Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

05/13 Links Pt1: Boko Haram and the Death of Feminism; Will Iran become North Korea?

From Ian:

Michael Lumish: Boko Haram and the Death of Feminism

One would expect that given the outrageous violations of the rights of women among Islamist groups that western feminists would vehemently object to those violations, yet they do not.
Nor, of course, do they tend to stand with Israel which is the only country in the entire Middle East which stands with them.
If western feminists honestly objected to the abuse of women in other parts of the world – and if they honestly believed in universal human rights – then we would see some expression of that objection on places like Daily Kos and the Huffington Post.

Israelis Are On The Ground Assisting In The Search For Nigeria’s Missing Schoolgirls

Israeli security forces are already on the ground in Nigeria, gathering intelligence and assisting in the search for hundreds of schoolgirls who were kidnapped by the extremist Islamist group Boko Haram.
“There are ongoing security ties and cooperation between Israel and Nigeria. In the wake of this crisis, Israel increased its assistance and we have been providing support in any manner possible,” said one military official, who only recently returned from Nigeria. “We have been involved on this from the beginning.”
A Nigerian delegation is also currently in Israel, an official at Israel’s Foreign Ministry said. The official declined to provide information on what exactly they were doing in the country or how Israeli forces were assisting in the search for the girls. Israeli radio commentators have suggested that Israeli commandos could be on the ground in Nigeria, but Israeli officials would not confirm or deny that report.
On Monday morning, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan publicly accepted an Israeli offer of assistance made Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

King David Hotel Manager Dismisses Newsweek Spying Report – Air Conditioner Vent Too Small for ‘Even a Cat’

Speaking to The Algemeiner, Dror Danini-Forsyth, the hotel’s manager, said, unlike in big U.S. hotels, the air conditioning system in most Israeli hotels, including Jerusalem’s King David, is a set of small vents that heat or cool air in the rooms, rather than being pumped in through a large duct that a man could crawl through, as described in the Newsweek report.
“I can confirm that the story is ridiculous,” Danini-Forsyth said. “There is a small pipe that brings some fresh air into the room, and it is so small that even a cat cannot walk in it.”
The architectural inconsistency would invalidate the anecdote relayed by Stein from an unnamed U.S. Secret Service agent.

UNRWA released a statement to several Arabic newspapers warning of serious health crisis on the horizon in Gaza.

There is a severe shortage of vaccines in Gaza, and those for polio, the mumps, rubella and meningitis have been completely depleted, while those for tetanus and whooping cough are dangerously low.

UNRWA warned that polio is starting to spread again in the Middle East because of the Syrian war.

As of this writing, this statement is not found at UNRWA's website. Their Twitter account only links to an Al Jazeera Arabic version of the story - a story that implies that Israel is responsible for the shortage, as it reports this story together with the launch of a "Popular Committee Against the Siege on Gaza." Even that is only mentioned in Arabic.

Why is UNRWA so reluctant to publicize this story of an impending heath catastrophe in English?

Perhaps their statement to Ma'an sheds some light.

In that statement, the UNRWA spokesperson Abu Hasna says that the responsibility of purchasing vaccines rests with the Gaza Ministry of Health and that UNRWA has warned them about this looming crisis for months.

Israel does not, and never has, restricted vaccines into Gaza. The Al Jazeera story, and the reporting of other Arabic media outlets, imply that this is part of the "siege" - but they are lying.

The looming health crisis is purely the result of Hamas either not caring about the health of people under its control, or a cynical purposeful creation of an epidemic by Hamas to make Israel look bad. That is not so far fetched, as Hamas has done exactly that by refusing imports of fuel to Gaza even when Israel was willing to provide it.

UNRWA, always eager to blame Israel for all problems, does not want to publicly say anything bad about Hamas. So instead of publicly shaming Hamas for refusing to allow life-saving vaccines to enter Gaza, UNRWA only discreetly planted stories about the issue in Arabic media and downplayed the reasons for the crisis, hoping that Hamas will take the hint without UNRWA having to go public to the West.

