Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 17, 2006

Hamas aid watch

OK, Iran finally publicly announced that it would give $50 million to Hamas, apparently wanting to wait for their terror conference to make the announcement. But keep in mind that this cover roughly ten days to two weeks of the PA budget, so for such a bigmouthed powerhouse it is a surprisingly small number. Compare to the half a billion or so that the PA got for years from both the EU and the US.

The Arab Summit pledged $55 million monthly to Hamas, although I will bet that this will last only a month or two.

Russia pledged an unspecified amount. Clearly, their motivation is to be a power-broker in the Middle East, because the idea that Russia's economy has millions to spare is laughable. Chances are it was a relatiively small amount and meant more as a political move to show relevance to the one-time superpower.

I still think that the cash will get through to the terrorists, mostly through the UNRWA, which employs many Hamas terrorists itself, as well as the "charities" and NGOs that are sure to sprout up as the money flow moves in that direction. But ultimately the PA budget is so bloated that there is no way that the world will make up the shortfall without Hamas firing half of the PA employees and risking a civil war.

UPDATE: Qatar added $50 million, but the article says that the other Arab pledges never materialized.

UPDATE 2: Qatar's $50 million is just part of the earlier pledge by the Arab summit, but Iran doubled its pledge to $100 million (the same number I predicted, by the way.)

Again, to keep it in context, the PA budget is somewhere between $1.5B and $2 billion a year. These pledges are Band-Aids. If the Arab world would truly commit to the entire shortfall from the loss of EU and American money, it appears that it will affect the Arab world's entire economy.

It is also notable that the two most important Arab countries, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, did not attend the Arab summit where the money was pledged, meaning they have not yet pledged anything.

UPDATE 3: Japan cut off its aid to Hamas, some $40 million a year.

The culture of terror

The mother of the scumbag who murdered at least 9 innocent people today in Tel Aviv said to AP that "there were no warning signs her son was getting involved with a militant group."

And here she is, with some family photos of her beloved murderous son:

But wait? What is her son holding in that photo?

Only in the Arab world can one go to a local photographer and pose a family member in front of his "Autumn in New England" backdrop with an automatic weapon, to see it become a cherished family memory.

And only Palestinian Arabs can say with a straight face that the children whom they raise to hate Jews, who they raise to love murderers, who they brainwash from birth into idolizing death and terror - that they are surprised when they actually do what they have been taught to do.

The mother is as guilty as the son, and it is time that the parents of these terrorists get treated the same way. She should be rotting in jail where she cannot raise and indoctrinate another set of would-be murderers.

GAZA, April 17 (Reuters) - Palestinian militants linked to President Mahmoud Abbas's increasingly fractured Fatah movement threatened on Monday to attack Jews overseas to force Israel to release Palestinian prisoners from its jails.

"This is an open call to all our fighters in the homeland to focus on kidnapping Israeli soldiers and civilians inside our occupied land. And if the enemy does not release our prisoners, then Zionists outside Palestine will be an easy target for our fighters," the group said in a statement.

Remember, these are the moderates that the world is trying to strengthen to oppose Hamas.

Hitler made plans to destroy Palestinian Jewry

Hat tip Ruthy at A March of Folly:

It was the victory of the famed Desert Rats of Britain’s Eighth Army at El Alamein under the leadership of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery that saved the Jews in Palestine from annihilation. The turning point in the desert war signalled a reprieve from a planned German invasion of what was then the British Mandate of Palestine.

The Nazis stationed a unit of SS troops in Athens, tasked with following invading frontline troops in Palestine and then rounding up and murdering about 500,000 European Jews who had taken refuge there, according to historians at the University of Stuttgart.

But the unit, answerable to the Afrika Corps under Field Marshal Erwin “The Desert Fox” Rommel, never deployed.

It was designed to function like the Einsatzgruppen or “action squads” of the SS that followed the German army into Russia, shooting close to a million Jews and political enemies before the static killing centres such as Treblinka and Auschwitz were established in Poland.

Klaus-Michael Mallmann of the University’s Ludwigsburg research team and his assistant Martin Cüppers said they had spent three years studying German wartime archives, including those at the foreign office in Berlin which had hitherto remained sealed.

