Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Insane Muslim Protester Bonus!

I can't get enough of these.

These charming young Pakistani women are very upset. After all, a Danish newspaper published a couple of cartoons and some Sunni Muslims in Iraq bombed a major shrine.

So, naturally, they must protest against America.

Humorously enough, while the signs say "Down with America" in English, in Arabic and Urdu they helpfully elaborate it as "Death to America."

And then there are the Mohammed groupies just dying to show their great love for their prophet:

Can't you feel the love?

I wish I could read the trenchant political humor that these wild Pakistani college girls came up with. (Although the one in the middle looks like a guy in drag to me. Who knew they were so progressive?)

The best I can see is that a dog, representing Europe and called George, ate something bloody that may or may have not been Muslim pride and is still hungry. The physics of the gravity force on the drops of blood elude me, but perhaps it has something to do with relativity.

Hamas terror-apologists increase in Europe

The "united front" against a Hamas-led PA continues to crumble, only weeks after the election and without Hamas doing anything remotely peaceful. It is truly an amazing scenario and one that is more pessimistic than I expected - even without Hamas having to lie about being interested in peace, the innate Jew-hatred and sympathy for those who want to wipe out all Jews continues unabated.

The new terrorist supporters barely even attempt to address Hamas' own explicit statements of how they will never accept Israel and will continue terror and war. In the absence of any Hamas lies to hang their arguments on, they simply make up their own:

It is worth noting that Hamas has maintained a ceasefire, which means no suicide bombings or other attacks on Israel, for a year. Such control over its own militants might be seen as a hopeful sign, alongside its anti-corruption stance, but only the Russians, who have invited Hamas officials to Moscow, seem to see the opportunity rather than the danger. They have offered a "long-term ceasefire", just as Sharon suggested an interim solution before the creation of a Palestinian state, but this too is dismissed.

In the meantime Hamas is combing the Muslim world for funds. On Monday its political leader, Khaled Mishaal, was in Tehran meeting Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who will happily plug the financial gap if Hamas adheres to his anti-western agenda. "Palestinian people knew that their vote for Hamas meant the fight against the Zionist occupier regime," he said. (In fact, most people I met in Gaza last month voted Hamas because they were angry with the corrupt Fatah leadership. "Ideology accounted for less than 15 per cent of votes," said the Gazan psychologist Eyad Serraj. "People voted on corruption and social issues.")

Last week, this magazine revealed Foreign Office plans to engage with "political Islam" in the form of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, a close ally of Hamas. This acknowledges reality without endorsing terror. Hamas is not about to become the Liberal Democrats, but it came to power in a legitimate election. It may yet descend into corruption or return to violence, but right now there is all to play for.

I left Gaza through the Erez crossing. Palestinians lined up in concrete corridors and the voices of teenage Israeli conscripts ordered them, through loudspeakers, to wait, turn around and put their hands above their heads. More security, more humiliation. Now Israel talks of closing Erez, too, cutting off Gaza completely, as punishment for the election of Hamas. Such measures will radicalise Palestinians further, as the Americans endorse the Israeli line and Europe misses a chance to challenge US policy and gain credibility in the Arab world.

Lindsey Hilsum is international editor for Channel 4 News

Amazing!

First, the explicit lie: Hamas has been responsible for fatal attacks in Israel during the "cease fire." Not to mention the dozens of rocket attacks that luckily weren't fatal. The fact that this terror-apologist chooses to ignore facts and prop up murderers shows a complete disregard for truth as well as human lives. (But Palestinians standing in line are a major crime against humanity, according to the sickening logic of this idiot.)

Then comes the usual worthless comparisons between Hamas and Sharon, to try to justify the bizarrely untenable pro-terror position.

Then the implicit threat that if the West doesn't fund Hamas, then Iran will! As if Hamas will act differently with Western money.

Following that comes the crazy illogic that, "sure, it is a gamble to trust people who explicitly call for genocide, but it is worth a shot." As long as the potential victims are Jews, that is. Somehow I doubt that the writer would extend the same courtesy to Al Qaeda, which incidentally hasn't killed many British recently.