How much can UNRWA really care about the "refugees" when they are so reluctant to publicize how badly they are being treated by their Arab leaders?

Meanwhile, Israel has approved some 26 construction projects into Gaza, including 12 for UNRWA.

That isn't on their website either, because this is another story that doesn't fit UNRWA's anti-Israel agenda - and agenda that clearly trumps its mission.

(Similarly, I have not yet found this story on any of the usual "pro-Palestinian" websites.)

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Arabic media has exploded in the past few hours claiming that Israeli authorities demanded that the Latin Patriarchate remove a poster welcoming Pope Francis that was put up on their building near Jaffa Gate, so "as not to provoke the wrath of the Jews."

Dmitry Dliany, Secretary-General of the National Assembly of Christians, is outraged, telling the media that this is one more example of how Israel is denying Christians and Muslims to have any rights in the city, and it is an example of ethnic cleansing, and probably that the IDF kills cute baby puppies.

I can't find any proof of this story anywhere. There are no photos of this supposed poster. The Latin Patriachate Facebook page doesn't mention a thing about this story.

While I can see, maybe, a situation where Jerusalem authorities would demand that a freestanding sign be taken down for zoning or safety reasons, the chances that any Israeli authority said that a poster of the Pope must be taken down so as "not to provoke the wrath of the Jews" is zero.

This story is just another anti-Israel lie.

UPDATE: Bob Knot found a photo of the poster with the story on Facebook:

The #Israeli police department asked the #Catholic #Church to remove welcome to the #Pope banner displayed on the wall of the #Christian Information Center, a Franciscan property, in order not offend the feelings of the #Jewish groups who oppose the Pope's visit. This Place is located in Jaffa Gate area in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, which is in the Christian Quarter. Welcome to the only democracy in the Middle East!

I still don't believe that any Israeli authorities asked them to take it down because of possible Jewish reactions.

UPDATE 2: Now, this makes sense: (h/t Bob K)

According to the sources, the church decided not to remove the sign, while police claimed they did not ask for the removal of these reasons, but for legal reasons relating to the law on placing banners on archaeological sites.

Verified here.

Any chance Dliany will apologize? Yeah, sure.

UPDATE 3: Too bad Israeli police don't enforce this rule on the Temple Mount:

Ha'aretz reveals its mission has nothing to do with journalism

What is the mission of a newspaper?

One might think that it is to help people stay informed, or to report the day's events objectively.

The New York Times describes its goal as "to cover the news as impartially as possible ...and to treat readers, news sources, advertisers and others fairly and openly, and to be seen to be doing so."

Various journalism outlets and professional societies describe their codes of ethics to include truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability.

How about Haaretz? What is its mission?

Here, in a remarkable article where Haaretz is begging for money, we find out:

Two years ago our website, Haaretz.com, introduced its subscription-based readership and many thousands of subscribers signed up. They enjoy full access to all Haaretz content. I want to urge you today to join them and purchase a subscription to Haaretz, Israel's leading source for news and opinion.

By doing so, you will become a partner in the ongoing effort to shape Israel as a liberal and constitutional democracy that cherishes the values of pluralism and civil and human rights. You will become a partner in actively supporting the two-state solution and the right to Palestinian self-determination, which will enable Israel to rid itself of the burdens of territorial occupation and the control of another people.

Haaretz, which as far as I can tell has no written code of ethics, has here provided a mission statement that has nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with advocacy.

Whether one supports Haaretz' editorial stance or not, this explicit description of Haaretz as being primarily a political actor should cause anyone to be against supporting it.

Let Haaretz register as an NGO or an Israeli political party, and let it ask for money to support its views. But don't call it a newspaper.

Judging from this article, Haaretz doesn't even define itself that way. It is a newsletter for a political organization, one that is begging for more members.

(h/t Zaba)

Ha'aretz buries a #BDSFail in an anti-Israel report

Here is a perfect example of why Haaretz is a joke. Keep in mind that this piece written by Esther Zandberg is considered a news article, not an editorial.

South Africa during the apartheid era was the only country to be thrown out of the International Union of Architects. Will Israel be the second? This issue is now on the union’s agenda.

