Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Get ready for "Moderate Hamas"

Dr. Mohammed Ghazal, a Hamas leader in the West Bank, speaks during a news conference in the West Bank city of Nablus on March 12, 2005. Hamas could one day amend a charter calling for the destruction of Israel and hold negotiations with the Jewish state, Ghazal said. (Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters)

One of the favorite Arab games in trying to destroy Israel is starting again.

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Hamas could one day amend a charter calling for the destruction of Israel and hold negotiations with the Jewish state, a political leader of the Islamic militant group in the West Bank said.

"The charter is not the Koran," Mohammed Ghazal told Reuters in an interview in Nablus on Tuesday.

"Historically, we believe all Palestine belongs to Palestinians, but we're talking now about reality, about political solutions ... The realities are different."

The unprecedented comments by Mohammed Ghazal clashed with recent pronouncements of more senior Hamas officials in Gaza.

But they reflected an apparent shift in Hamas toward the political mainstream and to winning greater world acceptance in the run-up to Palestinian parliamentary elections and after Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip.

Here's the game:

Kill Jews. The more, the better. Loudly advocate terror, proudly.
While killing Jews, have a few "leaders" make statements that don't sound quite as genocidal as their true intent. Put them in jackets and ties. Trim their beards. The best ones are doctors - always a nice touch.
Look at all those microphones! All that media attention just for saying what they want to hear!
Have the world start to recognize and reward the meaningless, slightly less terroristic statements.
Ensure that there are still groups that still explicitly call for the genocide of Jews and worldwide terror, so you can look better by comparison.
Do a few more symbolic gestures with no substance whatsoever to solidify your newfound status as a "realist."
Never, ever criticize the "more radical" groups. They might believe you and then kill you.
Bask in your new political power, achieved with no real concessions whatsoever.
Get money from gullible Europeans and others aimed at encouraging "moderate voices" and dutifully send the money to your terrorist friends.

It worked (and is still working) for the PLO, and for a while it was working well for Hamas (remember it's "political wing" and "military wing" that the world believed was separate?) Now Hamas is playing the same game again, a terrorist implementation of "good cop, bad cop" where the Western world is playing its part to the hilt.

Using these methods, Holocaust deniers can become "president," suicide bombers can be heroes, children can be taught to hate an entire religion, women can be subjugated, lies can become the official language of the "government," agreements never need to be honored, and you can stil rest assured that the world pressure will not be on you, but on the people you want to destroy. Because you are now moderate, and the "dangerous extremists" are the Jewish teenagers who dare to wear the color orange.

Muslim scholars slam Egyptian Imam for allowing relations with Israel

This article from Egypt is interesting from a couple of angles.

It shows how Israel's existence is still not accepted, and never will be accepted, by religious leaders of Israel's "peace partner."

It also shows how the famous Al Azhar university, possibly the most influential Muslim institution in the world, will change its religious rulings to be in sync with the Egyptian government. (Read the entire article for more examples of that; this is just the beginning.)

Last week's Israeli withdrawal from Gaza appears to have received the approval of the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, who was quick to rule that normalisation with Israel was religiously acceptable.

"Islam does not prohibit normalisation with other countries, especially Israel, as long as this normalisation is in non- religious domains and serves some worldly interests," Tantawi told a gathering at a festival held to mark the national day of Al-Sharqiya governorate.

Tantawi's statement immediately provoked heated debate inside and outside the Sunni world's most prestigious seat of Islamic learning.

Prominent Palestinian Islamic scholar Sheikh Hamed Al-Beitawi, who is also head of the Palestinian Scholars League (PSL), was quick to denounce the fatwa on the grounds that it "greatly serves the Israeli occupation, which is unacceptable in Islam," and urged the Grand Imam to retract it.

"It is obvious that the fatwa was issued following increased American and Israeli pressure on Arab leaders who already have relations with the Zionist state," El-Beitawi said in a PSL statement. He condemned the fatwa as contradictory to Islamic tenets "because it is the religious duty of all Muslims to help their brothers in driving the enemy out of their lands."

