Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

August 1948: The Arab League starts to slide into Islamism

I just found this fascinating article from the Palestine Post, August 22, 1948:

Robert Martin, who had been in the Arab States since the outbreak of the Palestine war, went to Cyprus to file dispatches on the situation which the Syrian military censors refused to pass for transmission.

He summarizes his impressions as follows:

A tragically unexpected and potentially dangerous result of the conflict in Palestine is the increasing trend among the Arabs toward meek acceptance of nationalistic, totalitarian governments.

The Arab League was formed in 1945 to protect the independence of all Arab countries...But critics of the League believe that it is tending to become Islamic rather than Arabic.

One minor point of evidence is that the former Lebanese Foreign Minister, Kamid Frangieh, a Maronite, had never been permitted to attend a League meeting. When the League's Military Committee assembles, the Lebanese Chief of Staff, Gen. Fuad Shehab, a Christian, is barred, and his place is filled by a Moslem officer of inferior rank.

Other critics believe that the League ismoving away from its former professed ideal of promoting regional unity and democracy, and has become fundamentally a bulwark against the West. If true, the League will become the spokesman of reaction rather than of progress.

In the eyes of some Arabs, the chief offenders are the youth groups, especially the Young Men's Moslem Association and the Moslem Brotherhood, whose leaders are in part graduates of Al Azhar University. Under their guidance, Islam is tending to become more and more a retreat into the past, breaking away from everything that is Western and progressive. They preach Moslem orthodoxy, and in their minds religion and politics are inextricably entwined. They have progressed beyond the mere acceptance of the constitutional provision that "the religion of the state is Islam" and now look to the State to bar all outside thought or culture.

Self--centered and feudalistic, this concept of Islam inevitably denies the oppressed people in the Arab States any improvement in their status. For these interpreters of the revived Islam are linked up with their landlords, who are the keystones in the feudalistic family, tribal and social system.

Martin's major mistake, of course, was to attribute this pivot towards Islamism as being a reaction to Israel. (Linkage has been around a long time!) After all, even he admits that the banning of Christians from meetings was happening from the beginning of the League, and the League's apparent first decision was to boycott Jewish products - not Zionist, but Jewish - back in 1945.

Even so, his description of radical Islam of 1948 is remarkably similar to what we are seeing in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world 65 years later.

8/21 Links Part 1: MB Creed - "Begin on Saturday, Finish on Sunday", Large Chemical Attack in Syria

From Ian:

"Begin on Saturday, Finish on Sunday"

The Islamists have now started on Sunday: the Christians are in their crosshairs, and when they have finished, the Islamists will return to Saturday and destroy the Jews. The Zionists in Israel understand the threats of radical Islam and its intentions for their country far better than the U.S. administration will ever be able to. The Jews do not fear to show their determination and willingness to fight a life-and-death battle for their continued existence; it is that determination which has made the Islamists avoid confronting them for the present and target the Christians instead.
What is unreal are the dictates America imposes on Israel, including the demand to release convicted murderers from jail and to reach an agreement with Mahmoud Abbas, who does not have the support of the Palestinian people. This approach will lead to a Hamas takeover of the West Bank and most likely then of Jordan; and it will destroy what is left of the Christian community in Bethlehem and east Jerusalem, whose members after the Oslo Accords and the withdrawal of Israel from the territories, were killed, raped and threatened into fleeing their homes.

Peace through martyrdom: Muslim Brotherhood leader poses as a liberal at ‘Comment is Free’

Whilst Muslim Brotherhood-led attacks on Egypt’s Christians, and the burning of churches, since the July coup alone makes a mockery of such claims, it’s interesting to note that back in 2010, as one of two members of Egypt’s delegation to the Gaza flotilla, Al-Baltaji was singing a different tune concerning peace, justice and the dignity of man.
Per MEMRI: "Al-Baltaji…said at a March 2010 conference, “A nation that excels at dying will be blessed by Allah with a life of dignity and with eternal paradise.” He also said that his movement “will never recognize Israel and will never abandon the resistance,” and that “resistance is the only road map that can save Jerusalem, restore the Arab honor, and prevent Palestine from becoming a second Andalusia."

MEMRI: Saudi Author: The Arabs Were Occupiers in Andalusia; We Should Reexamine our History Books

Al Jazeera America’s First Guest: Conspiracy Theorist Stephen Walt

Walt rose to prominence as co-author of a conspiracy book about Jewish manipulation of American foreign policy and has been referred to by prominent liberal journalist Jeffrey Goldberg as someone who “makes his living scapegoating Jews.”
AJA has boasted of the additional airtime it will provide guests such as Mr. Walt — AJA will not be “cluttering the news with commercials,” said one executive — so that they may explore current events in a nuanced, balanced fashion.
Walt concluded his interview by noting that the only reason the United States provides aid money to Egypt is to placate the Jewish state.

Al-Arabiya General Manager Slams Qatar For Its Pro-Mursi Position

In an August 18 article titled "Why Is The Gulf Divided Over Egypt?," 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, the general manager of Al-Arabiya TV and a columnist for the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, attacks Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which, he says, is pushing this country towards chaos and conflict. He points out that, in taking this position, Qatar has come out against all the other Gulf states – namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait – who realize that the Muslim Brotherhood poses a danger to Egypt and to the region at large.

