Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Arab boycott news

A month ago, there were headlines trumpeting the "fact" that Saudi Arabia dropped its long-standing economic boycott of Israel as a pre-condition to joining the World Trade Organization.

Unfortunately, the Saudis deny it:

JEDDAH, 22 December 2005 — Saudi Arabia announced yesterday that it would maintain its first-degree boycott of Israeli products despite joining the World Trade Organization (WTO).

An official at the Commerce and Industry Ministry denied reports that the Kingdom had lifted the boycott. “The Kingdom has lifted only the second and third degree boycott of Israel in accordance with a decision taken by the GCC summit 10 years ago,” the official said, adding that the Saudi accession to WTO was not linked to the lifting of the boycott.

Whether the WTO will still allow Saudi Arabia to join even though it is explicitly breaking the rules remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, AP reports that Israel has a healthy underground trade with Arab countries anyway:

CAIRO, Egypt Dec 26, 2005 — Staff members at a Riyadh hospital got a surprise when they looked at the fine print on the paper cups they were using. Workers in a storeroom at a Dubai hospital were similarly shocked when they took a close look at the tags on a large shipment of uniforms, towels and sheets.

The labels said 'Made in Israel,' according to recent newspaper reports from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have laws that ban imports from the Jewish state.

Experts say the camouflaged trade, with just a small portion receiving publicity, has been going on for years between Israel and its officially hostile Arab neighbors.

The hidden trade is worth about $400 million a year about two and a half times what Israel sold to its official Arab trading partners, Egypt and Jordan, in 2004 said Gil Feiler, the director of Info-Prod Research, a Tel Aviv consultancy specializing in Arab markets, and an economic professor at Bar Ilan University.

Others say such estimates are significantly inflated.

'All the figures are very sexy for the press, but the reality is much less than what is written,' said Dan Catarivas, foreign trade director at the Israeli Manufacturers' Association.

The true amount of Arab imports from Israel is impossible to establish because neither side makes it public, with Israeli-made goods moving to Arab customers through third countries Cyprus or the Netherlands, for example, which list the shipments as local exports.

This naturally upsets the Arab "intelligentsia" who bemoan the fact that Israel gets any recognition whatsoever from anyone.

As was the case in 1946, the Arab boycott against Israel is an ineffective weapon that hurts the Arab people more than it hurts Israel. One would think that after 60 years it would be obvious that Israel's economy is the strongest in the Middle East despite the official boycott, and that the Arab nations that trade with Israel are benefitting. It is also obvious that the entire reason that the Palestinian economy is in a shambles is because of the intifada, the Palestinians lost their jobs in Israel.

Arab pigheadedness once again hurts Arabs while trying vainly to hurt Israel.

"The Society for Resisting Normalization with the Zionist Enemy" was not available for comment.

Disproportionality

AbbaGav, in fine form, displays the trademark black Israeli humor with his solution to Israeli aggression: Proportionality Packs. One size fits all!

I actually have a very proportionate solution of my own to the problem of Palestinian Arab terror, and it is all based on the famous "land-for-peace" formula. Since the entire world seems to accept the concept of Israel ceding land for peace, it stands to reason that the converse should be true as well: if there is no peace, Israel should take more land!

Every terror attack should have a response from Knesset: one square kilometer of "Palestinian" territory will be irrevocably annexed by Israel for every dead Israeli, and it will be named for the victim. All the rest of the land will remain up for negotiation but the Palestinian Arabs would see their dream of a terror statelet dry up in direct response to every terror attack.

Israel can start with unpopulated areas, but it should be methodical and planned, one square kilometer at a time. The night of an attack, the fence goes up and the guards move over.

Given the Pavlovian nature of Palestinian Arabs, this would train the people very quickly not to support the terrorists whose actions are resulting in the exact opposite result than they planned for.

This would stop terror faster than any other "proportionate" response.

The problem in a nutshell

Here, in a nutshell, is why peace will forever be elusive beween Israel and Arabs.

