Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 10, 2014

01/10 Links Pt1: Israel kills fewest innocents but takes most heat, Kerry goes home with three No’s

From Ian:

Israel kills fewest innocents but takes most heat

Professor Richard Falk is a top UN official. Recently he declared that Israel wreaks carnage upon the Palestinians, harboring what he termed "genocidal intent." If we want to understand the relationship between the industry of lies and the discourse of human rights, we could do worse than examine the case of this bad man, perhaps a Jew, who is an embodiment of this link.
Let us gauge the genocide claim. In 2013, 36 Palestinians were killed, according to the human rights organization B'Tselem. At least 30 of those were either involved in clashes with IDF soldiers or were members of terrorist organizations. Only a few innocents were killed. The death of each one of them is to be deeply regretted. Yet one should add that there isn't another conflict in the world where the fatality rate among civilians is as low as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In other conflicts it is estimated that between 60 and 90 percent of fatalities are innocents. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are a minority.

IDF Blog: After Mortars Fired from Gaza, Israel Air Force Targets Terrorists, Terror Site

After mortars were fired from Gaza at Israel, the IDF targeted terrorists during their final preparations to launch rockets toward Israel early Thursday morning (January 9). No damage or injuries were reported among the soldiers.

WATCH as the IAF targets a Gazan terrorist site preparing to launch rockets:

Charles Krauthammer: How to fight academic bigotry

Which makes obvious that the ASA boycott has nothing to do with human rights. It’s an exercise in radical chic, giving marginalized academics a frisson of pretend anti-colonialism, seasoned with a dose of edgy anti-Semitism.
And don’t tell me this is merely about Zionism. The ruse is transparent. Israel is the world’s only Jewish state. To apply to the state of the Jews a double standard that you apply to none other, to judge one people in a way you judge no other, to single out that one people for condemnation and isolation — is to engage in a gross act of discrimination.
And discrimination against Jews has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.

Iran says again Israel must be destroyed, and Hezbollah will fire the missiles

This week there was a double memorial service at the Hazrat Zahra mosque in Tehran.

The first person being remembered was General Ahmad Kazemi, commander of Iran's Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution who died in a plane crash in 2006, which some allege was sabotage.

The other was not for an Iranian at all, but for the Hezbollah commander Hassan Lakkis, assassinated a month ago in Beirut.

One of the facts revealed at the memorial is that Hezbollah was "the first nucleus of the resistance in Lebanon was formed by forces of the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards," and that Lakkis was trained by Iran and had a "special loyalty to Imam Khomeini."

The ceremony showed (yet again) how Hezbollah is nothing more or less than a remote arm of Iran's military.

Two banners were set up at the service, showing two quotes: one from Ayatollah Khomeini and the other from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The quote from Khomeini says "Israel must vanish from the entire world."

The Farsi in the Nasrallah photo says "to target Israel, we need only a few missiles." They mistranslated "a few" as "some."

The juxtaposition of the two banners makes an unmistakable statement: Iran is threatening Israel, militarily, and Hezbollah is the means that it intends to use to accomplish that.

At the event, which had many senior Iranian military figures, officials spoke of a "big surprise that Hezbollah has in store for Israel, and that Hezbollah warehouses are filled with highly accurate missiles aimed at Israel. Another speaker spoke of a time, not so far in the future, that will witness "an apocalyptic battle" across the region for the Holy Land.

Iran is supplying even more advanced missiles to Hezbollah - today.

A few years ago when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that "Israel should be wiped off the map/off the pages of time" there was a lot of apologetics saying it was a mistranslation, or that he didn't mean "militarily," or that Ahmadinejad was just a blowhard and didn't set Iranian policy so it was no big deal.

Iran is saying that Hezbollah, as an arm of Iran, will wipe Israel out. There is no ambiguity here. But people who refuse to see the truth will always find reasons to ignore the facts, even when the facts are printed on large banners in English.

Photos of today's Islamic Jihad rally against Kerry

Just another day in Gaza.

