Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 10, 2014

Fatah, Hamas talking (again) about unity

I haven't bothered to write about "unity" between Hamas and Fatah for a while, because every single attempt for the past few years has been a joke, often meant more to head off internal Arab Spring-type protests than to actually try to unify. Hamas does not want to give up its hold on Gaza.

The latest attempt has a slightly better chance though - because Hamas has been rocked by the Egyptian coup, losing its main monetary sponsor and partner.

Hamas and Fatah will hold meetings to discuss the implementation of a national reconciliation agreement on Sunday evening and Monday morning, members of both movements told Ma'an.

Fatah official Nabil Shaath and Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said they considered reconciliation a top priority, and that an earlier meeting between a Fatah delegation and Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh was a success.

"We realize that the road to freedom and independence is still a long one and needs a lot of work, and the first step is Palestinian unity," Shaath said.

"There cannot be a state without Gaza," he said.

Shaath also praised Hamas' recent decision to allow Fatah lawmakers to return to Gaza.

Al-Hayya echoed Shaath's statements.

"We at Hamas want to be united with Fatah and not interfere in Fatah internal issues," he said.

Al-Hayya said Hamas had sent a letter to President Mahmoud Abbas, saying "that we support him in his position of protecting our principles."

Hamas is hurting for cash, and Fatah may be its best hope to stay afloat.

If the Fatah-led PA would take over the Rafah crossing, for example, then Hamas-hating Egypt would probably keep it open more. Exports from Gazs could increase if Israel could deal with the PA directly on those issues.

When the current negotiations between Israel and the PA collapse, Hamas would have one less reason to avoid unity, because one of its conditions has been to stop negotiating with Israel and continue based on jihad.

And when it comes down to it, Fatah and Hamss are not that far apart ideologically, as much as Western media and pundits like to pretend they are. They both explicitly support terrorism and both agree that terror is not in their best interests at this time. Islamic Jihad and other terror groups are convenient to use for today's attacks, and both Fatah and Hamas can claim that they are innocent.

While it is still a longshot, this time there may actually be a chance for some sort of quasi-unity between the two. It would necessarily involve the PA moving away from a peace posture, but the West would provide cover for them since so much of the media and Western governments and NGOs have been so invested in the lie of Fatah "moderation" for so long.

Egyptian fatwa: If your wife is a Muslim Brotherhood member, divorce her

From Al Arabiya:

“If a man discovers that his wife belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, he should divorce her,” said preacher Mazhar Shahin in the show he presents in one of the private Egyptian satellite channels. “It is like having a bomb sleep in your own bedroom,” he added.

In this case, Shain explained, the wife should be given the chance to sever all ties with the Brotherhood, but if she refuses, the husband has to divorce her. Shahin, who is also the imam of the Omar Makram Mosque in Tahrir Square and is known as “the imam of the revolution,” attributed his fatwa to the “jurisprudence of priorities” in Islam, through which, he argued, it becomes obvious that Egypt takes priority over individuals.

“If the interests of my country contradict those of my wife, I would definitely choose my country,” he noted. “A man can find many other women to marry, but there is only one Egypt.”

Belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, however, does not mean the wife should be stripped of her financial rights, according to Shahin, who stressed that the divorce has to “comply with God’s laws.” The fatwa, Shahin said, also gives the right to any woman who finds out that her husband belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood to seek divorce.

For Shahin, divorce is considered the lesser of two evils for the wife because otherwise the husband might report her to the police. “It is better for her to end up divorced than to end up in jail.” Shahin was referring to the case of a man who reported his wife to State Security for belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In his complaint, the husband said that he only found out his wife is a Brotherhood member after Islamist President Mohammad Mursi came to power. “After the Brotherhood was toppled, the group started assigning her missions,” the complaint added. “That is why she traveled to the United Kingdom and Germany.”

Well, at least he didn't say to behead her.

Maybe next year.

