Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 16, 2006

How enlightened Iranians treat women's rights protesters

Activists and police at the June 12 protest
(kosoof.com)

PRAGUE, June 13, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian police violently dispersed a women's rights gathering in one of Tehran's main squares on June 12.

Activists said afterward that police forces detained more than 50 people shortly after the gathering started. One former reformist legislator, several students, and women's rights activists are reportedly among the detainees. Several activists were arrested and summoned to court ahead of the announced gathering.

Activists say several hundred demonstrators of both genders attended the peaceful gathering, which was held to protest legal obstacles for women.

They were planning to remain in front of a nearby park for one hour and voice their objections to discriminatory laws.

According to the interpretation of Islamic laws applied in Iran, a woman's testimony in court is worth half of a man's. Women's divorce rights are negligible compared with those for men. And women need the permission of their father or husband to travel.

Activists planned to call for equal legal rights in marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, and other areas.

They also said that they would read aloud a statement claiming that despite efforts to achieve equal status, women's most basic rights "have been ignored in the Iranian civil and penal codes.”

Authorities Were Prepared

But shortly after the gathering started, participants faced tough action by police forces, who dispersed the gathering within about an hour.

Keyvan Rafi, the spokesman of a newly founded group that calls itself Human Rights Activists In Iran, told RFE/RL that police and security forces outnumbered protesters.

He said they resorted to force to crush the protest.

"[Police] forces -- especially armed female officers with batons -- suppressed the protest," Rafi said. "Between 70 and 80 people were arrested -- former MP Mussavi Khoinia, women's rights activist from Amir Kabir University Leila Mohseninejad, and also members of Daftare Tahkim Vahdat [major reformist student organizations] are among those arrested -- in addition to many women whose name we have not been able to obtain yet."

Despite the clashes, some protesters managed to chant slogans urging that laws against women be abolished.

Some bloggers claiming to have witnessed the scene accused authorities of dragging women on the ground by their hair and savagely beating others. They say pepper gas was used against the activists.

Why the long face?

I've been noticing a large number of pictures in the newswires of mourning Palestinian Arab women, such as these:

I was wondering - how come we'd seen so many relatives of past martyrs happy and handing out sweets, celebrating the entry to paradise of their terrorist kin, and now they are so sad? After all - they are certainly martyrs, they were trying to kill their enemies when they died, and they are certainly screwing lots of virgins right around now. What is different?

Then it hit me...

The suicide bombers that were celebrated in the past managed to kill some Jews while dying. The celebrations aren't for dying - they are for successful murder!

Rachel Corrie and Caterpillar revisited

Yesterday was Caterpillar, Inc.'s annual meeting, and predictably the pro-terror crowd was out in force trying to force the company to not sell to Israel. The company rejected their arguments vehemently.

Over a year ago, the pro-terror crowd said they were suing Caterpillar, presumably for building bulldozers that could accidentally kill people.

If one goes through the Rachel Corrie website, for some reason one cannot find a single call for Arab nations or Palestinian Arabs to boycott Caterpillar! As the chairman pointed out yesterday, Arab nations themselves rejected the idea of a boycott, and the wonderful, warm Palestinian Arabs who Rachel was defending somehow manage to get their hands on some Cat bulldozers as well:

And now for today's gratuitous swipe at the MSM: It is widely believed and reported (in the article linked to above, for example) that Corrie was "crushed to death in 2003 by a Caterpillar tractor." In fact:

The army report obtained by the Guardian says Corrie: "was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.

"The finding of the operational investigations shows that Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved."

Finally, for all of the supposed human rights supporters calling for hurting Caterpillar, it is fun to once again see how its stock has been doing since Corrie's death.

On the day she died, Caterpillar stock was at $22.10 in today's terms, after splits and dividends. Today it is at $70.85, more than tripling its price in a little over three years. Not too shabby! Perhaps an anti-terror mutual fund should be created - it would probably beat the market.

111111111111111 and 1000000000000000

Others may celebrate milestones in boring Base 10, but I'm a binary type of guy.

Today, I received my 32,767th and 32,768th visitors (according to Sitemeter - StatCounter has me at well over 36,000 but I think Sitemeter is more accurate.) This is, of course, a power of 2, so in binary notation I just received my visitors number 111111111111111 and 1000000000000000. Now, those are numbers that would look cool on an odometer!

