Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Behind the scenes in Gaza

Some truth comes out in a BBC article from Monday:

On the northern outskirts of Gaza, I was taken on Monday to see one of the latest bomb sites.

A four-storey house had been completely destroyed. Its roof had collapsed inwards; tables and chairs, bedclothes and children's toys spilled out of its squashed floors like shopping from a torn plastic bag.

The ground around the house was charred black and smelled of burning.

Back at the bomb site, I met the man who owned the pile of rubble that was - until last night - his home.

Amazingly no-one was killed in the explosion, despite the complete devastation.

On first inspection it looked like one of Israel's missiles must have gone astray, a case of collateral damage.

But on closer questioning the picture changes.

"I have already lost one son to the struggle for liberation," the man told me. "I have two more, and I am willing to sacrifice them too."

One of his sons is in the al-Qassam brigades, he says, the other in Islamic Jihad.

"After the attack last night (Sunday) the Israeli Shin Bet (Internal Security) called me on the phone to tell me it was because of my son's activities," he says.

I asked another local how it was that so many people could have escaped relatively unscathed from a building that was so completely destroyed.

"Sometimes the Israelis call up the person beforehand and warn them that they have 10 minutes to leave the house, then they strike."

..."What do you mean when you say you are struggling against the occupation?" I asked one Gazan. "After all Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005?"

"We mean the occupation of Jerusalem, and Jaffa and Haifa and all the other places that belong to us," he said without hesitation.

(h/t Ian)

The New York Times has ignored Gaza's power outages

In 2008, Israel briefly stopped shipping fuel to Gaza's main power plant.

That was mentioned by the New York Times no less than ten times, starting with a major story on January 21:

Two days later, Israeli fuel shipments resumed, and the Times noted that the Eu called Israel's move "collective punishment."

Two days later again, it was mentioned in a story about Gazans breaking through the border to Egypt. As it was on January 26th and 29th.

On February 9, Israel cut the supply of electricity to Gaza - by 1%. This prompted another major NYT story.

And there were a few mentions of it in other stories during 2008.

Now, for the past five weeks, Gaza has suffered another fuel crisis, closing its power plant three times. Hamas stopped all shipments of power plant fuel from Israel since January 2011 and relied on smuggled fuel from Egypt; Egypt cracked down on smugglers and Hamas has so far refused to allow fuel to go to Gaza via Israel.

While the New York Times had noted Israel's brief stoppages of fuel to Gaza five times in nine days in 2008, it has yet to mention Gaza's current power woes even once. No photos of people protesting with candles, no stories about how a human rights activist was arrested for blaming Hamas for the shortage, nothing about how Hamas refuses fuel from Israel or wants to charge exorbitant taxes on the fuel or is politicizing this issue to gain concessions from Egypt. Nothing at all.

Isn't that interesting? Two identical human interest stories, one that lasted a few days and the other that lasted five weeks, and the New York Times ignores the one that is far worse.

Now, why might that be?

(The BBC isn't much better. It mentioned it - exactly once, the first time the plant shut down. )

(h/t EBoZ)

Fatah, Hamas celebrate "flying Zionist body parts" in 2004 attack

Usually nowadays Hamas and Fatah can't stand each other, but when it comes to reminiscing about terror attacks, they have nothing but warm feelings for each other.

Hamas' Palestine Times newspaper and the pro-Fatah Palestine Press Agency celebrate (and exaggerate) the twin suicide bombing attack at the Ashdod port that occurred eight years ago, on March 14, 2004.

The attack was meant to blow up the fuel tanks at Ashdod which could have killed hundreds of people. The bombers felt thwarted from that goal and instead blew themselves up hundreds of meters away, killing 10., mostly port workers.

The two bombers, one from Hamas and the other from Fatah, infiltrated Ashdod by hiding in a shipping container from Gaza.

In an unusual and possibly unprecedented move, both the Hamas and Fatah newspapers published the same article about the terror attack, using flowery language to describe the murder of Israeli civilians, including (in PalPress' headline) "flying Zionist body parts."

Israel responded to the attack by killing Sheikh Ahmed Yassin a week later.

Moroccan girl commits suicide after being forced to marry her rapist

From Washington Post:

Morocco’s internet activists mobilized on Wednesday in outrage over the suicide of a 16-year-old rape victim who killed herself after she was forced to marry her rapist.

An online petition, a facebook page and countless tweets expressed horror of the case of Amina Filali, who swallowed rat poison on Saturday to protest her five months of marriage to the man who raped her a year earlier.

Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the “kidnapper” of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution, and it has been used to justify a traditional practice of making a rapist marry his victim to preserve the family’s honor.

“Amina, 16, was triply violated, by her rapist, by tradition and by article 475 of the Moroccan law,” tweeted activist Abadila Maaelaynine.

