Tuesday, August 23, 2005

  • Tuesday, August 23, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
You can't make this stuff up! (Hat tip to OpinionJournal Best of the Web)

Made-in-Israel Paper Cups Used in Local Hospital
Samir Al-Saadi, Arab News

JEDDAH, 22 August 2005 — Paper cups with Hebrew writing disturbed both employees and medical staff at King Khaled National Guard Hospital on Saturday. The catering subcontractor for the hospital coffee shops began using them on Saturday after their usual supply ran out.

We were shocked and angry,” said an employee. “How can Israeli products be allowed and how did they enter this hospital?” he asked.

The Filipino employee who works in the Al-Musbah coffee shop asked: “Why is everybody mad about the cups?” He was told: “Because they are made in Israel!

According to hospital officials, the matter is being investigated and action will be taken.

Saleh Al-Mazroi, executive director for operations at KKNGH, said the matter had been referred to authorities in Riyadh and was being dealt with.

On the bottom of the paper cup was a website address and a telephone number. When Arab News looked at the website — www.orion-rancal.co.il. — it was found to be in Hebrew though there were a few words of English: “Israeli disposable paper, plastic and foam dinnerware supplier for restaurants.”

Arab News contacted Ibrahim Al-Musbah, manager and owner, who said, “I thank you for informing me. I will look into it personally and the offending articles will be disposed of.” He added that the company has a supplier in the Kingdom from whom they buy restaurant supplies. According to Al-Musbah, the supplier might be unaware of the problem.

Al-Musbah later contacted Arab News and said that the paper cups had come to his company by mistake. The cups were in a cardboard box that looked exactly like the ones his company normally receives and so the employees did not notice any difference. Al-Musbah added that the supplier was named “Jeelani” and that he would supply Arab News with his contact numbers today.

The paper cups were quickly withdrawn from use but might there not be other, less obvious, Israeli products in our shops and marketplaces?
Horrors! The $15 that they accidentally paid to an Israeli company could have gone for bomb belts!
  • Tuesday, August 23, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
In a transcript of a radio interview in Australia about the Prime Minister meeting with "moderate" Muslim leaders, a moderate Muslim critic mentions a casual fact in passing:
MICHAEL VINCENT: What do you think of the result of today's meeting? Do you think it does progress the dialogue between the Muslim community and the Government?

IRFAN YUSUF: Well, it'll progress the dialogue between the Government and these particular organisations, but then I don't know really how committed these organisations are to, you know, to curbing extremism.

I mean, the last camp I went to, which was organised by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, I was handed a copy of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, as an educational text. It's extremely anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish text.

It's (inaudible) anti-Semitic forgery which was written, I believe, during the Zionist time as a way of encouraging pogroms against Jewish people.

And, I mean, I don't regard that as being, you know, reflective of mainstream Muslim opinion, but unfortunately that's the sort of opinion and attitudes and books and what have you that are being distributed by some of these peak bodies.
  • Tuesday, August 23, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Another in the continuing saga of "Today's criminals, tomorrow's policemen."
In another incident in the West Bank, arsonists set fire to the offices of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Hebron on Sunday night. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, which is yet another sign of increased lawlessness in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hebron residents said the arson was apparently the work of a local Fatah gang whose members were angry because they were not given jobs and money.
  • Tuesday, August 23, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
An interesting part about funding for Fatah terror groups buried in another Gaza-in-chaos article:

In a military training camp run by the ruling Fatah movement, hundreds of young Palestinians marched in formation Monday and sprinted across a sandy lot.
[...]
Competition among armed Palestinian groups over control of Gaza's lawless towns intensified Monday as Israeli settlers cleared out the last of 21 Jewish settlements.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas wants to see carefully orchestrated victory marches under the Palestinian national flag. However, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a few tiny Palestinian Liberation Organization factions have ignored his appeals, already parading their gunmen in a show of force and planning parades once the last Israeli soldiers leave in the coming weeks.

[...]

In southern Gaza, near what was once the Gush Katif bloc of Israeli settlements, members of Fatah's military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, have organized three military training camps for more than 3,000 activists. (Tiny indeed! - EoZ)

[...]
The Palestinian Authority distanced itself from the training camps.