In this article, the writer says that Israel is practicing genocide against Palestinian Arabs, that Israel acts like Nazis, and that Auschwitz is comparable to Sabra and Shatilla.

But he does not deny that the Holocaust happened.

Which means that in any other universe, he would be denounced as an extremist with no concept of history and proportion, as a historical illiterate and as a person who cynically uses the Holocaust to prop up Palestinian Arab pseudo-cause.

But since he is an Arab, he must be a moderate.

The Arab world is utterly bereft of people who can actually speak to these sorts of issues in a reasonable way, so by the fact that his unreasonableness does not extend to advocating genocide, he sounds reasonable by comparison.

These are the sorts of people Israel has to deal with.

Three leading figures of the Middle East have rushed to revise and re-read the Holocaust from a completely immoral and inhumane perspective. Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad began by denying the massacre against Jews ever took place. Soon after, leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, reiterated the same ideas to be followed by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mahdi Akef.

The denial of the Holocaust equates the clearance of Adolf Hitler, with which Islamists should not associate. Such denial is like dissociating Sharon from Sabra and Shatila, Begin from Deir Yassin, the Turks from the massacring of Armenians and Saddam Hussein of his mass murders.

We must draw a line between the fact of the torture of innocent Jews in concentration camps and the Zionist exploitation of the Holocaust with its aim of maintaining a Zionist state that practices the same methods of the Nazis but against Palestinians. For our own sake, we must acknowledge that Zionists cunningly used the genocide of the Jews for political blackmail, whereas no Arab or Muslim organizations have yet documented professionally the genocide of Palestinians to present to the world. Meanwhile, some Arab political parties still insist upon denying the annihilation against the Kurdish village Halabjah and the mass graves perpetrated by Saddam Hussein's regime, however, will seek to justify such horrendous acts!

UPDATE: Judeopundit found an Arab-penned article in Lebanon that did not have the same problems as this one. So the tiny sliver of hope that Israel always clings to, that there might be Arabs who can make sense, has not been completely extinguished.

JIB awards warming up

The Jerusalem Post is getting ready for the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards, with what appears to be a beta test page of the nominations. Not all the categories are there yet but it is looking good! It is also a great page to check out the entire JBlogosphere from.

I also failed to extend my hakoras hatov to those who nominated me (besides the self-nominations, I admit I was weak): Soccer Dad nominated this blog for Best Designed Blog (where most of the credit goes to Daughter of Ziyon) and Judeopundit nominated it for Best Israel Advocacy Blog. Thank you! (I had nominated myself for Israel Advocacy and I nominated the Palestine Post-ings sister blog for Best Series. Part of me hopes that the editors of the Jerusalem Post won't be able to resist the nomination of a blog dedicated to their early years!)

The first round of voting starts next week. Congratulations to the entire J-Blogosphere for some outstanding blogs and articles, and thanks to Israellycool for doing the hard work behind this event!

UPDATE: The voting has been pushed back a week. Check here for details.

Haveil Havalim #50 is out

Daled Amos hosts this week's Haveil Havalim, in which I embarrassingly nominated three articles (two of them at Soccer Dad's request) and all three ended up making it in. So for a brief time I can fool myself into thinking that I am a major star in the JBlog universe.

The three articles are my Chanukah gift to the blogosphere, my comparison of the news coverage of the same event from two very different sources, and my historical posting from 1949 of a very relevant analysis of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem.

Daled Amos himself is too modest to refer to his own great observation about Reuters.

As usual, a great collection of articles and links!

Iranian Mehr "News" verifies - Holocaust really was a hoax!

If this is the kind of "research" that we can expect from the Iranian world, then we don't have to worry much about Iranian nukes.

TEHRAN, Dec. 24 (MNA) -- Following the statement by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who on December 14 called the Holocaust a myth, the Mehr News Agency contacted a number of leading independent historians and scholars from different parts of the world to ask them their views on the idea.