News no one talks about: Egypt sends construction material to Gaza

You know how, now that the tunnels from Egypt have been mostly closed by Egypt, Israel is the only source for Gazans to get construction material? And how, when Israel stopped construction for private projects after discovering Hamas terror tunnels, human rights organizations insist that Israel has the sole responsibility for allowing those materials to resume being imported? Egypt, it is assumed, cannot adequately support sending large amounts of building materials into Gaza through Rafah.

Right?

Well, the latest weekly UN OCHA report (January 28-February 3) says something very interesting:

During the reporting period, the Crossing opened for one day to allow 56 truckloads of construction materials to enter for project funded by the Government of Qatar. The previous week, some 215 truckloads of construction materials designated for the Qatari construction projects entered over the course of three days.

...This week (26 January-1 February), nearly 1,000 truckloads of goods entered Gaza through Kerem Shalom Crossing, 13 percent more than during the previous week. The increase is mainly due to the entry of slightly greater amounts of basic construction materials for projects implemented by international organizations and approved by the Israeli authorities (142 compared to 48 truckloads the previous week).

If the truckloads are of comparable size, this means that Egypt is allowing more construction materials into Gaza than Israel is.

Moreover, given that the Rafah crossing is only open sporadically, if Egypt wants it could open the crossing for six or seven days a week, meaning that some 450-500 trucks of building material can go into Gaza for whatever purposes Egypt and Gazans agree on.

There is no rule that Egypt can only allow building material for the Qatar-funded projects. There is no reason why private Gaza builders should not be able to order construction material from Egypt and have it trucked in the next day. Rafah is clearly not only a passenger transit point but it can handle significant amounts of other goods for Gaza. There could be a healthy two-way trade of goods and materials for Gazans and exports of Gaza produce and other goods to Egypt.

Except that Egypt doesn't allow it.

Yet so-called "human rights" organizations are completely silent about demanding that Egypt allow more construction materials into Gaza. They only demand this from Israel, the one country that is the target for Hamas kidnap tunnels built with these very same materials.

Isn't that interesting?

Houthi official explains slogan "Death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews"

I've mentioned before the Houthi logo and slogan:

From the top, it says "God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews, Power to Islam." In many cases I've seen the fourth line autotranslated as "F--- the Jews."

Al Tagheer (translated by Shawarma News) has an interview with a Houthi spokesperson where we learn a kinder, gentler interpretation:

- Death to America does not mean death to the American people, or the death of an American tourist, journalist, merchant or employee, but it's death to the American Zionist policy in our region and the world

- Death to Israel does not mean death to the "real" Jews who have been living in Palestine for hundreds of years, but it's death to the racist entity implanted in the body of the Islamic nation and the Arab region

- Curse the Jews, we are not referring to all of those who follow the Jewish religion, we are referring to those who were cursed by God in the Koran according to the attributes associated with the curse

It is fairly clear, both to casual readers of the Quran and to ordinary Muslims themselves, that every single Jew was cursed in the Quran.

See how moderate they are? They only want to kill about half of the Jews in the world, and the rest are only damned to become apes and pigs!

Glad he cleared that up. Whew!

(h/t Bob K)

Nourizadeh

The Director of the Center for Iranian Studies in London, Ali Nourizadeh, says that since Hamas' founding it has received more than two billion dollars of financial support from Iran, according to Raya News. At the same time Islamic Jihad receives between $100-$150 million dollars annually from Iran.

On the other hand, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority have not received a penny Since the Iranian revolution so far, but on the contrary, Iran has not paid half a million dollars from the proceeds of the "Palestine" sales pavilion at the Tehran International Fair.

Nourizadeh says that Hamas has received its aid through various sources; sometimes in cash when Hamas leaders visit Tehran and some through Hezbollah. Islamic Jihad receives it money via Hezbollah or from cash transfers from banks in Beirut or Malta.

He adds that "Iran has paid a lot to strengthen its relationship with Hamas to be used as a card but it did not succeed because [Hamas] has good relations with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Arab states and Iran is no longer the main source of funding Hamas, so Iran considers its investment in Hamas to be unsuccessful."

In terms of relationship between Iran and Islamic Jihad, Zadeh says that their fighters were trained in Iran and their weapons all come from Iran; Hezbollah played an important role in achieving this. On the other hand, no more than 500 Hamas fighters were trained by Iran.