#32767 is from Argentina and #32768 is from Canada.

Readership is moving steadily upwards. While this blog is tiny compared to many, for the past few days I've averaged 150 unique visitors and over 200 pageviews (mostly because I was quoted a couple of times in the Backspin blog.) When I crosspost to Infidel Bloggers Alliance I get a much higher readership, of course.

The International Zionist Web that I founded is growing slowly as well. Feel free to join - just let me know and place the graphic on your site.

Thanks so much to all who hang out in my humble corner of the blogosphere!

The BBC discovers the rocket threat - to a point

The BBC has an unusually sympathetic article about the threat to Israel from rockets. One of the illustrations shows the range of Palestinian Arab rockets from Gaza (older Kassams, newer Kassams and Katyushas):

Even with this article, the BBC falls short of telling the whole story:

What would happen if Israel would go back to the Green Line in the West Bank?

Let's look at a map I made based on this BBC map:

That's right - essentially all of the populated areas of Israel are in range of Katyushas from the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon.

So while the BBC at least began to inform its readers of the threat that their "Goliath" is under, it just couldn't quite take the next step and describe how life would be if Israel did what the BBC and most of the world has been pushing it to do.

It is easy to sit in the UK or in the US where you are thousands of miles from any real threat to your citizens and say that Israel should give back its only slight strategic advantage in its war with the combined Arab nations, but Israel doesn't have two oceans or an entire continent as a buffer. Defending against an enemy that is within walking distance from you is a little different from one that is far away.

Phrases you won't hear describing Hamas/Fatah war

The coverage of the nascent civil war between Hamas and Fatah somehow never mentions certain phrases:

Cycle of violence
Extrajudicial killings
State-sponsored terror
Martyrs
War crimes

Additions welcome!

UPDATE: The ones I like from the comments:

Calling for restraint (based on Myackie)
Disproportionate force (Callie)
Disregard of civilian life (Callie)
Illegal (GreenMamba)
Assassination (GreenMamba)
Against international law (GreenMamba)
UN (Brutus)
Violation (Brutus)
Home-made (Brutus)
Extremist (based on Callie)
Provocation (Ricky at Backspin)
Humiliation (Ricky)

Arabs lie, MSM reports, you decide

This morning's Israeli airstrike against an Arab rocket cell is being universally reported as:

The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted militants on a mission to launch Katyusha rockets at southern Israel. Palestinian witnesses said one missile missed the militants' van, which then crashed into a curb and was struck by two other missiles.
The last two missiles killed and wounded the civilians. Also killed was Hamoud Wadiya, reported to be Islamic Jihad's top rocket launcher, and an unidentified second person in his van, whom the Israeli military identified as another militant.

Witnesses said at least one of the missiles struck some two minutes after the initial one and after a crowd had begun to gather around the scene of the attack.

Now, anyone who has followed Israel's targeted attacks against terrorists in Gaza knows that this sounds very strange. Israel doesn't wait two minutes to send another rocket into an area where civilians have gathered. But - Reuters and AP and UPI have eyewitness testimony!

Now - what really happened?

The Islamic Jihad said earlier that two of its operatives who were killed were Hamoud Wadiya, the group's top rocket launcher, and Shawki Sayklia. Seven Palestinian civilians, including two schoolchildren, were also killed Tuesday when the single missile fired by the IAF detonated the Katyushas inside the car. The army said it had proof that only one missile had been fired and that the terrorists were the only target in the strike.

With years of evidence that Palestinian Arabs habitually will lie to the press - provably and repeatedly - one would think that any "news" organizations that are committed to finding out the truth would at least temper their reporting with this understanding.

And perhaps one day someone from a wire agency might actually write an article that indicates that when Arabs are on their way to fire Katyusha rockets, when they travel through a populated area, when they are killed by Israel in a clearly justifiable manner, and when their own explosives kill Palestinian Arab civilians - that the fault lies wholly with the terrorists and not at all with the country that acted appropriately to stop a rocket attack against her citizens.