"There is no Fatah army, no popular army," said Tawfik Abu Khoussa, a Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman. "We want to get rid of the military images. After the withdrawal, there is one authority and that's it."

However, the Al Aqsa men said they were getting Fatah funding for the camps, and Palestinian security officials sat in on one of Monday's interviews with camp organizers.

In organizing a small private army, Fatah gunmen in southern Gaza also appeared to be sending a warning to the Palestinian Authority that they could make trouble if jobs are not found for them in the security forces. Many gunmen believe they are entitled to government posts, saying they made personal sacrifices in fighting Israel.


We have mentioned many times before the absurdity of believing that Abbas is a "moderate" when he directly funds the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades terror group. The connection is well known and for some reason the world community doesn't seem to have a problem continuing to give huge amounts of money to the PA knowing that some of it goes directly to a terror organization.

The AP decided that this information didn't have to appear until paragraph 24.
  • Tuesday, August 23, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
CAMERA published a good backgrounder, "Why Palestinians Still Live in Refugee Camps", that explode many of the myths that the media take for granted about Palestinian "refugees." (interestingly, they published the same table I did in an earlier article, but I had not seen theirs before I published mine from Wikipedia.)

And, via Israpundit, here is "Confessions of a Once-Hopeful Leftist," by Jared Israel, that does a nice job laying out the basic truths of the conflict and the true goals of the Palestinian Arab leaders.

Monday, August 22, 2005

  • Monday, August 22, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
More insanity from the Palestinians that the world thinks sounds normal in the bizarro Palestinian world. In today's double feature, we have the interesting idea of paying former terrorists more so they abandon their lives of crime.

It brings a whole new meaning to the expression "pay for their crimes."
Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Nasser Youssef has decided to double the salaries paid to the PA's security forces.

The increase in salaries is an attempt to attract more recruits to the PA security forces and to prevent them from opting to join terrorist organizations.

Meanwhile, back in Gaza:
Palestinians from the ruling Fatah party armed with assault rifles converged on the Gaza parliament building on Sunday to demand jobs in a protest that underlined challenges ahead for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

At least 200 al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades gunmen, most dressed in black, demanded jobs while accusing officials of corruption. Some fired into the air. The protesters came close to scuffles with police before commanders on both sides ordered calm.

They then dispersed.

"We are here only to send a message that Fatah fighters should be treated fairly. Jobs should be secured for those who made dear sacrifices," said Abu Jihad, a spokesman.


I can just see the want-ad now:

WANTED: New Palestinian policemen. Must have fired at Jews. Will consider rock throwers. A previous stint in jail a plus. We will do a background check to ensure previous membership in terror organizations. Send resume, along with references, blackmail and threats to shoot us, to: Abu Abbas, on top of Arafat's grave, Ramallah
  • Monday, August 22, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
I am very lucky in that I can see the Statue of Liberty looking south from my cubicle window. I am about a mile away from it so I can't take any really good pictures without a much better zoom, but the lighting was pretty interesting at 8:30 even though there was a lot of smog today.

Enjoy!
  • Monday, August 22, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Another excellent issue of Haveil Havalim, a round-up of the week's best postings in the Jewish blogosphere, is now at SoccerDad. One of my articles made it there.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

  • Sunday, August 21, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
An amazing article by John Roy Carlson from October 19, 1948 in the Palestine Post about the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Essentially every point the author makes applies today; eerily so. The graphic format is a little hard to read but it is worth it, especially the parts about the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Azhar University, about liberalism in interpreting the Koran, the various competing Muslim fundamentalist groups, and the affinity they had with Nazism.

Before this point, Arab terror was not primarily religious-oriented; it was more nationalist, anti-Western and anti-semitic. The rise of Muslim fundamentalism changed the game and it is more important to understand the origins today of a movement that is responsible for 9/11.



  • Sunday, August 21, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
One of the biggest hopes of the wishful thinking accompanying the Gaza withdrawal is that it will lead to "peace." In the West, a peacemaking move is regarded as something that is naturally reciprocated with good-will gestures. But in the Arab and Muslim worlds, it appears to be a chance to increase the hateful rhetoric and absurd conclusions.