This insane train of thought continues with the notion that while Palestinian Arabs electing a government based on terror is meaningless, but withholding money from them will radicalize them and turn them into terrorists.

Finally, we get to the good part: all of this twisting of facts and calling to fund terror is meant to increase Europe's fading influence and to stick it to America. And if supporting terror is the price that has to be paid to atain this noble goal, well, what are a few dozen more dead Jews?

A small Oslo history lesson

Thanks to MEMRI:
Following are excerpts from an interview by Al-Quds Al-Arabi Editor-in-Chief Abd Al-Bari Atwan, aired on ANB TV on February 16, 2006.

Abd Al-Bari Atwan: When the Oslo Accords were signed, I went to visit [Arafat] in Tunis. It was around July, before he went to Gaza. I said to him: We disagree. I do not support this agreement. It will harm us, the Palestinians, distort our image, and uproot us from our Arab origins. This agreement will not get us what we want, because these Israelis are deceitful.

He took me outside and told me: By Allah, I will drive them crazy. By Allah, I will turn this agreement into a curse for them. By Allah, perhaps not in my lifetime, but you will live to see the Israelis flee from Palestine. Have a little patience. I entrust this with you. Don't mention this to anyone. Always remember this. Sometimes, when I would criticize him strongly, he would say to me: Do you remember the promise I made, Abd Al-Bari?

He was very amicable, and had a great capacity to forgive. I never let him down in crucial moments. For example, when the Americans tried to force Abu-Mazen on him as prime minister, and to take away all his authorities, I stood by Yasser Arafat. I was convinced, because of what he entrusted with me, and because I knew him, that he would not betray [the Palestinians], and would not make concessions.

That is why I knew that it was he who founded and armed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in order to redress the balance with the historic mistake of the Oslo Accords.

This is the "peace process" that the West worships more than any deity. The entire Oslo farce was meant as a means to wage war, not peace, on the part of the Palestinian Arabs against Israel.

And it has been successful. Israel has, from the Arab perspective, abandoned land to terrorists because of the good cop/bad cop pairing of Oslo and terror, both of which had the same goal - the destruction of the Jewish state.

The West still thinks that the "peace process" is a desirable state of affairs, when it is in fact one of the biggest misnomers in history, one whose goal from the Arab side is anything but peaceful.

Isn't unity wonderful?

Muslims across the Middle East – Sunnis and Shiites alike – largely ignored sectarian divides today to unite in condemnation of the the bombing that destroyed of the golden dome that graced one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines.

King Abdullah II, the Jordanian monarch, call it “a heinous attack … (that) has greatly angered us and has provoked our strong feelings as direct descendants of the Prophet Mohammed.”

Radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who was touring the region, cut short a visit to Lebanon to return to his troubled homeland.

At a news conference when he reached Damascus, Syria, al-Sadr laid blame either with the Americans or the Iraqi government.

“If responsibility is not in the hands of the Iraqi government, then I consider the responsibility for this event lies with the occupation forces which should either leave immediately or according to a timetable,” the firebrand cleric told reporters.

Influential Egyptian Sunni cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi said the blast was “a very dangerous action that kindles the fires of sedition.”

He refused to accept that fellow Sunnis were behind the bomb blasts that ripped apart the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

“We cannot imagine that the Iraqi Sunnis did this. So who did do it? Who planned with such slyness and precision and got away without being arrested?” he said.

“No one benefits from such acts other than the US occupation and the lurking Zionist enemy.”

Lebanon’s powerful Shiite militant Hezbollah organisation blamed the US.

“We call upon Muslims everywhere, and especially in Iraq, to avoid falling into a major trap of sedition designed for them by the American occupation and their agents inside Iraq,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

Free Speech

What exactly are the limits of free speech?

Many Muslims are convinced that there is a double-standard in the West: while Holocaust denial and hate speech are illegal in some countries, making fun of Mohammed is not.

A recent LA Times editorial says that the Austrian laws against Holocaust denial are counterproductive:

Free speech, even if it hurts
# Protecting the rights of a Holocaust denier ultimately protects us all.

