Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 03, 2012

Expert:"Iran behind DDoS attack on US banks"

The first six minutes of this video shows Mike McConnell, former Director of National Intelligence and now working at Booz Hamilton, directly saying that Iran was behind the denial of service attacks that some major US banks suffered last September.

The consensus is that Iran attacked the US in a semi-sophisticated cyber-terrorist attack. (The target is not military, but civilian infrastructure, so any way you look at it, this is terrorism.)

This was apparently already common knowledge in some circles in October:

Iranian hackers renewed a campaign of cyberattacks against U.S. banks this week, targeting Capital One Financial Corp. COF +0.36% and BB&T Corp. BBT +0.07% and openly defying U.S. warnings to halt, U.S. officials and others involved in the investigation into the attacks said.

The attacks, which disrupted the banks' websites, showed the ability of the Iranian group to sustain its cyberassault on the nation's largest banks for a fifth week, even as it announced its plans to attack in advance.

U.S. officials said the attacks against banks, and others against Middle Eastern energy companies, were sponsored by the Iranian government and approved at high levels as part of a low-grade cyberwar that officials warned could lead to retaliation.

Unclear is at what point attacks on individual banks constitute an assault on the overall financial system that would call for a forceful response from the U.S. military, which has formed a "Cyber Command" to help defend government computers and critical civilian networks.

"It is a fair question," said a senior U.S. official. "I am not sure I have the answer to it."

PalArab music video says it all

Seen on Palestine Today:

The translation - which, I understand, is very heavy on "Oh our Gaza, oh our (West) Bank, oh fire, oh volcano... Tel-Aviv is a token... We won, we won, we won" is not very important.

The part that is interesting to me is that the video - already with thousands of views in two days - does not distinguish between rockets towards Israeli civilians, Israeli women running to shelters, the bus bombing in Tel Aviv, dead Gaza babies - and Abbas' UN stunt.

All of those represent "victory."

Think about it. While the West tries mightily to distinguish between the "moderate" Palestinian Arabs who are supposedly aghast at terror and who really want peace, and the "tiny minority of extremists" who love violence, videos like this - which are a dime a dozen - show that there is really no distinction at all.

The goal is the same: the destruction of Israel. Rockets, they believe, further that goal, as do bus bombings.

But so do dead Gaza kids - because they help demonize Israel in the media.

And so does Abbas' UN stunt - because it pressures Israel to give up land.

Those are all tactics. But the goal is the same, whether in ten years or a hundred.

The people who made this video, and those who watch it, don't see any distinction between "moderate" and "extremist." The "moderates" in Ramallah cheered random rocket fire towards Israeli cities no less than the "extremists" in Hamas. The distinction is an artificial construct created by Westerners to justify pressuring Israel to give up more and more in the name of "peace."

The reality, however, is reflected in this video.

(h/t Al Gharqad)

Leila Khaled, one of the most notorious terrorists from the early days of Palestinian Arab nationalism, is set to visit Gaza tomorrow.

Khaled was involved in the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 on its way from Rome to Athens in 1969, diverting the Boeing 707 to Damascus and then blowing up the plane after the passengers had been taken off. She also attempted to hijack El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York City in 1970 as part of the Dawson's Field hijackings, carried out by the PFLP, but she was foiled and ended up in a British prison for less than a month, as the British gave her up in a PFLP prisoner exchange.

Israel-haters have latched on to her iconic image, romanticizing her violence (she was caught carrying two hand grenades and her partner shot a member of the flight crew.)

The unrepentant terrorist will arrive from Jordan and enter through Egypt. She will be honored at a number of ceremonies by the PFLP and other terror groups in Gaza.

A match made in hell.

Hamas, Fatah and Israeli priorities (Zvi)

From Zvi:

The following juxtaposition says pretty much everything.

What's important to Hamas
Hamas' Osama Hamdan: Palestinian state without an armed struggle against Israel is worthless

He also reiterated Hamas’s commitment to the armed struggle against Israel. He said that his movement would continue to seek the “liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

What's important to Fatah
Incitement against Israel in PA is getting worse

This section also included a Facebook page of an elementary school in Kalkilya where the sentence “I hate Israel” was written in 16 different languages, and another Facebook page from a high school in Tulkarm that included a picture of Adolf Hitler over the words, “I could have killed all the Jews in the world, but I left some of them so you will know why I killed them.”

