Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Map of Hezbollah and Hamas rocket coverage

Based on the reports that the terror rockets that hit Haifa this morning were Iranian Fajrs, and the report from al-Sharq al-Awsat that Iran has provided also 150 km. range missiles and rockets, here is my graphic of what parts of Israel are under direct threat from the terrorists.

One can draw one's own conclusions about the wisdom of giving up control of territory when the result looks like this.

GoozNews: Iranian whining hits new levels

Iran has been increasing its insane rhetoric about Israel even more, if that is possible. Here's a sampling of the latest GoozNews:

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, Israelis aggressive behavior has no conformity with any logic or principle.

Imam's grandson Seyed Hassan Khomeini said here Saturday the Zionist regime has proved that it is not committed to any international and human laws.

Ahmadinejad said the Zionist regime arrests and tortures defenseless people adding the powers, who claim to support democracy, independence and sovereignty are undermining all these cases in Lebanon and Palestine.

In a ceremony to open the traffic tunnel in Tehran which was held before a number of country's officials and foreign envoys on Saturday, President Ahmadinejad said, "The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler and behave worse than Genghis Khan."

Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel here Saturday said that as an Islamic country Iran should enter the world equations, given its advanced technology....Turning to the crimes of the usurper Zionist regime in Gaza and Lebanon, he said that today technology has turned into an effective weapon in the hands of the Zionist vampires to shed the blood of ordinary people.

What you can do

UPDATE 2: See my sidebar about the Elder Challenge - donate to the named charities and get matching funds!

BurgerIDF.org and PizzaIDF.org delivers great food and morale to the brave soldiers defending their land.

Zaka is the world famous organization that offers first response service to terror attacks.

American Friends of Magen David Adom.

Treppenwitz has much more, both monetarily and free, that you can do to help.

UPDATE:
Yad Sarah is bringing medical equipment to the north. (H/T Muqata.)

Friends of the IDF provides equipment and morale-boosting (H/T View from a Height)

(To all the Truth Laid Bear visitors - sorry, but I cannot claim to be an Israeli blogger. I'm in the US.)

UPDATE 2: See my sidebar about the Elder Challenge - donate to the named charities and get matching funds!

Islamic leader of Australia: Holocaust a Zionist lie

But wait...it gets better!

THE nation's Islamic leader, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, has dismissed the Holocaust as a 'Zionist lie' in a series of fiery sermons in which he also lashed out at the West and the US-led occupation of Iraq.

Revelations that the nation's most senior Islamic cleric has been openly preaching extreme messages to his mainstream followers will be a major setback for the Howard Government.

Sheik Hilali is a senior member of the Prime Minister's Muslim advisory board.
In a February sermon, Sheik Hilali attacked the Western press for being afraid to admit that the Holocaust was "a ploy made by the Zionists".

He also trivialised the number of Jews killed by the Nazis.

"What's that six million all about? Is there six million?", said the Egyptian-born cleric, before calling on Muslims worldwide to boycott Danish goods over the publication of cartoons that offended Muslims for their depiction of the prophet Mohammed.

"The West say we have freedom and freedom of speech," he told thousands of his followers on February 3. "But journalism stops and shuts up when it discusses the burning of the Jews - the Holocaust -- the Zionist lie and the industry that the West deals in."

In another Friday sermon, delivered two weeks ago at Lakemba Mosque - titled The Zionists Murder Palestinians and the World Watches and the Muslims Are Silent - he called the US the breeders of oppression and labelled Israel a "cancer that is planted in the heart of the Ummah (Muslim community)".

Yes - this is one of those "moderate Muslims" we are always hearing about! At least, as long as he's not speaking Arabic.

Chirac is a disgrace

Here is part of the current Ha'aretz news ticker:

17:24 Man seriously hurt when rocket hits Galilee village of Yesod Hama`alah (Channel 10)
17:20 Hezbollah anti-aircraft guns fire at IDF helicopters along Lebanon border (Channel 2)
16:31 Home Front Command to residents of Acre, Carmiel: Stay in bomb shelters (Haaretz)
16:26 Qassam rocket lands in western Negev; no injuries reported (Haaretz)
15:58 Three Katyusha rockets land in Kiryat Shmona; no injuries reported (Haaretz)
15:21 2 people moderately hurt, 8 lightly wounded in Katyusha strike in Safed (Haaretz)
14:49 Four Katyusha rockets hit Peki`in, several casualties reported (Haaretz)
14:45 Several casualties in Hatzor Haglilit lightly wounded by Katyusha rockets (Channel 1)
14:40 Three Katyusha rockets hit central Nahariya; several people treated for shock (Ch. 1)
14:25 Safed mayor: State should declare emergency situation here due to rocket fire (Ch. 1)
14:18 Two people lightly injured by rocket hits in Nahariya (Haaretz)
14:17 At least three people hurt, residential building damaged by rocket in Safed (Haaretz)
14:16 French President Chirac: Israel`s attack on Lebanon is `disproportionate` (Reuters)
14:12 Initial report: No casualties in latest Katyusha attack on Nahariya (Haaretz)
14:10 Katyusha rockets slam into Nahariya; sirens heard across the town (Haaretz)
14:08 Five Katyusha rockets land in Safed (Haaretz)
13:39 Five fires raging in Naharia environs following Katyusha hits (Haaretz)
13:18 Qassam rocket lands in an open area in western Negev; no casualties, damage (Itim)
13:06 Rockets near Naharia land in open areas (Haaretz)
12:53 Katyusha rockets hit Nahariya; no immediate report of casualties (Haaretz)

