Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Electricity crisis in Gaza gets worse

Egypt apparently sent small amounts of fuel to Gaza's power plant on Friday night, but only about a half-day's worth, according to the chief engineer of Gaza's electric plant Canaan Obeid.

On Thursday he had warned that there was only enough fuel for the power plant to run for 72 hours.

He charged the PA with pressuring Egypt not to send any diesel to Gaza, saying that Mahmoud Abbas insists that the fuel only go through Israeli crossings.

As I reported on Thursday, Hamas has been refusing to receive power plant fuel from Israel since January 2011. And it appears that Hamas has been getting its fuel through smuggling tunnels under Rafah, meaning that it never had a steady supply and it is especially bad now that Egypt is suffering from its own fuel problems and is cracking down on fuel smuggling.

Obeid says, seemingly accurately, that the electricity crisis is "highly political." Just he only blames the PA, when in fact Hamas is at least as guilty by placing its citizens at risk rather than accept fuel from Israel.

We'll see if Gaza goes dark tomorrow.

More indications of a split within Hamas

From YNet:

Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar has publicly expressed his opposition to a reconciliation agreement signed this week by the Islamist group's politburo chief, Khaled Mashaal, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Zahar told a Gaza-based news agency that the agreement, under which Abbas would head an interim unity government of politically independent technocrats whose main task would be to prepare for presidential and parliament elections, was finalized without consulting other Hamas leaders.

"Handing the reins of government to Abbas is completely unacceptable," Zahar said. "It's a strategically erroneous plan."

The Hamas leader added that Hamas leaders in Gaza and abroad will convene in the coming days to discuss the terror group's official position on the agreement.

In the interview, Zahar said that the Doha declaration of unity was effectively Meshal recognizing Israel and that it causes a "major threat" to the future of Hamas.

He denied that there was a rift, and said that political decisions in Hamas must not be done unilaterally but must instead go through its Shura council.

Meanwhile, Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh is in Iran, and Al Arabiya sees that as another indication of a split:

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah’s trip to the Iranian capital of Tehran highlighted the disagreement between the movement’s leaders at home and abroad, particularly his relationship with Damascus-based politburo chief Khaled Mashaal.

Haniyah’s acceptance of an invitation by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to participate in the celebration of the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, demonstrates the disagreements between Hamas leaders inside and outside the Gaza Strip, said political analyst Mekhimar Abu Saada.

“This division started becoming clear after the reconciliation agreement signed in Cairo between Fatah and Hamas,” he said.

At the time, he explained, Mashaal surprised Hamas by granting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas a one-year grace period to conduct negotiations with Israel.

However, Abu Saada added, divisions inside Hamas were made clear when the resistance movement was required to take a stance as far as the Syrian crisis is concerned and the general inclination was to reject Iran’s demand that Hamas support Bashar al-Assad’s regime like Lebanon’s Hezbollah did.

“Mashaal was in the camp that favored distancing itself from Iran and Syria and getting closer to the Sunni axis represented by Turkey, Qatar, and the Palestinian president.”

That is why, he pointed out, this visit seems to have been an explicit rejection of Mashaal’s stance and that of the majority of Hamas leaders.

“This move by Haniyah and any similar moves likely to take place by Hamas leaders at home can be attributed to financial factors.”

Abu Saada explained that Hamas in Gaza is more in need of financial aid from external powers and that is why it is in its best interest not to contradict Iran.

“This, in addition to Haniyah’s objection to the rapprochement between Mashaal and Abbas, is expected to encourage the prime minister to maintain strong relations with Iran even though it supports the Syrian regime unlike Hamas’s initial stance.”

According to sources, Hamas leaders abroad as well as several Gulf nations advised Haniyah not to accept the Iranian invitation.

For his part, Haniyeh told a crowd in Iran that Hamas will never recognize Israel and will actively seek its destruction:

Hamas “will never recognize Israel,” its Gaza prime minister said Saturday in a speech in Iran that is likely to complicate Palestinian efforts to form a unity government in the teeth of opposition from the Jewish state.

“They want us to recognize the Israeli occupation and cease resistance but, as the representative of the Palestinian people and in the name of all the world’s freedom seekers, I am announcing from Azadi Square in Tehran that we will never recognize Israel,” Ismail Haniyeh said.