By Michael Shermer, MICHAEL SHERMER is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American and the author of "Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?"

That Irving has been, and probably still is, a Holocaust denier is indisputable. In 1994, I interviewed him for a book on Holocaust denial, and he told me that no more than half a million Jews died during World War II, and most of those because of disease and starvation. In 2000, Irving lost his libel suit in Britain against an author, and the judge in the case called him "an active Holocaust denier … anti-Semitic and racist." And in April 2005, I attended a lecture he gave in Costa Mesa at an event sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review, the leading voice of Holocaust denial in the U.S. There he joked about the Chappaquiddick line and, holding his right arm up, boasted: "This hand has shaken more hands that shook Hitler's hand than anyone else in the world."

The important question here is not whether Irving is a Holocaust denier (he is), or whether he offends people with what he says (he does), but why anyone, anywhere should be imprisoned for expressing dissenting views or saying offensive things. Today, you may be imprisoned or fined for dissenting from the accepted Holocaust history in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland.[...]

Austria's treatment of Irving as a political dissident should offend both the people who defend the rights of political cartoonists to express their opinion of Islamic terrorists and the civil libertarians who leaped to the defense of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill when he exercised his right to call the victims of 9/11 "little Eichmanns." Why doesn't it? Why aren't freedom lovers everywhere offended by Irving's court conviction?

Freedom is a principle that must be applied indiscriminately. We have to defend Irving in order to defend ourselves. Once the laws are in place to jail dissidents of Holocaust history, what's to stop such laws from being applied to dissenters of religious or political histories, or to skepticism of any sort that deviates from the accepted canon?

No one should be required to facilitate the expression of Holocaust denial, but neither should there be what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the "silence coerced by law — the argument of force in its worst form."

Call David Irving the devil if you like; the principle of free speech gives you the right to do so. But we must give the devil his due. Let Irving go, for our own safety's sake.

His arguments are eloquent, and as a believer in free speech I am sympathetic. (Even Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust researcher who won a lawsuit against Irving, does not believe that he should be in jail.)

However, to give a famous example, free speech does not give you the right to yell "Fire!" in a movie theatre. Incitement to violence is not covered under free speech.

There are serious Holocaust researchers who cast doubt on certain details. Some "facts" about the Holocaust have been shown to not be true by real historians. As in other cases, one must apply a reasonable standard for the intent of the speaker when determining whether his words are meant as a call for truth or a call for genocide.

It is a reasonable assumption that the people who deny the Holocaust happened are the people who most want it to happen again. As such, their denial is nothing more than window dressing for their desire for a world that is Judenrein.

The cartoons of Mohammed were in no way, shape or form an incitement to violence against Muslims. The only violence that occurred in the wake of the cartoons were by Muslims, not against them.

The level of offensiveness should not affect free speech. If speech is restricted by how much people are offended, then everyone has veto power over everything. The intent of the offender is all that matters, not the thinness of the skin of the offended.

The line is still blurry between free speech and incitement, but the editorial above didn't even consider the possibility of Holocaust denial as incitement to rid the world of Jews. And that is the fundamental issue that needs to be addressed.

More pragmatism from Hamas

This animation was on Hamas' website: (hat tip LGF)

It is interesting how Muslims use the Crusades as a club to beat the West with. I wonder how tolerant they would be if prominent leaders would claim that they were a myth created to justify Islamist expansionism and warmongering.

Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies XXIV

Soccer Dad asks a good question from me: what exactly is this military exercise that Palestinian "policemen" are doing?

This other picture, however, gives the answer:

Obviously, because of how inconsistently their paychecks have been arriving, they are starting a circus! This will help cheer up the poor Palestinian Arab children and will of course be underwritten by the EU.

The circus will show Palestinian Arab policemen doing death-defying acts, and the part that makes it interesting is how often death wins! I'm sure that AbbaGav can give a more detailed description of this circus...

The money source fallacy

I've been seeing news stories that seem to suggest that the reason why the West should continue to fund the Palestinians in the wake of the Hamas victory is because if we don't, Iran and Saudi Arabia will.

