Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Condoleezza Clinton? (The New York Sun)

For an administration that bills itself as having a groundbreaking new doctrine when it comes to the Middle East, the Bush administration is starting to look a bit too close for our taste to the Clinton administration, at least on the question of Israel's rights in Jerusalem. Reading Secretary of State Rice's comments in an interview Thursday with the Los Angeles Times, we were hard-pressed to tell if it was Ms. Rice or President Clinton.

Here is Ms. Rice, commenting on Israel's plans to add 3,500 housing units in Maale Adumim, a suburb that is four and a half miles east of Jerusalem: "We've noted our concern to the Israelis," she said. "We will continue to note that this is at odds with the - of American policy." She said of Israel's reply to the concerns: "anything that raises the prospect that you're going to have an expansion of settlements in this way, particularly in a sensitive area, is not really a satisfactory response." And here is President Clinton, answering a question in 1997 about Israel's plans to build in the Har Homa area of Jerusalem: "I would have preferred the decision not have been made, because I don't think it builds confidence, I think it builds mistrust. And I wish that it had not been made."

Israel is planning to build houses in a suburb of its capital, a capital that, according to the Jerusalem Embassy Act passed by Congress in 1995 by a vote of 93 to 5 in the Senate and 347 to 37 in the House, "should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel" and "should remain an undivided city." This decision to build houses in a suburb of the capital is deemed not satisfactory by Ms. Rice. It is deemed by the editorialists of the New York Times to be "a slap in the face of the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas" and evidence that "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel doesn't quite get it yet." The Washington Post used an entire editorial of its own over the weekend to call on President Bush to press Mr. Sharon to freeze the plan.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Arabs engage in genuine outrage after genuine outrage with hardly a peep out of Ms. Rice or the liberal editorial writers. Mr. Abbas has failed in his obligation to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure. Abu Musab, a leader of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian Arab terrorist group, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, "What's happening now isn't considered a calm. It's merely a warrior's rest." The Palestinians were recently caught smuggling anti-aircraft missiles into Gaza.

Mr. Abbas has announced plans to release from prison Ahmed Saadat and Fuad Shubaki. Mr. Saadat is the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which our State Department lists as a terrorist group responsible for the assassination in 2001 of Israel's tourism minister and for airline hijackings that have killed at least 20 American citizens. Mr. Shubaki is an aide to Yasser Arafat who documents show made the deal to buy the arms from Iran that Arafat was smuggling in aboard the ship the Karine-A. Mr. Abbas's response when asked by Time magazine who was responsible for the February 25 suicide bombing that killed five Israelis in Tel Aviv: "If you ask me who is responsible, the Israelis are responsible." The Palestinian Authority-controlled press praised the suicide bomber as a martyr.

It is nothing less than warped to look at this situation and see Israeli home-building as the unsatisfactory part of it. There is no question where the logic leads. As Norman Podhoretz writes in the April number of Commentary, the whole world "takes as axiomatic the Arab position that a Palestinian state must be judenrein." Therefore, the 30,000 current residents of Maale Adumim "face the prospect of being dragged out of their homes by the Israeli army and packed off to 'Israel proper.' " As Mr. Podhoretz paraphrases his Israeli daughter telling him indignantly, if any such thing "were to be done to Palestinians, or to anyone else, it would be called 'transfer' or 'ethnic cleansing' and would be condemned as a crime against humanity. But with Jews as the victims, it is being transmuted by a malignant political alchemy into nothing less than an act of justice." Such is the Arab position. Alas, the Bush administration and Ms. Rice, like the Democratic administration that preceded them, do not yet appear to have fully broken free of it.

Our friends the Saudis

Waiting for the loud denunciations of the Saudis from Human Rights Watch, the UN, the New York Times editorialists....

Saudi religious police have destroyed a clandestine makeshift Hindu temple in an old district of Riyadh and deported three worshippers found there, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or religious police, on Thursday stumbled across a room converted into a temple while raiding a number of apartments suspected of being used to manufacture alcohol and distribute pornographic videos, pan-Arab Al-Hayat said.
"They were surprised to find that one room had been converted into a Hindu temple," the newspaper said.
A caretaker who was found in the worshiping area ignored the religious police orders to stop performing his religious rituals, the paper added.
He was deported along with two other men who arrived on the scene to worship.
All forms of non-Muslim worship are banned in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, which is home to Islam's holiest shrines.