Tantawi's ruling seems to have created rifts within Al-Azhar where many scholars criticised the edict, saying it only reflected the personal opinion of the Grand Imam and not Al-Azhar as an institution.

Sayed Khodeir, former head of the research and translation section at the Islamic Research Academy (IRA), said Tantawi's ruling "was political rather than religious. "It is religiously correct to normalise relations with a country you have peace with but not when this country is usurping Muslim lands and killing Muslim brothers and children," Khodeir explained, saying it would perhaps be in the interest of Egypt to have peace and economic ties with Israel but from a religious viewpoint. "Those who don't care about the affairs of their Muslim brothers do not actually belong to them," Khodeir said.

"As Muslims we consider ourselves in a state of conflict with Israel so long as it insists on occupying Muslim lands, desecrating Al-Aqsa Mosque and Islamic shrines and massacring Muslims," Khodeir said. "Egypt cannot be regarded as separate from what is going on in neighbouring Palestinian lands."

Prominent Al-Azhar scholar Abdel-Azim El-Mataani added that normalising relations with Israel "is not religiously -- or even logically -- acceptable at this particular time when it is using all sorts of aggression and tyranny against Muslims and posing a threat to Arab national security."

El-Mataani said the IRA had formerly issued an edict condemning normalisation with Israel. Former IRA member Sheikh Ali Abul-Hassan had previously issued a fatwa forbidding an Israeli judo team from playing in Egypt or any other Arab and Muslim country. He described such an invitation as an acceptance of what Israel has done and is still doing to Muslims, including usurping land, money and honour.

"This IRA fatwa sounds more logical because we should never accept the Israeli humiliation of Arab and Muslim nations," El-Mataani said.

It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that Israel's very existence, no matter how much land is given to Arabs, is a major affront to Islam as interpreted by most "scholars."

Poor terrorists don't get paid enough

The US and the EU are falling over themselves to give more money to the PA.

Secretary Rice is a little uneasy over the PA's foot-dragging on disarming Fatah, but not enough to actually stop sending them more money:

"Now, I think it would be a good start for the Palestinians, by the way, if they would disarm the militias of Fatah. That would be a good start. They have a roadmap obligation to disarm terrorist organizations and militias. But as a starting point, because I understand that there are complications with Hamas and there are questions about how capable they would be of actually insisting on disarmament of Hamas."

Abbas has other ideas:

The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday rejected an appeal from the Quartet to dismantle armed militias and called on the international community to stop meddling in the Palestinians' internal affairs.

Ministers of the Quartet – the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union – said in a joint statement Tuesday that following Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians needed to "dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructures."

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the appeal, saying the Palestinians knew how to handle their own affairs.

And where exactly is this money going? A little factoid buried in another article about Palestinian infighting may give us a glimpse:

Hani al-Hassan, a former interior minister in the Palestinian Authority, escaped an assassination attempt on his life Tuesday night when a group of masked men fired several shots at him during a visit to Nablus.

Hassan, who is a member of the Fatah central committee, was not hurt. Sources in the city said the assailants belonged to Fatah's armed wing, Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades have issued several threats against Hassan in the past, accusing him of suspending their salaries when he served as interior minister under Yasser Arafat.

Isn't this interesting? Members of the terror group are angry because their salaries were suspended by the PA interior minister?

Maybe I'm crazy, but this seems to imply to me that there is still a relatively consistent funding source directly from the PA to the Fatah terrorists that neither Abbas nor Condi are bothering to address in public. So many "observers" are supposedly watching how the PA is spending its money and no one is uncovering the fact that terrorists are still getting funding straight from the PA?

Gaza is paradise for Egyptians, hell for Reuters

How many stories have we read that mentioned how terrible the conditions are in Gaza, how overpopulated and destitute it is, how Arabs who live there are in such desperate straits that they have no choice but to turn to terror?

Evidently, Egyptians have a much different picture of Gaza.

Many Palestinian men who flocked into Egypt after the IDF evacuated the Philadelphi corridor have seized the opportunity to search for brides. Palestinian sources estimated on Tuesday that at least 100 Egyptian brides were smuggled into the Gaza Strip in the past week.

One of the brides, who identified herself as Samira, said she agreed to marry the man she met only hours earlier "because this was an opportunity that should not be missed." Samira, 28, lived with her family in Al-Arish.

"In Egypt, it's very difficult for a woman my age to get married because I'm considered too old," she said. "Moreover, the economic situation in Egypt is not as good as in the Gaza Strip."

Another bride from Al-Arish said that she always been dreaming of marrying a Palestinian. "Palestinian men are better than Egyptian men," the 27-year-old said. "They know how to look after their wives and provide for them a decent living."

So it appears that the horrible consitions that Israel forced Gazans to live in is preferable to the everyday conditions of the leading "moderate" Arab country
Meanwhile, Reuters publishes a bald faced lie about Gaza to add to the myth of how unbearable it is to live there:

Palestinians would build 3,000 homes for poor families in southern Gaza at Morag, once a stronghold of settler resistance to the Israeli pullout that Washington praised as a potential spur to renewed peacemaking.

The remainder of the housing will be erected elsewhere across the coastal Gaza Strip, the most densely populated place on earth and home to 1.4 million Palestinians.

As we have shown, this is not even close to true.

Hamas converts synagogue to terror museum

Another Palestinian peace gesture.

The destroyed synagogue in the evacuated Gaza settlement of Netzarim is expected to be converted into a temporary Hamas museum in the next few days.

On Saturday members of Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades , Hamas’ military wing, plan to set up an exhibit of the terror group’s “military industry” in what used to be a synagogue.

The exhibit is set to be on display for three days, and will be open to the public from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

The group said in a statement that “all of the tools used by Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades to abolish the Gaza occupation will be on display.”

Hamas promises that visitors will be able to see all of the weapons, “from stones to instruments used in suicide attacks and the ‘tunnel war.’” Missiles and rockets will also be on display, the groups said.

Jihad Unspun - Muslims should be proud of 9/11 and 7/7

One of the many racist "news" sources indexed by Google News is Jihad Unspun, a Canadian website that unapologetically supports terror. It is always nice to check in with this site once in a while to see what many Muslims really think, not filtered by the smokescreens eretced by CAIR or similar groups.

In the middle of an incoherent article that seems to support Al Qaeda's declaration of war against Shiites comes this beauty:

Muslims as a whole have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that Muslims carried out 911 or 7/7 for that matter. In the West, the Muslims blame the CIA and in the East they blame Mossad. This blame mentality is a means in which they can distance themselves from the Mujahideen and continue to live in a make believe world that the Muslims are victims who have something to prove to the Kufr who will ultimately accept them. In addition to the fact that this blame game gives both intelligence agencies way more credit than they are due, it speaks to the very heart of the problem within the Muslim Ummah which is that most do not know that the Muslim faith is based on “justice” not peace and that Muslims have been systematically targeted in the roots of this current conflict for over a century. Saying “La Illaha Illalah” is not a pledge of peace but of obedience. And when the Mujahideen rise to defend the Ummah as required, the weak Muslims apologize for it!....Muslims will never live peacefully with the Kufr unless we abandon our religion or alternately remove them from our lands.

A good way to evaluate Simon Wiesenthal's life

A quick look at Google finds that the harshest critics of Simon Wiesenthal are Holocaust deniers, neo Nazis, bigots and supporters of Arab terror.

He must have been doing something right.

Baruch Dayan ha-emet.

EU rewarding Palestinians for acting like animals

Since the Palestinian Arabs did such a good job over the past couple of weeks in destroying Gaza's economy and future prospects, smuggling weapons and drugs in from Egypt, burning synagogues, looting, pillaging, creating complete chaos and threatening Israeli Jews with genocide, the EU has decided that they deserve more money.