“The resistance will continue until all Palestinian land, including al-Quds (Jerusalem), has been liberated and all the refugees have returned,” he said.

Haniyeh’s reiteration of Hamas’s long-held stance was made on the occasion of Iran’s commemoration of its 1979 Islamic revolution. The Gaza leader spoke to an estimated crowd of 30,000 from a stage alongside Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Did Interpol help nab Saudi "apostate"?

From The Guardian:

Interpol has been accused of abusing its powers after Saudi Arabia used the organisation's red notice system to get a journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport "following a request made to us by Interpol" the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

Jago Russell, the chief executive of the British charity Fair Trials International, which has campaigned against the blanket enforcement of Interpol red notices, said: "Interpol should be playing no part in Saudi Arabia's pursuit of Hamza Kashgari, however unwise his comments on Twitter.

"If an Interpol red notice is the reason for his arrest and detention it would be a serious abuse of this powerful international body that is supposed to respect basic human rights (including to peaceful free speech) and to be barred from any involvement in religious or political cases."

He called on Interpol to stand by its obligations to fundamental human rights and "to comply with its obligation not to play any part in this case, which is clearly of a religious nature".

Interpol, which has 190 member countries, has a series of coloured notice systems that police forces around the world use to pass on requests for help. Contacted at its headquarters in Lyon, France, the organisation did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the Kashgari case.

In response to past criticisms of the red notice system, it has said: "There are safeguards in place. The subject of a red notice can challenge it through an independent body, the commission for the control of Interpol's files (CCF)."

Last year Interpol was accused by Fair Trials International of allowing the system to be abused for political purposes when it issued a red notice for the arrest of the Oxford-based leader of an Asian separatist movement, Benny Wenda, who has been granted asylum and has lived in the UK since 2003.

Interpol has hundreds of people listed in its Red Notice system; over 160 are wanted by Saudi Arabia alone. (It looks like the limits of a database query is 160.) There are plenty of categories to hide a request for apostasy, for example "hooliganism" or simply "at large."

Anyway, it is too late for Kashgari:

Saudi citizen Mohamad Najeeb A. Kashgari, better known as Hamza Kashgari, who allegedly posted blasphemous tweets on Prophet Muhammad's birthday, was deported back to his country hours before his lawyers managed to get a High Court injunction to stop the deportation.

The lawyers, led by R Kesavan, said that they got the injunction at 1.30 pm today only to be told that Kashgari has been put on a private plane sent by the Saudi authorities at 10 am this morning.

The injunction was an order to the police, the Home Ministry, as well as the Subang and Kuala Lumpur International Airport immigration authorities to stop Kashgari's deportation.

"We managed to get the injunction from High Court Judge Datuk Rohana Yusof at her house.

"We are very disappointed that the authorities refused us access to Kashgari and we were given the runaround. We were not told of his whereabouts since he was detained at KLIA last Thursday. As he is now out of the country, there is nothing more we can do," said Kesavan.

Saudi Arabia, where you can get executed for a tweet.

Report: Saudis would buy nukes from Pakistan within weeks of Iranian bomb

There goes the neighborhood:

Saudi Arabia would launch a military nuclear program immediately if Iran successfully developed atomic weapons.

While Riyadh signed an agreement with the US in 2008 stating that it would only pursue nuclear power for civil purposes, the Saudi government is likely to abandon the deal if Tehran had a nuclear bomb, reported The Times.

"There is no intention currently to pursue a unilateral military nuclear program but the dynamics will change immediately if the Iranians develop their own nuclear capability," a senior Saudi source said.

"Politically, it would be completely unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom."

In such an eventuality, Saudi Arabia would start work on a new ballistic missile platform, purchase nuclear warheads from overseas and aim to source uranium to develop weapons-grade material.

Officials in the West believe Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have an understanding in which Islamabad would supply the kingdom with warheads if security in the Gulf was threatened.

A Western official told The Times that Riyadh could have the nuclear warheads in a matter of weeks of approaching Islamabad. Other vendors were also likely to enter into a bidding war if Riyadh indicated that it was seeking nuclear warheads.

Both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have denied the existence of any such agreement.