There is now a new rapprochement between the PLO and Iran, as Fatah official Jibril Rajoub visited Iran after Abbas and Hassan Rouhani met in New York, according to Nourizadeh.

Three new "Apartheid?" posters

My "Apartheid?" poster series has gone truly viral in the past couple of weeks - over 23,000 views in the past week alone!

Since I hadn't added any new posters in a year, here is a Reality TV edition:

02/09 Links: State Dept: No Guarantee Arab League Will Recognize Israel; Historic 'Palestine'

From Ian:

Israel may pay for tolerance it shows to killers

IF most Palestinians thought like most Israelis, peace would come to their lands.
If most Israelis thought like so many Palestinians — from its leader Mahmoud Abbas down to the shiftless youths seeking to meet Allah via Semtex and Jewish blood — there would be many fewer than the 4.3 million of them.
The tolerance of Israel, as its neighbours bait it, bomb it and demand its destruction, surprises me. Three rockets were fired from Gaza in to southern Israel as I wrote this piece.

Historic Palestine

So there you have it, from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition. Rather than being an "indigenous" populations, the Arab population of "Palestine" is composed of Bosnians, Sudanese, Algerians, Armenians, Greek, Kurds and many many others. There is no mention of a group called the "Palestinians".
Colonizers. All of them
Hard to imagine how the indigenous "Palestinians" could have escaped historical scrutiny for so many years. (h/t Bob Knot)

BBC Correspondent Apologizes For Omitting Anti-Israel Bias (satire)

In a news item last week, Philips was seen narrating a segment about a crash on Route 443, part of which runs through the West Bank. A number of Palestinian men were hurling stones and Molotov cocktails at passing Israeli cars, and the driver of one such vehicle stopped his car and chased the group while wielding a handgun, scattering them and stopping the attacks. Philips devoted almost the same amount of time discussing the attack on the motorist as on his brief pursuit, thus departing from BBC policy of specifically painting Israel and Israelis as at fault in confrontations with Palestinians.
“I apologise first to the Palestinians, who depend on the BBC for unstinting propaganda support; second, to my colleagues at the BBC, for showing what could be construed as disrespect for our journalistic standards; and of course to our viewership, who might become confused if we do not paint Israel as thoroughly evil,” Philips wrote in a statement. He attributed the lack of sufficient spin to deadline pressures, but admitted he could have done better.

A powerful video from a Belgian Jewish family fleeing to the US

(h/t Philip S)

Iranian TV shows simulation of attack against Israeli civilians, US aircraft carrier

From Lenz Iran, an 11 minute Iranian video with amateurish graphics showing a simulation of Iranian drones and rockets attacking Israeli targets and a US aircraft carrier.

Note that the Israeli targets include civilian targets, such as Ben Gurion airport and many of Tel Aviv's skyscrapers. (They also seem to think that Ehud Olmert is Israel's prime minister and that the US and Israel have no air defenses whatsoever.)

Even though the video is ridiculous even to non-military types like me, a real expert goes into detail about how comical these scenarios are.

(h/t Bob Knot)

BDS trying mightily to spin Scarlett into some sort of victory

By any objective yardstick, the SodaStream/Scarlett Johansson episode was an unmitigated disaster for BDS. But Max Blumenthal, whose rabid anti-Zionism and series of provable and verified lies have ensured that he can no longer be published except in Mondoweiss and Arab news outlets, writes a fantasy about Scarlett Johansson to try to fit the facts of the past couple of weeks into his very limited worldview - and try to spin a major BDS loss.

Writing in the UAE's "The National," Blumenthal talks about how Hollywood celebrities used to publicly embrace Israel, but are less likely to do so today.

The reason?

These days, celebrities who shill for Israel can expect to be relentlessly harried and forced to declare where they stand on Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.

For those who have attached themselves to humanitarian do-gooder causes, the potential for PR damage is considerable — certainly enough to give them second thoughts. As the price tag on pro-Israel activity rises, some performers are quietly opting out of attractive deals before the controversy shatters their image.