Fatah: 'Don’t believe the Jews’

Notice this isn't Hamas or Islamic Jihad talking - it is a member of Abbas' own party, openly advocating terror and Jew-hatred.

But we know that Abbas will crack down on the terrorists in his own organization, right? If we close our eyes and wish real hard, Palestinians will be very happy about disengagement and quietly build a new Hong Kong in Gaza, asking the Israelis to move in and help them build an infrastructure. Everything will be great as long as Israel keeps acting like she needs to give Palestinian terrorists more and more and more to appease them.

And remember, when right-wing Israelis say that the current calm is false, they are hate-mongering; when Palestinians say it; they are just posturing. At no point must you believe it. And when fighting breaks out again, it will be because of an Israeli provocation, and have nothing to do with people like Abu Musab.

GAZA - The current lull in fighting is a false calm, used by terrorists to gather strength ahead of the next round of violence, senior al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades figure Abu-Musab told Ynet Saturday.

“What’s happening now isn’t considered a calm. It’s merely a warrior’s rest,” he says. “When the confrontation renews, we’ll be back with methods and tools never before seen.”

Moreover, the current lull in violence does not signal a genuine chance for peace, as Jews should not be believed, Abu-Musab says.

“In our religion, in the Koran, it says you should not believe the Jews,” he says. “The Jews won’t accept us until we join them, their religion, and until we stop demanding our rights.”

Abu-Musab, who is the Brigades commander in the northern Gaza Strip, also warns that talk by Jewish far right activists regarding attacks on the al-Aqsa mosque, as well settlement expansion, ensure the current lull would not last long.

“It must be clear, every attack or attempt to target al-Aqsa means not only the end of the calm, but a renewed, much more serious eruption (of violence,)” he says."

Palestinians smuggling anti-aircraft missiles from Egypt

It's beginning to sound alot like Oslo!

Israel's defense minister said Sunday that Palestinian security agents recently smuggled anti-aircraft missiles into the Gaza Strip from Egypt, according to officials a development that would threaten a recent cease-fire between the two sides.

Defense Minister Shaul told a closed Cabinet meeting that Palestinian intelligence agents were involved in bringing the Strella missiles into Gaza through smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border, participants in the meeting said.

'Last week, several Strellas were smuggled in by Palestinian military intelligence. If the Palestinians don't get a hold of the Strellas, we will,' Mofaz was quoted as saying.

Hamas pays for ads on Google

Who says that terrorists are against capitalism?

Terror organizations are advancing their recruitment and public relations methods: Internet surfers who enter the word “Hamas” in Arabic in the Google search engine, will view, in addition to the search results, an AdWord message that links directly to the website of the organization’s military faction Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
The link also appears in a search of several other words, such as the “Gaza,” “Palestine,” “Jihad.”
This indicates that a Hamas source has paid Google, the most popular search engine on the web, for the advertisement.
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades website holds updated and diverse information: Along with news updates stories from the news agencies, the site also publishes interviews with the organization’s leaders.
In one such interview, Hamas member Said Badarna, who is imprisoned in Israel, says, “abductions are the only way to release prisoners being held in Israel.”

Terror Museum planned

Once again, beyond parody.

Hamas terrorist leaders have said they intend to make a museum out of the house of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader whom Israel killed last year.

The museum will consist of five rooms, including the room where Yassin received guests and a waiting room where he sat with guards. The focus of the museum will be some of his writings, gifts that he received and parts of his wheelchair.

Human Rights Watch hires Israel-basher

Thanks to the excellent NGO Monitor organization.

Ken Roth and Human Rights Watch have employed Lucy Mair as a researcher in Israel/Occupied Territories. Ms. Mair's qualifications include writing for the "Electronic Intifada" and work with Grassroots International, a radical pro-Palestinian political organization. (Since HRW's employment process is secret, and not subject to independent review, we are unable to compare her credentials and expertise on universal human rights issues with the other candidates.) Her descriptions of Life in Palestine, and articles for "Palestine Now" etc., focus exclusively on Palestinian "fear and the loss and the humiliation and the despair", with no mention of terror, suicide bombings, and the human rights of Israelis. References to Israeli soldiers "protected by arrogance and hatred" are hostile stereotypes, and she echoes the false massacre claims in referring to Palestinians "killed in their homes in Jenin when the tanks and the bulldozers ate up their camp". In this extreme biased approach to Israel that extends far beyond legitimate criticism, she joins the other members of HRW's Middle East team, including Sarah Leah Whitson (from MADRE) and Joe Stork (from MERIP).

[...]
Thus, HRW has hired someone whose experience in 'human rights' is based upon a history of promoting the Palestinian cause with absolutely no regard for the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the rights of Israelis to defend themselves from Palestinian terror. Kenneth Roth has once again demonstrated his policy of filling HRW's Middle East department with like-minded politicized individuals whose priorities are not in keeping with the promotion of universal human rights values.

Chag Purim Same'akh!

To my legions, um, dozens, um, couple of readers!

חג שמח

Sports news!

When was the last time you heard of a "human rights" group boycotting any Palestinian event because of child abuse, suicide bombing, honor killings, incitement to hate, support for terror....

Human rights groups in Ireland are calling on Irish national soccer team supporters to boycott a World Cup qualifying match against the Israeli national team.

The organizations asked fans to refrain from making the trip to Israel for the May 26 match, and have also asked the Irish Football Association
to boycott the game entirely due to the political situation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

And another progressive brain surgeon/father weighs in:

France's national soccer team top goalie slammed Israel on Thursday, saying he refused to travel with his teammates to a planned match with Israel’s national team next week because of the the Israeli army's actions against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

“When I see all the suffering in the world, I don’t understand why they would want to play in Israel,” Fabien Barthez told a news conference in Paris.

The French goalie also slammed Israel’s operations in the Palestinian territories, saying: “I don’t like it at all. I am speaking as a father and not as a soccer player.”

Should Barthez not arrive in Israel with the rest of the French squad for the planned match on Wednesday, Coach Raymond Domenech would need to use his second-string goalie.

Apparently, Jewish kids blown up by bombs or from Kassam rockets do not have any fathers.
Hat tip to Hatshepsut.

Child Abuse: The New Islamic Cult of Martyrdom

A lengthy report from the South Asia Terrorism Portal site, trying to see if India can learn the lessons of Israel.

This disturbing practice of deadly child abuse is on the rise in Muslim societies all over the world, most notably in the Palestinian areas and in Pakistan as also in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). While the average Israeli or Indian citizen does not usually make the connection, there are striking similarities between the threats that face their two countries. Muslim terrorist organizations that recruit – sometimes forcibly – these teenagers, justify this illegal and immoral practice by noting that children, much like females, are less likely to be intercepted by security forces before they carry out their missions of death. In both conflicts, the value of a child’s life (not to mention the lives of those unfortunates who find themselves within the radius of death and destruction when the bomb is detonated) has become subordinate to the aspirations of militant Islam and militant nationalism. And while the recruitment and indoctrination of Muslim children to engage in terrorism and armed conflict in Indian Kashmir has not reached the unprecedented levels of the current Intifada that targets Israel; concerned Indian citizens (indeed persons living in any region where militant Islam has declared a Jihad) should be aware of the threat that the cult of martyrdom directs at democracies worldwide.8

Many of this Journal’s readers live in India and the surrounding region. While generally familiar with the problems emanating from Jammu and Kashmir, they remain largely unaware of the highly troubling direction taken by wide-scale Palestinian recruitment and training of children to engage in terrorist violence. This paper attempts to address the following vexing questions, in the hope that the lessons learned will be relevant to those facing similar threats in South Asia and elsewhere: How pervasive is this form of child abuse in the present Israeli–Palestinian conflict? How is it inspired?