With enemies like these...

One of the overarching ironies of the Israel/Palestinian Arab conflict is the fact that Israel helps the day-to-day life of Palestinian Arabs more than any other nation on the planet. For all the Jew-hating morons who love to write articles about Israel's supposed "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" against "Palestinians", Israel - even when it is at war with them - still bends over backwards to help the people who want to see it destroyed.

From Vital Perspective:

Despite ongoing terror attacks from Gaza aimed at the civilian population of Israel, supplies continue to be transferred to the Palestinians through several crossings. Today, reports are that over 30 containers and 140 trucks brought in the following supplies:

1080 tons of grains
800 tons of sugar
140 tons of dairy products
520 tons of flour
420 tons of fruit
169 tons of oil
120 tons of salt
160 tons of rice
40 tons of eggs
100 tons of meat and fish
7 truckloads of medicine and medical equipment
Several heavy duty generators
25,000 liters of chloride
350,000 liters of diesel
50,000 liters of gasoline
100 tons of cooking gas

People on the ground tell us that water and electricity supply remains uninterrupted.

As I've said before, never in history has a nation cared so much about the civilian population of its enemy than Israel is today.

And the final irony is that Israel's enemies truly do intend to perform a complete and total ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Jews in the Middle East.

Photo bias

When looking through Yahoo's list of wire service photos from the Middle East, the ratio of pictures evoking sympathy for Arab civilians outnumbers those that show Israeli civilians under siege by a ratio of about 30-1.

Most of the pictures from the Israeli side show soldiers preparing to do battle with large weapons; most of the pictures from the Lebanese and Gaza side show families and civilians "inspecting damage." One would get the clear impression that Israel is a warmongering state hell-bent on punishing innocent people.

Any moment now....

Any moment now, I'm sure that those noble folks who volunteered to be human shields to protect Saddam's Iraq are flying to Israel as we speak to protect Israeli citizens from Hizbollah rockets. These are, after all, fearless people with a strong sense of justice, who are against all forms of aggression.

Any moment now, I expect we'll be hearing about peace rallies against Hizbollah's unprovoked attack, where the masses of moderate Arabs will be speaking for justice.

Any moment now, op-ed pages will be filled with strong words from famous leftists and peace activists strongly condemning Hizbollah, and Lebanon for not acting against them in accordance with UN resolutions.

All these things are imminent, I just know it. Because these people truly care about all humanity.

UPDATE: I've got to give credit where credit is due. Israel's Peace Now members will spend the weekend in the north in order to support residents on the frontline. Saudi Arabia has rebuked Hizbollah.

Eliminating the root cause

I heard on the radio tonight that the US was doing everything they could to pressure Hizbollah to release the soldiers.

This is laughable. Even if the US could pressure "moderate" Arab nations like Jordan to help out, no Western nation is going to convince any Islamist government (Iran, Hizbollah, Hamas) to do anything, directly or indirectly.

And the US is not going to enter a third war without a serious provocation.

Yet the US, and the West, has one weapon that can solve many, many problems without spilling any blood. It won't be easy but it would be far better to do this sooner rather than later.

Cut off all economic ties with any state that supports Islamist terror. More importantly, cut off any ties with any state that trades with any state that supports Islamist terror.

The US needs to say to Europe, to the third world and to everyone else: You are either with us or against us. If this means another oil boycott, so be it - we can survive without them far better than they can survive without us.

Islamist ideology cannot and will not be changed. No charismatic Islamic leader is going to show up and prove to the terrorists that they are wrong according to the Koran. No one in the Islamic world is going to face down the Islamists. The hope that Islam can modernize is a false hope that comes from not being willing to face the problem head on.