What's important to Israel

More than a million people – especially pregnant women and children up to the age of five – die each year of malaria... .

Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have figured out how the most dangerous strain “tricks” the immune system, paving the way for the development of new approaches to cure this acute infection.

Dr. Ron Dzikowski and research student Inbar Avraham revealed for the first time the genetic mechanism that enables a parasite to selectively express one protein while hiding other proteins from the immune system.

By combining bioinformation and genetic methods, the researchers identified a unique DNA sequence found in the regulatory regions of the gene family that encode for these surface proteins."

This is a huge breakthrough in the global war against malaria - brought to you by Israeli researchers.

Any questions?

The truth about E-1

Many articles in the past 48 hours have included breathless statements like this one:

Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said: "If we build in E1 the two-state vision will truly be history ... it is a strategic point that if built, will prevent the Palestinians from having a normal state."

The usual keyword is "viable":

...[E]ven friendly European countries are fed up with Israel’s continuing illegal settlement of areas the Palestinians will need if they are to have a viable state...

Palestinians bitterly oppose the project, as it would effectively cut the occupied West Bank in two, north to south, and sever it from Jerusalem, and make the creation of a viable Palestinian state even more problematic.

That announcement included 3,000 new settler homes and sped up plans for building a settlement in an area vital for a viable Palestinian state, connecting the West Bank with East Jerusalem, known as E-1.

Once again, anti-Israel activists repeat a mantra that lazy journalists pick up on and accept as the truth.

And once again, the Israeli government is not helping matters; no one is explaining that the viability of a Palestinian Arab state is not affected by building in E1.

If you are interested in the facts, the JCPA published a good article on this very issue - in 2009:

The E-1 area is a part of the Israeli city of Maale Adumim, located immediately adjacent to Jerusalem. There is an E-1 construction plan that was devised in order to link Maale Adumim and its 36,000 residents to Jerusalem. Every Israeli prime minister since Yitzhak Rabin has supported the plan. The E-1 site covers an area of largely uninhabited, state-owned land.

Without control of the E-1 area, Israel is apprehensive about a Palestinian belt of construction that will threaten Jerusalem from the east, block the city’s development eastward, and undermine Israel’s control of the Jerusalem-Jericho road. This major artery is of paramount strategic importance for Israel in order to transport troops and equipment eastward and northward via the Jordan Rift Valley in time of war.

Contrary to reports, the completion of E-1 would not cut the West Bank in half and undermine Palestinian contiguity. Israel has planned a new road that would allow Palestinian traffic coming from the south to pass eastward of Maale Adumim and continue northward to connect with the cities in the northern West Bank. This Palestinian bypass road would actually reduce the time for Palestinian drivers traveling in a north-south direction who would encounter no Israeli roadblocks.

The main threat to Israel’s future contiguity comes from encroachments on E-1 made by illegal Palestinian construction. Israeli and Palestinian construction in the West Bank has been governed by the legal terms of the Oslo II Interim Agreement from September 28, 1995. The area around E-1 is within Area C, where, according to Oslo II, Israel retained the powers of zoning and planning. As a result, much of the recently completed Palestinian construction there is illegal. In contrast, none of the Oslo Agreements prohibited Israeli settlement activity, though Israel undertook unilateral limitations upon itself in this area in recent years.

Israeli construction of E-1 will not undermine Palestinian contiguity, but were Israel to lose control of E-1, the contiguity of Israel would be severely compromised.

...The Israeli interest, one that tends to be ignored by the international community, is to bring E-1 to fruition by establishing contiguity between Jerusalem in the west and Maale Adumim as well as the approaches to the Dead Sea in the east, as part of a security belt of Jewish communities surrounding Israel’s capital. Without control of the E-1 area, Israel is apprehensive about a Palestinian belt of construction that will threaten Jerusalem from the east, block the city’s development eastward, and undermine Israel’s control of the Jerusalem-Jericho road. This major artery is of paramount strategic importance for Israel in order to transport troops and equipment eastward and northward via the Jordan Rift Valley in time of war, and this road is already subject to growing pressure from unchecked Palestinian building.

