was wrong to claim that the Holocaust had become Israel’s justification for abusing innocent Palestinians.

Despite these monumental errors of political and moral judgment, Arendt’s published work on Zionism, Israel, and the Holocaust continues to be viewed by leftist intellectuals as a model of truth-telling and integrity. In the pages of the liberal journals that Arendt once wrote for, we hear echoes of her disdain for a Jewish (now Israeli) tribalism that threatens world peace and universal human rights. How familiar it sounds when her disciples instruct the people of Israel that they must make amends for their previous sins by risking their own security and either ushering in an independent Palestinian state or creating a new binational state with their Palestinian brothers. Familiar, too, are the complaints of excommunication and suppression when the stubborn, parochial Jews decide to reject this gratuitous advice.

Arendt got pretty much everything wrong about Israel, but is regarded as a saint by the anti-Zionist Left. There are a number of cogent analogies between Arendt and today's leftist critics of Israel - including the charge of being "excommunicated" by the all powerful Jewish community when in fact their very criticism of Israel is what catapults them to fame.

The article is well worth reading.

(h/t Samson)

EU publishes report based on false information

From YNet on January 12:

The European Union has decided to pursue a series of steps which may undermine Israel's control of Area C in the West Bank, an official EU document obtained by Ynet on Thursday suggests.

The Oslo Accords divided the West Bank into three areas of control: Area A which is under the Palestinian Authority's full control; Area B, which is under Palestinian civil controls and shared Israeli-Palestinian security control; and Area C, which is controlled by Israel.

Area C makes up 62% of the West Bank, but the Palestinians make up only 5.8% of its population.

The document, titled "Area C and Palestinian state building," harshly criticizes Israel's policies in the West Bank, claiming they have caused the Palestinian population in Area C to shrink significantly and recede into enclaves.

Is this true?

The EU report itself was published last July.

Legal scholar Avi Bell analyzed the document and the sources it gave, and wrote this up:

I first went to the EU report. This is the key paragraph: "According to Save the Children UK (SCUK) Fact Sheet on the Jordan Valley of October 2009 more than 90% of the Jordan Valley is designated as Area C. Prior to the Israeli occupation in 1967 the Palestinian population of the Jordan Valley was estimated at between 200,000 and 320,000. As of 2009 the population is approximately 56,000 with roughly 70% of residents concentrated in the City of Jericho (located in Area A). ..." The citation is to http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/docs/English_Jordan_Valley_Fact_Sheet_and_Citations.pdf.

That link is stale, but I found the fact sheet at http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/opt_prot_savethechildren_Jordan_Valley_Fact_Sheet_oct_2009.pdf. The fact sheet has the following statement in bullet points under the heading "Background": "Prior to the Israeli occupation in 1967, the Palestinian population of the Jordan Valley was estimated at between 200,000 and 320,000. [MA’AN]". No other reference is given.

While the MA'AN in question is not identified, it appears to be the Ma'an Development Center, which put out a 2008 report called Palestine's Forgotten Displacement: The Plight of the Jordan Valley Bedouin with the following paragraph on page 18: "... While exact figures for displacement and in particular displacement of Jordan Valley Bedouin do not exist, comparisons of data from the time of Jordanian rule and today suggest that the region has suffered significant forced displacement. Prior to 1967 estimates range from 200,000 to 320,000 people who lived in the Jordan Valley. Today however the total population is set between 52,000 to 56,000 (for the greater Jordan Valley). Local community leaders also say that approximately 90 per cent of the villages that existed prior to 1967 have disappeared from the map." Needless to say, no sources are cited. Page 19 offers the following, again without sources: "Though Bedouin are disproportionately affected, residents across the Jordan Valley are especially vulnerable to displacement. Since the 1950s, the population has decreased from around 300,000 to only 56,000 today."

According to subsequent Ma'an reports, the pre-1967 population has increased to first 300,000-320,000 and then to 320,000-350,000.

Page 8 of the 2010 Ma’an publication Bankrolling Colonialism: How US Zionist Organizations in the Jordan Valley are Undermining a Future Palestinian State," jointly published with the Jordan Valley Popular Committees states that "The Palestinian population of the Jordan Valley is 58,000 approximately 2% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank. 70% of Jordan Valley residents live in the city of Jericho. Prior to the 1967 occupation the population was estimated at between 300,000 and 320,000." The latter population number is cited to “Jordan Valley Solidarity" That site states, “When Israel occupied the Jordan Valley in 1967, 320,000 people resided in the area. Following the continued Israeli campaign of creeping ethnic cleansing, only 56,000 Palestinians still reside in the Valley on a permanent basis today.” Jordan Valley Solidarity’s citation for the 320,000 figure is to a dead link in the site of the “Popular Struggle Coordination Committee”. But while the link is dead, the apparent reference is to a 2009 report by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee called an Eye on the Jordan Valley which states, “when Israel occupied the Jordan Valley in 1967, 320,000 people resided in the area.” The footnote cites: “‘Eye on the Jordan Valley: To exist is to resist’: The Grassroots Palestinian Anti Apartheid Wall Campaign: May 07.” Eye on the Jordan Valley: To exist Is to Resist from May 2007 turns out to be a fact sheet put out by Ma’an and The Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. Page 14 contains the following statement without citation: “Between 1948 and 1967, the Palestinian population of the area from Ein Gedi in the south to Bisan in the north reached 320,000. However, once the occupation began, hundreds of Palestinians were killed; dozens of Palestinian communities were leveled; and Palestinian residents were forced to immigrate to Jordan.” (In other words, if you go through the string of citations, Ma’an cited itself as the source.)