And, I hate to say it, but one cannot soundly defeat a fragmented enemy militarily. You may be able to destroy the Taliban or Hamas or Hizbollah, but you cannot defeat Islamism in the field of war. When the war is asymmetric, where the people down the block from you can one day blow up a building with easily-obtained materials, one can never declare victory.

But the enemy is thoroughly and completely dependent on the West - for our technology, for our petrodollars, for every material need they have, including their weapons. Without money, without our money, they will change from a threat to world pace to a nuisance. They won't disappear but enough of them will happily back the winning horse and turn their backs on the terrorist leaders.

The US' major strength is not its military - it is its sheer economic might. It is past time we use it correctly.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union on Thursday criticized Israel for using what it called "disproportionate" force in its attacks on Lebanon following Wednesday's raid by Hezbollah guerillas who killed eight Israel Defense Forces soldier and abducted two soldiers.

"The European Union is greatly concerned about the disproportionate use of force by Israel in Lebanon in response to attacks by Hezbollah on Israel," according to a statement issued by Finland which holds the EU's rotating presidency. "The presidency deplores the loss of civilian lives and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. The imposition of an air and sea blockade on Lebanon cannot be justified."

According to the calculus of the EU, Israel should carefully take an inventory of its dead and missing, the damage caused by rockets and terror, and bring a spreadsheet to the World Court to gain approval of causing the exact same amount of damage to those who attacked it. That way the EU is happy and won't complain any more.

Of course, when Israel hits back in a proportionate manner, that just perpetuates the "cycle of violence" that so concerns the world, so Israel must, in addition to calculating the damage, exercise "maximum restraint." Which means that Israel shouldn't make any aggressive moves at all towards those who try their hardest to destroy Israel. Restraint means Israelis should hide in their bomb shelters and wait for Hizbollah to run out of ammunition.

To be fair, Hizbollah was also asked to act with restraint by the EUeenies. Since we all know the vast amounts of respect that Hizbollah has towards Christian Europe, we can rest assured that they will drop everything and free the prisoners as they were asked.

And for Euridiots to actually say that one side is wrong and the other side is right would make their heads explode. In these sophisticated times, everyone is equally at fault, unless Israel does something unilaterally, of course. Morality is relative, don't you know. "One man's terrorist" and all that.

Wars must be fair, you see. The Eurodopes say that if the Arabs kill three Jews, Israel can kill 3 Arabs. Let the Muslims kill, say, 6 million Israelis, and then the Israelis would have some justification to kill 6 million Muslims - in the most humane way possible. Just as long as they don't kill any civilians, destroy any infrastructure or buildings, or make too much noise that could keep some kids awake at night. That would be cruel.

What to read

I don't have time today to compose anything major, but there are plenty of bloggers posting great articles and news about the two-front war in Israel.

Check out AbbaGav's editorial, Yourish's coverage, Israel Matzav's articles, and Israellycool's liveblogging.

I have found that traditional news sources, including Israel's, have been frustratingly slow and incomplete. The blogosphere seems to be doing a better job.

Hizbollah's hero

Ha'aretz reports:

Immediately after the Hezbollah attack, the organization's Al-Manar television station began broadcasting clips calling on Israel to release Lebanese prisoners held in Israel in return for the soldiers.

The group in particular emphasized the release of Lebanese militant Samir Kuntar, jailed in Israel since a 1979 attack in the northern town of Nahariyah, in which he entered an apartment and murdered three family members and an Israeli police officer.

Samir Kuntar isn't just another terrorist. He is one of the most loathsome creatures to ever breathe.

Here is an account, from the Washington Post in 2003 (no longer online) of the coldblooded crime that Hizbollah idolizes and the scumbag who committed it:

The World Should Know What He Did to My Family
By Smadar Haran Kaiser

Sunday, May 18, 2003; Page B02

NAHARIYA, Israel
Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas's terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar's name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

The next day,Abu Abbas announced from Beirut that the terrorist attack in Nahariya had been carried out "to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty"at Camp David the previous year. Abbas seems to have a gift for charming journalists, but imagine the character of a man who protests an act of peace by committing an act of slaughter.

Two of Abbas's terrorists had been killed by police on the beach. The other two were captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Despite my protests, one was released in a prisoner exchange for Israeli POWs several months before the Achille Lauro hijacking. Abu Abbas was determined to find a way to free Kuntar as well. So he engineered the hijacking of the Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt and demanded the release of 50 Arab terrorists from Israeli jails. The only one of those prisoners actually named was Samir Kuntar. The plight of hundreds held hostage on a cruise ship for two days at sea lent itself to massive international media coverage. The attack on Nahariya, by contrast, had taken less than an hour in the middle of the night. So what happened then was hardly noticed outside of Israel.