This is followed by quotes from well-known Holocaust deniers and a smattering of emails from first-name-only correspondents.

And yet, Google still considers Mehr a "news" source.

And a Christmas present too

Saturday Night Live's "Christmas-time for the Jews" video.

A real Chanukah present for Elder of Ziyon readers

Over a year ago I came up with an interesting idea.

I am not nearly as fluent in modern Hebrew as I should be, but I thought that since Arabic and Hebrew are so similar, if I could create an Arabic font that used corresponding Hebrew characters, people who were very familiar with Hebrew but who didn't know Arabic letters could read and begin to understand Arabic newspapers. All you have to do is configure your browser to use this font for Arabic, or cut and paste the Arabic to a word processor and then change the font to this HebArabic font.

In other words, change this:

مسؤولون : قريع سحب ترشيحه من الانتخابات

قال مسؤولون فلسطينيون يوم الجمعة ان رئيس وزراء السلطة أحمد قريع الذي استقال من منصبه الاسبوع الماضي ليترشح على قائمة حركة فتح للانتخابات التشريعية سحب ترشيحه. وأضاف المسؤولون أن قريع اتخذ هذه الخطوة احتجاجا على عدم قيام الرئيس الفلسطيني محمود عباس بتأجيل الانتخابات وبسبب دمج قائمتين متنازعتين لفتح ... التفاصيل

Into this:

With only a limited amount of Hebrew knowledge you can pick out the words "Palestinian" and "Mahmoud Abbas", and you see many words beginning with the "al-" prefix.

Here is possibly a shortcut way for Hebrew speakers to learn Arabic.

So I commissioned someone to create the font to my specs, and they did.

It isn't perfect: there seem to be different Arabic standards, right-to-left sometimes gets messed up, and altogether it is not a plug-and-play type thing. I am not doing technical support for this! But it is a fun tool to play with.

It works under Windows but I see no reason it shouldn't work on Macs as well.

Here is the font in ZIP format. Enjoy, and Chag Sameach!

Good news roundup

Israeli creates popular diet with lots of bread
Petah Tikva scientist find gene that causes mental retardation
Copper oxide in textiles keeps bacteria away
Israel lends billions more than it borrows
New high-tech boom in Israel

Two sides to every story?

Which one makes more sense?

Iranian and Arabic news

Israeli news

Israeli occupation troops on Wednesday murdered a Palestinian activist in the northern West Bank town of Hamas.

The troops reportedly arrested and then killed Ziyad Mousa whom the occupation authorities accuse of having killed an Israeli occupation soldier earlier this year.

According to eyewitnesses, Israeli troops stormed a building in downtown Jenin where they killed Mousa.

The eyewitnesses said Mousa was only armed with a pistol and didn't resist arrest.

"Despite this, the troops killed him in cold blood rather than arresting him."
The eyewitnesses described the killing of Mousa as "a cold-blooded murder and extra-judicial execution."
Hamas officials in the West bank called on the international community to condemn the murder.

"Where is the international community which cries out whenever a Zionist is killed or injured?" said one Hamas spokesman in the northern West Bank.

An elite Border Guard unit shot and killed one of Hamas’ commanders in the West Bank town of Jenin wanted by security forces for killing an IDF soldier in November.

Ziad Suleiman Khalil Moussa, 28, of Marka near Jenin, was located in Jenin Wednesday afternoon and killed in exchanges of fire between Border Guard policemen and Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank town.

Moussa was responsible for the killing of IDF Sergeant Yonatan Evron, 20, near Jenin last month.

A trained police dog was killed and a policeman was lightly wounded during the operation. The policeman was treated at the scene and then taken to Afula’s Emek hospital.

Two Palestinian gunmen were also injured and taken to a Jenin hospital in Palestinian ambulances.

Palestinian Authority officials said Moussa’s killing will draw Hamas back into the cycle of violence, after a long period of commitment to a truce with Israel.

NerdTests.com User Test: The Orthodoxy Test.