Last month, the Royal Institute of British Architects resolved to ask the IUA to expel the Israel Association of United Architects from its ranks until the latter organization expressed opposition to illegal construction in the occupied territories, and took action against those Israeli professionals involved in construction and planning there. RIBA called upon the IAUA to abide by the international union's resolutions from 2005 and 2009, which condemn any act that violates the Fourth Geneva Convention (which protects civilian populations in occupied lands), including construction or development involving ethnic discrimination in illegally conquered territories.

The UIA’s upcoming congress will take place in August in Durban, South Africa, which in itself is quite symbolic. While the UIA’s agencies considered bringing up for a vote at that international event the RIBA demand to ban the Israeli architect's association – the UIA has now decided not to do so. But even if the vote is not taking place, the damage to the IAUA – and perhaps to Israeli architects in general, regardless of their individual political leanings – has been done. The mere threat of expulsion from the UIA, an organization that's more respected than important, constitutes yet another link in the chain of efforts to isolate Israeli society from the community of nations.

Since the call was issued by the British group to ban the Israelis – at the initiative of an organization called Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, whose members are active in RIBA – the IAUA's leadership had been working feverishly to thwart the vote, which would have had negative consequences. But, the Israeli association came by this situation honestly: Its insistence on claiming that it is an exclusively professional organization with no political agenda has led it to this point. Its statement that it does not concern itself with political issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that each of its members behaves according to his own world view, sounds hollow in the international arena.

The mantra “I personally do not build in the territories” is no longer a solid defense. After all, being apolitical does not mean being neutral; rather, it is tantamount to taking a stance supporting the status quo. Since architecture is a tool through which political policy is implemented, even if not all the members of the IAUA are involved in planning and construction in the territories, the local organization representing them is now being asked to take a moral stance and use the profession as a tool for implementing it – with or without a decision by RIBA or other agencies.

Did you catch the actual news buried in this anti-Israel diatribe?

Here it is again, in the second sentence of the third paragraph:

While the UIA’s agencies considered bringing up for a vote at that international event the RIBA demand to ban the Israeli architect's association – the UIA has now decided not to do so.

RIBA failed to even bring the issue to be on the agenda - let alone to have it be voted upon. The Israel haters utterly failed. But Haaretz cannot stomach such bad news, so they write an entire article as if Israel's architects have been banned or are in imminent danger of being banned.

They are not.

(Haaretz also throws in that Judea and Samaria are "illegally conquered territories." Even if one holds that the occupation is illegal [which is not true either, since occupation is by definition a legal construct] there is no way to say that the West Bank was "illegally conquered," given that Jordan attacked Israel in 1967 and was thus the aggressor.)

(h/t Jonathan)

05/12 Links Pt2: What Is Going on at Vassar College?; BBC omits origin of Israeli Tech

From Ian:

Revisiting Jewish and Islamic Oppression during the Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition was a time when considerable horror was visited upon the Jewish people of Spain, which subsequently spread to Portugal, one for which the authorities of both nations wish to make amends, even if in a belatedly tokenistic fashion.
Commentators, such as Robert Fisk, have taken issue with this offer of citizenship. Rather than welcoming the development, and using it to recommend that this legislation be extended to Muslims, it is framed as a pretext to suggest that lack of inclusion for Muslims is in some respect Islamophobic.
Likewise, when word of the plan spread a decade ago, Islamic groups began to demand Spanish citizenship for millions of the Muslim descendants, of the 325,000 expelled by the Spanish authorities in the early 17th Century, despite the fact that expulsion played a central role in the rapid expansion of the Islamic world itself.
"Fisking" history
Notably, Fisk white-washes the Moorish “Golden Age”, in which Jews, Muslims and Christians supposedly lived in a tolerant environment.