But others like Scarlett Johansson, the comely blonde starlet described by Woody Allen as “sexually overwhelming” were not willing to let apartheid get in the way of a sizeable profit.

In January, the Israeli company Sodastream signed Johansson to promote its home soda-making machines in a $16 million (Dh58.8m) Super Bowl ad that featured her sucking suggestively on a straw off-and-on for two minutes.

Johansson, a standard-fare Hollywood liberal who proclaimed in 2008 that her “heart belongs to Barack”, cast her deal with Sodastream as a shining example of “conscious consumerism and transparency”.

She seemed oblivious to the fact that Sodastream operates out of Maale Adumim, an illegal Israeli mega-settlement built on privately owned Palestinian land whose master plan would eventually bisect the West Bank.

Blumenthal exposes his usual disregard for journalistic ethics and basic facts, of course - one minute of Super Bowl advertising cost about $8 million, not $16 million; the ad was only one minute long, Maale Adumim was not built on privately owned Arab land (except for 0.5% of it,) none of Mishor Adumim where SodaStream's factory is located was built on Arab land, even Israel's far left accepts that Maale Adumim would be part of Israel in any peace agreement, and in no way does it "bisect the West Bank."

He even says that Oxfam forced Johansson out, when the truth is the exact opposite.

Proving that Blumenthal is a liar is too easy.

The funny part is how desperately Blumenthal is trying to spin an episode that was a huge disaster for BDS into a victory.

His thesis that no major Hollywood figure today would support Israel as they did in the past is quite demolished by what Scarlett Johansson actually did do - although he blames her love of money, and doesn't mention that she isn't exactly hurting for cash.

True, there are some B-listers - washed-up rock stars and second-rate acts - that have bowed to pressure and joined the boycott of Israel. Why did they do that? Well, according to Blumenthal, it has nothing to do with what they really believe in.

It is because the Israel haters who push the boycott are bullies! And they are proud of it!

Blumenthal says it explicitly: "celebrities who shill for Israel can expect to be relentlessly harried." The haters expect that thin-skinned celebrities, who are allergic to controversy, will scamper away from any hint of trouble. Sometimes, they are right. It has absolutely nothing to do with the righteousness of their cause - it has to do with the fact that the haters can instantly raise an army of brainless Facebook drones to threaten people who are often not very self-confident to begin with.

Johansson not only pushed back against the BDSers she pushed back on humanitarian grounds! She explained why the BDS goals actually would hurt the people they pretend to care about. She exposed their hypocrisy in a very public way. (This is another point that Blumenthal studiously avoids mentioning.)

This episode did not damage Johansson's star power one bit.

The biggest losers were Oxfam and the BDS movement itself.

Oxfam is now sputtering and making itself look idiotic as it tries to justify its desire to throw hundreds of Arabs out into the street without salaries or healthcare. The halo effect of Oxfam being a humanitarian organization has been considerably dimmed.

But Oxfam, in trying to defend itself, has in turn thrown the BDS movement under the bus! It has been publicly forced to say that it does not support boycotting Israel and it is distancing itself from haters like Max Blumenthal.

Whether that is true or not is besides the point - Oxfam does give plenty of money to organizations that do support BDS - but nevertheless a major humanitarian NGO is publicly saying that boycotting Israel is immoral and beyond the pale, and it is jumping through hoops to make fine distinctions so that it cannot be accused of supporting BDS explicitly.

How on Earth can anyone think that BDS won?

The only people who can believe that are those who spend so much time lying that they can no longer distinguish truth from fantasy.

Like Max Blumenthal.

Hating Israel is a good career move in Egypt

Here is a tweet from Wael Mansour a couple of days ago, who says that he was the voice of Donald Duck in Arabic-dubbed Disney films:

Here is the tweet that lead Disney to end my role as Donald Ducks official voice in Arabic dubbed cartoons in the ME pic.twitter.com/ZLdpN1NrMF
— Wael Mansour (@Wa2elMansour) February 6, 2014

In Arabic, he tweeted much the same thing, saying that Disney dropped him because of his anti-Zionist tweet, and he said both in English and Arabic that he is proud about this.