“The Allied defeat of Rommel at the end of 1942 had prevented the extension of the Holocaust to Palestine,” they said. If Rommel had beaten the Allies in the desert and invaded Egypt, a push into Palestine would have followed and the unit would have deployed there.

The researchers, whose findings appear in a new book entitled Germans, Jews, Genocide: The Holocaust as history and the present, said the Athens unit would follow the blueprint drawn by Nazi units that hunted for Jews in eastern Europe, massacring them on the spot or shipping them off to death camps. In Palestine, they say, it would have been more of the former than the latter due to the greater distances involved.

Mr Mallmann and Mr Cüppers said the Nazis had planned to exploit Arab friendship for their plans.

“The most important collaborator with the Nazis and an absolute Arab anti-Semite was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem,” they say in the book. He was a prime example of how Arabs and Nazis became friends out of a hatred of Jews.

Al-Husseini had met Adolf Eichmann, Adolf Hitler’s chief architect of the Holocaust, several times to settle details of the slaughter. In the academic work they draw on documents from the Reich Main Security Office showing “Einsatzgruppe Egypt” was standing by in Athens and was ready to disembark for Palestine in the summer of 1942.

The Middle East death squad was to be led by the SS Obersturmbannführer Walther Rauff.

Dutch Dhimmi Dummies

An astounding "study" in Holland:

The Dutch authorities must work to establish good relations with the political aspects of Islam. That is the conclusion of a report by the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR). The report, which was presented this week to Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot, has been released at a time when the EU is also dealing with the problem of a Palestinian government led by Hamas.

In recent years, a climate of fear and suspicion between the Muslim world and the west has led to distorted mutual perceptions. In this atmosphere, Islamic politics are often equated with the views and behaviour of anti-democratic and violent fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden. The WRR report argues that this image is unfair. Within Islam there are many more and varied political views.

Of course there are fundamentalists such as the Taliban and the followers of al-Qaeda, who advocate a literal interpretation of the Qu'ran and reject democracy and human rights. But Islamic politics also includes progressive movements and thinkers who emphasise the spirit rather than the letter of the Qu'ran and who often seek to justify democracy and human rights on the basis of Islam.

The report also draws attention to the fact that, over the years, many Islamic activist movements have gone through a process of moderation. Movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who - in the 1970s - were still calling for a radical overthrow of the secular state. Today they act as normal political parties willing to cooperate with others within the limits of a democratic system.

Pure Islam
This is not really new. But Dr Wendy Asbeek, one of the authors of the report, thinks that these facts need to be explained in the Netherlands today:
"In the Dutch media, we regularly hear opinion makers and experts claim that fundamentalist Islam is the only 'pure Islam'. This calls for a counter-discourse that shows the diversity and especially the dynamics of political Islam."What are the consequences of this analysis for Dutch government policies? The report calls for nothing less than a "paradigm shift". The Dutch authorities and also the EU must learn to view political aspects of Islam as a potential ally in their efforts to advance democracy and human rights in the Muslim world.

Hamas
The release of the report is timely because at the moment the Dutch government and the EU are wrestling with the question of how to deal with the Islamic movement Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections in January. Wendy Asbeek:
"The report will surely contribute to making cooperation with Hamas debatable. It is important to approach such movements pragmatically and to judge them on their deeds. We should have the courage to enter into dialogue."

IslamOnline adds:

The WRR study urged an end for campaigns sullying the image of Islam and Muslims in the Netherlands.

It blamed right-wing politicians like MP Ayaan Hirsi for fanning the conflict with Islam.

The study maintained that those politicians, in attacking Islam, are after fame and voters.

The findings of the study drew immediate fire from right-wing and liberal parties, which asked the parliament to hold a special session to debate the conclusions.

Hirsi, who wrote the scripts of two documentaries on alleged oppression of women in Islam, said the study lacks professionalism and undermines free speech.

Yes, walking around with 24-hour protection from Islamic would-be murderers and imams who threaten your life and who murdered your friend is definitely just for fame.

And Hamas is just a democratic movement that doesn't take the Koran literally.

And the Muslim Brotherhood is not interested in terror, no, not in the least. They are fully within the democratic tradition.

And "political Islam" is just another political movement; no interest in establishing shari'a law for the world. No-sir-ee.

Such stupidity from Holland, the country that hosted the murder of Theo Van Gogh, is breathtaking.

UPDATE: I didn't realize Little Green Footballs had covered this, and an interview with one author is even worse, identifying Hezbollah as a moderate movement and saying that Shari'a is just like the Ten Commandments.

Humanitarian crisis, part 3

Palestinians stand in front of their shop at Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza strip April 16, 2006.

Yes, the Palestinian Arabs huddled in horrible, squalid conditions in their refugee camps, clearly starving, and if the EU doesn't pony up an automatic salary for every adult male in the territories, how will Palestinian women be able to afford to shop for their stylish clothing that are for sale at the Khan Younis Mall?

(Part 1 and part 2)

Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies XXVI

A masked Palestinian security man shouts after they stormed a government building at Khan Younis camp in the southern Gaza Strip April 15, 2006. Dozens of masked Palestinian security men stormed a government building in the Gaza Strip on Saturday demanding the Hamas-led administration, already under international financial pressure, pay overdue salaries. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

Law and order once again is front and center for these dedicated public servants.

Already, we can see the dire effects that no salary is having on the average Palestinian Arab. They are already suffering a severe flag shortage!

Chag kosher v'sameach!

This blog is now officially free of all leavened products.

(from the Washington Haggadah, Joel ben Simeon, 1478, at the Library of Congress.)

Wishing all of you a wonderful Yom Tov, and L'Shana Haba'a B'Yerushalayim!

A-Z Meme (gee, thanks AbbaGav)

I am always torn about these things. On the one hand, they are pretty much identical to computer viruses (and chain letters) and I don't like to help propagate them. On the other hand, someone actually wants to know how I would answer the questions.

So, here are my answers to the A-Z meme, but I will not pass it on to others, especially right before Pesach!

Accent: None that I'm aware of. I like to think I speak in the same way a national anchorman speaks.
Booze: I never understood why people like drinking things that taste like ashtrays. When I must drink for some social reason, I can stomach a gin and tonic. That is very rare.
Chore I Hate: Pretty much all of them. That's why they are called "chores."
Dogs/Cats: We have a Lhasa Apso, perhaps the dumbest dog in the world. In fact, that's how I call him: "Here, you stupid dog!" And he always comes to me.
Essential Electronics: PC, Casio Exilim camera, Blackberry. And my old Treo which has Bejeweled and a siddur. And a USB memory stick. And a USB WiFi adapter. And a Panasonic camcorder. And....
Favorite Perfume/Cologne: Some twenty years ago, when I taught Hebrew school, I got two colognes for Chanukah. One was English Leather. It took me years before I could bring myself to throw them out.
Gold & Silver: Sorry, I didn't read how others answered this, so I don't know what it means. I don't have any, at any rate.
Hometown: Born in Philadelphia, now in central NJ.
Insomnia: Only when thinking about blogging. Which is often.
Job Title: Guru.
Kids: 2, known as Daughter of Ziyon and Junior Elder.
Living Arrangements: I share my bedroom with my wife. Shocking, I know.
Most Admired Trait: How would I know? The readers need to answer that one.
Number of Sexual Partners: More than zero and less than two, unless I'm really forgetful.
Overnight Hospital Stays: Bli ayin hora, never for myself. DoZ was born on a Friday night so I did stay in the hospital that night.
Phobia: Memes.
Quote: "You deserve the best, but nobody owes you anything." -E. of Z.
Religion: The Jewish part is easy, but I have no idea which subdivision of Orthodoxy I might fit in.
Siblings: 2.
Time I Usually Wake Up: 6.
Unusual Talent: The ability to make faces in a crowded room to a teenage daughter, making her laugh despite herself, without anyone else noticing.
Vegetable I Refuse To Eat: Plenty I dislike but haven't yet seen any I couldn't force down.
Worst Habit: Apparently, responding to memes.
X-Rays: Well, my teeth have been X-rayed a few tmes.
Yummy Foods I Make: My rule is never to spend more time making a food than it takes to eat it. I used to doctor up pre-made foods when I was single, for example putting honey on pre-made breaded chicken before baking, or putting chopped onions in pre-made chopped liver, and those shortcuts made ordinary pre-packaged stuff much more interesting.
When my kids were little I would ask them to take out 3 random (non-dairy)ingredients from the refrigerator or cupboard and then I would mix them up and put it on chicken pieces. Practically everything works (mustard, marmalade, OJ, onions....)
Why I spent more time answering about how little time I spend on food preparation, I do not know.
Zodiac Sign: Virgo, both in my Hebrew and English birthdays.

The Palestinian Arab welfare state stats

Some more statistics and information about how utterly dependent the Palestinian Arabs are on free money:

This article says that the PA pays $118M every month just for salaries. Since the PA employs some 140,000 people, that means that each "worker" gets over $10,000 a year on the average. This may not be high by Western standards, but compare this to Egypt, whose average annual income is $1530 (in 2001) and Jordan's is $1750. (I am assuming that "average annual income" is per worker; I couldn't find a definition.)

I also found this article from 2000 showing how thousands of Palestinian Arabs are employed by NGOs and getting paid far more than civil service workers, and seem to have plenty of corruption that goes along with the extra money and perks, with little accountability. As we see international funding shift from directly funding the PA to the "humanitarian aid" organizations, watch as the NGOs become more and more corrupt and infiltrated with terror supporters themselves.

Unless the international community starts overseeing the NGO budgets, the problem is just moving terror dollars from one pocket to another.

Who is working to give the Palestinian Arabs financial independence?

GAZA: Israel suspended formal security ties to the Palestinian government yesterday in what Hamas said amounted to "a declaration of war".

Meanwhile...

Israel must not be recognized and the Palestinian Foreign Ministry should aim to establish a Palestinian State from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, in place of the Jewish State, PA Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar said according to Palestinian media reports.

So Israel refusing to cooperate with those who want to destroy it is "declaring war", but Hamas saying they want Israel to be replaced by another Arab state is just evidence of its desire to live in peace with its (Islamic) neighbors.

BERLIN, April 11, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The European Union is set to remove derogatory terminology about Islam like "Islamic terrorism" and "fundamentalists" in its new lexion of public communication to make clear that terrorists are hijacking the religion, an EU official revealed on Tuesday, April 11.

"Certainly 'Islamic terrorism' is something we will not use ... we talk about 'terrorists who abusively invoke Islam'," the official told Reuters.

EU counter-terrorism chief Gijs de Vries said that terrorism was not inherent to any religion, and praised Muslims for opposing attempts by terrorists abusing Islam.

"They have been increasingly active in isolating the radicals who abuse Islam for political purposes, and they deserve everyone's support. And that includes the choice of language that makes clear that we are talking about a murderous fringe that is abusing a religion and does not represent it," he told Reuters.

Omar Faruk, a Muslim British barrister who has advised the government on community issues, said there was a strong need for a "new sort of political dialogue and terminology".

The widespread use of the expression "just creates a culture where terrorism actually is identified with Islam. That causes me a lot of stress," Faruk added.

The lexicon, which would set down guidelines for EU officials and politicians, will reconsider other terms like "Islamists" and "jihad," which is often used by groups like Al-Qaeda to mean a holy war against the infidels.

"Jihad means something for you and me, it means something else for a Muslim. Jihad is a perfectly positive concept of trying to fight evil within yourself," said the EU official.

We wouldn't want to cause Mr. Faruk any stress, would we?

The very same website that printed this definition of Jihad has this quote in its "fatwa bank," quoting the "moderate" Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.

The meaning of Jihad in our present time particularly refers to striving to liberate Muslim lands from the grip of the disbelievers who usurped them and imposed on them their own laws in lieu of the Divine Law. Those disbelievers may be Jews, Christians or both or even pagans, who follow no particular religion at all. Disbelievers are all alike.

Capitalists, Communists, Westerners, Easterners, People of the Book and pagans are by no means different from one other. They should all be fiercely fought if they attempt to occupy any part of the Muslim land. This duty falls on those closest to the occupied land, who should be aided by those closest to them, who, in turn, ought to be aided by those closest to them, till it becomes incumbent on all Muslims to take part in Jihad.

Muslims have never been more severely afflicted than they are nowadays. Many of their lands have been captured by the disbelievers, on top of which is Palestine that has fallen victim to corrupt Jews. Similarly, Kashmir has been dominated by pagan Hindus. Chechnya and other Islamic states have fallen in the grip of pagan tyrannical communism.

Retrieving these lands, freeing them from the clutches of atheists and their twisted laws is the joint responsibility of all Muslims. Declaring Jihad to save our land is an Islamic obligation.