Israel Security Official Meets Egyptian Counterparts in Cairo as Shin Bet Counts 15 Sinai Terror Groups, 4 Violent

Tuesday’s meeting reflects the deepening collaboration between the two security forces over common trouble in the Sinai, where Israel’s Shin Bet security service now counts 15 Salafist terror groups operating from the desert, with four seen as being especially violent, Israel’s Haaretz daily reported, citing unnamed sources at the security agency.

Court orders Mubarak freed

An Egyptian court ordered Wednesday the release of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, but it is not yet clear if the ailing ex-leader will walk free after over two years in detention, officials said.

U.S. Denies Aid to Egypt Was Cut Off

President Barack Obama is expected to hold a Cabinet-level meeting to discuss the issue, according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
"That review has not concluded and ... published reports to the contrary that assistance to Egypt has been cut off are not accurate," Earnest told reporters in a briefing.

Egypt PM says country can live without US aid

If the US does cut the $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt, the country could find other supporters, but it would be “a bad sign and will badly affect the military for some time,” Beblawi said, noting that in the past “Egypt went with the Russian military for support and we survived. So, there is no end to life. You can live with different circumstances.”

Saudis Warn the West: We Won’t Forget Your Stance on Egypt

In a blunt warning to countries critical of the Egyptian military crackdown and considering suspending aid, longstanding U.S. ally Saudi Arabia suggested that the decisions they make now will have long-term consequences for their relationships in the Arab and Muslim world.
Saudi Arabia has led the way in supporting the Egyptian military’s actions, first in removing the Muslim Brotherhood administration early last month and in its subsequent steps against supporters of the ousted Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi.

Top Brotherhood officials nabbed in continuing crackdown

The arrested Islamists include a preacher known for his fiery sermons at Muslim Brotherhood gatherings who was reportedly caught as he tried to flee to neighboring Libya in disguise, and a spokesman for Brotherhood said to be on his way to catch a flight out of the country.

Cairo’s Jews support military’s campaign

Haroun, the president of the Egyptian Jewish community, doesn’t enjoy hearing anti-Semitic slurs on the street. She gets nervous when she hears Egyptians are burning the churches of Coptic Christians, a much larger religious minority than the country’s tiny Jewish community. She assumes that most of her compatriots have forgotten there are any Jews left in Egypt.

Egyptian Catholic Church Leader Says Country in a ‘War Against Terrorism’

The ongoing turmoil in Egypt “is not a political struggle, but a war against terrorism,” the head of the Catholic Church in Egypt, Bishop Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak, Patriarch of Alexandria, said in a recent statement.
“With pain, but also with hope, the Catholic Church in Egypt is following what our country is experiencing: terrorist attacks, killings and the burning of churches, schools and state institutions,” Bishop Sidrak said.

PA nabs man for selling ‘Morsi perfume’

Bdair’s brother, Abdel Fattah, said that the security agents stormed the family’s shop in Tulkarem and confiscated all the Morsi perfume bottles, in addition to a computer. The shop specializes in selling locally made fragrances for men and women.
The PA leadership in the West Bank has come out in full support of the ouster of Morsi, hailing the Egyptian army for its crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters

Egypt: We're Losing Patience with Turkey

Egypt warned Turkey on Tuesday that it was losing its patience, after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of being behind the removal of former President Mohammed Morsi by the Egyptian military.
The state news agency MENA quoted Egyptian ministers as having said that Erdogan's comments aimed to divide Egyptians.
"The cabinet stresses that Egypt's patience is wearing thin," the ministers were quoted as having said.
"Egypt does not share others' enmities, and is not about to go in search of a new identity. Its Arab and Islamic nature is obvious," they added.

U.S. Slams Erdogan's Allegations of Israel's Role Ousting Morsi

White House spokesman Josh Earnest also condemned Erdogan by saying the comments were "offensive and unsubstantiated and wrong."

Liberman says Turkish PM is successor to Nazi Goebbels

“Anyone who heard Erdogan’s words, which were full of hate and incitement, understands without any doubt that we are talking about the successor to Goebbels, and his plotting is in the same vein as the Dreyfus trial and the Elders of Zion,” Liberman said Wednesday, referring to two notorious instances of anti-Semitism.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Slams Hezbollah’s Nasrallah for Supporting ‘Murderous Campaign Against the Syrian People’

“After years of stifling repression and brutal oppression, the people of the Middle East said enough is enough. Millions have poured into the streets from Benghazi to Beirut and from Tehran to Tunis. They have raised their voices for liberty, for democracy, and for opportunity,” Ambassador Prosor said. “By far, the worst instance has been Bashar al-Assad’s murderous campaign against the Syrian people.”

Top Hezbollah Official: Israeli Cities to Be Attacked with Tens of Thousands of Missiles

Senior Hezbollah member Nabil Qaouk bragged today that the Iran-backed terror group is capable of saturation bombing Israeli population centers, bragging that Israeli cities were being targeted with tens of thousands of missiles.