UPDATE: The IDF has admitted that it did send two rockets:

The army had originally said it had proof that only one missile had been fired and that the terrorists were the only target in the strike.
However, the IDF later rescinded that claim, saying that the first missile struck near the vehicle but failed to kill the terrorists. Following the initial strike a crowd of Palestinian onlookers gathered. By that time, said a senior IDF officer, an IAF aircraft had already launched a second missile at the target. The second missile, which could not be rerouted, struck the Katyusha-laden vehicle, causing the casualties.

It still appears that the number of casualties would not have been nearly as high had the explosives on the vehicle not contributed. And the fact that the terrorists had Katyushas and not Kassams would explain why Israel was not as reluctant to shoot sooner rather than later.

Also, AP is still claiming 3 rockets were sent, based on "witnesses."

AP puff piece on anti-Israel/anti-US comic book

This morning AP published a puff piece about an Arab superhero comic book that is available in the US:

LOS ANGELES -- If Batman had a twin sister, her name most likely would be Aya, "princess of darkness."
Just like Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne, Middle Eastern comic-book superstar Aya launched her quest for vengeance against evil after witnessing her father's murder.
And while Batman stands vigil over Gotham City, Aya keeps watch over the City of All Faiths, which could easily pass for Jerusalem if it were ever overrun by cartoon villains.
Aya's creator, Ayman Kandeel, hopes such superhero similarities will resonate with Americans and that comic-book readers will embrace the new Middle Eastern crime-fighter and her fellow AK Comics superheroes - Lone Warrior Rakan, the Last Pharaoh Zein and Jalila, saviour of the City of All Faiths.
"I think our characters are global," says Kandeel, who launched AK Comics in his native Egypt four years ago and is now rolling out its stable of superheroes in the United States.

The part that the AP decides isn't relevant to this story is that the major female superhero, Jalila - a female scientist who at the age of 16 survived an explosion at the Dimodona nuclear plant (a reference to Israel's Dimona nuclear research reactor), and gained super-powers from the radiation. She protects the City of All Faiths (Jerusalem) from the warring Zios Army (guess who) and the United Liberation Force (guess who again.)

This story came out over a year ago. To be fair, from looking at the synopses of the comic books themselves it looks more like standard superhero fare than explicit hatemongering against Israel, but the subtext is there and it is crystal clear. The fact that the AP decides not to mention it is just another in a long string of whitewashing we've come to expect from the MSM.

Al-Dura and Ghalia; Intifada II and III

There is another similarity between the fake al-Dura video and the possibly somewhat staged Ghalia video.

Remember, the second intifada was supposedly sparked by two events - the visit by Prime Minister Sharon to the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000, and the fake al-Dura shooting on September 30th. But in reality it was planned in July 2000, after the failure of Camp David. Sharon's visit was cleared ahead of time with the PLO, and al-Dura was fake from the start.

So in 2000, the PLO planned the war and cynically used the media and lies to inflame Arab passions to make the war have a more popular basis. In fact, they started attacking Jewish civilians and soldiers in earnest on September 13 in violation of Oslo.

Now we fast forward to this weekend. While the Ghalia family really were killed, unlike al-Dura, the piece of information that is most relevant to the timing of this episode can be seen in this article by Ze'ev Schiff:

An analysis of the situation leads to the conclusion that the decision to launch the offensive was made by Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based political leader of Hamas, and the Gaza-based heads of the organization's military wing. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, also of Hamas, was informed of the decision and did not object to it.

The first decision to break the hudna came earlier this month. One contributing factor was the Hamas argument that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' call for a referendum over the Prisoners' Document must be neutralized.

What did Khaled Meshal say recently? Among other things:

Hamas and rival Palestinian faction Fatah should close ranks against Israel rather than fighting each other, according to Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. Speaking at the end of a two-day conference in Qatar, Meshal, who is based in Damascus, said Hamas and Fatah should jointly focus on "liberating Palestine, not recognizing Israel and adopting the path of Jihad and resistance."

The timing of this breaking the "hudna" seems awfully similar to the timing of the outbreak of the September 2000 "intifada" - use an external, televised event as an excuse to start killing as many Jews as you can.

Anti-semitism and anti-Zionism

Soccer Dad and Judeopundit, among others, have had an interesting discussion on whether there are differences between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism.