...With a view toward consolidating Jerusalem’s status as the capital of Israel, successive Israeli governments planned and built a chain of neighborhoods and satellite towns around the city. Maale Adumim to the east, Givat Zeev to the north, and Efrat in the Etzion Bloc to the south were all established back in 1982. Beitar, southwest of Jerusalem, was established in 1990. Surrounding these satellite towns are dozens of additional communities. Israel views these satellite towns as part of a single Jerusalem metropolitan area.2 All Israeli governments have conceived this settlement bloc, akin to the other major settlement blocs established in the West Bank relatively close to the “green line,” as destined to remain within the area of the State of Israel and to be annexed to it in the framework of a permanent peace agreement.3

On April 14, 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush sent a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in this vein. In the letter, Bush declared that the U.S. position was that in any final Israeli-Palestinian arrangement, the demographic reality that was created on the ground since the Six-Day War should be taken into account, and that Israel could not be expected to withdraw totally from all areas of the West Bank.4 Sharon viewed the letter from President Bush as an Israeli achievement that derived from the decision by his government to approve the Gaza-Northern Samaria disengagement plan.

The route of the West Bank separation fence was plotted on the basis of the principle of eventually incorporating the major settlement blocs within Israel. Some 220,000 of the 290,000 settlers reside within these major settlement blocs. In general, Israel’s High Court of Justice has upheld the principle of including the settlement blocs west of the security fence.

...In a Knesset discussion on October 5, 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared: “United Jerusalem would also encompass Maale Adumim as well as Givat Zeev as the capital of Israel under Israeli sovereignty.” Six months previously, in April, Rabin handed over the annexation documents of the E-1 area to Maale Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel.14 On March 13, 1996, Prime Minister Shimon Peres reaffirmed the government’s position that Israel will demand applying Israeli sovereignty over Maale Adumim in the framework of a permanent peace agreement.

...The main threat to Israel’s future contiguity comes from encroachments on E-1 made by illegal Palestinian construction. Israeli and Palestinian construction in the West Bank has been governed by the legal terms of the Oslo II Interim Agreement from September 28, 1995. Oslo II divided the West Bank into three different jurisdictions: Areas A, B, and C. In Area C, according to Oslo II, Israel retained the powers of zoning and planning (Annex III, Protocol Concerning Civil Affairs, Article 27). The area around E-1 is within Area C and much of the recently completed Palestinian construction there did not receive Israeli approval and, as a result, is illegal. In contrast, none of the Oslo Agreements prohibited Israeli settlement activity, which was considered an issue for permanent status negotiations in the future. Despite the absence of an Israeli settlement freeze, Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo II Interim Agreement, which covered the West Bank, nonetheless.

The real issue is not "Palestinian contiguity" - any glance at a map shows that to be a lie, something reporters cannot be bothered to do - but Jerusalem. Palestinian Arabs, against all historical evidence, say that Jerusalem is "Palestinian" and an essential part of their hoped-for state. There is actually no reason a Palestinian Arab state must include parts of Jerusalem - right now, the PA is headquartered in Ramallah and functioning normally.

The reason they want Jerusalem is not because of historic or legal ties. It is because they know that Jerusalem is the heart of the Jewish people and they want to wrench that away. Once they weaken Israel's hold on the holy city they weaken Israel's very existence. All the other arguments are simply obfuscations around that simple fact.

Israelis know this, and so do Palestinian Arabs. The world media has yet not figured out this essential fact though, and parrot the lie that a Palestinian Arab state depends on Jerusalem. It doesn't, any more than Jordan depended on Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967.

Arafat death investigation already looking like a sham

If you thought that the exhumation of Arafat was completely transparent, think again:

Around 60 samples were taken from the remains of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for a probe into whether he was poisoned by polonium, a Swiss newspaper reported Sunday, quoting a lead investigator.