The victim’s father said in an interview with an online Moroccan newspaper that the court pushed the marriage on her.

“The prosecutor advised my daughter to marry, he said ‘go and make the marriage contract,’” said Lahcen Filali in an interview that appeared on goud.ma Tuesday night.

In many societies, the loss of a woman’s virginity outside of wedlock is a huge stain of honor on the family. In many Middle East societies, there is a tradition whereby a rapist can escape prosecution if he marries his victim, thereby restoring her honor. There is a similar injunction in the Old Testament’s Book of Deuteronomy.

I hope no one thinks that the Washington Post is an authority on Deuteronomy. Jewish law is explicit: the woman may never be forced to marry against her will.

Guess who is encouraging foreign investment in the Pal territories?

Israel's Defense Ministry is.

The Defense Ministry's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories just instituted new procedures meant to streamline the process for foreign investors to be able to visit and evaluate investment opportunities in the Palestinian Arab territories.

The document is entitled "Encouraging Foreign Investment in the Palestinian Territories" and its stated purpose is "Presenting a process for dealing with foreign investors, with the goal of encouraging the development of the Palestinian economy."

At the same time that the PA and its official media are doing everything they can to demonize Israel, and even as they refuse to even speak with Israel to bring a lasting peace to the region, Israel continues to work towards cooperation and peace. At the same time that Palestinian Arabs are trying to cripple Israel's economy by boycotts and sanctions, Israel is trying to help the Palestinian Arab economy by encouraging foreign investment.

It is just one more proof that there is only one side that is truly interested in peace and co-existence.

Azerbaijan detains 22 suspected Iranian spies aiming at Jewish, Israeli, US targets

From Journal of Turkish Weekly:

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry has detained 22 people accused of spying for Iran and other crimes, the ministry said on Wednesday.

They had been secretly cooperating with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), “collecting and passing information that could harm Azerbaijan’s security,” and recruiting people for Iranian intelligence services.

They were charged with high treason and illegal acquisition and storage of firearms and ammunition.

The ministry did not say when they were detained.
Azerbaijan announced on February 22 it had uncovered a terrorist group with links to Iran’s IRGC and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The group, led by an IRGC officer called Hamid and Hezbollah operative Hadji Abbas, was planning to stage attacks against the Israeli embassy and a Jewish cultural center in the Azeri capital Baku.

AFP adds the US embassy to the list of targets.

(h/t Philtheman)

How many missiles did Israel shoot? I'll tell you!

Ali Abuminah of Electronic Intifada asks what he thinks is a damning question:

Whenever you hear Israel’s tired hasbara refrain about rockets, rockets, rockets, remember to ask the question Yousef Munayyer recently asked: Why don’t Israel’s spokespeople ever tell us how many rockets, missiles and bullets Israel has fired on Gaza?

Of course the answer is because it is by orders of magnitude greater in both number and explosive power than anything Palestinian armed groups have or ever could muster against Israel.

Well, luckily for Abuninah, we can know how many missiles Israel shot into Gaza over the past few days - because PCHR counts every report of a missile, even those that cause no injuries or damage, and even some that never happened.

So using the numbers provided by a biased, lying anti-Israel organization that cannot even call the IDF by its name, we can count:

11 missiles fired on Friday and Saturday,
10 missiles fired on Sunday, and
8 missiles fired on Monday.

That's a whopping maximum of 29 missiles the PCHR claims (including at least one that was fictional) that Israel's dreaded war machine shot at Gaza over four days.

Not exactly carpet bombing, is it?

In comparison, Gaza terror groups shot about 250-300 rockets at Israel in the same time period. Meaning they shot ten times as many projectiles at Israeli towns as Israel shot at specific terrorist targets.

And most of the rockets fired by the Gaza terrorists were not the small "homemade" Qassams, but professional 122 mm Grad rockets, probably of Chinese or Russian manufacture, often with a payload of about 20 kg of explosives. They are not firecrackers.

Needless to say, when Israel shoots a missile, it generally hits the exact target intended. When Islamic Jihad fired a rocket, it aims at the general direction of where ever it thinks it can kill the most civilians. For moral midgets like Abuminah to pretend that somehow Israel's actions are worse than those of terror groups in Gaza is simply an attempt to justify terrorism.

Yes, Israel has far more firepower, but in no possible universe can you say that Israeli fire was disproportionate to the rockets that came out of Gaza.

You're welcome, Ali.

AFP ignores its own report; blames Israel for two child deaths from fictional airstrike (UPDATE)

From AFP:

A Gazan child died on Wednesday from wounds sustained in four days of Israeli-Palestinian violence, but a truce deal appeared to be holding, despite more rocket fire and two Israeli raids.