This makes no sense. While in a very broad outline, Western money has some strings attached to ensure that the money ends up going towards specific programs, in the end all it does is free up money for Palestinians to blow up Jews.

And the idea that somehow Western money influences the Palestinians to have more Western attitudes is simply false. After all, they still elected the party of suicide bombers. One lesson of the cartoons is that you cannot buy respect from those who are pro-terror - Denmark was the most tolerant and pro-Palestinian Arab nation in Europe, and now their flag is burned in every Muslim capital.

Hamas is firmly tied to Iran ideologically, and no amount of Western money will change that. And Iran will fund Hamas regardless.

In the end, it is Western money that funds Saudi Arabia and Iranian-sponsored terror anyway. If we are going to use our economic might to make a difference, it needs to be against the true monetary sources of terror - the Saudi-funded madrassas, the terror "charities," Iran. Any other plan is just playing games and congratulating ourselves that we added an extra step in the inevitable money trail from our pockets to those who want to kill us.

Mrs Naeem, a 37-year-old social worker at the Islamic University in Gaza City and a mother of four, is one of six women elected to parliament on the Hamas ticket in the Islamist party's landslide victory last month....

Women played a crucial role in getting out the vote for Hamas, knocking on doors and often getting a sympathetic hearing. Hamas's strategy to build political support through its social programmes - the provision of health clinics, nurseries and food for the poor - sealed the loyalty of many Palestinian women.

Shortly before the election, Hamas launched a women's armed wing and pictured its members brandishing guns and rocket-propelled grenades in its campaign posters. But the women MPs say their priority is reform, not armed struggle.
[...]
Many of the male leaders of Hamas favour the extension of sharia to cover civil as well as criminal codes. Some have said they want to segregate schools, others favour a ban on the sale of alcohol. They also want to see women dress in accordance with Islam.
Mrs Naeem says changes should come only after Hamas has taken time to explain the benefits of religious law. "Our sharia is great if it's practised according to its values. It's not like they say about only cutting off hands," she said.
"It's not going to be forceful but anybody who believes in the religion has to be educated in it. At the end, what matters is fighting corruption, not what people wear."
Then there is an issue unlike any other. The most controversial of the newly elected Hamas women is Miriam Farhat, known as the "Mother of Martyrs" after losing three sons fighting Israel. Her campaign video included a scene of her bidding a son goodbye before he died killing five people in a Jewish settlement. Mrs Farhat said later that she wished she had 100 sons to sacrifice as "shaheeds" - Muslims who die in a holy war.
Mrs Naeem, who named her youngest child after a Hamas leader assassinated by Israel, says there is nothing illegitimate about suicide bombers. "[The Israelis] bomb our neighbourhoods with high explosive. What kind of weapons do we have against F16s?" she asked. But would she encourage her own 16-year-old son to die killing Israelis? "Yes, as soon as his homeland calls for it. I am preparing him to be a shaheed," she said.

How pragmatic and forward thinking!

Dhimmi Carter says to give Hamas lots of money

Another predictable idiotic op-ed piece by Jimmy Carter supporting terrorists in the name of democracy.

Don't Punish the Palestinians

[...]
The role of the prime minister was greatly strengthened while Abbas and Ahmed Qureia served in that position under Yasser Arafat, and Abbas has announced that he will not choose a prime minister who does not recognize Israel or adhere to the basic principles of the "road map." This could result in a stalemated process, but my conversations with representatives of both sides indicate that they wish to avoid such an imbroglio. The spokesman for Hamas claimed, "We want a peaceful unity government." If this is a truthful statement, it needs to be given a chance.

During this time of fluidity in the formation of the new government, it is important that Israel and the United States play positive roles. Any tacit or formal collusion between the two powers to disrupt the process by punishing the Palestinian people could be counterproductive and have devastating consequences.