The samples were distributed among three teams doing separate analyses eight years after Arafat's death in a French hospital, Patrice Mangin told Le Matin Dimanche.

A Palestinian pathologist was the only person allowed to touch the body when Arafat's grave was opened on Tuesday in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

He was able to "take all the samples that were wanted, around 60 in total," said Mangin, the director of the Swiss University Center of Legal Medicine in Lausanne.

OK, that's the second irregularity around this investigation.

The first one was why are Russians involved in the investigation, together with the Swiss (who did the initial testing on Arafat's personal items) and the French (since Arafat died in Paris.) What do the Russians have to do with it - except for the fact that they happen to live where polonium is most available?

Is it possible that the Russians instructed the Arab pathologist how he could brush trace amounts of polonium on Arafat's tissue samples before he gave them to the team? (Could the same have happened with Suha, which would explain why such abnormally large amounts of polonium were found - amounts that would have indicated Arafat had ingested enough to have been killed within hours, not weeks?)

I can see no valid reason to stop the Swiss and French from taking the tissue samples directly. the unfortunate fact is that any Palestinian Arab involved in the investigation is automatically suspect - because the PLO has publicly called Arafat's death a "murder" for years.

Hamas tells Europeans they aren't terrorists; their website says otherwise

From Ma'an:

Hamas and other Palestinian factions should be removed from international lists of designated terrorist groups, Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh said Sunday.

"It is time to remove Palestinian resistance movements, that resist under international law, from the list of international terrorist groups," Haniyeh said during a meeting with a European delegation of politicians, academics and lawmakers.

"Hamas and other Palestinian factions are national liberation movements operating inside Palestine."

Besides the fact that Hamas brags about shooting rockets indiscriminately towards Israeli civilians, which is the very definition of terror, its Al Qassam Brigades website routinely praises past terrorists on their homepage.

Today, they are praising the terror attack in the village of Adora, on April 27, 2002. As described by the Jewish Virtual Library:

Apr 27, 2002 - Danielle Shefi, 5; Arik Becker, 22; Katrina (Katya) Greenberg, 45; and Ya'acov Katz, 51, all of Adora, were killed when terrorists dressed in IDF uniforms and combat gear cut through the settlement's defensive perimeter fence and entered Adora, west of Hebron. Seven other people were injured, one seriously. The terrorists entered several homes, firing on people in their bedrooms. Both Hamas and the PFLP claimed responsibility for the attack.

But they speak so moderately when they are speaking to Westerners! Shouldn't we reward them for their wonderful, soothing words?

Sunday linkdump

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Legal Implication of the United Nations Resolution on Palestine

"Nor was this Resolution a recognition of the two-state solution, since a considerable number of states who voted for it have refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. What they were looking for was a one state resolution—that one state being yet another Islamic country that voted for Hamas in the last election and that is likely to be governed by Sharia Law that will not allow Jews or Christians equal rights."

Expert: Israel Should Let the PA Collapse

Prof.Efraim Inbar says Israel should not be responsible for PA, particularly after their UN move. And perhaps it should leave that body.
"If I understand what you’re saying, you are supporting the remarks of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, that the Israeli response to the Palestinian move at the UN should be the collapse of Abbas’s rule.
"We do not need to help him. That's all. He will fall apart on his own. We should not help our enemies."Meanwhile, we do exactly the opposite.
"Yes. We give him money, safeguard him from Hamas, and what does he give in return? We need to change our mindset. And if the world wants to send them money for them to waste on Abbas’s sons, in order to make them wealthier, let it go ahead…”

Analysis: Merkel’s flip-flop on Israel

Despite her government’s vote against an PLO upgrade at the UNESCO in Paris last year, she chose to abstain at the UN.
"From Israel’s perspective, Merkel’s stances on PLO statehood measures, which seek to bypass direct negotiations with Israel, along with her wobbly positions in UN international forums and when handling party deputies in the Bundestag that bash Israel, have represented a marked lack of consistency."