Like the US and many other countries in the West, Saudi Arabia believes that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons and the kingdom is preparing for a worst-case scenario, the Saudi sources said.

If this is true (The Times has a spotty record in such scoops), it is bad enough that Pakistan is willing to sell nuclear warheads to protect Saudi interests.

And if they are willing to sell to the Saudis, chances are they would do the same for other gulf countries.

And if they do that, the chances that a terror group would end up with nukes skyrockets, especially in the chaos that the "Arab spring" is bringing.

And beyond that, who could the "other vendors" be that are willing to sell nukes to Saudi Arabia? China? Russia?

Notice that no Arab countries felt this threatened by the assumption that Israel has had nukes since the 1960s.

(h/t Yoel)

Saturday night open thread

Haven't done one in a while...

University of PA responds about Amy Kaplan's politicizing of her courses

I asked the chair of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, Nancy Bentley, to comment on my post earlier today about a Q&A at last week's PennBDS conference.

Here was her answer:

I can say I didn't agree with the way the blog characterized Professor Kaplan's comments on the recording. The blog stated the following:

"At the Q&A session, another teacher asked Kaplan how to incorporate the BDS memes of demonizing Israel into college courses, even when the course has nothing to do with "Palestine." And Professor Kaplan answered him. Here we have a professor at an Ivy League university explicitly calling on like-minded educators to shoehorn hate of Israel into every one of their classes."

This characterization is not accurate. Contrary to the claim that Professor Kaplan believes that political views on Israel-Palestine should be forced into college courses that have nothing to do with that subject, Kaplan explicitly said she didn't think that was feasible: "I don't know how you can address the issue if you're not dealing with a course that has no content or relationship to it."

She took the position instead that certain kinds of thematic courses, such as prison literature or prison history, would have an inherent relation to the topic of Israel-Palestine (as one case among others). Prison writing is a well established area in literary studies, as is the history of prisons. Any search of data bases will reveal this neutral fact of academic history. And I fail to see how the case of the Israeli-Palistinian [sic] conflict would be inherently inappropriate as a case study for a thematic course of that sort, just as with courses like war literature or the literature of mourning and violence. If you can explain how this is not the case, I'd be happy to comment.

"For these academics, college is not about teaching but it is merely a platform for them to spout their political views at their captive audience." This assertion on the blog does not seem accurate to me either, since Professor Kaplan expressed the idea that only courses in which Israel and Palestine were relevant to the advertised course theme would be logical candidates for discussing these questions. Such courses (prison writing, war and literature, etc.) are not required of English majors or SAS students, so discussions of the politics of the Israeli-Palestine conflict would never be forced on a "captive audience."

Professor Kaplan didn't say that one shouldn't try to figure out a way to fit one's politics into a course that should have nothing to do with politics - just that she doesn't know exactly how one would do it in a practical way.

The basic issue, which Professor Bentley avoids, is that the university should not be a place where professors a priori craft their classes to push a political viewpoint, as Kaplan says she wants teachers to do and indicates she does herself. If the best example of prison studies includes Palestinian Arab events, or if the best example of poetry includes Darwish, there is nothing wrong with including that in the course. But if a professor specifically includes it for the express purpose of pushing an anti-Israel agenda there is something very wrong with that.

I'm not saying it is inherently inappropriate. I am saying it is inappropriate when the teacher decides to include it for reasons that have nothing to do with academics. Kaplan is not only doing that proudly, but she is telling like-minded people how to do it - to "make courses" that have the desired political content.

That is an problem, and to see Penn sweep it under the rug this way indicates that it is a much bigger problem than just the actions of one professor.