Eye on the Jordan Valley, a 2010 report jointly published by Ma’an with the Jordan Valley Popular Committees states on page 26, without any citation of sources, “Between 1948 and 1967, the Palestinian population of the area from Ein Gedi in the south to Bisan in the north was around 320,000. However, once the occupation began, hundreds of Palestinians were killed, dozens of Palestinian communities were leveled, and Palestinian residents were forced to emigrate. Currently, only 52,000 Palestinians permanently live in the Jordan Valley.”

Page 42 of Ma’an’s 2011 "Diary" states that "when Israel began occupying the fertile Jordan Valley in 1967, 320,000 Palestinians lived in the region. ... Since 1967, Israel has managed to decrease the Palestinian population in the Valley by 82.5% to only 56,000." Of course, no sources are cited.

Restricted Access and Its Consequences: Israeli Control of Vital Resources in the Jordan Valley and Its Impact on the Environment, a 2011 report by Ma’an, states on page 2: “In addition to the extremely adverse effects on Palestinian population levels in the Jordan Valley, decreasing from over 320,000 in 1967 to 52,000 today, the Israeli policies have had grave consequences for the Palestinian agricultural sector and have produced a number of continuing and residual environmental concerns.” Footnote 44 on page 41, in the meantime, states: “There has been speculation that the unjust treatment of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley is part of a strategy to cleanse Palestinians from the area in an effort to facilitate complete annexation of the valuable area by Israel. The Palestinian population of the Jordan Valley has decreased by 82% since 1967, from 350,000 to 56,000 today.” No sources are cited and no explanation given of the additional retroactive jump from 320,000 to 350,000.

Finally, the following statement appears in the publication “To Exist is to Resist: Save the Jordan Valley,” jointly put out by Ma’an Development Center and Jordan Valley Popular Committees: “Jordan Valley has been under complete occupation since 1967. Prior to the 6-day war, the population of the Jordan Valley was between 300,000 and 320,000. The population now stands at 53,000 of which about 70% live in the city of Jericho.” The August 2010 Ma’an’s bi-monthly “Developmental Focus” explains the publication as follows: “MA’AN’s publication To Exist is to Resist – Save the Jordan Valley outlines the situation of the Jordan Valley in an easy accessible coffee table format. The Latest Publications book is made in cooperation with the Local Popular Committees in the Jordan Valley and funded by the Representative Office of Norway.” The same article tells us, “Together with MA’AN Development Center, the Palestinian National Authority and international solidarity groups, the Jordan Valley Solidarity Campaign is working with the Palestinians in the Jordan Valley at the grassroots level. The slogan of the campaign; ‘To Exist is to Resist’ emphasizes the importance of remaining in the Jordan Valley to resist Israeli apartheid, colonialism and forced displacement in order to keep working for a future Palestinian state.” (http://www.maan-ctr.org/pdfs/Newsl.pdf, page 8).

To sum up, the figures in the EU report, while cited to Save the Children UK, apparently come from a report by a Palestinian organization called Ma’an. The Ma’an figures vary from report to report, and are cited to no external sources whatsoever.

And how good are the Ma’an sources? They are obviously made up.

You can find Israel’s 1967 census of the West Bank here There is no breakdown of figures for the Jordan Valley, but the total West Bank figure is 598,637, with only 9,078 in the Jericho district. Interestingly, if you take the figures for the Jericho, Nablus, Tulkarm, and Jenin districts together, you get to 311,983. This suggests to me that the figure of 320,000 is the entire Samaria north of Ramallah. (The other districts are Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron).

We've seen before how NGOs and the media are willing to believe Palestinian Arab statistics without any fact checking, even when they are spurious. Apparently the EU is just as sloppy.

Deputy PM of Iran allegedly calls Israeli hacker "Jew bastard"

Over the past couple of weeks there have been a number of hacker attacks, first by an alleged Saudi hacker exposing Israelis' credit card numbers, then with Israelis doing the same to Saudi email account passwords, and from there we have had attacks on websites like El Al and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Israeli hacker "Hannibal" writes that he received an email from the deputy prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Reza Rahimi. I have no idea if this is authentic, but it is funny:

It is easy enough to forge a sending email address, so this should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Hannibal replied

Hi
I now publish the letter he sent me deputy prime minister of Iran
Funny to me that he had time to go into a mailbox and curse and threaten me ..
Mr. Muhammad, you do not scare anyone! You never find me !!!!!
Say thank you at least who censored you the email ..
Link to the picture :
http://i40.tinypic.com/143mkpk.png
State of Iran, I'm so going to teach you a lesson soon
Today I post about 25 000 e-mail accounts and Facebook accounts of arabs to my new permanent procedure.. On Saturday night I will publish new list of 100,000 emails and Facebook accounts

(h/t amiyena, article at Mako)