Brussels - The European Union on Monday announced an increase in aid for the Palestinians this year, saying help is crucial to maintain the peace momentum triggered by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

The European Commission, executive arm of the EU which has long been the biggest aid contributor to the Palestinians, (not any Arab country! -EoZ) said it will provide some €280m in aid, bigger than the €250m previously announced.

"Only Israel and Palestine can make peace, but Europe is playing its part in the international quartet to create the environment in which peace can take root," said EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

'We are taking very practical action to regenerate Gaza, and help prepare the Palestinians for statehood,' she said.

"Having led the way in support for reform efforts in the Palestinian Authority, we are now helping to lay the foundations for a viable Palestinian economy."

And look how successful their previous outlays of money have been!

Arabs getting nervous with Israeli diplomatic success

In the wake of Israel's seeming diplomatic victories that accompanied the Gaza withdrawal, notably the overtures from Pakistan, it is interesting to see how isolated some Arabs are feeling from their Muslim counterparts.

In this funny screed published in the "Arab American News", Ramzy Baroud writes an article titled "The risks of normalizing relations with Israel." As part of his "historical overview" showing the supposed centrality of Palestine to Arab thinking, he offers this whopper:

Israel exploited the mostly sentimental relationship Arabs and Muslims held toward Palestine. While the tangible and perpetual conflict was in fact taking place between Israel, a newly forged entity with further colonial ambitions, and a fragmented and displaced Palestinian refugee population, Israel labored to elate a different interpretation, that of a tiny little country struggling for survival amongst hordes of hostile Arabs and Muslims, who were up in arms to erase this little stretch of land from the face of the earth. Considering the political and military positioning of most Arab and Muslim countries, the Israeli claim is almost comical.

One would almost think that the wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973 initiated by Arab countries against Israel never happened!

But the fact that articles like this are even being written betrays the nervousness that is rippling through the Arab world since Musharraf made his overtures to Israel, and especially since he shook hands with Sharon last week.

Israel has also increased ties with Tunisia, Bahrain is making overtures, Israel made diplomatic contact with Qatar as well as with Indonesia.

How much of these efforts are honest reappraisals from the Muslim world of Israel, and how much is the result of diplomatic arm-twisting by the US, is unclear. Equally unclear is whether the apparent diplomatic gains offset the problems with the Gaza withdrawal. But it is fun to watch the Arabs squirm as it becomes more apparent that their unified front of Muslim anti-Israelism is crumbling, and that their pretense of solidarity with Palestinian Arabs has shown no solid results over the decades.

by Alastair Gordon, President, Canadian Coalition for Democracies
Monday, September 19, 2005

Toronto, Canada - Saturday, 17 September 2005 - On September 15, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced from New York that Canada will give another $24.5 million to the Palestinian Authority (PA). This past May, Mr. Martin announced $12.2 million in aid during the visit to Canada of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, bringing the total Canadian aid to the Palestinians to $310 million since 1993.

“President Abbas came to office promising (1) to disarm Palestinian militants, (2) to end incitement in schools and media, and (3) to end glorification of suicide bombing,” said Alastair Gordon, President of the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD). “On that understanding, Prime Minister Martin promised another $12.2 million in May of this year.'

Since receiving Canadian tax dollars, President Abbas has reneged on all his commitments. Specifically, (1) PA Foreign Minister Nasser al-Kidwa publicly declared in June that the PA will not disarm Hamas and other terrorist groups under its jurisdiction; (2) Not a single textbook denying the existence of Israel and preaching the destruction of “the Zionist entity” has been removed or revised; and (3) Abbas himself, speaking to a group of high school students and educators in Gaza, glorified suicide bombing when he declared, “What has been achieved here [in Gaza] is due to the martyrs.”

“When money is given on the understanding that certain commitments to peace will be undertaken, the open declaration by the recipient that those commitments will not he honoured should mean, at a minimum, that funding would stop,” said Gordon. “Instead, our Prime Minister rewards bad faith with another $24.5 million from Canadian taxpayers.”