Unfortunately, these steps are already underway and are well known throughout the Palestinian territories and the world. Israel moved yesterday to withhold funds (about $50 million per month) that the Palestinians earn from customs and tax revenue. Perhaps a greater aggravation by the Israelis is their decision to hinder movement of elected Hamas Palestinian Legislative Council members through any of more than a hundred Israeli checkpoints around and throughout the Palestinian territories. This will present significant obstacles to a government's functioning effectively. Abbas informed me after the election that the Palestinian Authority was $900 million in debt and that he would be unable to meet payrolls during February. Knowing that Hamas would inherit a bankrupt government, U.S. officials have announced that all funding for the new government will be withheld, including what is needed to pay salaries for schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, police and maintenance personnel. So far they have not agreed to bypass the Hamas-led government and let humanitarian funds be channeled to Palestinians through United Nations agencies responsible for refugees, health and other human services.

This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies.

The election of Hamas candidates cannot adversely affect genuine peace talks, since such talks have been nonexistent for over five years. A negotiated agreement is the only path to a permanent two-state solution, providing peace for Israel and justice for the Palestinians. In fact, if Israel is willing to include the Palestinians in the process, Abbas can still play this unique negotiating role as the unchallenged leader of the PLO (not the government that includes Hamas).

It was under this umbrella and not the Palestinian Authority that Arafat negotiated with Israeli leaders to conclude the Oslo peace agreement. Abbas has sought peace talks with Israel since his election a year ago, and there is nothing to prevent direct talks with him, even if Hamas does not soon take the ultimately inevitable steps of renouncing violence and recognizing Israel's right to exist.

It would not violate any political principles to at least give the Palestinians their own money; let humanitarian assistance continue through U.N. and private agencies; encourage Russia, Egypt and other nations to exert maximum influence on Hamas to moderate its negative policies; and support President Abbas in his efforts to ease tension, avoid violence and explore steps toward a lasting peace.

Carter is so incredibly willfully blind, so unbelievably wrongheaded as to make it remarkable to conceive that he was once President of a great country.

Is he completely unaware that Abbas is also the leader of Fatah, which is responsible for scores of terror attacks? Is he clueless about the Palestinian Arab "policemen" who are nothing but terrorists in uniform? Does he really consider money that others pump into the Palestinian economy for free "their own money?" Can he really believe that after seeing the lies of the PA over the past decade that the "peace process" has any value to anyone? Can he not read the Hamas charter in black and white? Why does he believe an anonymous Hamas spokesman who doesn't even say anything remotely peaceful over the explicitly anti-semitic and genocidal statements of Hamas in Arabic?

Perhaps the most clueless and dhimmified part of the article is the part that is unwittingly bigoted towards Arabs. Yes, Jimmy Carter is a bigot against Arabs. He holds them to a much lower standard than human beings , and he justifies their terrorism as a natural part of their personalities. How else can he say that withholding money from them is an incitement to violence? What exactly is the genetic psychological condition that Palestinians evidently have that means that if we don't do what they want, they are justified in killing Jews?

No, according to the liberal mindset typified by Dhimmi Carter, all of their violence is our fault. Somehow when the Mafia threatens violence when they don't get their "protection money" it is a crime, but when Hamas does exactly the same thing it is reason to bow before Allah and submit to an Islamic 'ummah.

And now Hamas doesn't even have to make that threat explicit. President Jimmah will do it for them, in the pages of the Washington Post.

Wine and cheese

From Denmark:

Kosher Wine and Cheese.

Haveil Havalim #58 has arrived

The grand-daddy of Jewish blog carnivals is back with HH58 hosted by Soccer Dad himself! Lots of new (to me) blogs to check out and a great job, as always.

He was nice enough to link to this article of mine.

If you haven't yet seen this weekly collection of the best of the J-Blogosphere, read it now!

Insane Muslim Protesters of the Day

In my previous posting, I reproduced a sign from some New York City protesters that appear to show death threats against people who have upset Muslims.

The sponsors of that poster are from the "Islamic Thinkers Society" whose webpage is currently down. But thanks to Google's cache, we can find a lovely recent picture of a protest by these people in Europe, threatening to "butcher" anyone who disagrees with them: