Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Another worthless treaty

Hat tip to Ze'ev:

Background: Treaty already obligates Egypt to stop arms smuggling

The Sharon team reportedly wants a written Egyptian commitment to stop the
arms smuggling from Egypt into the Gaza Strip before Israel retreat from the
Philadelphi Corridor - a narrow strip between Egypt and Gaza. It should be
noted that Egypt is already obligated to do this per the Peace Treaty
Between Israel And Egypt signed on March 26, 1979. It is far from clear why
the Sharon team considers the signing of an additional piece of paper to
have significance given that Egypt has ignored the very same obligation for
over a quarter of a century. If anything, the fact that a new piece of
paper is being signed indicates that that is all it is - a piece of paper.

Text follows:
www.knesset.gov.il/process/docs/egypt_eng.htm:

Smuggling weapons to kill Israelis falls into Article III.2.:

'...Article III 2. Each Party undertakes to ensure that acts or threats of
belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not
committed from within its territory. . .. Each Party also undertakes to
refrain from organizing, instigating, inciting, assisting or participating
in acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, subversion or violence
against the other Party, anywhere, and undertakes to ensure that
perpetrators of such acts are brought to justice.'

Smuggling through the tunnels - regardless of the purpose is also illegal:

'Annex I Protocol Concerning Israeli Withdrawal and Security Agreements

Article II 2. Access across the international boundary shall only be
permitted through entry check points designated by each Party and under its
control. Such access shall be in accordance with laws and regulations of
each country.'

"Secret documents known as "martyrs' kits" obtained by The Post provide a startling glimpse into the world of suicide bombers, who are recruited with promises that their families will be well taken care of financially.

These kits ensure that the families of Hamas, PLO and Palestinian Islamic Jihad killers get generous "charitable donations" from Saudi Arabia-based organizations and, while he was in power, Saddam Hussein.

The documents reviewed by The Post include a martyr kit for Maher Kamel Hbeishe, a Hamas fanatic who blew himself up on a Haifa bus Dec. 2, 2001, killing 15 Israelis and wounding 40.

Much of the kit's paperwork carries the corporate logo of the Arab Bank — the Middle East's most important and influential financial institution — and the numbers of the accounts through which his family was paid.

The cover on Hbeishe's file — in the records of Saudi relief committees — proclaims: "the martyrs receive reward from their Lord, they and their light."

Replete with florid Arabic tributes to dead terrorists, the paperwork explains the manner of death, making it clear that the bank knew exactly whom it was giving money to and why.

If the terrorist were successful, the family would receive $5,316; being wounded or captured would earn them a lesser amount.

Though small by Western standards, the payments are more than six times the West Bank's average annual income of $850.

To get its money, Hbeishe's family was most likely contacted by the so-called "social welfare arm" of Hamas and instructed to open up an Arab Bank account. Then representatives of Hamas would use the information in the martyrs' kit to provide the bank with the name of the attacker and the beneficiaries getting checks.

The Saudi charities — called relief committees — that provide the funding for the terrorists make no secret of their activities, even taking out full-page ads in newspapers. One such ad listed more than 1,000 individuals who had been wounded or captured by the Israelis during the intifada and whose families were eligible for benefits.

Every ad explicitly directs the family members to go to Arab Bank.

Terrorists on shooting spree demanding jobs as policemen

Once again, the Palestinians move beyond parody.

Dozens of militants linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group stormed a government building in Gaza on Saturday, demanding he make good on a deal to recruit them into the Palestinian security forces.

About 40 armed militants from the group, some masked, raided the Palestinian Legislative Council building in the town of Rafah to protest the delay in the move, but said they were not using violence or holding anyone hostage.

Also, this:

In Tulkarm on Monday, some 20 Fatah gunmen went on a shooting spree in the center of the city, accusing the PA leadership of failing to fulfill its promise to pay them salaries.

The gunmen went earlier in the day to a local bank to check if the PA had deposited money in their accounts. When they discovered that the money had not arrived, they took to the streets, shooting into the air and chanting slogans against the PA.

Hamas planning on raining rockets on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv

Nice to see how "moderate" they have become.

After the security services identified Hamas efforts to transfer the infrastructure for Kassam rockets from Gaza to the West Bank, an official verification of this trend has arrived. An article on the Hamas website warns: "The Kassam in the West Bank will be the main deterrent weapon in the next phase....The entire distance from Netanya to Tulkarm is no more than 4 kilometers. Ramallah and Bethlehem are adjacent to Jerusalem; the entire distance between Kalkilya and occupied Tel Aviv is no more than 7 kilometers." The article explained that intense efforts have been underway for the last two years in Jenin and Nablus to develop this capability. (Maariv-Hebrew, 5Jul05)

Here's a map of which parts of Israel are vulnerable to Kassams and Katyushas from the Defensible Borders website, which looks like it may become a very nice resource.

The poor French. They deal with Algerian terrorists for years, then they finally leave in 1962, and decades later, after years of French appeasement of Arabs, the Muslims are still trying to kidnap and kill them.

French diplomats living in Algeria asserted that the French government is concerned about a possible alliance between the Algerian fundamentalist organization, 'Salafist Group for Call and Combat' and Al-Qaeda in Iraq led by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. According to the sources, the alliance will target French citizens who live in Iraq and French interests in general all over the world. French diplomats expressed the concerns of their intelligence services to Asharq Al Awsat saying that the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat wish to integrate with global Jihad.

Where are the analysts who predict less terror after withdrawal?

Is there any analyst who has made a serious assessment and determined that Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza will make things any more peaceful?

This is only the latest pessimistic analysis I have seen. But I have read many of them, from people who seem to have stellar credentials in political or military matters. However, I have yet to read any article giving a realistic scenario of Palestinians not increasing their attacks on Jews in the wake of the Gaza withdrawal. Sometimes I'll see a throwaway comment like "Peace negotiations will be kickstarted by the disengagement" but I cannot recall one time that there was any evidence behind it.

If anyone has such an article, please let me know.

Random links - hebrewsports.com and parshablog's Linkify

Been busy at my real work and with various other projects, including yet another side business called hebrewsports.com where you can buy clothing and gifts with Hebrew versions of professional sports logos. (I'm particularly proud of the Knicks logo I made tonight:

and my recent Mets logo:

.)

I'm also going to be going on a few business trips in the next few weeks so posting will be sporadic. My heyday of putting together articles worthy of Havel Havalim seems to be behind me, alas.

But check out parshablog's Linkify, a very cool Mozilla Firefox add-on that notices any reference to verses in the Tanach or Talmud on web pages and links them to the appropriate page on the Mechon Mamre or e-daf sites. Very nice!

Palestinian "Police" work ethic shines through

Just six weeks before Israel is due to evacuate its Gaza Strip settlements, the U.S. general charged with reforming the Palestinian security forces said Thursday that they were not yet ready to enforce internal security or prevent attacks on Israeli targets. Army Lt. Gen. William Ward told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Palestinians had not yet forged their disparate security groups into a single force under a centralized command. Ward depicted a Palestinian force that is woefully unprepared to handle internal policing duties or stop attacks on Israel after Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza. The Palestinian security force has more than 58,000 members, Ward said, but no more than 22,000 "actually show up for work."

He said the force was like 'a social welfare net,' with the payroll including officers who do not 'contribute to the day-to-day security situation on the Palestinian street.'

That's where he is wrong. They contribute, all right - just on the wrong side.

The Washington Post adds:

Assistant Secretary of State C. David Welch, who has traveled repeatedly to the region to assist Israeli-Palestinian coordination on the Gaza withdrawal, echoed Ward's assessment. "Overall, Palestinian performance on confronting violence has been far from satisfactory, and this is a real shortfall and area of concern," Welch said.

Ward said he had completed an inventory of the equipment needed by the Palestinians, including vehicles, clothing and basic infrastructure. Some of it will be supplied by the Europeans, and he said he was working to expedite it through Israeli customs.

Israeli officials have drawn the line at providing lethal weapons to the Palestinian security. They have pointedly told their Palestinian counterparts that if they need weapons, they should simply collect the illegal ones on the streets.

Ward demurred when asked whether Abbas's strategy of trying to co-opt militant groups -- rather than confront them -- would work in the long run. He said that he did not "know if I'd do business that way" but that it "has created an atmosphere that is allowing other things that are important to occur."

Like daily terror attacks, shootings, killings, attempted bombings, arms smuggling, allowing terrorists to go free from jail, criticizing Israel for doing the PA police job, encouraging Palestinian kids to become martyrs, and accusing Israel of poisoning poor Palestinians.

War of the Worlds: The Lost Version (Iowahawk)

If you've never read Iowahawk spoofs, this is a great one to start with. Here's an excerpt:

CARL PHILLIPS
Can you tell the folks at home who you are, and what you are doing here?

CAPTAIN LANSING
I’m Captain Lansing of the signal corps, attached to the state militia, and we’re here to give these Martians a taste of hot New Jersey lead.

CARL PHILLIPS
Captain, I think question on the mind of all our listeners is obvious – have you received authorization for this action from the League of Nations?

CAPTAIN LANSING
Well, no, but the President and the War Department have asked us to…

CARL PHILLIPS
If you proceed without the cooperation of Prime Minister Chamberlain or Mr. Stalin or the Germans, won’t the mechano-men have a strong case that this is an illegal, unilateral strike that only serves the interest of the United States, and neo-Venusian masters? Won’t this just anger the Martian community, and provoke them further? What about the brutal New Jersey winter? What about --

CAPTAIN LANSING
Listen, pal, I have to go, they’re shooting death rays at our tanks. You’re welcome to embed with us.

CARL PHILLIPS
With all due respect Captain, that would compromise my integrity as a radio journalist, and a citizen of the solar system. Wait! Ladies and gentlemen, I can hardly describe the horror before my eyes! The Air Corps bombers… and the tanks… they are overwhelming and decimating the outmatched mechano-men! One by one, the mechano-men are fleeing and surrendering!

(TROOPS CHEERING)

CARL PHILLIPS
I think I’m going to be sick.

PROF. PIERSON
Roosevelt lied! Robots Died!

CARL PHILLIPS
(OFF MIC) What..? Are you sure? Ladies and gentlemen, I have just received a wire service report that state militias and police have captured and killed hundreds of mechano-men from Maine to California. How many mechano-women and mechano-children also died in this senseless violence, we may never know. I’m afraid this is it folks… I’m afraid that it looks as if we have lost all hope for mechano-kind.

Israel arrests Palestinian terrorist/"policeman"

Just another shining example of the types of people that Mahmoud Abbas is paying for his "police" force that does no policing.

A Palestinian policeman involved in the October 2000 Ramallah lynching has been arrested. Numerous investigations have shown that Wassim Radi, the Palestinian policeman in question, was directly involved in the murder of Sergeant First Class Yossi Avrahami. Wasam Radi was arrested May 22nd, 2005 in a joint IDF and ISA operation.

Radi is suspected of being directly involved in the Ramallah lynching on October 12, 2000, during which two IDF reserved soldiers were brutally murdered. Radi, a 30-year old Palestinian policeman, is originally from the Gaza Strip and is currently a resident of the village of Beituniya, southwest of Ramallah.

The IDF will continue to hunt all those who were involved in the murders until they are brought to justice.

According to the news, only settlers are "extremist" and only Palestinians are "moderate"

Number of hits in Google News search for the phrase "extremist settlers": 106
Number of hits in Google News search for the phrase "extremist Palestinians": 1
Number of hits in Google News search for the phrase "moderate settlers": 0
Number of hits in Google News search for the phrase "moderate Palestinians": 125

In other words, people who advocate genocide of Jews, who danced on 9/11, who cheered Saddam's SCUD missiles, who burn the American flag regularly, who idolize people who blow up pizza shops, who name public squares after terrorists, who prefer Hamas to any non-Muslim - they don't have an extremist among them!