“It is not enough to pretend that the money is allocated to specific projects, because money is fungible,” added Gordon. “If Canadians are paying to build a highway, those funds are now freed up for war against Israel, in keeping with the PA’s constitutional governing charter and repeated declarations by PA spokespeople.”

On behalf of Canadians, CCD is urging Paul Martin to inform President Abbas that he will receive no more Canadian funding until he meets his commitments. Canadians expect that the Palestinian Charter will finally be amended to remove Article 9 that declares “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine”, Article 20 that states “Jews [do not] constitute a single nation with an identity of its own”, and other articles that call for the destruction of Israel through violence (See PLO Charter below).

“The constitutional Charter of the PA is available on the web for Paul Martin to read,” concluded Gordon. “Instead, our Prime Minister has chosen to purchase international approval with the blood of Israelis, while refusing to tell Canadians what benefit has been derived from nearly one third of a billion tax dollars paid to Arafat and Abbas.”

Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies

Palestinian Authority policemen went on a rampage in Nablus on Saturday night, setting a car and a house on fire and shooting indiscriminately in one of the city's main squares.

The policemen were protesting against the killing of one of their colleagues, Khalil Kharmah, by a security officer from the PA's National Security Forces. Kharmah, 35, was shot to death while he was sitting inside a police station. The motive for the killing was unknown.

Following the incident, scores of policemen torched the house and car of the assailant. Later, they drove through the center of the city, shooting into the air and burning tires, forcing shopkeepers to close their businesses.

Grand slam: Police phunnies, Palestinian rampages, AFP bigotry and lies

This story has it all!

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Once the epitome of high-tech and worth millions in desperately needed trade, the greenhouses of Gaza have been stripped bare by their former Jewish owners and pillaged by the Palestinians.
Fitted out with sophisticated, computer-programmed irrigation systems, rich New York Jews forked out 14 million dollars to buy the hothouses from former Israeli settlers and donate them to the Palestinians.

Under the deal negotiated by James Wolfensohn, the international special envoy for the pullout, the glass houses and their annual crops of 75 million dollars, were to be handed over in good state to the Palestinian Authority

But pillagers, taking advantage of the chaos reigning over some evacuated settlements in the days since Israel left and ceded control of Gaza to the Palestinians, made a bee-line for greenhouses seen as gold dust.

According to Palestinian authorities, who have since ordered police and civilians to stop the ransacking of money-making structures so crucial to the future of impoverished Gaza, around 800 of the 4,000 greenhouses are unusable.

"Repairs cost 10,000 dollars per greenhouse," said Osama al-Farra, mayor of the closest Palestinian town, Khan Yunis.

"Part of the electrical circuits, irrigators and computers were taken by settlers, the rest by looters," he said.

Taking a quick tour of the ruins of the largest Jewish settlement bloc, Gush Katif, is enough to ascertain that if most of the greenhouses' metal frames are still in place, they are cavernous shells.

Electricity sub-stations have been gouged open and their wires yanked out, impossible to know whether it's the handiwork of settlers or looters.

Few greenhouses have even a pipe left as ripped tarpaulin flaps in the wind.

Next to one, a peasant from near Gaza City and three of his cousins bundle water pipes and tarpaulin into a pick-up van.

"An Israeli tank destroyed our farm," Hani offers by way of excuse.

"The Palestinian Authority talks but does nothing. The intifada ruined us: with this we can build again," he adds.

Outside Neve Dekalim, once the largest Jewish settlement in Gaza, Abdelaziz Ali Otman, 53, and colleagues drink tea. For 20 years they were employed in the enclave by a wealthy Jewish settler.

"It was us who did everything here so we know how to take care of it!" According to him, some owners stopped watering flowers, fruits and vegetables two months before the withdrawal, others carried on until the last day.

Otman and five colleagues were sitting down, unarmed, to protect the hundreds of hectares and put off looters. One civilian car skidded in front of them: "Guys, guys, come quickly, some lads are cutting the fence!"

Palestinian forces are now installed outside most of the greenhouses, but that doesn't stop the looters from continuing to carve out treasures.