Gaza emergency services spokesperson Adham Abu Selmiya said Baraka al-Mughrabi, aged 7, died from severe injuries sustained during an Israeli bombing raid on Gaza City on Saturday.

The boy's death, which raised to 26 the number of Palestinians killed in four days of bloodshed, came 24 hours after Israel and militant groups in Gaza agreed to observe a ceasefire deal in a bid to end the confrontation, which saw more than 200 rockets fired at Israel.

Yet Mughrabi was injured not on Saturday, but in the same Monday morning incident that killed teenager Nayif Qarmout.

Which an AFP reporter (and photographic evidence) confirmed was not an Israeli airstrike.

AFP described the incident where Qarmout and now Mughrabi were killed as a kind of "work accident" where an explosive device carried by 15-year old Qarmout went off. The IDF denied any strike in the area and AFP confirmed that.

It is no surprise that "Gaza medical officials" will lie and blame Israel for the deaths, but AFP reporters should presumably know what they themselves reported.

The number of victims from the airstrikes is 24, not 26, of whom 20 were terrorists (and at least one, a farmer, was effectively a human shield as Islamic Jihad terrorists were injured in the same strike.)

Sloppiness or bias?

UPDATE: Ma'an was wrong; Mughrabi was not one of the kids with Qarmout. He was killed by a terrorist bullet. From AP:

A Palestinian boy accidentally struck by a bullet when militants fired in the air during a funeral died of his injuries Wednesday, family members and witnesses said.

Palestinian health official Adham Abu Salmia initially said that 8-year-old Barka al-Mugrahbi died of wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike on Monday.

However, Israel's military said it did not carry out a strike in the area at the time.

The boy's relatives and witnesses later said the boy was marching in the funeral procession for a Gaza militant Monday when he was struck in the head by an errant bullet.

At the time, gunmen were firing in the air, they said.

But did AP go back to Adham Abu Salmia and ask him why he lied? Will AP and other wire services keep quoting him even though they know he is a liar?

Delhi police confirm Iran behind embassy attack

From Economic Times of India:

The Delhi Police has cracked the Israeli embassy car blast case and traced the conspiracy to Iranian secret agents. According to sources privy to the investigation, it has now been 'conclusively established' that Syed Mohammad Kazmi, the freelance journalist recently arrested in the case, was in touch with an Iranian intelligence officer and had even visited Iran as part of the conspiracy.

Sources in the security establishment told ET that the breakthrough in the February 13 blast on an Israel diplomat's car, will be announced by the Delhi Police in a "day or two." They added that another couple of detentions have been made in the case.

The questioning of these two persons is underway and their arrests will follow soon. A senior official of the security establishment claimed that the Delhi Police had identified the bomber.

Even before the details of the investigation are placed in the public domain, India made it a point to share them with Israel. On Monday, home minister P Chidambaram is said to have briefed the visiting Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror on the alleged breakthrough in the case.

Putting its weight behind the Delhi Police, the MHA on Monday said it completely backs their line of investigation. "Wait for the announcement from the Delhi Police, which will unravel the entire conspiracy and the role of each individual and agency in the attack," a senior home ministry official told ET.

The outcome of the blast probe confirms Israel's assessment soon after the blast. Israel had claimed that the blast was carried out by Iran or its protege Hezbollah, given Israel's stiff opposition to its nuclear ambitions.

Kazmi has been charged with helping the bomber conduct reconnaissance of the Israeli embassy several times and keeping tab on the movement of Israeli diplomats. He allegedly helped terrorist who planted the magnet bomb on the diplomat's car.

Kazmi, a freelance journalist, is said to be running a feature news agency, Media Star, besides being a part-time worker with an Iranian broadcaster and also a columnist with Persian newspapers in Iran.

It is worth mentioning that an article in Al Jazeera by an "investigative journalist" that claimed this was an Israeli "false flag" operation was given credence by anti-Israel journalists.

Which proves yet again that for most Israel haters, there is no journalistic integrity - skepticism simply does not exist for the most moronic claims.

(h/t Yoel)

Rabid Israel-haters say Gilad Atzmon is too Zionist for them

A group of people whose single-minded aim is to take away the Jewish right of self-determination has decided that Gilad Atzmon's nutty anti-semitic rantings is too crazy - even for them.

From the "US Palestinian Community Network," quoted in Electronic Intifada:

For many years now, Gilad Atzmon, a musician born in Israel and currently living in the United Kingdom, has taken on the self-appointed task of defining for the Palestinian movement the nature of our struggle, and the philosophy underpinning it. He has done so through his various blogs and Internet outlets, in speeches, and in articles. He is currently on tour in the United States promoting his most recent book, entitled, The Wandering Who.

With this letter, we call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions.