So what crimes are the extremists in this conflict doing? Read the articles: they are doing such heinous crimes as stopping traffic on Israel's highways, protesting and getting hit by moderate Palestinian stones, building houses, and, um, that's about it.

A reasonable question to all "news" sources would be why wouldn't they use scare quotes when talking about "extremist" Jewish settlers when they will use them while talking about Muslim terrorists?

Arabs helped Titus conquer Jerusalem in 70 AD

Interesting tidbit (thanks to Emet m'Tziyon). Publius Cornelius Tacitus mentions this in his Histories:
[5.1] EARLY in this year Titus Caesar, who had been selected by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea, and who had gained distinction as a soldier while both were still subjects, began to rise in power and reputation, as armies and provinces emulated each other in their attachment to him. The young man himself, anxious to be thought superior to his station, was ever displaying his gracefulness and his energy in war. By his courtesy and affability he called forth a willing obedience, and he often mixed with the common soldiers, while working or marching, without impairing his dignity as general. He found in Judaea three legions, the 5th, the 10th, and the 15th, all old troops of Vespasian's. To these he added the 12th from Syria, and some men belonging to the 18th and 3rd, whom he had withdrawn from Alexandria. This force was accompanied by twenty cohorts of allied troops and eight squadrons of cavalry, by the two kings Agrippa and Sohemus, by the auxiliary forces of king Antiochus, by a strong contingent of Arabs, who hated the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbours, and, lastly, by many persons brought from the capital and from Italy by private hopes of securing the yet unengaged affections of the Prince. With this force Titus entered the enemy's territory, preserving strict order on his march, reconnoitring every spot, and always ready to give battle. At last he encamped near Jerusalem.

So while students of the Bible may not be surprised, Tacitus shows that Arab hatred of Jews pre-dates Islam by many centuries.

I imagine that they were only upset by the "occupation" of Canaanite land a millenium earlier, and that they were just trying to help the Romans uphold international law.

----------------
By the way, Tacitus clearly hated Jews and Judaism, but some of his complaints (the few that are accurate) are actually quite complimentary to Western eyes:

This worship, however introduced, is upheld by its antiquity; all their other customs, which are at once perverse and disgusting, owe their strength to their very badness. The most degraded out of other races, scorning their national beliefs, brought to them their contributions and presents. This augmented the wealth of the Jews, as also did the fact, that among themselves they are inflexibly honest and ever ready to shew compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart, and though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they abstain from intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is unlawful. Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference from other men. Those who come over to their religion adopt the practice, and have this lesson first instilled into them, to despise all gods, to disown their country, and set at nought parents, children, and brethren. Still they provide for the increase of their numbers. It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant. They hold that the souls of all who perish in battle or by the hands of the executioner are immortal. Hence a passion for propagating their race and a contempt for death. They are wont to bury rather than to burn their dead, following in this the Egyptian custom; they bestow the same care on the dead, and they hold the same belief about the lower world. Quite different is their faith about things divine. The Egyptians worship many animals and images of monstrous form; the Jews have purely mental conceptions of Deity, as one in essence. They call those profane who make representations of God in human shape out of perishable materials. They believe that Being to be supreme and eternal, neither capable of representation, nor of decay. They therefore do not allow any images to stand in their cities, much less in their temples. This flattery is not paid to their kings, nor this honour to our Emperors.

Islam is more a political ideology than a religion

One of the reasons that the West treats Islam with kid gloves is because of our understandable desire for world-wide freedom of religion. But when religion becomes more than a personal or community-based belief system and turns into a worldwide political philosophy (and a very bigoted and ugly one, at that) then the free world has no obligation to treat it like a religion, rather it should be treated the way that fascism is treated - with no tolerance.

The latest evidence that Islam is not acting like a religion comes from this latest demand:

Islamic states want permanent seat on UN Security Council
Foreign ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) opened a meeting with a call for a Muslim permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu urged a greater role for Muslim countries in world affairs and demanded a 'permanent representation for the Islamic world on the UN Security Council'.

