Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 20, 2012

The lessons of Cyrus (TED video - Neil MacGregor)

Fascinating:

(h/t Joseph E)

Iran cancels soccer game because opposing coach is Israeli

From JPost:

Iranian soccer group Sepahan Isfahan cancelled an upcoming training match after learning that its rival team's coach is Israeli, the Serbian Cafe website reported on Monday.

The group was scheduled to play against Serbian team Partizan Belgrad on Friday.

"I'm disappointed that the game was cancelled," Partizan Belgrad coach Avram Grant said. "They told me it was cancelled because I'm Israeli. I don't mix sports with politics and I'm not going to start now."

The Serbian team previously cancelled its participation in a training camp in Dubai because of difficulties in obtaining a visa for Grant and moved the games to Israel instead.

Probably just as well. After all, Iran threatened to deliver a crushing blow to Israel if the Jewish state made even the slightest hostile move, or even thought about attacking. If they would lose to a team with an Israeli coach, they would shoot thousands of rockets towards Israel as "retaliation."

(context)

October 1955: Arab League rejects water plan to help entire region - because it would help Israel

From the New York Times Magazine, October 19, 1958, by Eric Johnston, who was a US envoy to the Middle East during the Eisenhower administration (reproduced here):

Between 1953 and 1955, at the request of President Eisenhower, I undertook to negotiate with these States a comprehensive Jordan Valley development plan that would have provided for the irrigation of some 225,000 acres. This is an area comparable in size and in climate to the Salt River irrigation project near Phoenix, Ariz., which produces crops valued at $326 per acre a year. After two years of discussion, technical experts of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria agreed upon every important detail of a unified Jordan plan.

But in October 1955, it was rejected for political reasons at a meeting of the Arab League. Syria objected to the project because it would benefit Israel as well as the Arab countries. Three years have passed and no agreement has yet been reached on developing the Jordan. Every year a billion cubic metres of precious water still roll down the ancient stream, wasted, to the Dead Sea.

...The boon to the Middle East of an imaginative water program can scarcely be exaggerated. If proof were necessary, one need look no further than Israel, where sound planning, a systematic program, modern irrigation techniques and ingenious use of every available drop of water have produced remarkable results in a single decade.

Since 1948, Israel has more than doubled its cultivated area, from 412,000 acres to about a million. It has quadrupled its area of irrigated land, from 75,000 acres in 1948 to 306,250 acres today. And Israel has embarked on a large-scale program to conserve land and water through modern methods of reforestation.

All this has been accomplished without the benefit of the waters of the Jordan River, which constitute the country's greatest single source of water. Israel's original plan to tap the Jordan north of Lake Tiberias has been held up for five years by the Arab States, which still refuse to agree to any plan for sharing the waters of the river with the Israelis.

Israel's new water development program, approved in 1956, indicates that the country must soon have Jordan River water to move ahead with its program of agricultural expansion. The plan makes it clear, however, that the country is counting only on that share of the river allocated to it in the Jordan Valley plan agreed to by Arab engineers and water experts during my negotiations in 1955.

But the fact remains that what Israel has done even without Jordan River water can be equaled throughout the Middle East, and indeed surpassed in countries blessed by greater supplies of water. It is clear that water resources are adequate to assure a sustained and flourishing growth throughout the area. But the availability of these resources hasn't been enough in the past, and it isn't enough now, to do it.

The crucial question remains: Are the Arab States prepared to make the necessary commitments to develop these water resources?

No one else can make this decision. It must be made by the Arab States and the Arab States alone. Up to now they have proved themselves unwilling to do so; their attitude and their actions have been precisely the reverse of what needs to be done. Nothing less is required of the Arab States than that they forego political turmoil and get together on regional watershed developments.

Today, a matchless opportunity beckons to the Middle East. President Eisenhower offered it in his recent proposal to the United Nations General Assembly for a regional development agency. Will the Arab States grasp this opportunity? Will they at last face up to the necessity of abandoning chauvinism for regionalism in realizing the rich benefits offered by the Nile, the Jordan, the Tigris and the other rivers of their land?

If they do, that field of green grass in the Jordanian desert can spread throughout the Middle East.

A couple of days before the Arab League rejected the plan, the Muslim Brotherhood and the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem made clear their opposition:

In the Arab world, more often than not, the most extreme viewpoints will tend to win - even as well-meaning Westerners will dismiss the extremists as a fringe group.

And the idea of any win-win solution when one of the winners would be Israel is anathema to many, many many Arabs.

Westerners need to understand these to basic facts - facts that are just as true today as they were in 1955.

"Israeli viruses infecting Egyptian chickens"

From YNet:

An Egyptian Health Ministry official said that chemicals smuggled from Israel are infecting his country's poultry with dangerous viruses, Ynet has learned Monday.

Osama Selim, the head of Egypt's veterinary authority, has called on the People's Assembly to press the local poultry growers' association to fight the use of illegally imported vaccinations and blood serum, which he claimed are exposing the poultry to disease and threaten public health. He added that he does not rule out the possibility of a biological war with the Jewish state.

Dr. Suhair Hassan, a preventive veterinary medicine official, told the assembly's Health Committee on Sunday that a study conducted at some 200 farms found that 75% percent of poultry were treated with Israeli products, which often cause them to contract viral diseases and the bird flu. In some cases the chemicals lowered egg production or caused the animals to die.

But wait - there's more!

(unfortunately not subtitled, but you can see the host show to the camera Israeli consumer products that are supposedly "poison." A small portion of the show was translated by MEMRI.)

A television show called "The Truth," broadcast on the Darim channel, launched a media campaign earlier this month aiming to prevent the entrance of Israeli products to Sinai after learning that they "cause cancer and infertility."

Several of the "offending" products featured over the course of the show included chocolate, coffee, biscuits and yoghurt. All of these goods are commonly smuggled through the border crossings.

But wait - there's more!

A member of the Sawarka Bedouin tribe, Muhammad al-Mani'i, who was interviewed on the show, also accused Israel of manufacturing "toxic" jeans that cause infertility. He claimed the Jewish state sells them to Arab countries reduce population growth.

The tribesman said that the denim pants are equipped with belts that contain a magnet, which is the source of their toxic powers.

Al-Mani'i accused the "Zionist entity" of plotting to spread disease among the Bedouins by distributing its products in Sinai markets.

He said that the residents prefer to buy foreign products because they think they are of better quality than the local ones.

"The residents buy Israeli water because the water we have in Sinai is salty," he said. "They buy the Israeli soap because it foams better than Egyptian soap."

A spokesman for the Sinai Revolutionaries movement, Mohammed Hendy, said on the show that Israeli goods are sold unhindered under the police's eyes.

He called on the Bedouins to boycott the products.

"We must understand that the Zionist entity is the one who killed our sons and robbed us of our territory," he said.

"The Israeli products contain lethal poison," the show's host concluded. "It is possible that you don't feel it now, but you cannot escape feeling it in the future.

"Israel continues to be an enemy that targets Egypt regardless of the agreements between the two countries, because it has its eye on the country."

I better not tell them about the tiny Israeli transmitters that hide in 10% of Egypt's grains of sand, or how the Aswan dam is really a huge satellite dish that intercepts and forwards all Egyptian communications to the Zionists. Then they might really go crazy.

Latest dangerous Arab rumor: Israel to divide Al Aqsa into Jewish, Muslim sections

Over the past two weekends, Muslim clerics and officials have been pushing false rumors about Israeli designs on the Al Aqsa Mosque. The first time they got Israeli police to bar Jews from peacefully visiting; the second time they started stoning Christian tourists who they claimed were Jewish extremists.

Clearly, spreading false rumors is an effective weapon.

So, emboldened by their success in keeping Judaism's holy site free of Jewish tourists, they have started a new rumor for this week.

The Al Aqsa Center has released a statement saying that they have received information that Israel plans to divide up the Temple Mount into separate Jewish and Muslim sections, they way that the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron is divided. Jews would be able to - horrors! - perform "Talmudic rituals" (i.e., pray) in the sacred site.

They say that under this plan, Israeli police will cleanse the Mount of Muslims under flimsy pretexts (like, for example, they are stoning Christian tourists).