There are certainly some theoretical differences, and some undeniable differences (Neturei Karta members may be bigoted, hateful, publicity seeking morons but it would be hard to characterize them as anti-semitic)

But for the majority of ani-Zionists there is little question that they are really anti-semitic, or self-hating Jews. Whether it makes sense to accuse them of Jew-hatred based purely on their anti-Zionist statements is a different question.

There are a few good "acid tests" to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel or Zionism and old fashioned bigotry against Jews. One of the better definitions comes from Natan Sharansky.

He calls it the "3D" test:

Demonization - "When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel's actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz - this is anti- Semitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel."
Double Standards - "When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria, is ignored; when Israel's Magen David Adom, alone among the world's ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross - this is anti-Semitism."
Delegitimization - "When Israel's fundamental right to exist is denied - alone among all peoples in the world - this too is anti-Semitism."

So while it may not be prudent to yell out "anti-semite!" at every critic of Israel, it is more than reasonable to dig a little deeper and see if the critic fits one or more of the above criteria. It quickly becomes clear that the motivation behind Israel boycotts, for example, is pure Jew-hatred dressed up as liberal social values.

There may be another reason for some of today's irrational anti-Zionism.

One other great hatred that exists in the world today that is socially acceptable is the hatred of America. As the only superpower, as well as the major economic driving force, America is the object of intense envy that manifests itself as hate. Just as in the case of Israel, the United States' very existence and success is an implicit indictment of others - in America's case, it shows the impotence of Old Europe, in Israel's case, it shows the shortcomings of her neighbors.

In either case, some of the hatred of Israel may be because it is such a staunch friend and ally of hated America. It is probably not nearly as much of a factor as old-fashioned Jew-hatred, but it is a component that may be used to differentiate between some Israel-bashers and anti-semites. It may make more sense to say that French anti-Zionism is more a consequence of French jealousy of America than innate Jew-hatred.

At any rate, Judeopundit's main point that anti-Zionism is no less bigoted than anti-semitism is well taken and worth repeating.

DEBKA: Family on beach killed by Hamas bomb

Again, not a mainstream news source, but DEBKA has broken accurate stories before.

Israeli leaders have ordered army commanders to put their counter-missile offensive on hold pending the findings of the military probe into the deaths of seven Palestinians, including children, on Gaza’s beach Friday, June 9. Cooperation between US, Israel, Palestinian Authority and Egyptian intelligence has yielded an initial impression that the blast that caused seven Paletinian deaths on a Gaza beach Friday, june 9, was caused by one of a series of bombs Hamas planted last week on the northern Gazan beach. They were put there as daisy chain traps in case Israeli commandos landed by sea to take Qassam missile launchers in northern Gaza by surprise. The theory gaining ground is that the Palestinian picnickers had the bad luck to detonate one of those bombs.

The day after the mishap, Saturday, dozens of people were sighted combing the scene of the blast and removing the bombs, according to information passed to Israel by Palestinian intelligence, which is engaged in a blood feud with Hamas

To explain this Palestinian helpfulness, DEBKAfile’s sources reveal how the close Abu Mazen associate Muhammed Dahlan was humiliated when he made the gesture of presenting his condolences for the killing of the new Hamas militia commander Jemal Semadhana last week at the official mourners’ tent. Instead of his courtesies being accepted, he was pitched out of the tent by Hamas and Semdhana’s Popular Resistance Committees’ musclemen. He was thus treated to the ultimate insult for a Muslim. Islamic canons enjoin even enemies to be treated with respect in a mourning period. Dahlan was so enraged that he ordered PA intelligence to assist Israeli in its probe to find out if a Hamas bomb rather than an Israeli artillery shell was the true culprit behind the death of the Palestinian family. As yet it is not yet clear how much information Dahlan will allow the Palestinian service to release on the episode.

YNet adds some details:

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Sunday that the security established had completely excluded the possibility that the explosion was caused by an IDF air force or naval strike already during initial investigations. However, the possibility Israeli artillery fire caused the blast was still being examined.

“Out of six shells that were fired, the landing spot of one of them is unknown,” Peretz said. However, he added, there are great disparities between the time at which the army recording firing shells and the time the beachfront explosion occurred, according to Palestinian reports.

IDF investigations found that the shell that hit closest to the blast site landed a full 200 to 250 meters away, and therefore could not have caused the deadly explosion.