Rebel forces report massive death toll after Syrian chemical attack

Syrian activists close to the country’s opposition claimed hundreds of people were killed in a devastating “poison gas” attack by regime forces outside Damascus Wednesday.
The attack came as UN chemical weapons inspectors were beginning a probe of chemical weapon use in sites around Syria.
There were several differing reports on the numbers of dead. A Free Syrian Army source told Al Arabiya the death toll stood at 1,188, while the Local Coordination Committees said some 785 people were killed. A nurse at an emergency clinic in Douma told Reuters the death toll was at 213, and the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 40 were confirmed dead and the death toll could reach over 200.

Syrian Palestinians pack Lebanon refugee camp

The Palestinians are a minority among the more than 600,000 Syrian refugees who have come to Lebanon. But their stateless status as lifelong refugees now forced to flee relatively secure lives in Syria has complicated the regional humanitarian crisis. The vast majority were born in Syria, descendants of parents and grandparents who left ancestral homes in what is now Israel.
Soon after arriving here, Rania and her family were joined by Rania's sister Riham and her husband, Ammar, who abandoned his lingerie shop on Damascus' Hamra Street.
While camp residents, including several relatives, have been welcoming, the Syrian Palestinians say the garbage-strewn squalor of this and other Palestinian camps in Lebanon has stunned them.

Hamas says Gaza is a "prison" - and it aims to keep it that way

Hamas minister Ghazi Hammad said that the continued closing of the Rafah crossing has converted Gaza into "a big prison."

One suggestion that had been made to help out at Rafah was to let the PA take over the crossing, as it did before the Hamas coup in Gaza, and according to existing agreements between Israel, the PA and the EU who had observers at the crossing. There were even rumors that an agreement had been reached. But Hamas rejected the idea, saying that this would put Israel in control of the crossing, which is unacceptable.

There was another report that the PA and Israel agreed to further open up the Erez crossing for Gazans who have a good reason to leave; they would be bused to Jericho and from there travel to Jordan and anywhere else in the world they need to go. (This might be an alternative for this Minnesota family stranded in Gaza.)

But Hamas rejected that as well:

The Hamas government in Gaza on Wednesday voiced its rejection to use the Erez crossing with Israel as an alternative to the Rafah terminal with Egypt after the latter was shut down following a deadly attack.

"The Palestinians can never accept the Erez crossing, which is under Israel's security control, as an alternative to the Rafah crossing," Ghazi Hammad, Hamas deputy foreign minister told a news conference in Gaza.

So Hamas is complaining that Gaza is a prison, but anything that might actually help Gazans escape the "prison" is unacceptable to Hamas.

If Gaza is a prison, then Hamas is the warden.

Arab media across the board falsely saying a Jew tried to burn Al Aqsa in 1969

Wikipedia summarizes the incident:

Denis Michael Rohan (born 1 July 1941 - died 1995) was an Australian citizen who gained worldwide infamy on 21 August 1969, when he attempted to set fire to the Al-Aqsa mosque, located atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Rohan was arrested for the arson attack on 23 August 1969. He was tried, found to be insane, and hospitalized in a mental institution. On 14 May 1974, he was later deported from Israel "on humanitarian grounds, for further psychiatric treatment near his family". He was subsequently transferred to the Callan Park Hospital in Australia. In 1995, he was reported to have died under psychiatric care.

Rohan, a Christian, stated that he considered himself "the Lord's emissary" and that he tried to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque acting upon divine instructions to enable the Jews of Israel to rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount in accordance with the Book of Zechariah, thereby hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Today is the 44th anniversary of that event, and practically every single Arab media outlet is claiming that the arsonist was Jewish.

Of course sites that are filled with overt antisemitism, like Al Watan Voice, claim Rohan was Jewish. But Ma'an News - which pretends to hold to Western journalistic standards - says Rohan was a "Jewish extremist" (in Arabic.) Jordan's Al Ghad says he was Jewish.

Ma'an separately reports that the head of the Muslim-Christian Association in Jerusalem commemorated the anniversary and also said Rohan was Jewish.

The official Palestinian Arab news agency Wafa also claims Rohan was Jewish. As does, naturally, Hamas' Felesteen newspaper.

Respected pan-Arab Al Arabiya claims Rohan was a "Jewish extremist" as well.

Hezbollah's Al Manar is slightly more careful, calling Rohan "Zionist." And Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today - one of the better Arabic sources of news, believe it or not - calls him an "Israeli extremist."

There are literally hundreds of articles in the Arabic media today making the claim that Rohan was Jewish (or Israeli.)

This is only a small indication that Arab media has no compunction about lying. This is something Westerners find hard to believe, but it is true, and it is something they need to understand. There are no consequences for the Arab media lying; no shame in it, no watchdog organizations in the Arab world that tries to correct errors and lies. The falsehoods are endemic.

Interestingly, I did a similar survey of Arabic media in 2007 on this anniversary. At the time, while some said he was Jewish, many only implied it, while others claimed Israel itself was behind the bombing.

Waters recently released another anti-Israel screed pleading with his fellow LSD-addled rock star friends to boycott Israel.

Bubala Please - Shabbat (Video)

Definitely one of the better episodes of this web series (NSFW for language, and its halacha leaves a bit to be desired...)