Wall Street Journal News Page Pushes Pro-Palestinian Narrative

"And here’s the subtle way the Journal backs the Palestinian narrative. The Palestinians have convinced the world that Hamas and the PA are mortal enemies. Thus, the Journal reports breathlessly that there was “a groundswell of support for the Palestinian Authority and its U.N. upgrade gained ground because the recent eight-day war in Gaza politically strengthened Hamas at the expense of the more pro-Western Palestinian Authority.”
This, of course, is ridiculous. Hamas and the PA have the same agenda: destroying Israel. Hamas plays bad cop while the PA plays good cop. But lest anyone forget, the terrorists who were suicide bombers for years came from the PA, not Hamas."

Western Media Ignore Terrorists Using Journalists as Human Shields

"These questions are important, and every western news outlet should be forced to answer to them. Why do western journalists feel it's perfectly OK for terrorists to pretend they are journalists and endanger them all by hiding amongst them?"
"But, I guess when the western media sees nothing wrong with using propaganda videos, presenting them as real news, perhaps that answers our question. Western journalists apparently care less about their craft than they do about choosing sides and throwing in with terrorists."

Christiane Amanpour to Host Series on History of Israel

"In an affront to religious Jews and religious Christians everywhere, ABC News has chosen vehemently anti-Israel and anti-Christian journalist Christiane Amanpour to host a two-part primetime special about the history of the land of Israel that will air December 21 and 28. According to ABC, “Back to the Beginning” will feature Amanpour, who will “explore the powerful stories from Genesis to the Birth of Jesus.”

CIF Watch: An update on Chris McGreal and that Gaza “sports stadium”

"Evidently, McGreal’s ‘Just War Theory’ would require that the IDF avoid targeting an enemy rocket launching site which has been used to attack Israeli civilians until the exact moment when another rocket is being fired from the location – not a second before and not a second after.
Chris McGreal’s rhetorical obfuscations in service of a desired narrative are truly works of beauty."

Muslim Brotherhood 'paying gangs to go out and rape women and beat men protesting in Egypt'

If Iran tries to attack, Israel will reportedly target its missiles before they get off the ground
With the help of the US-made X-band radar, Eitan drones stationed in Azerbaijan will attempt to hit the missiles ‘the moment their engines are ignited,’ Sunday Times reports
[That Sunday Times reporter has a less than stellar record on accuracy - EoZ]

Iran stations defense staff at N. Korea site
Japanese news agency: Iran stationed staff in N. Korea in an effort to strengthen cooperation in missile, nuclear development.

Turkey Importing Oil from Iran
The latest trade data quoted by Iranian news media indicates Turkey imported more than 75,000 barrels of oil daily in October from Iran.

Senate votes to tighten sanctions on Iran
Ignoring White House opposition spelled out just hours earlier, US Senate votes 94-0 for package of punitive measures that will end sales, transactions with various Iranian domestic industries

Thousands of miles from Iran, and still in danger
Since fleeing for Europe, poet and professor Afshin Ellian has become a staunch critic of the Muslim world — which he says should emulate Israel

"Among his many talents, Afshin Ellian has a knack for making people want to kill him.
It’s a trait he demonstrated as a fugitive in his native Iran after the Islamic Revolution; then as a refugee in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he angered secular Stalinists; and finally in Holland, where he lives under 24-hour police protection because of his criticisms of Islam."

The Argentinian and Iranian tango
One can’t help but ask why, after 18 years of mishandled investigations, corruption charges and coverups, talks on the 1994 Buenos Aires terror attack are taking place now.

Bahrain: MP torches Israeli flag in parliament
"... even though he could have burned the place down, not enough lawmakers could be persuaded to vote for punitive action against him -- apparently their Islamic Jew-hatred outweighed their concern for safety."

At Harvard, ‘Jews need not apply’
Students receive offensive invitation to join ‘The Pigeon, Harvard’s Newest Finals Club’

“Even if intended as satirical in nature, they are hurtful and offensive to many students, faculty and staff, and do not demonstrate the level of thoughtfulness and respect we expect at Harvard when engaging difficult issues within our community.”

‘My name is Jihad and I am a bomb’

"A French woman is slated to face charges of “apologie de crime,” which can be translated as advocating violence, after sending her 3-year-old son, Jihad, to kindergarten dressed in a T-shirt bearing the inscriptions “I am a bomb” on the front and “Jihad. Born September 11″ on the back."