The Extremist Allegiances of Joel Beinin

Joel Beinin – Professor of History and of Middle East History at Stanford University – once threatened legal action after being named as a supporter of terrorism. That should have surprised even the most jaded observers of American academic “activism.” Ever since his days as a young Maoist on the campuses of Princeton, Harvard, and then Michigan, Beinin has competed in militancy with the most brutal terrorist foes of the Jewish state.
As a former student recalled, Beinin “had nothing but contempt for Israel, was well to the ‘left’ of the PLO, and was perfectly representative of the extremism of his milieu. One day, at a particular forum, he gave what I can only describe as a kind of beer-hall speech. Shouting and pumping his fist, he admonished the Arabs to forget any negotiating with Israel and to stay true to pure radicalism.”

Mick Jagger’s False Quote Spreads Through Social Media

As the owner of tickets for next month’s Rolling Stones concert in Tel Aviv, I’m very much looking forward to seeing Mick Jagger and the rest of the legendary rock band defying both their age and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
It’s not surprising that Israel advocates are trumpeting the Stones concert as an epic BDS fail, leading to this quote and related images spreading like wildfire through the pro-Israel community on social media.
Unfortunately the quote isn’t true.

From The Malaysian Insider:

Relentless in his attacks against non-Muslims despite a public outcry over controversial remarks made recently, Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) president Abdullah Zaik Abdul Rahman is now calling on Malays to fight for their rights or risk losing their Islamic identity in Malaysia to " proxies of capitalist Jewish groups".

In an open letter to the Malays, Abdullah Zaik said it was their collective responsibility to protect Islam and its supreme position in the country.

"Don't allow foreign races to impose their wants on us.

"Leave fear behind and step forward to state your stand, we are duty bound to protect our rights in determining the way forward in this country," he said in a statement.

He also cautioned against what he termed as "games of the enemy", with allegations of racism and extremism and the like.

"They are playing psychological mind games so that the sons of the soil will not rise up to protect their rights," he said.

Isn't it nice to live in a world where we don't have to worry about antisemitism anymore?

Algeria recently appointed a woman to be Secretary of Education. Her name is Noria bin Gabrit Rimon.

Immediately, Algerians started wondering whether she was Jewish. After all, they note, "Rimon" rhymes with...Shimon.

More fuel for the fire came from the fact that she came from a region of Algeria from which many Jews lived, after fleeing from Spain in the 15th centuries.

Salafist leader Sheikh Abdel Fattah Zrawi Himedash denounced the appointment, asking how a Jew can possibly help educate the Islamic masses of Algeria, He asked "what right and legitimacy and credibility can the Jew Noria bin Gabrit Ramon bring to the Ministry of Education and the education sector in Algeria?".

Her party denied the scurrilous accusations, saying that they wouldn't choose someone with such "questionable" background. They said that Rimon was an Arabization of the Spanish "Ramon," and that her family helped found a major mosque in Paris in the 1920s.

To its credit, some in the Algerian media pushed back, asking what difference it would make if she were actually Jewish.

05/12 Links Pt1: Palestinian Authority: Combatants Against Peace; Oren- Spy Claims are Baseless.

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Authority: Combatants Against Peace

Palestinian peace activists have come under fire for attending a Memorial Day Ceremony in Tel Aviv for Palestinian and Israeli victims of violence. The ceremony was attended by some 2700 people.
The event was organized last week by Combatants For Peace, a movement that (according to its website) "was started jointly by Palestinians and Israelis who have taken an active part in the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom."
Organizers have hailed the ceremony as a great success and "another positive step toward peace and reconciliation" between Israelis and Palestinians.
But the Palestinian Authority [PA] leadership and many Palestinians obviously don't share this view. In fact, they see the participation of Palestinians in an event commemorating Israeli victims of violence as an act of treason.
The PA government in the West Bank -- who do not miss any opportunity to tell Westerners that they remain committed to peace and coexistence with Israel -- even went as far as disbanding the Palestinian branch of Combatants For Peace in June 2013.

Oren: Claims the FBI warned Israeli diplomats about spying are baseless

Oren told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that Israel’s intelligence relationship with the United States was unparalleled, and that claims of Israelis being scolded by the FBI were baseless.
Oren was responding to the second article in a week that appeared on the Newsweek magazine website Thursday alleging rampant Israeli spying on the US.
Oren, a historian of the US-Israel relationship, said that when it has gone through periods of tension in the past, stories frequently appear in the US media citing anonymous sources leveling stinging criticism of Israel.
The ambassador, who dismissed the Newsweek stories as groundless, said the important questions to ask are about what the motivation is behind them, and why “somebody is making an effort to leak this stuff and give it prominence.”