He received thousands of retweets for this.

Here's the funny part: His anti-Israel tweets were last August. The Washington Free Beacon got hold of Disney:

Mansour has previously done Donald Duck voiceover work but is no longer under contract with the company, a Disney spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon.

“He was a third party contractor,” the spokesperson said. “He doesn’t represent the company in any way.”

Mansour was not under contract with Disney when he made his controversial remarks about Israel, the spokesperson said.

Asked if Mansour would be hired for future voice over work, the spokesperson said, “What do you think?”

In other words, he was not fired from Disney - he wasn't working for them at all. However, they won't hire him again, for obvious reasons.

Now, this all happened six months ago. Apparently, Mansour decided to turn himself into a martyr now, and he (correctly) assumed that thousands of Egyptians would rally to support his desire to see Israel destroyed.

In other words, to publicly say you hate Israel in Egypt is a great career move!

Not that we didn't know this already.

In 2001, an overweight, third rate Egyptian singer made a hit record called "I Hate Israel."

In 2012, another Egyptian singer made a sarcastically titled song called "I Love Israel" with lyrics like “May it [Israel] be destroyed. May it be colonized. May it be wiped off the map. May a wall fall on it. May it disappear from the universe. God, please have it banished....May it dangle from the noose. May I get to see it burning, Amen. I will pour gasoline on it. I am an Egyptian man. I am not a coward...May it be targeted. May it go up in flames that will never subside. From the bottom of my heart – may a wall fall on it.”

This is what "peace" looks like.

02/08 Links: Scarlett, soda and Samaria; Truman, The Jewish State, and the NYTs Decline

From Ian:

Richard Millett: Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi apologises for comparing Gaza to the Holocaust

The response to Qureshi’s remarks from the Labour Party itself was an utter disgrace:
“These remarks were taken completely out of context. Yasmin Qureshi was not equating events in Gaza with the Holocaust. As an MP who has visited Auschwitz and has campaigned all her life against racism and anti-Semitism she would not do so.”
However, soon after, Qureshi must have had a pang of conscience and came out with this apology:
“The debate was about the plight of the Palestinian people and in no way did I mean to equate events in Gaza with the Holocaust. I apologise for any offence caused. I am also personally hurt if people thought I meant this. As someone who has visited the crematoria and gas chambers of Auschwitz I know the Holocaust was the most brutal act of genocide of the 20th Century and no-one should seek to underestimate its impact.”
So Qureshi is “personally hurt”? Poor her. Not as “personally hurt” as those who were in Auschwitz or Belsen etc or lost family there.

Truman, The Jewish State, and the Decline in New York Times Standards

The New York Times referred to this presidential statement twice in the past five years, and the way the did so exposes an unfortunate decline in the newspaper's standards. In both articles, reporters mentioned recent Palestinian attempts to cast a last minute change in the language of the statement — one of the letter's two references to "Jewish state" was changed to "State of Israel" — as supposedly showing that Truman did not support the idea of a Jewish state. But while the earlier article gave some clarifying context that suggested Palestinian leaders are misusing the letter, the more recent piece relayed the misinformation with no qualification, leaving New York Times readers severely misinformed about Truman's position.

Melanie Phillips: Scarlett, soda and Samaria

But, as the attacks on her by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions crowd reached fever pitch, Ms Johansson stunned everyone by sacking Oxfam, on the grounds that she was a supporter of “economic co-operation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine”. Which, by implication, Oxfam was not.
With this put-down, she achieved more than all the anti-BDS activists put together (not to devalue their heroic efforts). For the first time that I can remember, a glamorous personality went on to the front foot against the peddlers of anti-Israel bigotry.
She did not adopt a cringing, defensive posture. She strode on to the moral high ground and, at long last, delegitimised the delegitimisers.
For Oxfam’s part, it dug itself further and further into its ridiculous hole. Its mantra that Israeli “settlements” such as Ma’ale Adumim – the city to which Mishor Adumim belongs — are illegal under international law is simply false.