Not the Typical IDF Soldier’s Mom: Muslim Arab Mother Whose Son Serves in the IDF Speaks Out

During Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense, Haskia did not just sit worrying over what may happen to her son—the proud mom did her share to help Israel as well. “Over 12 years, Hamas has been firing rockets at Israeli civilians and all you see are photos of Gaza in the media. Some of those photos are fakes,” Haskia pointed out.

Students help Jews who came from Arab countries document their stories

"High school students from northern Israel take part in the "Tell Your Children" project which records the stories of veteran olim in Israel who immigrated from Arab countries • Project to be displayed in special event in 2013, marking the 60th anniversary of Migdal Haemek."

Also:

The legal impossibility of limited Palestinian statehood at the U.N. (WaPo)

CAMERA: E-1 Contiguity Fallacy Returns

Also CAMERA: West Bank and Gaza Residents Experience Among the Longest Life Spans in the Middle East

Houthi logo says "Damn the Jews"

A reporter for a Yemen newspaper notes that he saw dozens of spray-painted slogans in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, saying "God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews, Power to Islam," indicating the growing Houthi influence there. One example:

It turns out that this is the actual Houthi logo, as noted by Wikipedia:

Yes, the Shi'ite opposition in Yemen makes anti-semitism an official part of its platform.

Must be the occupation.

Israeli science innovation linkdump

From NoCamels:

The Singapore-Israel Industrial R&D Foundation (SIIRD) has approved a grant of NIS 640,000 (about $165,000) for the development of a tablet application which will help autistic children deal with everyday tasks.

The joint project is being developed by the Center for Educational Technology (CET) on the Israeli side, and by Singaporean organization Dynamics Speech, which specializes in therapy for children with communication difficulties and in finding technological solutions for them

Using the power of the sun and ultrathin films of iron oxide (commonly known as rust), researchers at the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, have found a novel way to split water molecules to hydrogen and oxygen. The breakthrough, published this week in the scientific journal Nature Materials, could lead to less expensive, more efficient ways to store solar energy in the form of hydrogen-based fuels. This could be a major step forward in the development of viable replacements for fossil fuels.

Six Israeli teenagers won a $5,000 prize at an international competition at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) last summer for their FreezeStick invention, designed to keep food and medicine in a cooler at the right temperature for an extended period. The Israelis beat out 250 other teams at the event.

(They are better scientists than they are actors.)

A seven-year-old girl with aplastic anemia, a 54-year-old woman with lymphoma and a 45-year-old man with acute myeloid leukemia all walked out the doors of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center in the past several months after receiving an experimental treatment with an Israeli placenta-based cell therapy to beef up their bone marrow.

Nearly a century ago Jewish chemist Chaim Weizmann invented a method of producing acetone for explosives – helping the British army with its WWI efforts. The British went on to win the great war alongside their allies and Weizmann moved to Israel to become the first president of the independent Jewish state.

Now, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have found a way to utilize the same formula in order to generate a “greener” version of diesel fuel made from plants.

Damaged spinal discs cause a great deal of trouble for people with chronic back problems, and a burden on the economy due to absenteeism from work and financial costs of treatment.

But some scientists are trying to find ways to alleviate the problem of damaged discs. Dr. Sarit Sivan of the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology’s biomedical faculty is one of the three winners of the European Commission’s new Marie Curie Prize for outstanding achievement in spinal disc research, announced at a ceremony in Nicosia, Cyprus. She won the prize in the “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” category.

Recent research by Ben Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel has revealed that extracts from the yellow water-lily’s roots and leaves show promising results in improving chemotherapy treatment for cancer. The yellow water-lily (nuphar lutea) is a plant that can be found on the Yarkon stream and other water reservoirs in Israel’s Galilee.

Israeli Arab students in Jordan become more - Zionist!