Here's a selection from Arab and Muslim writers over the past couple of days.

The Providence Journal published an op-ed by Mazin Qumsiyeh comparing post-withdrawal Gaza to apartheid South Africa, justifying terror, and referring to Zionist "ethnic cleansing."

Aljazeerah.info (from Georgia) blames Israel for Darfur and seems to be claiming that Israel wants to expand to Africa through the Sudan.

A New York writer names Preston Taran calls for the destruction of Israel, saying that a two-state solution is impossible. He openly calls for war in the name of Arab pride:

Therefore, “we have nothing to lose but our chains.” We cannot continue under these circumstances forever. Do we want our children to continue witnessing our humiliation? Do we want them to look us in the eyes and see our powerlessness? Do we want to keep on losing our children to Israeli murder? I do not think so. It is time to break the chains and end the “pleasant talk.”


Hamas has said, to no disapproval from the Arab world, that they will now move the terror attacks to the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The PA-controlled Palestine Media Center published an Al Ahram editorial slamming the Gaza withdrawal as a facade. It also mentions "territorial contiguity" as a requirement for a Palestinian state, meaning that Israel would have no territorial contiguity itself.

The next stages, from the Arab perspective, are clear, and all are consistent with Israel's destruction and inconsistent with any real desire to live in peace with Israel:
  • Do not create an independent state in Gaza because that would lessen pressure on Israel.
  • Move Kassam rockets to the West Bank because (they think) that is what caused the withdrawal.
  • No Palestinian state without all of Jerusalem.
  • No Palestinian state without cutting Israel in two.
  • No real Arab aid to Palestinians; their suffering is what keeps them useful.
  • Keep taking land, even tiny bits; never compromise. (Shebaa Farms is a good example.)
  • Use Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah to create the illusion of moderation by the PA.
  • Always blame Israel for every worldwide terror attack so Europeans will do the same.
  • Use Western standards of morality to castigate Israel; use Arab standards of morality to justify terror.
  • Lie continuously and often, because the West will report it as fact.
  • Keep pressuring about "right of return" to destroy Israel demographically.
  • Keep referring to Palestinians as "refugees" although in no other case are the descendants of refugees ever referred to as such. This way there are always more Palestinian "refugees," never fewer.
  • After the 1967 borders come the 1947 partition borders, then no borders at all.
There will be no softening of rhetoric as a result of Gaza - on the contrary, it will only increase. Because, ultimately, today's Israel is sensitive to world pressure and those who want to destroy Israel have an inexhaustible supply of means to apply it.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

  • Saturday, August 20, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
As predictable as ever, we have a new article from The Nation going through a history of the Muslim Brotherhood and blaming 1940's era American bigotry (and perceived Western bigotry today) for today's Muslim terrorism. This was written by a Naomi Klein.

Hussain Osman, one of the men alleged to have participated in London's failed bombings on July 21, recently told Italian investigators that they prepared for the attacks by watching "films on the war in Iraq," La Repubblica reported. "Especially those where women and children were being killed and exterminated by British and American soldiers...of widows, mothers and daughters that cry."

It has become an article of faith that Britain was vulnerable to terror because of its politically correct antiracism. Yet Osman's comments suggest that what propelled at least some of the bombers was rage at what they saw as extreme racism. And what else can we call the belief -- so prevalent we barely notice it -- that American and European lives are worth more than the lives of Arabs and Muslims, so much more that their deaths in Iraq are not even counted?

It's not the first time that this kind of raw inequality has bred extremism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian writer generally viewed as the intellectual architect of radical political Islam, had his ideological epiphany while studying in the United States. The puritanical scholar was shocked by Colorado's licentious women, it's true, but more significant was Qutb's encounter with what he later described as America's "evil and fanatic racial discrimination." By coincidence, Qutb arrived in the United States in 1948, the year of the creation of the State of Israel. He witnessed an America blind to the thousands of Palestinians being made permanent refugees by the Zionist project. For Qutb, it wasn't politics, it was an assault on his identity: Clearly Americans believed that Arab lives were worth far less than those of European Jews. According to Yvonne Haddad, a professor of history at Georgetown University, this experience "left Qutb with a bitterness he was never able to shake."