Another plan has Jews freely entering the mosque between 8 AM and 11 AM, between Muslim prayer times.

These alleged plans will be implemented this year, according to the inciters of violence who released the statement.

There is only one reason why these rumors are started - to keep Jews off of the holiest site in Judaism. They want to stir up riots because, according to these defenders of Islam, it is better than no one go to the Temple Mount than to allow Jewish "filth" from "desecrating" it.

These incitements have worked in the past, so the Al Aqsa defenders will keep churning out the lies that Arab Muslims are more than happy to believe, fed by hateful terrorist-supporting media like Palestine Today.

Saudi Arabia maintains its ban on women in Olympics

From Bikya Masr:

Less than three months after Saudi Arabia said it would permit women to participate in the London 2012 Olympic Games, it has reportedly reneged on their agreement, barring women from entering the Games.

The move will also threaten the country’s overall participation in the Olympics, with the International Olympic Committee saying that all countries must field female athletes as part of their teams.

The decision has been roundly criticized by human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said in a press release that the move is counter to the Olympic Charter, which says, “The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit.”

HRW said it shouldn’t be too surprising, however, as state-run schools offer no physical education for girls and only men belong to sports clubs in the country.

“In fact, government restrictions on women essentially bar them from sports,” a new report says, HRW reported.

The IOC Women’s Chair Anita DeFrantz warned the country in 2010 that if female athletes are not allowed to participate, the country could face being banned from the global competition.

But it looks like the IOC will cave:

The chairman of the London 2012 Olympics said on Thursday that the Olympic committee needed to encourage more inclusiveness by countries that failed to send women to the games but cautioned that "sport is not the panacea for all ills."

"I think you can use sport in a way to encourage social change at a sensible rate," Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Games, told Reuters in an interview. "The world is diverse, it's very complex, there are sometimes barriers that are not going to be broken down overnight."

Way to show leadership!

(h/t Ian)

Kids in Gaza are dying from "resistance tunnels" collapsing

Palestine Press Agency reports on a new PCHR report (not yet online) that says that some recent deaths of children in Gaza were not from them "falling into holes," as had been reported, but from them being in the wrong place when "resistance tunnels" collapsed.

Last Thursday, a 13-year old child was killed as a tunnel underneath him collapsed south of Gaza City.

This was not a smuggling tunnel, but one of the tunnels that Hamas builds to store weapons and to provide a secret path between buildings.

Last October, two more children were killed while playing soccer as another "resistance tunnel" collapsed in Jabalya.

PCHR called on Hamas to take appropriate precautions when building these bunkers.

Perhaps Oxfam should be called in to do "independent" inspections of terror tunnels. It's not like they will ever criticize Hamas anyway.

Hamas looking to profit from the Gaza blackout

I have been trying to come up with an explanation for Hamas' deciding to allow the Gaza power plant to go dark rather than allowing fuel to come from Israel. A new article in Dar al Hayat may have given us a clue.

It's all about money.

Hamas decided to use smuggled fuel from Egypt instead of fuel from Israel because it was cheaper. The reason it was so much cheaper? Because Egypt subsidizes fuel for its citizens, and they were turning around and reselling the artificially low-priced fuel to Gaza!

Hamas is now using the crisis, with the specter of people in hospitals dying, to pressure Egypt to sell them fuel directly at the same subsidized prices.

Egypt, for its part, is refusing to sell fuel to Hamas below market value, noting that Hamas taxes fuel in Gaza at an astonishing 150%. Why should Egypt lose money while Hamas makes a windfall? At the same time, at a time of a fuel shortage in Egypt itself, the government cannot justify selling fuel to Hamas at low prices while its own people cannot find fuel themselves.

Meanwhile, pressure on Hamas from within Gaza is steadily increasing. A PFLP symposium on Saturday night harshly criticized Hamas' handling of the economy, including the fuel crisis, saying that there was a lack of transparency in Hamas' economic policies and that Hamas' taxes on the residents were onerous.

Netanyahu's peace plan similar to Livni's (Ha'aretz)

Ha'aretz has a behind-the-scenes look at the last, failed round of negotiations between Israel and the PLO in Amman, and it shows yet again that the Palestinian Arabs are the recalcitrant party.