Behind Newsweek’s anti-Israel canard

Last week, Newsweek’s Jeff Stein ran a sensationalist story detailing alleged Israeli spy activities in the United States. Stein, citing dubious sources, claimed that Israeli spies attempted to monitor Al Gore’s bathroom activities (an image too frightening to imagine) while drugs and women are routinely employed by Zionist spies to entice U.S. officials into handing over information of value. The sources for these and other absurd allegations contained in the article were mainly anonymous with one notable exception, an obscure ex-intelligence character and former CIA employee named Paul Pillar.
One look at Pillar’s past articles, publications and speeches puts the Newsweek screed in proper context. Pillar is a rabid Israel basher. In March 2014, he spoke at the so-called “National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel ‘Special Relationship’” where he attacked Israel on everything from its defensive military operations in Gaza to its concern over Iran’s procurement of nuclear weapons. He even attempted to downplay Iran’s threat to wipe Israel off the map claiming that it was a mere mistranslation. Pillar took his place at the summit alongside miscreants such as Cynthia McKinney and Alison Weir, whose radical views on the Jewish state veer uncomfortably into David Duke territory.

From Nicola Nasser, a Palestinian Arab journalist, in the Asia Times:

Israel is carving economic inroads into Asia which could be deep enough to compromise traditional Asian political support for Arabs. If this trend continues, growing economic Israeli-Asian relations will develop into political ties that neutralize Asia in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's official visit to Japan from May 11-15 is not an historic breakthrough per se in bilateral relations that date back to 1952.

Neither is the normalization of relations in "a matter of weeks" between Israel and Turkey, which was the first major Muslim country to recognize the State of Israel in 1949, as was promised by the Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 27.

However, both events highlight a breakthrough Israel has discreetly achieved in pivoting to Asia, which was once an reservoir of support for Arabs in their conflict with Israel over Palestine.

"For the first time, in 2014, Israeli exports with Asia will exceed trade with the US, pushing it from second to third place (behind the EU)," director of the Foreign Trade Administration at Israel's Ministry of the Economy, Ohad Cohen, was quoted as saying by Israeli "Globes" on April 27.

While opening more trade attache offices in Asia, the Israeli Ministry of the Economy has closed a number of European trade offices in Austria, Hungary, Finland and Sweden "in order to refocus on emerging markets," Cohen explained.

"Today we have five offices in China, three in India, and we have added attaches in Vietnam and an office in Manila," he added.

US President Barack Obama visited Asia in April trying to demonstrate that his promised strategic "pivot" to the region was seeing progress real. However, the Israelis seem to be making more secure progress in a similar direction.

"'Pivot to Asia' is a term that might be applied to Israel," Roger Cohen wrote in The New York Times on April 24, citing a boom in its trade with China to more than $8 billion in 2013. Israel's military and technological cooperation with China had once created a crisis in the US-Israeli relations.

Cohen noted that while the US and Europe continue to "huff and puff" about the illegal Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank "Asia does business. India has already bought sea-to-sea missiles, radar for a missile-intercept system and communications equipment from Israel."

India could be a case study for Israel. According to the website of the Embassy of India in Egypt, "Much of our external trade passes along the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden," all almost exclusively Arab sea routes, and "Our total bilateral trade with the Arab countries is over US$ 110 billion and the region is home to 4.5 million Indians and caters to 70% of our energy imports."
...

Yet, despite its vital ties with Arab nations, India is now also the largest customer for military equipment and the largest Asian economic partner of their arch-enemy - Israel. By courting India and China, Israel can neutralize Asian pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian influence in the region.
...
Writing in Forbes on May 14 last year, professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, Jonathan Adelman, and the acting executive director for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), Asaf Romirowsky, gave a controversial explanation for Israel's apparent breakthrough in Asia.