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Palestinians have faced two centuries of orientalist, colonialist and imperialist domination of our native lands. And so as Palestinians, we see such language as immoral and completely outside the core foundations of humanism, equality and justice, on which the struggle for Palestine and its national movement rests. As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.

...Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism.

...As Palestinians, it is our collective responsibility, whether we are in Palestine or in exile, to assert our guidance of our grassroots liberation struggle. We must protect the integrity of our movement, and to do so we must continue to remain vigilant that those for whom we provide platforms actually speak to its principles.

When the Palestinian people call for self-determination and decolonization of our homeland, we do so in the promise and hope of a community founded on justice, where all are free, all are equal and all are welcome.

Until liberation and return.

I don't know if it is worth fisking the absolute stupidity and purposeful lies seen here - for example, the ridiculous idea that Zionism is colonialism, or the myth that Palestinian Arab nationalism would accept Jews as equals, or even the sheer hypocrisy of stating that "Palestinians," who have enjoyed peoplehood for a few decades at most, have a greater claim for self-determination than the 3000 year old Jewish nation (which these signatories deny even exists.)

The people who signed this are attempting to put on a "moderate" facade on their sheer hate by distancing themselves from a Holocaust denier and anti-semite, but their excuses are hardly more moral than Atzmon's sickening rhetoric. It is equally anti-semitic to deny Jewish peoplehood and Jewish self-determination.

And who signed it? A score of Arab academics and thinkers, whose signatures to this letter show that there is no relationship between being an intellectual and being a moral human being. They include Ali Abunimah, Joseph Massad, Omar Barghouti and a host of prominent Palestinian Arab professors and activists who cloak their hate in big words and lofty-sounding concepts - that only apply to their own people.

ISIS identifies likely secret Iranian nuclear site

From ISIS Online:

ISIS has identified in commercial satellite imagery a building on the Parchin site in Iran that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wants to visit because it contains, or used to contain, a high-explosive test chamber (see figure 1). The building is located on a relatively small and isolated compound within the Parchin military site and has its own perimeter security wall or fencing. A berm can be seen between this building and a neighboring one, which is consistent with a description of the compound in the November 8, 2011 IAEA Safeguards Report. The compound is located more than four kilometers away from high-explosive related facilities also at the Parchin site which the IAEA visited in 2005 (see figure 2). 1

The IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano recently noted that the IAEA has “information that that some activity is ongoing” at the Parchin site.2 When asked if he was concerned that Iran was cleansing the site, Amano said that the “possibility is not excluded…” and that “we have to go there.” If Iran is engaging in clean up work to hide evidence at the Parchin site then it could be occurring inside this building as well. Thus, the IAEA deserves international support to visit this site without delay to inspect the inside of this building and other locations in Parchin as well.

In the November 8, 2011 Safeguards Report , the IAEA described evidence, including satellite imagery, indicating that Iran built the large explosive test chamber at the Parchin site and used it to conduct hydrodynamic experiments in the early 2000s, possibly related to the development of nuclear weapons. The IAEA has evidence that test chamber was placed at Parchin in 2000 and that a building was subsequently constructed around it.

The Associated Press has reported that satellite imagery in early November 2011 and satellite imagery from more recently shows increased activity at the Parchin site.4 It is not clear if this reported activity is occurring specifically at this compound, or at other areas at the Parchin site.

Hat tip to Challah Hu Akbar, who keeps getting better and better. He found this location on Google Maps so you can pan and zoom. It is a pretty remote area.

View Larger Map

See also CNN and Atlantic Wire.

Don't look at Juan Cole, though, because he's convinced that secret nuclear activity in military zones in Iran are completely innocuous. Iran's Supreme Leader said so himself - at least this decade.

Zahar: Hamas will accept fuel through Israel via UNRWA

From Hamas' Palestine Times newspaper:

Leader of the Political Bureau of Hamas Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar denied the report published by some Arab and Zionist media of a deal between Hamas and Egypt to accept the truce contingent on the introduction of fuel into the Gaza Strip, and said: "This is not true at all and has no basis in truth" .

Al-Zahar confirmed that there is nothing new on the subject of electricity, and expressed the approval of Hamas on the introduction of fuel for the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing by "UNRWA" for the power plant in the Gaza Strip.

So it looks like Hamas is going to allow fuel to reach Gaza via Israel after all, and is using UNRWA to make sure it does not receive the fuel directly, in a bizarre way to save face after depriving Gazans of fuel and power for well over a month now because of their refusal to do exactly that.

No confirmation yet from COGAT or UNRWA.

It is possible that by using this mechanism of going through UNRWA, Hamas will avoid giving taxes to the PA and will be able to tax it themselves. It will be interesting to find out how much Egypt (the presumed supplier) will be charging for the fuel.

Does this mean that UNRWA is going to be complicit in Hamas collecting taxes on fuel, and therefore in strengthening Hamas?