This is an Islamic Jihad rally to denounce any possible peace deal - because any deal would allow Israel to still exist, which is against Palestinian Arab principles.

Dr. Mohammed al-Hindi, a member of Islamic Jihad's "political wing," spoke and led the crowd in both marching and in the obligatory stepping on an Israeli and American flags.

Hysteria!

Ma'an says:

A Palestinian inmate in Israel's Ofer prison suffered from "hysteria" after carrying out an extended hunger strike, a prisoners' ministry lawyer said Thursday.

Ehab al-Ghaleet, a lawyer for the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, said that Thaer Abdullah was on hunger strike for 50 days, as a result of which he was treated in Assaf Harofeh medical center.

Throughout that period Abdullah suffered from brain dehydration and had to stop his strike before he was returned to Ofer prison, al-Ghaleet said.

Abdullah was brought to a psychiatrist when he returned to Ofer due to his hysteria, al-Ghaleet said.

There has not been a psychological diagnosis of "hysteria" for decades.

What would Def Leppard think?

Ma'an goes on:

Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel, representing 20 percent of the total population and 40 percent of all males in the occupied territories.

I showed that these numbers are complete fiction a number of times.

Anti-Israel groups love to pick up on ridiculous claims like these.

It would be hysterical - if so many didn't believe and disseminate the lies so easily.

(h/t Bob Knot)

Israeli Arabs really don't want to live in "Palestine" (video)

From Israel's Channel 10; translation by Yoel:

01/09 Links Pt2: Israel Palestine Who’s Indigenous?, Tamar Gas Field Worth $52 B to Israel

From Ian:

Israelly Cool: Israel Palestine Who’s Indigenous?

Now you might ask, why is this important? It is important to indigenous people because we cannot allow the argument that conquerors can become indigenous. If we, as other indigenous people, allow that argument to be made, then we are delegitimising our own rights.
If conquerors can become indigenous, then the white Europeans who came to my indigenous lands in North America could now claim to be indigenous. The white Europeans who went to Australia and New Zealand could now claim to be indigenous. If we, even once, allow that argument to be made, indigenous rights are suddenly devalued and meaningless. This is somewhat peculiar, as those who are arguing for Palestinian “indigenous rights” are usually those who have little grasp of the history, and no understanding of the truth behind indigenous rights.

Report: 2013 Christian Persecution Driven by Islamic Extremism

Of the 14 countries labeled as “extreme persecution,” 11 of them are countries with a predominantly Muslim population, including several Middle Eastern countries such as Syria at number 3, Iraq at number 4, Saudi Arabia at number 6 and Iran at number 9. However, North Korea was the worst offender at number 1.
Egypt, where there has been widespread persecution of its Coptic Christian minority over the past year by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, ranked at number 22. While the Palestinian Territories ranked at number 34.
The report noted that in 36 of the 50 countries, Islamic extremism was the driving force behind Christian persecution.

Tamar Natural Gas Field Worth $52 Billion to Israeli Economy – Ernst & Young

The natural gas in Israel’s Tamar field is worth some $52 billion to the Israeli economy, accountants Ernst & Young Israel said in a new report. The CPA firm will present their report at a gas and energy conference in Tel Aviv next week, according to Israel’s Globes business daily.
The initial findings of the study found that Tamar, which began production less than a year ago, boosted Israel’s GDP by almost 0.5 percentage points, and is projected to boost GDP by 1.5 percentage points for 2014.

Turkey wants to monitor and censor Internet use

From Hurriyet Daily News:

A draft bill will permit authorities to limit access to the Internet and monitor all actions by individuals online and keep such records for two years, daily Hürriyet has reported.

Three articles about Internet usage were concealed within a longer draft bill on the Family and Social Policy Ministry’s organizational structure and responsibilities, Yalçın Doğan, a columnist from daily Hürriyet, revealed yesterday.

The draft law will permit officials to limit keywords more easily, meaning access to videos on video-sharing websites such as YouTube that include keywords deemed problematic by Turkish authorities will be blocked.