If war is waged anywhere to achieve this goal, namely to free the occupied lands of the laws and the tyranny of disbelievers, it is undoubtedly a case of Jihad for the sake of Allah. It thus needs to be financed from the money of Zakah, the amount of which is to be decided based on the total sum of the charity, the requirements of Jihad as well as the degree of the need of other potential recipients of charity. This is all to be decided by reliable scholars, if they are to be found.

So here is the real definition of Jihad: When talking to Muslims, it means fighting non-Muslims; when talking to non-Muslims, it means "struggle."

I have yet to see an Islamic website mention the terror group "Islamic Jihad" with any anger about how they supposedly usurped the word Jihad.

The EU has succumbed yet again to dhimmitude, and watering down the definition of the war against Islamic terror means that the Islamic terrorists have just won another victory in their jihad against the West.

Islamic feminism

I once had an ancient 1954 World Book Encyclopedia. It had a large entry on "Negro" with such picture captions as "Smiling Pullman Porters help people on the train!" It talked about problems in the Negro world, such as the fact that there were far fewer Negro doctors per million Negro people compared to the number of white doctors per white people.

In other words, World Book was earnestly trying to be politically correct, while at the same time being unwittingly racist.

I am reminded of that article as I read this in the Arab News.

Saudi women need jobs, so let's give them jobs! As long as they are the right kinds of jobs...

JEDDAH, 11 April 2006 — The government’s decision to replace salesmen with Saudi saleswomen at lingerie shops will be implemented in two phases, according to Abdul Wahid Al-Humaid, deputy labor minister for planning and development.

Speaking to reporters in Riyadh, he said the sales jobs at lingerie shops along the streets, central markets and major shopping centers would be restricted to Saudi women starting on June 18.

In the second phase set to begin next year, sales jobs at shops of abayas and women’s readymade dresses will be restricted to Saudi women, the Saudi Press Agency quoted Al-Humaid as saying.

Last week, Labor Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi said his ministry would not back off from the decision. “The directive is binding and there will be no retraction in its implementation,” Al-Gosaibi said. “Providing jobs for women has been a priority for decision makers in the Kingdom for more than 25 years.”

The Labor Ministry has launched a campaign aimed at employing 200,000 women. Some of the jobs that have been identified for Saudi women are receptionists, tailors, banquet hall employees, nutritionists, governesses, photographers, beauticians, caterers, and hospitality and recreation industry workers.

April 12, 1936: Not worth the paper it wasn't written on

Philip Roth once wrote "Truth is stranger than fiction, but stranger still are lies." And he is right.

We see today that world leaders can transparently and provably lie and yet their statements are treated as if they are newsworthy.

Diplomacy is based on the assumption that both parties are trustworthy. But for some reason, even when one party is proven to have lied over and over again, in today's world people are willing to give them more and more chances - as long as they aren't the ones who can be directly affected by the lies.

Even bald-faced lies can have the effect of buying time, of causing the listener to pause and reconsider. People want to believe so much that they will allow themselves to believe the words of known liars.

So lies almost always work, on some level. And as long as they are rewarded, they will be repeated.

The headline I haven't seen yet

Back in January, I outlined the "nightmare Hamas scenario" where Iran would fund the nascent Hamastan. In this scenario, Hamas remains solvent, terroristic and it becomes a means to deliver nuclear weapons to Israel without any rockets.

It appeared that the scenario was coming true, as Iran forcefully and loudly declares its support for the Hamas terror leadership. Iran did in fact claim to offer Hamas money in February, and we know that Hamas has been getting closer to Hizbollah which is funded directly by Iran.

Iran has also been very vocal in its public support for Hamastan, hosting conferences with the purpose of supporting Hamas and Palestinian Arabs.

But I have yet to see the headline "Iran pledges $100 million to the PA" or anything specific like that. All I am seeing is Iran calling on other Islamic and Arab states to support Palestinian Arabs, and the occasional article saying how Iran "supports" Palestinian Arab rights.

Why hasn't Iran taken the obvious lead in funding Hamas publicly?

Do they not have the cash? Are they full of hot air? Do they want to keep aid to the Hamas military "wing" private and out of the scrutiny of international auditors who watch where Western dollars go?

Any ideas?