Israel News Agency: Palestinian Arabs killed family on Gaza beach

I have yet to see any major Israeli newspaper report this, and I can't vouch for the quality of this source, but it is consistent with all we have been reading so far about the Friday incident that is turning into another Al-Dura:

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem-----June 11.......An Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer has confirmed that the explosion that killed eight Palestinians on Friday, was caused by a stockpile of Hamas explosives.

"Shortly after we stopped defensive firing at Hamas rocket launch pads which were deployed behind Palestinian human shields, members of Hamas scrambled to fire more rockets at our positions," said Col. M. "We have eyes on every meter of Gaza, from the sky, from the ground and from the sea. One of their rocket tripods collapsed inadvertently setting off an explosion of a stockpile of Qassam rockets. The Palestinians killed their own children. And this was not the first time."

Hamas terrorists fired rockets and mortar bombs from a crowded Gaza beach at southern Israel. Some of the rockets fell near the Israel city of Ashkelon. Some 17 rockets were fired between Saturday and Sunday morning. A man at a school in the Israel town of Sderot was wounded, Israel officials said.

Israel Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant said today that the Israel Defense Forces has additional evidence that it wasn't Israel artillery that hit the beach in Gaza. Galant, who commands Israel's southern command, said Israel stopped firing 15 minutes before the explosion. It's all on secure videotape from both sides of the conflict. Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was sorry about the deaths, which included three children.

UPI: Israel guilty until proven innocent

Even though the source of the shells that killed the members of a Gaza family on the beach on Friday is not yet known, and even though Israel is making very public statements that the investigation is still ongoing and that Palestinian Arabs may have very well been the ones responsible for the deaths, UPI even Sunday morning is saying:

An IDF official said 48 rockets had been launched at Israel since Friday when the truce was called off after Israeli rockets killed seven Palestinians at a Gaza beach.

Reuters lies yet again

It looked for a while that the MSM might have gotten the message that the Hamas "truce" was illusory, and they had been saying things like "Hamas has largely abided by a truce" to be more technically accurate.

But it appears that the leading Reuters apologist for Palestinian Arab terror Nidal al-Mughrabi slipped one by the ever-vigilant and committed-to-truth Reuters editors:

The referendum would be the first chance that Palestinians have had to vote directly on whether they favor a two-state solution. Hamas is formally committed to Israel's destruction but has abided by a truce for more than a year.

I suppose that this week's Hamas rocket attacks are part of the "truce."

Humanitarian crisis, part 11

Those poor, poor, poor Gazans. Starving, unemployed, no medicine, no money, an economy in ruins.

Luckily, they can always scrounge money for rockets, ammunition, M-16s and anti-tank rockets!

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s forces and Hamas rivals are expanding their arsenals as a power struggle intensifies, increasing the risk that a showdown could turn bloody, security sources and diplomats said.

New weapons and equipment can be seen on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, while prices for black market guns and ammunition have soared in a growing arms race despite pledges by both sides to prevent civil war.

Western security officials in the Gaza Strip said members of one of Abbas’s elite bodyguard units had shown them newly issued anti-tank rockets concealed in backpacks.

In the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, where Abbas has his headquarters, the guard recently acquired four brand new US-made armoured vehicles worth an estimated $100,000 each.

The government is under a Western financial embargo aimed at forcing Hamas to recognise Israel and renounce violence. But Hamas has been able to smuggle weapons and tens of millions of dollars and euros through the Egyptian border with Gaza, Israeli intelligence sources said.

In Gaza, where it has enough guns, Hamas has been buying up bullets, Palestinian security sources said.

Arms dealers and an Israeli military source said black market bullets were now selling for $1 each - a steep price in areas where up to half the people live on less than $2 per day.

In the West Bank, Hamas has been buying M-16 rifles. Dealers said heavy demand and a lack of supply have sent prices soaring to as much as $13,000 each, up from $5,400 a year ago.

OK, let's do the math: half the people live on less than $2 a day, and an M-16 is $13,000. So the money for an M-16 could have supported 100 Palestinian Arabs for two months.

Nice to know that Hamas cares as much about the people as Fatah did!

(Other "Humanitarian Crisis" articles can be found here.)