All individuals’ Internet records, including details about what sites they have visited, which words they have searched for on the web and what activity they have engaged in on social networking websites, will be kept for one or two years, according to the draft law.

Web providers will also be forced to become members of a new Internet union to be formed under the control of government, Doğan wrote.

The draft bill is designed to “protect the family, children and youth from items on the Internet that encourage drug addiction, sexual abuse and suicide,” according to daily Hürriyet.

And the records of what people do in the Internet are no doubt also meant to protect the family - the family of thugs that is running Turkey.

I received 252 visits from Turkey over the last month, which is not a significant percentage of my readers but which places it at #29 out of 174 countries that visited EoZ. Hope none of my Turkish readers get in trouble.

In other Turkey news, the government is also acting to place the judiciary under its control.

Iran's Khamenei complains about "Satan's" enmity towards Iran

The Supreme Leader comedy show keeps adding new material.

Nuclear negotiations with major powers had revealed U.S. “enmity” towards Iran, the Islamic republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday the official IRNA news agency reported, hours before the resumption of talks in Geneva.

“We had announced previously that on certain issues, if we feel it is expedient, we would negotiate with the Satan (the
United States) to deter its evil,” Khamenei told a gathering.

“The nuclear talks showed the enmity of America against Iran, Iranians, Islam and Muslims,” he said.

Don't expect to see this in the mainstream media, which has lately adopted a new meme that Iran and the US have many strategic interests in common.

Let's not publish any of that "Satan" stuff - it just muddies the waters of how we want things to be.

01/09 Links Pt1: Unilateral Palestinian statehood - threat or ‘big bluff’?, The Latest "Zionist conspiracy"

From Ian:

Why do Leftists Attack the Only Liberal Country in the Middle East?

What is the most rightist doctrine in the world today? It has to be radical Islam. Islamists don’t allow women to go out of their houses alone, nor do they permit women to drive cars. Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by a member of Taliban for advocating education for girls, lists incident after incident describing the oppression of women in her book, “I Am Malala.”
Radical Islamists are also ferociously anti-homosexual. Homosexuality is a capital offense in nine Muslim countries: Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, parts of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
And so, leftists have decided to support ultra-rightists—radical Islamists. Radical Islamists hate Israel, and so groups like the ASA, and individuals like Sarah Schulman, have endorsed extreme anti-Israel policies—opposing Israel under all circumstances. Leftist groups that have passed BDS resolutions have never said that they would end their boycotts if Israel did X or Y or Z. The BDS Movement has no demands, and so its demands cannot be met.

Unilateral Palestinian statehood — real threat or ‘big bluff’?

According to Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Palestinian threat of a unilateral statehood drive is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. “This is a big bluff; it’s just an empty threat,” he said. “So the Palestinians will go to the International Health Organization, the International Postal Union and the Civil Aviation Authority. So what? That won’t give them statehood. It won’t make a difference, because Israel is still sitting in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and any change can only come about as the result of a negotiation process.”
And there is no cause to fear a Palestinian onslaught against Israel in international forums, averred Baker, a former Israeli ambassador to Canada, as such attacks have been going on for years. “There are 20 or so anti-Israel resolutions at the UN at any given moment, so how is this night different from any other night?”

Egypt top newspaper's weird "Zionist conspiracy" theory

Today, the most widely circulating Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, has run a front-page report headlined in red and bold, ''Israeli conspiracy on Sinai's underground water.''
In a black bold lead, the report stresses that ''liberating Sinai and restoring its territories from Israeli occupation was not merely our dream; the dream was to develop this region to be our real exit from all economic troubles.''
However, the report claims, ''the ship of the state is always besieged with conspiracies.''
"Unsatisfied with their crimes in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 in Sinai, Palestine, and South Lebanon; Zionists brought Prosopis juliflora, a kind of Mesquite [shrub or tree] which is considered so dangerous, to Sinai.'' (h/t Bob Knot)

Peacenik Israelis meet rock-throwing reality in Ramallah (updated)

There has been a bizarre private initiative to have ordinary Arabs and Israelis get together and see if they could agree to a peace plan.