A very interesting article in The Forward:

At first, the young man’s story sounds familiar: Tall, green-eyed, he walks the corridors of his university and his peers often shout at him, “Jew, go back to where you came from!” But we are not in Eastern Europe in 1881, and the student, Mohand, is not Jewish — he is an Arab Israeli studying in Jordan. His story is not exceptional. Although most, if not all, Arab Israelis in the country face some sort of hostility because of their nationality, the reaction of students like Mohand is unexpected: “Coming to Jordan” he told me, “not only did I not embrace the anti-Israeli attitude people freely express here, but being here actually strengthens my pride of being Israeli.” Yet the reality Mohand reveals is more complex than this one sentence might convey.

In recent years, Jordan has become a magnet for Arab Israelis who want to study abroad. This past decade, their number has quadrupled to more than 6,000. The students I spoke with testify that being in Jordan has helped shape their identity — strengthening its Israeli component. Here they acquire a new and more complex perspective on life in the Arab world. Whether at the university or on the street, they often face hostility that isolates them. Comparing their lives in Israel with their lives in Jordan, they suddenly feel more connected to the land lying west of the Jordan River than they did before.

“The first difficulty we come across,” said Saleh Ghanem, a round-faced and kind-looking student from a village near Akko, “is when presenting ourselves. One must not say ‘Israel’ here,” he explained. When asked, he answered that he is a “48er,” a neutral term meaning that his family was in Israeli territory since its beginning and that his family members are citizens.

“Once, while riding in a cab,” he continued, “I mentioned Tel Aviv by mistake. The driver, who overheard me, started screaming, telling me never to say Tel Aviv, only Yaffo.” But even when presenting themselves as 48ers they do not feel accepted, and it is difficult for them to blend in with the Jordanians of Palestinian descent, who make up the majority of Amman’s population.

As a response, they create their own exclusive culture. They live, party, eat and study almost entirely with other Arab Israelis; very few of them mingle with students from other Arab countries. In Ghanem’s building, for instance, almost all the apartments are occupied by students from Sakhnin, Haifa or Nazareth.

Mohand tried to explain the cultural barrier between Israelis and Arabs: “On many levels we are much alike; at the same, time their way of thinking is almost foreign to us.” When asked to articulate this difference, however, he struggled with his words, admitting, “I do not have Jordanian friends. They are not as free as we are.”

“Freedom” is a leitmotif in conversations with Arab Israelis here; many of them mention it as the reason for preferring Israel to Jordan. Although relatively modern, life in the Jordanian monarchy requires one to be careful; one can get arrested for using the king’s name in an offensive way. Coming from a country in which it is more common to criticize the government than to talk about the weather, they feel oppressed. But these Arab Israelis outsmart the system: They use Hebrew words that no one else understands, or code names; the king, for instance, they call “Tamer,” a common name for a male. Why Tamer? If there was ever a reason it was long forgotten.

Universities in Jordan are appreciated in the Arab and Muslim world and draw students from Bahrain to Pakistan. For Yusuf, a Christian dentistry student from Nazareth, meeting people from all over the Arab world is the most interesting part of living here. “Did that strengthen your sense of belonging to the larger Arab world?” I asked him. “No,” he answered firmly. “If anything, it shows me how distant we are.”

The rejection and isolation that 48ers feel, and their comparison of Jordan with Israel, leads them to feel more Israeli, but it also helps them shape their unique Arab-Israeli identity. In Israel they all come from different places, south and north. Some are Christian, some are Muslim. These differences, important in Israel, are much less significant here: They have an opportunity to make region- and religion-crossing friendships.

(h/t Ishai)

Today's fake PCHR "civilian"

From PCHR:

At approximately 21:00 [November 16], an Israeli warplane attacked a motorcycle on which Khaled Khalil Ali al-Shaer, 25, was traveling near Saladin Street. He was killed and 2 persons were wounded.

Once again, PCHR does not identify the casualty as a "militant" as they do with some of the others. Meaning that they counted him as one of the supposed "civilians" killed in Gaza.

And once again, they are lying.

The Al Qassam Brigades website notes that Shaer joined Hamas in high school and joined the Qassam Brigades in 2006, where he was a camp leader. He also attended the "Abu Bara Military Academy" of the Qassam Brigades, taking several military courses. He also fought during Cast Lead.