When even a computerized test cannot categorize me, I know I'm doing something right.

(from Lamed Zayin, via Elie, via OrthoMom, via Town Crier....)

The United States of Islam

It is not easy to understand the motivations behind Iran's Ahmadenijad (see "Towards a psychoanalysis of Iran" and "Media analyzes Ahmadinejad - and gets it wrong"). It is tempting to denounce Ahmadenijad as a madman, or to come up with explanations that are incomplete.

The real explanation is surprisingly simple: Ahmadenijad is positioning Iran to become a world superpower, and to a great extent he has already succeeded.

What makes a superpower? Part of it is military might, to be sure, but a more important component is the ability to lead. Ahmadenijad's rhetoric is not aimed at his people; rather he is stepping into the vacuum that the Islamic world has had for decades - trying to become a leader in the war against Islam's enemies.

There is a strong religious component to this desire, as I have mentioned before and as this article spells out very well, but it appears that Iran's president is aiming not only to make Iran the religious center of Islam, but the political center as well.

How does one assert political leadership of the Muslim world?

Take the one issue that all Muslims agree on (the destruction of Israel) and outdo all of the others.
Take on the undisputed existing world leader, showing bravery where everyone else is frightened.
Create the most powerful military in the Islamic world, one that now threatens the West.
Strengthen industry and scientific R&D to become technologically independent of the enemy:

The Supreme Leader pointed to the threat posed by the global arrogance led by US against different nations and said that under such circumstances, there is not way but, to get stronger, rely upon Almighty God and bolster self-confidence to make use of domestic potentials.
Ayatollah Khamenei said that nations should get stronger in the field of economy, science and politics, adding that reinforcing military and defensive capability is a major need for the nations.

Act as a leader, speaking for other countries (notice the use of the plural "nations" in the quote above)
Improve economic and political ties with more neutral countries. (A significant percentage of the Iranian news agency's stories are about economic initiatives with Europe, Asia and Africa - Iran hardly feels isolated even after its verbal provocations.)
Attack the enemy militarily (Hezbollah, Iraq)

It is worth emphasizing that while the Arab world has become anti-intellectual and anti-science, the Iranians are anything but. In many ways their path to superpower status is similar to the US' path - military, economic and technological might.

Looking at the world map with this perspective, Iran's "bloc" already includes essentially the entire Arab world, much of Africa, Pakistan, North Korea and probably Indonesia. Russia and China are pretty much neutral, although some former Soviet republics are solidly in the Islamic camp. India may not be Islamic but it has more Muslims than any Muslim country.

And as European countries becomes more Islamic and remain dependent on Islamic oil, it is not entirely clear that they are solidly in the US camp in this battle - a significant part of their population is very sympathetic to an anti-Western viewpoint. Iran is not only aiming at increasing its power, but in isolating the US as well.

Nuclear capabilities, along with missile technology, will cement Iran's leadership status as the world's second superpower. And the Iranians have already noted that North Korea became a nuclear power without the West stopping them, and they fully expect that while the protests will be noisier, things will end up exactly the same for them.

From all appearances, it looks like they are right.

Anti-semites crawl out from under rocks to support Ahmadinejad

One of the interesting side-effects of Ahmadinejad's public Jew-hatred has been how it is emboldening other assorted bigoted trash to show their miserable faces in whatever venues they can find.

Check out Holocaust-denier Mark Weber's article in "Axis of Logic" (reprinted from the Tehran Times), terror-supporter Preston Taran's ravings in Amin, and Kim Peterson (supporter of bombings) and his defense of Ahmadinejad in Dissident Voice.

When you wipe away the veneer of pseudo-logic, all that is left is pure Jew-hatred masqerading as liberal, universalist values.

Iran TV adds blood libel to its hit parade

The Iranian mass psychosis have been keeping MEMRI very busy.

Political Analysts on Iranian TV: The Jews Killed Children and Used Their Blood for Passover

Following are excerpts from a TV debate with Iranian political analysts Dr. Hasan Hanizadeh and Dr. Ali-Reza Akbari, which aired on Jaam-e Jam 2 TV on December 20, 2005.

Ali-Reza Akbari: Historians and eye-witnesses, some of whom are still alive... There are still many people who saw with their own eyes what happened 70-80 years ago. These people are alive and are of sound mind. They still possess the analytical abilities they had back then. They are our witnesses, and they deny the existence of crematoria at a place called Auschwitz.

Perhaps the reason... In my opinion, the people who say that the phenomenon of burning Jews on German soil during the World War II crisis is similar to a holocaust do so as a result of propaganda and due to psychological reasons.

In any even, a case of burning people has been registered in history, when many human beings were burnt because of their beliefs. The people who were burnt then were, in fact, Christians. They were burnt by the people who ruled Yemen, who were Jews. This event took place 400 years before the advent of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. Since then, the burning of human beings has been termed "holocaust."

[...]

Host: Were there six million Jews at all at that time, who could have been annihilated in the crematoria?

Hasan Hanizadeh: First of all, this figure is greatly exaggerated. The number of Jews in the world does not exceed 12 million. Only now, 57 years later, has it reached this figure. Clearly, at that time, considering the dispersion of the Jews, there could not have been six million Jews in Europe alone. In any event, the Zionist lobby and the Jewish Agency use this issue as a club with which they beat and extort the West.

Unfortunately, the West has forgotten two horrendous incidents, carried out by the Jews in 19th-century Europe - in Paris and London, to be precise. In 1883, about 150 French children were murdered in a horrible way in the suburbs of Paris, before the Jewish Passover holiday. Later research showed that the Jews had killed them and taken their blood. This event caused riots in Paris back then, and the French government found itself under pressure.

A similar incident took place in London, when many English children were killed by Jewish rabbis. These two incidents still haunt the minds and souls of the Europeans, but due to the growing influence of the Zionist lobby in Europe - or to be precise, the influence of the Jews - these two incidents are, unfortunately, never mentioned.

But don't call Iran anti-semitic - it upsets them.

A special edition, focusing on the effective and innovative recruiting methods employed by the PA Police.

Human resource managers around the world closely watch the PA for ideas on how to find well-qualified candidates for their own companies.

Especially striking are the management interview techniques as well as the insistence that the potential new hires meet their future co-workers in real-world situations so that they can integrate better into their new jobs with a minimum of re-training. Also, PA management negotiates salaries during the first interview, and lets the candidates know their decision instantly.

MBA (Management By Assassination) programs are starting to take notice as well.

A group of Fatah gunmen on Tuesday stormed the Bethlehem Municipality building on Manger Square, demanding money and jobs in the Palestinian Authority's security forces. The attackers left the building 90 minutes later after receiving assurances from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that their demands would be met.

At least 15 masked gunmen, who described themselves as members of Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, forced their way into the municipality at noon. Armed with rifles and pistols, they ordered all employees to evacuate the building immediately and later closed all entrances to the compound. Some of the gunmen took up positions on the municipality roof.

Scores of Palestinian policemen cordoned off Manger Square, ordering shopkeepers and a handful of tourists to leave the area.

A masked gunman who spoke to reporters on behalf of the attackers said he and his friends were trying to send a message to the PA leadership about the need to meet their demands, which include recruiting more than 320 Fatah militiamen to the security forces, resuming monthly payments to each one of them and guarantees that Israel would stop pursuing them.

[Bethlehem Governor] Ta'mari, and the local commander of the PA's Preventative Security Force, Colonel Majdi al-Attari, later entered the building to negotiate with the gunmen. Ta'mari said after leaving the municipality that he had reassured the attackers that he would make every effort possible to fulfill their demands.

Ta'mari disclosed that Abbas personally talked to the gunmen by phone and promised to look into their demands. "President Abbas, who was personally following the case from Ramallah, talked to one of the gunmen by phone and assured him that everything will be ok," he said.