Arab nations buy Israeli medical equipment

Perhaps their leadership should be regarded as collaborators and lynched.

Arab countries, including Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf emirates are among the recipients of medical equipment exported by 24 Israeli companies in 2004, Globes reported. Israeli exports of medical equipment rose by 7.2% in 2004 to $1.09 billion. The Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute predicts that medical equipment exports will rise by another 5-7% this year. Export Institute director Yechiel Assia said medical equipment exports to Europe rose by 10% to $318 million, and exports to North America rose by 17% to $471 million. 400 companies currently export medical equipment to the US, 212 to Germany, 150 to France, 100 to Australia, 135 to Italy, 70 to Hong Kong, and 185 to the UK. This year, the Export Institute plans to send three delegations of medical equipment companies to the UK, France, and Turkey, and to participate in national pavilions in two exhibitions in Germany.

A new version of a biomolecular computer developed at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology - composed entirely of DNA molecules and enzymes - outdoes even the fastest of its kind, performing as many as a billion different programs simultaneously.

Previous biomolecular computers, such as the one built by a joint team from the Technion and the Weizmann Institute of Science three years ago, were limited to just 765 simultaneous programs.

Current computers consist of metal, plastic, wires and transistors. The manner in which they process information is called linear because they conduct one computation at a time. In the latest generation of computers, biological molecules replace all the components. One advantage of these biomolecular computers over linear computers is their ability to simultaneously carry out an enormous number of complex operations.

This new biological computer is also autonomous; it processes calculations from beginning to end without any human assistance. Other biomolecular computers require humans to analyze and decipher results and perform intermediate tasks at different points in the process before the computer can complete the operation.

'A final innovation is the incorporation of a gold-coated chip, which allows simple, real-time readout of the results,' said lead researcher Professor Ehud Keinan of the Technion Faculty of Chemistry. He explained that results produced by current biomolecular computers can only be
analyzed by using elaborate techniques that include separating and sorting molecules according to size and the use of radioactive materials.

The development of the Technion's biomolecular computer is reported in the March 2005 Journal of the American Chemical Society.

A tribute to MEMRI (Jay Nordlinger)

This article is three years old. I was inspired to look it up because this Purim is the third anniversary of the newest blood libel from the Arab world - that Jews eat the blood of Gentiles in their Purim pastries (hamantaschen). And if it wasn't for MEMRI, we wouldn't know about the medieval bigoted rantings that are commonplace in Arabic media.

There are other Arabic media watchdogs as well, like Palestine Media Watch, and MEMRI now has an entire section devoted to TV shows, but the original MEMRI is invaluable and has already shown many times the differences between the smooth Western face of Arab propaganda and the way many Arabs really think.

How the MSM describes Hamas and Hezbollah

From the New York Times:

Hamas, the Islamic group that combines philanthropy and militancy, confirmed publicly on Saturday that it would take part in Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for July 17.....

They sound just like the Boy Scouts!

And check out the Washington Post:

Hezbollah, an armed Shiite Muslim political movement that operates in the south (of Lebanon).

Is it any wonder that the mainstream media is becoming more and more irrelevant?
Hat tip to Daniel Pipes.

Last Summer, the Israeli company Tadiran Spectalink revealed one of the more successful information tools used in recent Israeli counter-terrorist operations. The system, called V-Rambo (Video Receiver And Monitor for Battlefield Operations), is a 3x3 inch color video screen, with a wireless communications link to overhead UAVs. The battery powered system is worn on the wrist and provides the user with live video (at 30 frames a second) from the UAV overhead. The receiver, battery and antenna are carried on the soldiers web equipment or jacket. V-Rambo can also display digital maps. The Israeli manufacturer is trying to sell the system to foreign armed forces, most likely American. V-Rambo proved very useful in counter-terrorist operations, allowing small groups of soldiers to be led by officers or NCOs equipped with a real time video of the surrounding terrain. This put enemy fighters at a big disadvantage, and reduced the risk of friendly fire incidents. A vehicle version of V-Rambo uses a five inch color screen. V-Rambo can, of course, accept video feeds from any ground or air based source.