When Qutb returned to Egypt he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, leading to his next life-changing event: He was arrested, severely tortured and convicted of antigovernment conspiracy in an absurd show trial. Qutb's political theory was profoundly shaped by torture. Not only did he regard his torturers as sub-human, he stretched that categorization to include the entire state that ordered this brutality, including the practicing Muslims who passively lent their support to Nasser's regime.

Qutb's vast category of subhumans allowed his disciples to justify the killing of "infidels" -- now practically everyone -- in the name of Islam. A movement for an Islamic state was transformed into a violent ideology that would lay the intellectual groundwork for al Qaeda. In other words, so-called Islamist terrorism was "home grown" in the West long before the July 7 attacks -- from its inception it was the quintessentially modern progeny of Colorado's casual racism and Cairo's concentration camps.

Why is it worth digging up this history now? Because the twin sparks that ignited Qutb's world-changing rage are currently being doused with gasoline: Arabs and Muslims are being debased in torture chambers around the world and their deaths are being discounted in simultaneous colonial wars, at the same time that graphic digital evidence of these losses and humiliations is available to anyone with a computer. And once again, this lethal cocktail of racism and torture is burning through the veins of angry young men. As Qutb's past and Osman's present reveal, it's not our tolerance for multiculturalism that fuels terrorism; it's our tolerance for the barbarism committed in our name.
[...]
The real problem is not too much multiculturalism but too little. If the diversity now ghettoized on the margins of Western societies -- geographically and psychologically -- were truly allowed to migrate to the centers, it might infuse public life in the West with a powerful new humanism. If we had deeply multi-ethnic societies, rather than shallow multicultural ones, it would be much more difficult for politicians to sign deportation orders sending Algerian asylum-seekers to torture, or to wage wars in which only the invaders' dead are counted. A society that truly lived its values of equality and human rights, at home and abroad, would have another benefit too. It would rob terrorists of what has always been their greatest recruitment tool: our racism.


The ability to write an article like this without giving the slightest amount of blame to the people who actually plan terror attacks is nothing short of amazing. I suppose that Naomi Klein has just given carte blanche to black people or native Americans to start blowing up other Americans at shopping malls because of historic racism - and she would be the first to defend them.

She likes the theme that the West perceives that "American and European lives are worth more than the lives of Arabs and Muslims." What she glaringly fails to address is that American and European lives are worth more to the terrorists than the lives of Arabs and Muslims. How else to explain the entire idea of suicide bombing? (I know, she must consider it noble.) How else to explain the huge number of Muslims killed by other Muslims? How else to explain the concept of Jihad as it is normally used - as a holy war against the infidels? (And is she writing as many words about deaths in Africa and Indonesia as she is on Arabs and the West? Perhaps there is a little racism there, too, according to her "logic"?)

Her other points supposedly supporting her thesis are nothing short of absurd. Qutb was tortured by Nasser's thugs and she somehow uses his Colorado experiences to blame the West.

And not a word that Muslim extremism may be, just maybe, fueled partially by an interpretation or misinterpretation of the Koran? Nope...they might as well be secularists; religion cannot enter the worldview of this uber-liberal because religion is only a corrupting evil when practiced by Westerners; in the Third World it is some sort of civilizing factor that couldn't possibly be included in the calculus of terror. Nope...that's all our fault. (I wonder if Klein's vision of "deeply multi-ethnic societies" have as much room for Christian fundamentalists or West Bank settlers as they do for extremist mosques.)

So the words of a Muslim terrorist said to a Western reporter about a propaganda film launches this poor excuse for an opinion piece in The Nation. The only thing noteworthy about this is that anyone can write any claptrap that fits the editorial line of the magazine and get published.

(Of course, this also applies to some conservative publications as well. Over the years I have found way too many things written that said nothing but just filled space in partisan publications; they could have been written by a 'bot. Critical analysis by partisan editors is way too rare.)

Friday, August 19, 2005

  • Friday, August 19, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Kfar Darom was refounded in 1946 as part of "Operation Negev", an ambitious one-day program to build five settlements on JNF-owned land in October, 1946.