8/20 Links Part 2: The Rot of Return, Why They Hate Israel and America, A Black Stain on Whitehall

From Ian:

The Rot of Return

If you’re looking for intelligent discourse on the matter, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Reporter Ben Lynfield plugs maximalist Palestinian demands that are rotten to the core. This Monitor dispatch is a real disservice, for several reasons.
First of all, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there’s no legal basis for the so-called “right” of return.
Secondly, any responsible article about the “right” of return has to explain its consequences for Israel, not just bury a brief Mark Regev reaction at the bottom of the story. If the more than one million registered Palestinian refugees flooded what is today the state of Israel, it would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

‘World mum on PA incitement but slams Israel on construction’

“When Israel builds in areas which everyone understands will remain part of Israel in a final-status agreement, this is somehow perceived as a problem for peace. When Palestinians indoctrinate their people with hatred for Israel, and thereby directly undermine reconciliation, this is ignored.
“What is required of leadership at this time is to prepare the public for respect and reconciliation. But what we are seeing from the Palestinians is the opposite: continued demonization, stress on maximalist goals and that Israel is an illegitimate creation that will eventually disappear.”

In classified cyberwar against Iran, trail of Stuxnet leak leads to White House

The Obama administration provided a New York Times reporter exclusive access to a range of high-level national security officials for a book that divulged highly classified information on a U.S. cyberwar on Iran’s nuclear program, internal State Department emails show.
The information in the 2012 book by chief Washington correspondent David E. Sanger has been the subject of a yearlong Justice Department criminal investigation: The FBI is hunting for those who leaked details to Mr. Sanger about a U.S.-Israeli covert cyberoperation to infect Iran’s nuclear facilities with a debilitating computer worm known as Stuxnet.

Shmuley Boteach: Why They Hate Israel and America

It’s not that imams are preaching violence, although many unfortunately do. It’s rather that they preach victimhood. America is to blame for their problems. Israel is to blame for their suffering.
Where are the Islamic leaders and clerics who are prepared to say, “We are responsible for our own problems. We are taking a great world religion and turning it insular and away from secular knowledge rather than finding the balance between the holy and the mundane. We are not empowering women to be the equals of men in all spheres.”
“We Palestinians took the largest per capita foreign aid ever given to a people and we allowed corruption and hatred of Israel to squander the funds on bombs and bullets rather than building universities and schools. We elect leaders democratically who then, like Hamas, or Muhammad Morsi, precede to dismantle democratic institutions. We see the Jews as our enemies rather than using them as an example of what we ourselves should aspire to. They returned to their land after long ago being dispersed by foreign European powers and made the desert bloom. We can surely do the same.”

Black stain on Whitehall

While British Prime Minister David Cameron publicly calls the UK a 'strong friend of Israel' and bilateral ties in trade and technology are on the rise, diplomatic and the political relationships can be more strained.
This all comes down to one thing: the deeply entrenched scepticism that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) displays towards Israel. Israeli settlement activity has been singled out as the cause of aggression by some, but it is really only one small part of a wider problem that the FCO appears to have with Israel.

Guardian staffer ponders the “Evil Trinity” of Zionists, Neo-cons and Wahabists.

An Aug. 18 Guardian report titled ‘US has lost all credibility in the Middle East, says John McCain‘, elicited 156 reader comments, including one which noted the “sharp divide” in the U.S. between pragmatists and extremists – the latter consisting of the “Evil Trinity” of “the neocon-military-corporate complex in alliance with Saudi Wahhabism and Israeli Zionism.”
Not only was the comment not deleted by moderators but, as you can see by the orange icon on the right side of the graphic, it was actually recommended by the Guardian staff.

Indy’s Matt Hill engages in cynical smear about Netanyahu and the Rabin murder

Before even fisking Moreh’s accusation, it should be noted that Hill’s claim that Bibi “helped lead the incitement against Yitzhak Rabin” is evidently based solely on one opinion by one film director that “Netanyahu made a speech in which [a couple of] protesters carried a coffin [of Rabin]“. That’s it – one protest against the Oslo Peace Process in which a protester allegedly incited against the Prime Minister.
However, even this claim has been completely deconstructed by, among others, the popular blogger Elder of Ziyon. Here are the main points:

BBC’s Marcus invents a “cloudy understanding” about Israeli building

The notion that sectarian violence in Iraq (which last month saw the highest death toll since 2008) is in any way influenced by progress – or lack of it – in peace talks between Israel and Palestinian representatives is of course absurd. The idea that Bashar al Assad will retire to write his memoirs and play golf, that strife in Egypt will be eased or that Iran will stop persecuting Bahais if only Livni and Erekat manage to sign a piece of paper is downright comic. Western diplomats – perhaps hampered by the culturally dependent notion that if there is a problem, it must have a doable solution: a premise which does not always work in the Middle East – may indeed “believe” such fairy tales, but that is no reason to promote them to the BBC’s audiences.

Roger Waters: "One Baroness Deech, (Nee Fraenkel) disputed the fact that Israel is an apartheid state ..."

The incorrigible Roger Waters [formerly] of the rock group Pink Floyd, seemingly needs no excuse to deride and demonise Israel.
But famous British violinist Nigel Kennedy's remarks at the Proms (described below) have been characterised by Waters as the "inspiration" for issuing a new open letter denouncing Israeli "apartheid" and calling on fellow musicians to boycott Israel (see here for details).
Note, in this extract, the reference to pro-Israel Baroness Deech's maiden name, just in case her Jewishness might not be at once apparent (incidentally, this distinguished lady's father, Josef Fraenkel, was a renowned Yiddishist and co author of Theodor Herzl, which appeared in 1943):

Israel Second Quarter Economic Growth Exceeds Expectations

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) announced that the Israeli economy grew at an annual rate of 5.1 percent in the second fiscal quarter of 2013, beating economists’ expectations.
Economists had projected 3-percent growth in the second quarter for Israel. This compares with just 2.7-percent growth in the first quarter and 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 for the Israeli economy.

Israel Puts Focus on Latin American Trade

The new effort to increase Latin American trading, particularly with Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, will compliment Netanyahu’s simultaneous effort to increase economic ties with China and other East Asian countries. These four Latin American countries formed the free-trade Pacific Alliance last year and account for about 36 percent of the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP). They all trade significantly with North America.
Currently in Latin America, Brazil is Israel’s main trading partner, taking in Israeli exports at about $1.1 billion per year and importing to Israel at about $400 million per year. In June, Israeli President Shimon Peres signed a free-trade agreement with Colombia.

Evogene reports success in banana disease field trial

Plant genome company Evogene Ltd. (TASE:EVGN) and banana biotechnology company Rahan Meristem (1998) Ltd. have successfully field tested banana varieties that are resistant tolerance to Black Sigatoka (also known as Black Leaf Streak Disease), the most damaging disease threatening commercial banana plantations.
Current methods to control Black Sigatoka include the use of fungicides, which can account for 30% of a grower’s production cost and adds 15-20% to bananas' retail price. In addition to this substantial cost, frequent use of fungicides has significant adverse environmental and health effects.

Elfi-Tech selected as finalist in $2.25m Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE

Israeli medical device startup Elfi-Tech has been chosen as one of 12 finalists in the $2.25 million Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE, a global competition aimed at revolutionizing digital healthcare. The contest is comprised of two competitions that are designed to accelerate the development of sensing technologies that capture meaningful data about a consumer’s health state, surrounding environment, and risk of developing a health condition.

Small, fast and not so demanding: breakthrough in memory technologies could bring faster computing, smaller memory devices and lower power consumption

Increasingly, memory devices are a bottleneck limiting performance. In order to achieve a substantial improvement in computation speed, scientists are racing to develop smaller and denser memory devices that operate with high speed and low power consumption.
Prof. Yossi Paltiel and research student Oren Ben-Dor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Harvey M. Krueger Family Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, together with researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, have developed a simple magnetization progress that, by eliminating the need for permanent magnets in memory devices, opens the door to many technological applications.

Israel’s dive heaven on the Red Sea

“People come from all over Europe, from the US and Canada, and a lot of South Americans,” Koretz tells ISRAEL21c. “Most have dived all over the world.”
Almost every Eilat beach has diving equipment for hire. After all, diving represents 10 percent of the tourism income in Israel’s southernmost city, according to the Ministry of Tourism.
The coral reefs just off the coast are among the most heavily used in the world for recreational diving, with 250,000 to 300,000 dives per year.

A walk through the Baha’i Gardens on Mount Carmel

It costs nothing to take a tour of the 19 perfectly manicured, terraced Baha’i Gardens covering the slope of Mount Carmel in Haifa.
Besides being a UN World Heritage Site that attracts 750,000 visitors each year, the gardens and fountains are part of the Baha’i World Center, a religious shrine for the followers of a faith that teaches beauty in diversity.
That clearly goes for plants as well as people. Catch a glimpse of some of the 450 plant species here.

Those oppressive checkpoints making Arab lives miserable - in Lebanon

From Now Lebanon:

Notwithstanding the dramatic Roueiss car bomb and the innocent victims it caused in Dahiyeh, what many Lebanese went through in the wake of the attacks on Thursday has caused much frustration. Convoys of cars going in and out of Dahiyeh waited for hours to pass through the many fixed and mobile roadblocks manned by Hezbollah.

Since the blast, Dahiyeh has come to resemble more of a military barracks. Some residents went as far as to dub it as a prison – where Hezbollah deployed its members – the majority of whom were young men barely beyond their teenage years. These members stopped cars and passerbys without any exception, searching each vehicle they regarded as suspicious and asking each driver for identification and the reasons for entering Dahiyeh.

Indeed, entering the Hezbollah-controlled Dahiyeh has become anything but an easy feat since Thursday’s attack. Employees, shop owners, and other citizens at large were impacted by the new roadblocks. Many individuals NOW spoke with were frustrated with the new security checkpoints in Dahiyeh even though they also appreciated that these measures would protect them from future attacks.

Ali H., a shop keeper in Dahiyeh, stressed the need for both Hezbollah and the Lebanese state to spare no effort in protecting residents from the threat of “terrorists and takfiris.” Ali insisted that protecting lives is more important than having roadblocks delay traffic for an hour or even less. He argued that some hope to provoke media clamor in order to use it against Hezbollah. However, Ali wishes that more advanced methods are adopted at the road blocks including the use of police dogs, which he says will alleviate the burden of these measures for the good of Dahiyeh’s residents and visitors.

At the same time, residents questioned the usefulness of such roadblocks given the operational methods of the youths manning each station. NOW saw no evidence of armed individuals at each of the checkpoints it passed, but it also saw that each officer donned Hezbollah’s yellow armband insignia.

While many argue that pre-emptive security measures are justified following the Bir al-Abed and Dahiyeh explosions, some politicians including MP Antoine Zahra say that only the Lebanese state and its security institutions should control the country’s checkpoints. “Auto-security [by Hezbollah] is the most dangerous phase a country could reach at the brink of collapse,” Zahra told the Orient radio station earlier today.

Other than Ali, the majority of Dahiyeh shop owners with who NOW spoke with complained about the security measures following Thursday’s blast. While most shopkeepers said they welcomed protection from future attacks or explosions, they also said they do not want Dahiyeh closed off from its own people. Many also complained that no clients visited their stores following the implementation of roadblocks, noting that many people visiting the Dahiyeh fear they will stand accused by entering it.

Another resident of Dahiyeh by the name of Ali G. told NOW that motorcycles had followed him and other residents around town – later requesting their names, where they came from, and where they were heading in Dahiyeh.

Walid Q., a resident of Dahiyeh, said that his car was searched and his seats were removed at one of Hezbollah’s roadblocks. Walid said that he was then forced to head to the nearest repair shop to have his car restored to its original state.

Can't wait for the UN and EU to condemn this use of roadblocks that is strangling the residents of the area.

Today, an Egyptian court may decide whether the country should continue to provide electricity to Gaza.

The First Circuit Court of Administrative Justice of the Egyptian State Council, headed by Judge Abdul Majid , will rule today on a lawsuit filed by lawyer Reza Albarakaoy, which called for a court ruling to stop the Egyptian export of electricity to the Gaza Strip.

The lawsuit says that Egypt exports electricity to the Gaza Strip at a time when the Egyptians suffer from outages of electricity themselves, and disregards the needs of the Egyptian people themselves.

The suit adds that the production of electricity in Egypt is very expensive because it uses large quantities of Egyptian natural gas in the process of producing electricity, which requires the need to provide electricity to the Egyptian people, and take advantage of it rather than exported to the outside and the people in greatest need, in short supply.

Egypt provides about 28 MW of electricity to Gaza. Israel provides about 125 MW.

According to the web page of the law firm bringing the lawsuit, they also sued to close all Gaza smuggling tunnels, to stop Al Jazeera from broadcasting in Egypt, and to stop the sale of land in the Sinai - out of fear that Palestinian Arabs might buy it and use it as an "alternative homeland."

Another lawsuit being brought demands the expulsion of the US ambassador to Egypt for "violating Egyptian sovereignty through the provision of the U.S. Embassy financial and political support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi groups."

8/20 Links Part 1: Obama Appeasement Will Result in Disaster, Ban's about-face on UN bias

From Ian:

Prosor: Israel Won't Stand By as Assad Fires Mortars

Prosor sent a letter of complaint to the Security Council after the latest incident on Saturday, when the Israeli army fired into Syria after shells from the neighboring country hit the Israeli side of the Golan Heights. The Israeli attack demolished a Syrian military position.
Israel, wrote Prosor in his letter, will not stand idly by while "Assad’s terrorist regime fires mortars at Israeli citizens."
Prosor stressed in the complaint the "blatant violation on Syria’s part of the disengagement agreement of 1974." He added, "Israel has sent repeated warnings and warned the Security Council that such provocations will not be accepted by Israel. It should not be expected Israel will stand by while the terrorist regime of Assad rains down mortar shells on Israeli citizens."

In reversal, Ban says Israel does not face bias at UN

On Friday, Ban told Israeli students in Jerusalem that Israel “has been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias — and sometimes even discrimination” at the UN.
But asked by a reporter at UN headquarters in New York on Monday if he believed “there was discrimination against Israel” and what he “intend[s] to do about it,” he said he did not believe there was discrimination, but also insisted Israel should not face bias at the organization.
“No, I don’t think there is discrimination against Israel at the United Nations,” Ban replied, according to an official UN transcript of the conversation.

Victory: Swiss parliament declares U.N. nomination of Jean Ziegler “inappropriate”

UN Watch applauded the Swiss parliament today for declaring the U.N. nomination of Jean Ziegler — co-founder, co-manager, and 2002 recipient of the Muammar Gaddafi Human Rights Prize — “inappropriate.”
The parliament called on Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter to cancel the nomination.

Samantha Power Blasts Re-election of Swiss Critic of Israel

Power took to Twitter to denounce Jean Ziegler, a former sociology professor and former Social Democrat member of the Swiss parliament, the report said.
“Indeed, Dr. Ziegler is unfit for continued service” at the UN Human Rights Council, Power wrote last week.
In her denunciation of Ziegler, she took on a 79-year-old fixture at the UN who has praised Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, while accusing Israel of human rights abuses.

Isi Leibler: Obama appeasement will result in disaster

As anticipated, the Arab Spring has devolved into a bloody nightmare that has engulfed Egypt, leaving Israel surrounded by a sea of violence and barbarism with no prospect of stability on the horizon.
Yet while hundreds of people are being brutally killed daily, the international community remains obsessed with condemning Israel for allowing the construction of homes in the Jewish suburbs of east Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, the disproportionate levels of energy and passion invested by US Secretary of State John Kerry and other Western leaders in the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio can only be described as surrealistic.

‘Back Egypt or risk peace talks,’ says Israeli official to US

The unnamed Israeli source spoke to the newspaper’s Middle East correspondent Charles Levinson, telling him that Washington must back the Egyptian military or ”good luck with your peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians,” — a conversation the reporter recounted on Wall Street Journal Live.
“The Israeli position Saudi and Egypt have historically and still today played very crucial roles in supporting negotiations, in giving the Palestinians the support they need to stay in negotiations, to make concessions,” Levinson said of the conversation.

US reportedly secretly suspends aid to Egypt

Washington has refrained from calling the July 3 ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi a coup but has nevertheless secretly decided to temporarily halt aid, without publicly announcing it.
“The decision was we’re going to avoid saying it was a coup, but to stay on the safe side of the law, we are going to act as if the designation has been made for now,” the Daily Beast quoted one administration official as saying. “By not announcing the decision, it gives the administration the flexibility to reverse it.”

Portrait of a Cairo Liberal as a Military Backer

In Cairo Friday morning, before the midday call to prayer and an afternoon of protest marches that resolved in violence, chaos, and the overnight siege of a mosque, I jumped into a taxi and slipped across the Nile into the quiet, semi-suburban neighborhood of Dokki. I was there to meet with Mohammed Aboul-Ghar, a seventy-three-year-old academic and politician who has been a leading figure in Egypt’s liberal establishment, and now represents one of the most confounding elements of the country’s current crisis: the wholesale alignment of old-guard liberals with the military.

Qatar’s Risky Overreach in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Beyond

Morsi came to power in a democratic election, but misinterpreted the meaning of democracy. He and his Muslim Brotherhood backers – primarily Qatar – appeared to believe that having won the election, they could run the country according to their decree, not according to democratic principles as the majority had expected. A series of draconian laws, a spiralling economic crisis, and a feeling on the Egyptian street that the Muslim Brotherhood was paid handsomely by foreign forces, spurred street protests of historic proportions, prompting the military to intervene.
With Morsi gone, Qatar suddenly became “persona non grata” in Egypt.
Qatar sought to extend its influence and Muslim Brotherhood-inspired view of how countries like Egypt, Syria, Libya, and others should be. Qatar was also playing a power-game against Saudi Arabia, another hugely wealthy regional power whose vision of an even more strictly Islamist way of life for Muslims drove a wedge between the two parties.

Muslim Brotherhood supreme leader detained

The arrest of Mohammed Badie marks a serious setback for the heart of the Islamist movement, which had risen to power after the fall of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, only to see its fortunes fall with the ouster of president Mohammed Morsi in early July.

Muslim Brotherhood memo blesses Egyptian church burnings

A memo posted on the Facebook page of a local office of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism shows a clear call to incitement against Egypt's Coptic Christian population, giving its blessing to the burning of churches.
Over 40 Coptic churches have been burned by Muslim Brotherhood supporters since the Egyptian police cleared demonstrators protesting the overthrow of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Tuesday. Brotherhood supporters also reportedly blocked the road between Cairo and Aswan in southern Egypt looking for Copts, taking seven Copts hostage Thursday. They were later released after a ransom of 150,000 Egyptian pounds, roughly $21,500, was paid.

Looters ransack Egyptian antiques museum and snatch priceless artefacts

According to a statement made by the Ministry of Antiquities, the museum, in the Upper Egyptian city of Minya, was allegedly broken into and some artifacts were damaged and stolen on Thursday evening.
The ministry’s official statement accused Muslim Brotherhood supporters of breaking into the museum.
It not yet clear what is missing - a list is being compiled to ensure the artefacts are not smuggled out the country.

MK Zoabi: Al-Sisi must be overthrown

Like rest of world, Arab Knesset members breathlessly follow events in Egypt, do not like what they see. ‘Muslim Brotherhood will not disappear," said MK Zahalka. ‘Blood on streets will be downfall of regime’

Photo of Friendly Embrace Between Senior Egyptian and Israeli Security Officials Sparks Online Furor

The photograph, first uploaded to Facebook on August 13, 2013, was taken from the cover of a United Nations Director General’s report from 2011. The Facebook page, titled “Brotherhood Intelligence Agency (ASA),” has a large following of 151,000 “likes” and, according to Israel’s Channel 2, was created by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
The post condemned the “apparent coordination between the parties, Egypt and Israel,” which it said was “completely contrary to common logic and health.” It called for the purge of “traitors” from within the Egyptian Army and claimed that “we (the Muslim Brotherhood) are the only ones who can do it,” according to Channel 2′s translation.

Analyst: Mideast Gas a Chance for U.S. to Break with Turkey

The natural gas fields in the Mediterranean provide the United States with an opportunity to break with Turkey, according to Seth Cropsey, formerly the deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.
“Politics and alliances in the eastern Mediterranean are shifting, and the region’s security framework is splintering,” Cropsey wrote Monday in PJ Media. “The region is now divided as much within the Muslim world as between it and the non-Muslim states.”

So what the hell was Erdogan talking about?

This news is all over Israeli and Jewish news media today; here's the version from JTA:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel was behind last month’s military coup in Egypt.

Erdogan told a meeting of the provincial chairs of his ruling Justice and Development, or AKP, party that he has evidence that Israel was involved in the July 3 overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the Turkish Hurriyet news service reported.

“Who is behind this? Israel. We have evidence,” the prime minister said, according to Hurriyet.

He cited as proof a statement by a French intellectual he identified as Jewish, who told the Israeli justice minister during a visit to France before Egypt’s 2011 elections, “The Muslim Brotherhood will not be in power even if they win the elections. Because democracy is not the ballot box,” Hurriyet reported.

Who is this "French Jewish intellectual"?

Almost certainly it is Bernard-Henri Lévy, the rock-star philosopher of France.

Here is what he wrote in the Huffington Post after the Egyptian elections:

Let's not tell ourselves any stories.

The Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidate just won the presidential election in Egypt, is not a democratic organization.

They were not at Tahrir Square, in Cairo, at the beginning of the revolution.

Engaged in a curious game where, as long as they were left free to do their (economic, financial and other) trafficking, the army had already handed over an entire part of the prerogatives (concerning health and education, for example) that are normally those of a State, they began by doing everything they could to curb the movement.

I remember, on February 20th, at their headquarters in El-Malek El-Saleh street, an edifying encounter with Saad Al-Hoseiny, a member of the strategic leadership of the Brotherhood, whose attitude towards the insurgent peoples' demands for rights and liberty was, to say the least, one of prudence, if not ambivalence or even hostility.

Worse, we can never be reminded enough that the organization whose pale apparatchik is in the process of acceding to the leadership of the largest Arab nation was born in the late '20s as a totalitarian sect, inspired by Naziism, one whose founder, Hassan Al-Banna, never neglected an occasion to inscribe Adolf Hitler after Saladin, Abu Bakr or Abdelaziz al-Saoud in the lineage of "reformers" whose "patience, firmness, wisdom and obstination" had guided humanity.

...Scarcely more than a quarter of registered voters adhere to the president-elect's supposedly "moderate" Islamism.

Better still, there exists today in Egypt a huge "modern party" that, though certainly divided and rife with contradictions, consists of half of the electorate.

Or, even better put, it means that a battle is engaged where there will be, on one side, as usual, the military-Islamist bloc, and on the other, this formerly unheard of bloc that, though disorganized, has not renounced the spirit and the hope of the Tahrir Commune, and no one knows what the outcome of this battle will be.

Revolutions are not events but processes. These processes are long, conflictual, fraught with sudden leaps forward and discouraging retreats. But nothing says that things will not happen in Egypt at this dawn of the 21st century as they have in other great countries, heirs of immense civilizations that have taken time to give birth to their respective futures -- France, for example, where we had to pass through the Terror, the counter-Terror, two Empires and a Commune crushed in blood before we saw the birth of the Republic, or these countries that have emerged from a long communist coma and are groping towards a democracy whose first stage will have been the return to power, at the voting booth, of this or that Communist Party, or, worse, the appearance of a chimera named Putin, synonym of crimes that are right in line with those of the red czars of the last century.

Will we regret the fall of the Wall because of the war in Chechnya? 1789 and the glorious Gironde because of the massacres of September? No, of course not. And that is why the sombre lesson coming, these days, from Cairo does not make me regret the breath of spring of Tahrir. The promise is still alive. The struggle continues.

Levy's antipathy towards the Islamists is obvious, and almost certainly Erdogan is twisting his words (not to mention that the idea that a conversation between Levy and an Israeli official is an absurd proof of Israeli actions) but Levy believes that revolutions are not one-time moments but a continuous, time-consuming process, and that the process includes elections but is not exclusive to them.

Indeed, he seems to be almost prophetic about the current events in Egypt in this June 2012 article.

Israeli export markets: #1 - US. #2 - UK. #3 - Turkey

From Haaretz:

Exports to the United States, Israel's largest export market, totaled $5.4 billion in the first half this year, an increase of 9% over the same period last year, according to figures provided by the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute. Pharmaceuticals were a major source of this growth, though exports still grew by 4% when pharmaceuticals are excluded.

Israel’s top export destinations in the first half of 2013 were the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, China, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and France. ...

Israeli exports to the UK reached $1.7 billion in the first half of 2013, a 15% increase over the same period the year before. The jump in exports to the British market occurred almost entirely in the pharmaceutical sector, which constitutes some 60% of total Israeli exports to that country, according to the institute’s analysis.

While the U.S. and the UK retained their previous spots in the export rankings, Turkey jumped three places, from sixth to third, on the list this year. Exports to the Turkish market rose a whopping 56% in the first half of this year, compared to last, totaling $1.2 billion. According to the institute's analysis, the growth in exports to Turkey was due to a doubling of chemical and refined petroleum product exports, from $465 million in the first half of 2012 to $915 million in the first half of this year. ...

According to a separate article last month, Turkey is also still a market for military exports:

The head of SIBAT spoke about the crisis with Turkey and said that "defense exports to Turkey were never halted, and are weighed according to the interests of the State of Israel. The relationship that existed in recent years didn't continue, but if you look at the numbers – defense exports to Turkey were not zero." He says that although "most of it was composed of continuing contracts and past contracts, there are now requests for new transactions that we are examining."

Time for BDS to protest Turkey for buying Zionist goods.