Three pillagers were slicing through the fence when a police patrol orders them off the premises.

Suddenly a guard comes out from behind the bushes. Carrying pliers, he was helping the looters.

Where to begin?

AFP explicitly blames Jews for some of the equipment missing from Gaza without the slightest fact to back it up.
AFP twice refers to Jews as "rich" or "wealthy". While in the case of the stupid American Jews who decided to throw away millions on Palestinians, they were in fact rich, the story could have easily said "by members of the American Jewish community" rather than bring up the stereotype of influential New York Jews. And what purpose is served by calling the Gaza greenhouse owner "wealthy" if not to again promote a stereotype?
If it costs $10,000 to fix each of 800 greenhouses, that means that out of the $14 million gift, $8 million is already wasted. It also means that the true value of the greenhouses far exceeded $14 million (especially if the annual crop is $75 million) - a fact never mentioned in the media.
Palestinian "police" joining in the looting is always a nice touch to any story from the territories!

Tehran newspaper accidentally supports Jews' rights to Jerusalem

The "Islamic Republic News Agency", based in Iran, quotes from Iranian newspapers about various topics. One recent article quotes a "Kayhan International" editorial with the usual blather about Zionists usurping etenal Muslim lands and how disgusting it is for any Muslim to even think of having cordial relationships with "the Zionist entity."

But then comes this interesting paragraph, referring to Jerusalem:

Press blast Sharon for irrelevant words at UN on Beit ul-Moqaddas - Irna: "The daily concluded its editorial by stressing that 'It is an irony that those heads of Muslim states who shamelessly shook hands at the UN with the head of the usurper Zionist entity that lacks any legitimacy to exist on the map of the Middle East, felt no concern of either the Palestinian cause or the issue of Bait ul-Moqaddas which houses Islam's first qibla of Muslims, and which Sharon insolently referred to as the 'Temple Mount.''

Anyone witrh a passing knowledge of Hebrew would see an amazing resemblance between the word "Bait ul-Moqaddas" and the Hebrew words "Beit ha-Mikdash", which use the exact same Semitic root letters. The Beit ha-Mikdash is the Jewish Holy Temple, and the term pre-dates Islam by many centuries. Clearly Islam took the term, translated it (or possibly transliterated it) to Arabic, and now refers to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount by a variant of the Hebrew term.

Which means that in the early history of Islam (and, in fact, much more recently), Muslims freely admitted that the Jewish Holy Temple stood at the site of the Temple Mount, even though they absurdly try so hard nowadays to deny any Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

The term seems only to be used by Iranians; Arabs all seem to refer to the Temple Mount as "Haram al-Sharif" and to Jerusalem usually as Jerusalem, sometimes as Al-Quds (notice also the similarity of roots between Quds and the Hebrew Qodesh, "Holy." Jerusalem was known in antiquity as "Ir haQodesh", the Holy City, by Jews.)

It would be fun to ask an Iranian the etymology of "Bait ul-Moqaddas" and watch them try to spin it as an original Arabic or Persian term. Yet every time they use it, they are reinforcing the Jewish claim to the city that they try so hard to minimize.

About 60 members of rival Palestinian security units engaged in a shootout in the center of the West Bank town of Ramallah after two officers feuded over a parking space, security officials said. No one was hurt.

We have seen quite a few stories like this, where there are huge shootouts involving Palestinian "security" forces and no one getting injured. Is their aim that bad, or are they just not willing to admit to any casualties?

Either way, the idea that the finest of Palestinian Arab society along with dozens of their supporters shoot guns over a parking space speaks more about the prospects for peace than any number of pontificating pretend "Prime Ministers".

Haveil Havalim #37 is up

SoccerDad hosts this weeks' Best of the Jewish Blogosphere, this week misspelled in his title (though not in the content) as "Haveil Havlim."

Oh, and he very nicely mentions this article of mine, along with a unusually large number of other excellent posts from around the JBlogosphere. Check it out!