Even though the political implications were clear, the local Arabs welcomed the new Jewish villages, as this Palestine Post article shows:


The village was integral in the 1948 war, repulsing Egyptian attacks even before Israel declared its independence:



And the attacks continued, as Kfar Darom was the first line of defense against the Egyptian army. And the members were nothing short of heroic against a much larger and better-equipped enemy.


Unfortunately, Kfar Darom's isolation made it impossible to hold on to it, and the village was abandoned later in 1948.

But Jews are compared to the moon, where every month it appears to disappear only to come back again. And the members of the 1946 incarnation of Kfar Darom founded a new village a year later in the Negev:

Thursday, August 18, 2005

  • Thursday, August 18, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
A good article showing the cluelessness of the Jew-hatred of the UN and the direct criticism from Ambassador Bolton.

This is an auspicious start for the new UN ambassador. Let's hope that he continues to do his job in the spirit of Moynihan and Kirkpatrick.
The United Nations’ funding of a Palestinian Arab propaganda campaign timed to coincide with Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip has increased tensions between the U.N. and American officials.

America’s newly installed ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, labeled “inappropriate and unacceptable” the United Nations Development Program financing of materials bearing the slogan “Today Gaza, Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

Mr. Bolton said yesterday that the UNDP had failed to explain why it funneled money to the Palestinian Authority to back the production of banners, bumper stickers, mugs, and T-shirts bearing the provocative slogan as well as UNDP logos.

Responding to angry reactions from Jewish and Israeli leaders, UNDP officials yesterday said financial support from the agency was intended to help the Palestinian Authority communicate with Palestinian Arabs during Israel’s evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza. (Communicating how to build rockets? - EoZ)

In a letter to the American Jewish Congress, which had decried the funding of the propaganda materials, a UNDP administrator, Kemal Dervis, said it was “not at all acceptable” that the agency’s logo was placed on the propaganda.

“We cannot be involved in political messaging,” Mr. Dervis wrote. The UNDP manages nearly $4 billion in donor resources annually, operating in 166 countries.

The response from the UNDP was not sufficient, Mr. Bolton said yesterday. “Funding this kind of activity is inappropriate and unacceptable. We plan to raise the issue with UNDP and with others,” he said in a statement to The New York Sun. In effect, Mr. Bolton expressed to the UNDP that the most serious problem for his office was not the logo, but the fact that the agency supported that message with its checkbook.

William Orme, a spokesman for the UNDP, told the Sun by telephone yesterday evening, “We’ve seen Ambassador Bolton’s comments, and we are taking this matter seriously.”
  • Thursday, August 18, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
A fascinating timeline I found on this site shows the history of Gaza. During the first millenium, after the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews slowly moved back into Gaza. (The remains of one 1500 year old synagogue are still there today.) The number of Jews moving there accelerated during the Middle Ages and throughout the tumultuous history of the region.

During WWI, the Ottoman Empire ordered the eviction of Jews from Gaza City.

Jews returned in small numbers during the 20's, but were forced out by the Arabs during the riots in 1929, leaving all their possessions behind.

In 1946, the kibbutz Kfar Darom was founded the east-central part of Gaza on the same area as the Kfar Darom mentioned in the Talmud in around the year 500. It was abandoned under Egyptian fire in the 1948 war.

Of course, under Egyptian rule, no Jews were allowed to live in Gaza. They started returning after the Six Day War, with Kfar Darom being built for the third time in 1970.

So while history may be repeating itself in that Jews are being forced to leave Gaza, who knows - history may also repeat itself where Jews may end up going back there yet again.
  • Thursday, August 18, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Yesterday I was playing with a new, awesome digital camera and decided to take some pictures of Manhattan from the place I work. I took ten shots and stitched them together to make what is effectively a 33 megapixel panoramic view of lower Manhattan.

Here is a much-reduced version:



To give you an idea of how large the full picture is; here is a small slice:

If you want to download the full gigantic picture, it is here (sorry, filehost.to is no longer working - EoZ) It is over 3 MB.

Enjoy!

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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