'The Islamic world, which represents one fifth of total mankind, cannot remain excluded from the activities of the Security Council which assumes a fundamental role in keeping security and peace in the world,' he said Tuesday.

Notice that they aren't saying that any single Islamic state should be represented.

Notice how they wouldn't support India (which is also seeking membership in the Security Council), even though it has more Muslims than any other nation - because it is not an "Islamic state."

Notice how they put aside all their many political differences in order to push their agenda of increasing Islamic influence on the world.

The West needs to wake up and treat Islam on a geopolitical level the way that it treats all other oppressive and bigoted ideologies. The fig leaf of "religion" should not protect today's Islam.

June 28, 1935-36: The Power of Lies

A sobering article in the June 28, 1935 edition of the Palestine Post:

Everyone knew what was happening in Nazi Germany. Everyone saw the vile Jew-hatred coming from Europe. (In the same edition of the Palestine Post was an article about how cities in Germany were stripping Jews of their citizenship, even before Hitler's national law disenfranchising Jews took effect.) While they may not have imagined genocide, it was very clear that for the foreseeable future Jews would be heavily persecuted in Europe.

Britain could have saved millions of the Jews by just allowing them to go to Palestine (and Cyprus and Trans-Jordan.) So why didn't they?

The reason is simple. They didn't want to upset the Arabs.

And the Palestinian Arab leaders had no qualms about playing up their "fears" that Jews would destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque, that they would "endanger the Arabs existence" - any convenient lie would do.

As can be seen in the Post on June 28, 1936:

Do these complaints sound familiar? They are the same complaints we have heard for the past 70 years. And they are just as absurd as they were then.

And the British weren't stupid. They knew that the Arabs were liars (also the same issue):

But lies are insidious. When someone hears a lie, even if they know it is false, it still affects them. A little bit of us tends to think, "What if it is true?" Or, more commonly, "Both sides are very passionate and I don't know all the facts - probably the truth is somewhere in between."

Couple that with the fact that the Western mind has a very hard time accepting that someone would lie to our faces. Hitler did it in the 30s, and the "relief" that could be felt in the West whenever he claimed that he was finished his expansionism was palpable. And they were always lies.

The Arabs learned very well from Hitler's playbook. A lie, repeated often enough, tends to be believed. And in this case the Arab lies about their "fears" of their future (rather than the Jew-hatred that was truly the source of their being against Jewish immigration) made the British pause and think that perhaps this year isn't the best time to allow Jews to save their lives - maybe next year, maybe after negotiations, maybe when the Arabs stop rioting and things calm down - maybe then we will do the right thing. But until then, it is easier to close our eyes and believe some of the lies coming out of the mouths of vile bigots.

Westerners are fans of fair play, of the adage that "there are two sides to every story." It is very hard to accept that one side is right and that the other side is lying.

Arab lies and British (and world) apathy helped combine to the destruction of European Jewry. And the Arabs have never stopped their campaign of getting rid of any Jews in positions of power in the Middle East, partially through their incessant repitition of anti-Semitic lies to their own people and to the apathetic West.

Each lie affects us all until they are called out and exposed for what they are. It is a moral responsibility to expose each Arab lie about Israel and Jews and show the liars to be the bigoted scum they are.

And it is the height of stupidity to believe the promises of liars.

Muslim male bombers get virgins. What do the women get?

From OpinionJournal's Best of the Web:

Girls Gone Wild
Fundamentalist Muslim mythology has it that terrorist 'martyrs' are greeted in heaven by 72 virgins. With Palestinian Arabs increasingly making use of female suicide bombers, we've often wondered what they get in heaven. Now we have the answer, thanks to a report in London's Sunday Telegraph from an Israeli prison:

One of the inmates, Ayat Allah Kamil, 20, from Kabatya, told me why she had wanted to become a martyr: 'Because of my religion. I'm very religious. For the holy war [jihad] there's no difference between men and women shaid [martyrs].'

According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr 'will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair.'

That is to say, the highest aspiration for a fundamentalist Palestinian girl is murder, suicide and prostitution. Has there ever been a more depraved culture?