From a press release:

The Israeli and Palestinian leaderships apparently do not have a working strategy to cope with their conflict. So, the time has come for the two peoples to take matters into their own hands!

On January 9-10, 2014 an Israeli delegation, a Palestinian delegation and an audience will negotiate solutions to the conflict. The Congress will have a historic first being held in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Each delegation will include 20 people from all walks of life: Israeli generals, Palestinian commanders, Israeli settlers, Palestinian ex-prisoners, academics, business people, and students; reflecting the entire political spectrum.

The congress is co-chaired by Dr. Sapir Handelman – an Israeli who received the Peter Becker Award in Peace & Conflict Studies; and Mr. Ibrahim Enbawi – a prominent Palestinian leader in East Jerusalem. The chairmen have five sessions to lead the public assembly to reach peace agreements.

This historical event is an important step towards the establishment of a major Israeli-Palestinian Public Negotiating Congress with political power. The congress is designed to involve the people in the peacemaking efforts and motivate the leaderships to conclude agreements.

So how did the meeting in Ramallah go today?

Palestinians threw rocks Thursday at a West Bank hotel, shattering windows and breaking up a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.

The conference was cut short and three dozen Israeli participants were rushed out the back door, put on Palestinian police buses and driven to safety, organizers said.

About 35 Israelis and 50 Palestinians participated in Thursday's gathering, the first the group has held in the West Bank, said Palestinian organizer Ibrahim Enbawi.

After word of the gathering got out, about 30 protesters showed up outside the hotel. Protesters tried to enter the hotel, but found the doors locked, and then began throwing stones that shattered several windows and glass doors.

But did the Israelis learn anything from this episode? Apparently not:

Israeli participant Rami Cohen, a former air force pilot, said he felt uncomfortable after the stone-throwing, but expressed understanding for the protesters.

"There is more anger here than in Israel because the Palestinians suffer more than us," said Cohen, 56, who works for a high tech company in Tel Aviv. "One day, I hope it will be safe for us here in Ramallah as it is safe for us in Tel Aviv."

Come on, Rami - just try again tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that. Eventually, either the protesters will understand you as much as you understand them, or you'll be lynched and murdered. But if you are killed, it would be a comfort knowing that you found your death eminently understandable.

(h/t Yenta P)

UPDATE: Come to think of it, is there any substantive difference between these Arabs throwing rocks to get rid of Israelis and the BDSers who use violence, threats and intimidation to get rid of Israelis from speaking or performing overseas?

This is a rare BDS victory! I wonder if they will write this up as a milestone.

UPDATE 2: In the comments, sshender describes his idea of how these wonderful initiatives work.

If previous such initiatives of (Leftist) Israeli-Palestinian discussions are anything to go by, it would probably have looked something like this:

1. A day at the Buffet sipping Lattes and reading Haaretz.
2. A day of historical overviews of the conflict that would make Al-Jazeera blush.
3. A day of Palestinians accusing the Israelis of every conceivable wrongdoing accompanied by a choir of sympathetic head nodding from the Israeli side.
4. Half a day of the Israelis apologizing for everything that the Palestinians accused Israel of on the previous day, plus half a day of the Israelis apologizing for other things that the Palestinians neglected to mention.
5. Half a day of the Israelis saying "let byg ones be bygones" and half a day of the Israelis coming up with unrealistic solutions to the conflict, that no sane Israeli would ever accept.
6. A day of the Palestinians taking the Israelis out on a field day:
2 hours - meeting an obscure NGO representative (funded by millions of US$ by the EU, Soros and the NIF) who laments about the hardships of living under the occupation.
2 hours - meeting Tallal - a Palestinian farmer - to hear about the attacks of Settler whipped wild bores on his crops.
2 hours of the "apartheid" wall, with 1 hour of free time for selfies with the "V" sign and for spraying "this wall will fall" or other such themes.
2 hours of yelling and cursing at IDF soldiers.
7. A day of Palestinians explaining to the Israelis why they can never "let bygones be bygones", especially in the context of experiences form the previous field day excursion.
8. A day of Palestinians demanding that Israel submit to all of their demands as a prec ondition to having any dialogue to begin with.
9. A day of Israelis at the buffet discussing their experiences among themselves and arriving at the unanimous conclusion that no progress can be made unless and until Israel repents for all its past sins and acquiesces to all the Palestinian demands.
10. A day of Israelis going back and issuing a press release that the talks were a resounding success and that huge strides have been made towards a reconciliation and that this shows that if it were not for the intransigence of the Israeli government, peace could have been had long ago, since the "real people on the ground" see eye to eye.

Palestinian Arabs using negotiations to impose a solution, no desire to end conflict (JCPA)

JCPA has a very good analysis of how Israelis and Palestinian Arabs are viewing the current negotiations. Here is an excerpt, but the entire thing is a must-read:

The question, though, is whether the ratification of the 1967 border would entail the end of the dispute. Hopefully, the answer would be yes, with the United States putting its full weight behind the finality of the agreement.20 Yet we cannot ignore certain Palestinian positions which, if they do not change, are likely to generate crises even after an agreement is reached. For example, in an article posted prominently on Fatah’s website, the author discussed – uncharacteristically – the issue of the Jewish refugees. Zionism, according to this author, deliberately sowed terror in Iraq so as to frighten the Jews there and, eventually, settle them in Palestinian areas that were emptied of their residents, who then became refugees. Thus, the right of return is actually the right to return to lands that the United Nations allocated to the Arab state in the partition plan.21

What this means is that, from the Palestinians’ standpoint, the negotiations being held today are about the results of the 1967 war. The Palestinian state to be established along the 1967 lines is not intended to absorb the refugees from the 1948 lands; their proper place will be within the partition-plan borders. After “closing the file” on the 1967 borders, then, the “refugee file” will be opened, and the Palestinians will demand their return to the Arab state postulated by the partition plan. In other words, the real, intended border is not one along the 1967 lines, but the one of 1947.

An internal, strategic document formulated in the office of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, and posted on Palestinian websites in 2013,22 states that the aim of the talks is not to reach an agreement but, rather, to create an alibi for imposing a solution on Israel. According to this document, the Palestinians agreed to enter the talks only after receiving a written commitment from Kerry to support the Palestinian position on the 1967 lines, and after publication of the European Union’s statement that Israel is to be penalized for the settlements – meaning Europe’s recognition of the 1967 lines is to be imposed on Israel. It turns out, then, that the Palestinian strategy is not to reach an agreement with Israel but, instead, to create breaches in its relations with the United States, after already fostering Israel’s dispute with Europe.

Moreover, there have been repeated signs that the Palestinian leadership has claims to Israeli territory within the 1967 lines. In 1999, when Yasser Arafat tried to revive Palestinian territorial demands on the basis of the Partition Map that appears in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the PLO Observer, Nasser al-Kidwa, wrote an official letter to Secretary-General Kofi Anan in which he stated:

Israel must still explain to the international community the measures it took illegally to extend its laws and regulations to the territory it occupied in the war of 1948, beyond the territory allocated to the Jewish state in Resolution 181 (II).23

The PLO at the time was planning to replace the Oslo Accords with Resolution 181 and thereby extend Palestinian territorial claims. This was explained by the Palestinian minister Nabil Sha’ath, who said that it was his hope that the Palestinians would also seek to obtain land in Western Jerusalem and not just in Eastern Jerusalem.

This claim is being sustained to this day. PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi told Radio Palestine on January 8, 2014, that on the Jerusalem issue the Palestinians will also raise the matter of Palestinian properties in Western Jerusalem inside the 1967 lines. Palestinian sources have told this author that the files on Palestinian properties in Western Jerusalem were already prepared at Orient House by the late Feisal Husseini.