More surprising to the conventional wisdom, though, is that Netanyahu seemed to offer a plan that was nearly identical to that offered by the Kadima government during the 2008 Annapolis conference.

At first, the Palestinian Arabs refused to meet altogether:

According to a top Israeli official, on the day of the meeting, the prime minister’s envoy, Isaac Molho, arrived at the hotel and entered the meeting room only to discover that his Palestinian counterpart, Saeb Erekat, did not make it to the meeting. Mohammad Shtayyeh, a junior official and member of Fatah’s central committee was sent in his stead. The Palestinian side did not agree to sit with Molho in the same room, and the envoys were resigned to hopping between different rooms in the hotel in order to hold discussions between the two sides.

After a week, the Quartet envoys arrived in Jerusalem, although the Palestinians refused once more to sit in the same room as Molho. “There is an empty chair in the room,” said Molho to the envoys at the meeting. “Where is Saeb Erekat?”

For over a month, the Quartet envoys attempted to bring the Palestinians to the negotiation room, but only when King Abdullah II began to apply pressure did things begin to move. The king came to Ramallah on a rare trip and pressured Mahmoud Abbas. Finally, on January 3, the Jordanians were able to bring together Erekat and Molho in Jordan’s Foreign Ministry in Amman.

Jordan's King Abdullah personally went to Ramallah to pressure Abbas to take things seriously, and Erekat showed up. But this was all for show.

At the very first meeting on January 3, Erekat announced that the PLO held by the deadline of January 26 to complete negotiations, an impossible task.

The PLO position on borders were "a step backward" from their proposals in Annapolis in 2008, according to Israel's negotiator Isaac Molho.

There were a couple of other meetings where new demands were made by Erekat, such as the release of Aziz Dweik, a Hamas minister.

On January 25, a day before the PLO's deadline on negotiations, Molho presented Netanyahu's proposal for borders:

1. The border will be drawn in a way that will include the maximum amount of Israelis living in the West Bank, and the minimum amount of Palestinians.

2. Israel will annex the large settlement blocs, without defining what exactly is considered a ‘bloc,’ nor defining its size.

3. It is necessary to first solve the problem of borders and security in relation to Judea and Samaria, and only afterwards move to discuss the topic of Jerusalem which is far more complicated.

4. Israel will maintain a presence in the Jordan Valley for a period of time. Molho did not mention how long nor what kind of presence.

During the meeting, Erekat asked for clarification regarding the Jordan Valley. Molho referred him to Netanyahu’s speech’s to the opening session of the Knesset, as well as to that in front of Congress in May 2011. In both speeches, Netanyahu spoke of a “military presence along the Jordan River,” yet he did not demand that Israel maintain sovereignty over the valley. “And if we refuse?” Erekat asked. Molho responded: You would prefer that we annex the valley?”

Molho did not mention how size of the territory from which Israel will withdraw, but according to the principles he presented, it seems that it is similar, if not identical to that which was presented by Tzipi Livni during the negotiations that took place in 2008 after the Annapolis Conference. And although Netanyahu does not admit it, the meaning behind the principles Molho presented is a withdrawal that will cause Israel to give up 90% of its sovereignty. “The possibility of leaving the settlements in a Palestinian state also came up in Annapolis,” said a source that participated in the 2008 talks.

Erekat, who understood the principles, asked at the end of the meetings for a series of clarifications: whether Israel accepts the 1967 borders as a basic tenet upon which the two sides can negotiation, whether Israel accepts the principle of territory swaps, how many percentages of the West Bank is Israel interested in annexing, whether Israel has a map with border proposals, whether Israel is willing to evacuate settlements, etc.

“I’d be happy to answer all these questions in the next meeting,” said Molho to Erekat. But the next meeting never took place. A day later, the Palestinians said that they will not resume talks unless Israel freezes settlement building and accepts the principle of 1967 borders.