Here again is the Q&A:

AUDIENCE MEMBER (PROFESSOR) ASKS QUESTION:
My question falls on Professor Norton's statement that Boycott may not be the most important part of BDS, and is kind of the closest to where we live as academics and also with Professor Kaplan's call to think about a positive program on BDS, a positive aspect of the Boycott [of Israel]....And that's um about teaching in the classroom about BDS and how, not just in our life as professional producers of knowledge, and scholars, but as teachers, how can that be formed in this pedagogy, especially I guess when the course is not dealing directly with material that has to do with Palestine"

AMY KAPLAN RESPONDS:
Well I don't know how you can, how you can address the issue if you're not dealing with a course that has no content or relationship to it.... But I know that, I mean, you can make courses that have content. I mean, for example, I happen to know that you're interested in prisons, and the literature and culture about, you know, prisons, so you can teach a course on which you included prison as a really, really big thing, not only in the political life of Palestinians, but also in their literature and in their poetry, so that will be kind of an ideal way -- you take a thematic course, and you bring in themes from this issue, and literature is really a great way to teach students about what's going on -- students they think, they know they have an ideological line, a political line, and then they read, you know, they read darwish, they read, you know, The Pennoptimist and it opens up a whole new world -- so that's my answer to that.

Say goodbye to Egypt's tourism industry: 3 more kidnapped in Sinai

From Ma'an:

Armed men kidnapped three Korean tourists and an Egyptian guide in St. Catherine in the southern Sinai on Friday, an Egyptian security official said.

Maj. Gen. Muhammad Najib, director of south Sinai security, said a group of armed Bedouins stopped a bus of Korean tourists and kidnapped three in addition to the guide in Wadi Firan area.

Security sources predicted that the kidnappers may be the same who kidnapped three Americans in order to negotiate releasing Bedouins imprisoned for weapons and drugs violations.

If tourists are in danger on a tour bus, you can kiss the entire industry goodbye.

Egypt does not have a bright future. The Muslim Brotherhood will not be able to fix Egypt's financial woes; the newly powerful Salafists will push their 8th-century morality; and the Egyptian people now have the idea that they can simply protest their problems away.

Whoever is in charge will need a strong security force - whether it is SCAF or a successor - to be able to even do day-to-day governing.

And that force is going to end up killing a lot of people.

"The Jew is Satan in human form"

I linked to it before, but MEMRI just uploaded this video to YouTube, and I have to embed it here.

I mean, what would Satan do?

Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheik Bassam Al-Kayed, head of the Palestinian Islamic Scholars Association in Lebanon, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 1, 2012:

Bassam Al-Kayed: The Jew is a satan in human form. Allah inflicted the Jews upon humanity in its entirety, and especially upon the nation of Islam, including the early prophets and the Prophet Muhammad. The Jew is a satan in human form. We could almost say that the satanic jinn take lessons from them.

What they do is very peculiar. It transgresses all boundaries. They attribute no sanctity to anything that is sacred, to any treaty or agreement. They violate all the international laws, all the human norms, and all the Islamic and man-made laws. They violate all values. They are deterred by nothing but force.

Hey, if Allah put us here, then he must want us here, right? Sounds like Bassam saying that Allah purposefully inflicts pain on Muslims. Either that, or Jews are Allah's chosen people and the Muslims deserve to be punished. How else can we be so powerful?

Strange theology, but I'm OK with it.

OK, gotta go teach some Jinn.

Iran blocking major websites; HTTPS

From TechWeek Europe:

Iran has reportedly begun blocking sites using the HTTPS secure protocol, effectively censoring major bank sites, Google, Gmail, Facebook and many other commercial sites.

According to reports from Kabir News and The Washington Post, Internet providers in Iran began censoring the sites on Thursday, leaving behind a page which says: “According to computer crime regulations, access to this web site is denied”.

Kabir News states that the government will likely continue blocking access until Esfand, the next month in the Persian calendar, and the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

A more sinister suggestion about the downtime is that it could signal the introduction of Iran’s ‘National Internet’.

“The government’s technology officials have announced the construction of a domestic Internet network comparable to an office intranet, which would block many popular sites,” wrote Thomas Erdbrink, The Washington Post’s correspondent in Iran.

“Officials stress that there will still be access to the Web — just not to the “damaging” sites. But Iranian Internet users and activists fear that the activation of the National Internet will cut them off from the rest of the world, and put them under increased surveillance by authorities,” he wrote

Censorship has long been an issue in the country, but for a long time savvy users have been using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass barriers guarded by Iran’s cyberpolice. The Post is reporting that even these means have become unviable due to extremely low speeds.

WaPo adds:

Whenever Maysam, a prominent Iranian blogger, connects to the Internet from his office in the bazaar, he switches on a special connection that for years would bypass the Islamic republic’s increasingly effective firewall.