Abu Ala, who served as the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly and as a key Palestinian negotiator, stated in al-Hayat al-Judida on December 21, 1998: “It shall be emphasized that the [Palestinian] state has internationally recognized borders set in the [1947] partition resolution.”24

Palestinian reliance on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 continued under Mahmoud Abbas. In September 2011, Abbas spoke at the UN General Assembly and explained that he was applying for UN membership “on the basis of the 1967 borders.” But in the formal Palestinian submission to the UN, in which the Palestinian Authority sought membership, there is no reference whatsoever to the 1967 lines but only to Resolution 181 from 1947. There is a second reference to the 1988 Declaration of Independence that also was based on Resolution 181.25 Thus, there is considerable, cumulative evidence that the Palestinian leadership is maintaining claims to Israeli territory within the 1967 lines.

I had a post (with updates correcting some mistakes) noticing that Abbas didn't define the borders as the "1967 lines" in his formal bid for statehood but did mention the 1947 partition as a basis for legitimacy.

Report: Israel planning gas pipeline into Jordan

From Bloomberg:

Israel, seeking to tap recent natural-gas finds for export, plans to build a pipeline from the Dead Sea to the Jordanian border to supply its neighbor, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Ministry of Energy and Water Resources expects to begin work on the 15-kilometer (9-mile) link in 2015 and complete it in 2016, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The ministry commissioned the project on behalf of U.S. gas producer Noble Energy Inc. (NBL) and a Jordanian partner, they said.

The 2010 discovery of the offshore Leviathan field, coming after the nearby Tamar find, proved a bonanza for Israel, which expects the gas to meet its needs for a quarter of a century while also enabling exports. For Jordan, which has seen fuel imports from Egypt disrupted by pipeline bombings in Sinai, deliveries from Israel would help to boost security of supply.

An Israeli Energy Ministry official, who asked not to be identified, declined to comment, while calls to Jordan’s energy minister weren’t answered. A spokesman for Noble Energy in Tel Aviv declined to comment when contacted by phone.

Israel, which itself imported Egyptian gas until bombings cut deliveries, reached its first export agreement earlier this week, a 20-year deal to supply a planned Palestinian power station. Noble and its partners at Leviathan, the larger of the two fields, said they’ll get about $1.2 billion to send gas to the plant to be built in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

Partners in the offshore Tamar field, which include Houston-based Noble, also are in talks to sell gas to Jordanian potash plants for 15 years for $500 million to $700 million, Israel’s Calcalist business newspaper reported last month.

Jamal Sarayreh, the chairman of Jordan’s Arab Potash Co., declined to comment when contacted last week. Noble Chief Executive Officer Charles Davidson said in November the company would prefer to export Israeli gas to neighboring countries than to the Far East, which would require seaborne-tanker shipments.

“We will be able to market more gas regionally at lower capital cost because all of these regional markets are basically using pipes, and in some instances they’re connecting the pipes that already exist,” Davidson said.

The new pipeline will start at Sdom, according to the two people. It will be an extension to an existing link that brings gas to the Dead Sea Works Ltd. chemical plant there.

This is very big news, and it shows the importance of a strong economy to Israel's defensive posture.

Jordan (and Egypt) keep doing an interesting dance, publicly inciting hatred against Israel in their media but privately cooperating with the Jewish state. Deals like this strengthen existing peace agreements but they don't reduce the hate - and this seems to be a governmental decision to keep the old mentality of using Israel to divert attention from internal crises.

The contradictory messages cannot easily coexist, but widespread Arab antisemitism would not allow for the governments to act friendlier towards Israel in public. Note how no one will dare confirm any deals - publicizing them is a dangerous business when the Arab media is so invested in hating Israel and Jews.

Normalization with the Arab world will never happen, even if Israel signed a "peace plan" with the Arab League. From Israel's perspective, the best that can ever be hoped for is detente, not peace. Deals like these (and you can be sure that there are negotiations to export gas to Egypt as well) help strengthen Israel's position in this detente, and other under-the-table agreements will be made, but there will never be peace in the way that Israelis yearn.