As usual, the conventional wisdom on the conflict is 180 degrees away from the truth. The "hawkish" Netanyahu is willing to concede essentially everything that the "dovish" Livni would have, and the "moderate" Palestinian Arab side spent the entire time treading water until their deadline passed and they could move forward with their unity agreement with terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

It must be pointed out that all of the people who so loudly assert that Israel's democratic character is threatened by the lack of an agreement for a two-state solution have never once satisfactorily explained why a plan such as Livni's or Netanyahu's does not address every one of their concerns, especially the demographic issue. Instead of pushing for the PLO to compromise on the basis of a plan where Israel can have a modicum of security, these loudmouths like J-Street and Peter Beinart instead pretend that it is Israel that must keep offering more and more, and end up solidifying the PLO's hard-line positions.

Which proves that for all their protestations, they aren't really pro-Israel at all.

(h/t P.)

An about-face from Hamas' energy authority?

On Saturday:

Hamas authorities rejected an Egyptian proposal to bring in fuel via an Israeli crossing point to reactivate Gaza’s only power plant, which shut down four days ago when diesel supplies were disrupted.

“This is unacceptable because of our bitter experience with the Zionist occupation and the way it controls the delivery of the shipments,” Ahmed Abu Al-Amreen of the Hamas-run Energy Authority, told reporters.

Sunday:

Energy Authority official Ahmad Abu al-Amreen told Ma'an that while the government does not want to rely on transfers via Israel ... it will allow shipment via the Israeli crossing temporarily to alleviate the current emergency.

It was not clear whether this solution had been accepted by Egyptian authorities, but Abu al-Amreen said the power authority had not received notification from Egypt about how the fuel would be transferred.

"We keep contacting the relevant authorities in Egypt, but so far we received no answers," he added.

Meanwhile, Israel again offered to provide fuel for Gaza directly - and was rebuffed by Hamas.

There are games being played in Gaza, and all the players seem to have one thing in common - to demonize Israel. Luckily, it appears that some Gazans aren't being taken in by the lies.

....but Oxfam blames Israel for Hamas power cuts!

Oxfam, a major human rights NGO, is pushing a false narrative of Israeli responsibility for Gaza's power plant problems. This press release, published at Palestine News Network, proves once again that many NGOs are hopelessly biased against Israel and are equally afraid to criticize Hamas.

The Gaza Strip is inching towards a total collapse of essential services as fuel supplies from the tunnels beneath the border between Gaza and Egypt have reportedly ground to a halt.

With the blockaded enclave's only power plant shut down for long hours daily, the 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza are being affected across the board, with impending life threatening consequences in health services.

Since Israel put Gaza under total blockade in 2007, only limited amounts of fuel for Gaza's power plants were allowed to enter the enclave, prompting the government in Gaza to procure fuel from Egypt through the Rafah tunnels.

...Oxfam partners Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Al Mezan have both stressed the responsibility and obligations of Israel as the occupying power, to provide for the wellbeing of the civilian population under occupation, with international humanitarian law requiring it to allow the passage of fuel for the Gaza power plant. Israeli restrictions on fuel supplies via the overland crossings, imposed in 2007, caused massive shortages, leading the authority in Gaza to seek alternate solutions in fuel supplied through the tunnels.

Then why did they stop taking the fuel from Israel?

There was one week on November, 2010 when Israel transferred over 1.7 million liters to the Gaza power plant. Normally it transferred about a million liters a week. Then Hamas started refusing to get reliable amounts of fuel from Israel and chose instead to get smuggled fuel from Gaza. And now Oxfam is blaming Israel for Hamas' refusal to take in millions of liters of fuel that Israel is more than willing to provide!

Not only that, even though the press release was published today, Oxfam still refuses to complain about Hamas' refusal to accept fuel from Egypt going through Kerem Shalom!

Oxfam has the story exactly wrong. Israel is willing to provide fuel and Hamas is refusing to accept it. Yet the word "Hamas" is not to be found in the entire press release.

Oxfam's press release here is proof positive that this so-called "human rights organization" has less interest in the well-being of Gazans than in slamming Israel for a problem that Hamas is wholly responsible for.

This is more than just bias. This is evidence that Oxfam is actively working to promote Hamas' false narrative of the problem. And when NGOs support the terrorists against the free world, we have a problem.