Historically, "Asia largely lacks the anti-Semitism that was so prominent in Europe" and "Israel was like most Asian states ... a new state born after World War II after a struggle with a Western colonial power, in this case Great Britain," they said.

"Geographically, Israel is in West Asia, only four hours by air from India and 11 hours by air from China. Historically, Israel, like most Asian states, is a new state born after World War II after a struggle with a Western colonial power, in this case Great Britain. ... Economically, Israel's rapid transition from Third World power to First World 'start-up nation' echoes the great transformation underway in such Asian countries as India, China and the Four Tigers."

The authors add: "In intelligence matters, which are so critical to many developing countries, Mossad, with its strong human intelligence capabilities, is attractive for helping these countries overcome foreign threats to their rise to power."

In the full article Nasser attempts. poorly, to paint these developments as disastrous for peace and as wrongheaded for the Asian nations that are already reaping benefits from their relationship with Israel. She even claims that it makes more sense for Asian nations to cooperate with Arab intelligence agencies than with Israel in fighting Islamist terror!

Which indicates that Palestinian Arabs are panicking at the prospect of Asia becoming more pro-Israel. Even more insulting is that they themselves are being treated as irrelevant, as the world gets more tired of their whining and stunts and blaming all of their problems, past and future, on Israel.

Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of the Fatah Central Committee in charge of reconciliation with Hamas, says that the "unity" government with Hamas does not have to recognize Israel.

Ahmad says, correctly, that the Palestinian Authority was set up under the Oslo Accords to be a strictly domestic government, with all foreign relations tasks remaining with the PLO. As such, he claims, the PA never recognized Israel, and the planned unity government has no obligation to do so.

In reality, the PA does have official talks and communications with Israel all the time, for example to request permission for sick people to leave Gaza. The PA reports to the PLO which officially does recognize Israel

This indicates that Fatah is attempting to fudge the facts however it can to clear the path for Hamas to enter the government. Whether this means that the PA will no longer deal directly with Israel after a new government is formed is an open question.

There is another aspect of this theater: Internally, and to the UN, the PLO says that the PA no longer exists and it is all part of the "State of Palestine" that the PLO represents at the UN. Now it is telling Hamas that this isn't true. But it will also tell the US and the Europeans that there is a separate PA, when it suits the PLO's purposes. As it has done since its founding, the PLO will put on a completely different face depending on who it is talking to, and the world happily goes along with this charade because it is a lot easier than admitting that the entity that it honors so much is nothing but hot air.

Hamas, for its part, has said that recognition of Israel is a "red line" that it will never cross, no matter what some idiotic Western analysts say.

Al-Ahmad also said that no independent militias would be allowed under the unity government, which contradicts Hamas' insistence on maintaining its terrorist-military Al Qassam Brigades not to mention the many other terrorist organizations - including Fatah - that maintain their own military/terror wings.

It sounds like the "unity government" will be based on a foundation of lies. Which is pretty much how the existing PA works anyway.

In related news, the PLO has just joined the UN's "anti-corruption" convention, which would be hilarious if we hadn't already seen the UN do things that are far more egregiously inconsistent with its original intent.

Palestinian families attack Red Cross offices in Nablus

A couple of weeks ago, a lot of Palestinian Arab prisoners went on a hunger strike to protest Israel's practice of administrative detention.

Outside a few Arab news sites and limited coverage in Israel, the hunger strike has not been covered by the media. The hunger strike stunt has been used a few too many times and the media is clearly no longer impressed.

So, it is time to up the ante.

Last Thursday, more prisoners staged a one-day solidarity strike where they skipped a single meal.

Families in Nablus closed down the Red Cross offices there on Sunday because, they say, that organization did not visit the prisoners who were supposedly on the strike. They threatened to escalate their attacks on international NGOs if they don't get some...coverage? A statement? It is unclear.

Israel has fewer than 200 prisoners in administrative detention. Jordan detains over 10,000 every year. The US, UK, Ireland, and Australia all use administrative detention for reasons of public safety, in much higher numbers than Israel does.