But recently the software, which allowed him and millions of other Iranians to go online through portals elsewhere in the world, stopped working. When it sporadically returns, speeds are so excruciatingly slow that sites such as Facebook and Balatarin.com – which evaluates unofficial news and rumors in Farsi — become unusable.

“There has been a change,” said Maysam, who spoke on the condition his last name not to be used out of fear of being summoned by Iran’s cyber police. “It seems that the authorities are increasingly getting the upper hand online.”

Having seen social media help power uprisings across the Middle East, Iran’s leaders are trying to get control over what is uploaded, posted and discussed on the Internet. And after a slow start, authorities are becoming more and more successful, Iranian Internet users say.

(h/t CHA)

Saudi faces death after tweeting about Mohammed

From AFP:

A young Saudi journalist is facing calls for his execution after tweeting remarks about the Prophet Mohammed, and the kingdom's top clerics are demanding his trial after denouncing him as an "apostate."

On the occasion of the Muslim prophet's birthday last week, 23-year-old Hamza Kashgari tweeted: "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you."

"I will not pray for you," he added.

[Another reads: “No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice.” - EoZ]

The controversial tweet sparked a frenzy of responses -- some 30,000, according to an online service that tracks tweets in the Arab world.

In one response, Abdullah, a lawyer, said that since Kashgari was "an adult... we should accept nothing but implementing the ruling according to Islamic law" or sharia.

Insulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam, and is a crime punishable by death.

Kashgari quickly apologised for his remarks, but the calls for his execution only multiplied.

A Facebook page entitled "The Saudi people demand Hamza Kashgari's execution" already has nearly 10,000 members.

A recent posting thanks the page's members for their support and calls for even more recruits.

"Our page has almost 10,000 members... but we need you to work harder. The prophet deserves more respect," said one post.

A committee of top clerics in charge of issuing religious edicts in the kingdom issued a statement calling Kashgari "an apostate" and an "infidel," and demanded that he be tried in an Islamic court.

The statement, released late on Wednesday, said: "Muslim scholars everywhere have agreed that those who insult Allah and his prophet or the (Muslim holy book) Koran or anything in religion are infidels and apostates."

It is therefore "the duty of our leaders to judge based on sharia law," which stipulates that an apostate must be sentenced to death, the statement added.

So Kashgari, reasonably, fled Saudi Arabia in fear for his life.

Unfortunately, he went to another Muslim country:

Malaysian authorities Friday said they had detained a young Saudi journalist who fled his country after Twitter comments he made about the Prophet Mohammed triggered calls for his execution.

Hamza Kashgari was taken into custody after flying into Malaysia's main international airport on Thursday, national police spokesman Ramli Yoosuf told AFP.

"Kashgari was detained at the airport upon arrival following a request made to us by Interpol after the Saudi authorities applied for it," he said.

Officials in Interpol's office in Malaysia could not immediately be reached for comment.

The state news agency Bernama said the 23-year-old Kashgari had been detained by Muslim-majority Malaysia "for allegedly insulting Islam and the Prophet Mohammed".

Would Interpol really help to hunt down an "apostate"?

Islamists in Egypt stop filming of TV show for "indecency"

From Egypt Independent:

It's easier to act when the audience can't see your face

Islamist students halted the filming of an Egyptian television series at Cairo's Ain Shams University protesting against the "indecent" clothing of the actresses, the production company said Thursday.

Misr International films had obtained permission from the university's management to film on site, the head of the company, Gaby Khoury, told AFP.

But "when the shooting started, the director of the engineering faculty, Sherif Hammad, came to tell us that some students and teachers were against it, because of the clothing worn by the actresses," he said.

The series, adapted from the novel "Dhat" by Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, takes place in the 1970s, "when women wore short clothing."

Hammad "insisted that the filming should stop and that we would be reimbursed ... explaining that he was not able to guarantee the protection of the materials or the artists," Khoury added.

In a statement on Wednesday evening, the production company said "the student members of the Muslim Brotherhood at Ain Shams University had prevented the film crew from the 'Dhat' TV series from shooting the scenes set at the university."

The students had objected to the "indecent" clothing, it said, and "categorically refused" to let the filming continue unless the costumes were changed.