One hears the terrorists and their excusers say that they are driven to kill out of desperation. But there is always a choice. Even when you have suffered, you can choose whether to kill and ruin another's life, or whether to go on and rebuild. Even after my family was murdered, I never dreamed of taking revenge on any Arab. But I am determined that Samir Kuntar should never be released from prison. In 1984, I had to fight my own government not to release him as part of an exchange for several Israeli soldiers who were POWs in Lebanon. I understood, of course, that the families of those POWs would gladly have agreed to the release of an Arab terrorist to get their sons back. But I told Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister, that the blood of my family was as red as that of the POWs. Israel had always taken a position of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. If they were going to make an exception, let it be for a terrorist who was not as cruel as Kuntar. "Your job is not to be emotional," I told Rabin, "but to act rationally." And he did.

So Kuntar remains in prison. I have been shocked to learn that he has married an Israeli Arab woman who is an activist on behalf of terrorist prisoners. As the wife of a prisoner, she gets a monthly stipend from the government. I'm not too happy about that.

UPDATE: The disgusting al-Reuters writes a puff piece about this piece of garbage, whitewashing his sickening acts and leaving out any details until the very end of the article.

Syria's news agency also praises Kuntar.

A website dedicated to Kuntar quotes Hizbollah chief Nasrallah in February as saying, "We are working on making this year the year to free our brothers in Israeli detention, Samir Kantar and his friends, which will in turn pave way to free our Syrian and Jordanian brothers detained in Israeli prisons."

Hizbollah's kidnap goals different from Hamas

This morning's attack by Hizbollah against Israel had primarily different aims than Hamas' kidnap of Gilad Shalit.

Hamas fully expected Israel to negotiate for Shalit's release and to get Israel to free prisoners. They were surprised at the scope of the Israeli response.

Hizbollah, on the other hand, clearly sees that Israel did not capitulate (yet) to the Hamas kidnapping. So why did they choose now to perform this (clearly well-planned) attack?

The idea of a "prisoner swap" (more likely a swap of Jewish bodies for live terrorists) is only tertiary in the mind of Hizbollah's leaders. The major goals are:

Embarrass the Jews.
Make Hizbollah look macho

There's that Arab pride again. Here's the Hizbollah supporters' reaction to the kidnapping:

They are not celebrating the idea of a prisoner swap. They are celebrating a "victory", even one where far more Arabs will end up dead than Israelis. As Hizbollah continues to be under international pressure to disarm - which is the same as asking them to stop breathing - they needed the psychological boost that comes, in the sick Arab mind, from killing and terrorizing Jews.

Since th Arabs do not have a prayer at this time to win an open confrontation with Israel they change the definition of "victory" to be any single successful attack against any single Israeli soldier.

We have a people pitifully low in self-esteem, suffering from a mass delusion where death is better than life and where pride is the major driving factor behind all activities (from honor killings to terror bombings.)

What if Israel had never been created?

A far-left Marxist nutcase named William Hughes, who writes often for loony left rags like Media Monitors Network, just came out with a classic piece blaming all the world's troubles on Zionists. (Interestingly, Iran's president says the same thing. )

Normally, I ignore his fevered rantings, even though they are unintentionally hilarious. For example, here are some of his ideas of how the world would be if Israel never existed:

1. The U.S. would not have any enemies in the Islamic World.
2. There would be no Al-Qaeda Terrorist Network.
3. Gasoline would be selling for less than $1 a gallon.
4. There would have been no 9/11.

I don't know what he is smoking, but I thought it may be a cool idea to come up with my own list of how the world might be today if there was never an Israel:

Egypt and Transjordan would have divided Palestine in 1948. There would be no Palestine.
Jerusalem would be Judenrein.
Any Jews who live in Arab countries would be living in fear of pogroms.
The Soviet Union would have gained complete control of the Middle East in the 1960's, and would have had the ability to starve the US of oil during the cold war. It may never have fallen.
Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons in 1991, so he would by now be allied with the Soviets and ruling Kuwait. He would have nuked Iran, and he would be a clear threat to the US.
Islamic fundamentalism would have arisen anyway as a reaction to the increased power of the secular Arab states. Many Arab states would become like Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Adolf Eichmann would have died peacefully and William Hughes would be writing a glowing biography of him.
Computers would be slower and buggier than they are now.
Instead of having 6 million Jews, the USA would have some 10 million, making people like William Hughes write articles about the undue Jewish influence on American policy. But they wouldn't use the word Jewish - perhaps "Hebrew" or "Semitic".

Any other ideas?

UPDATE: Dave Bender has a funny take on a similar idea.

TEHRAN, July 9 (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it had yet to pay $50 million it had pledged to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority and suggested the process for payment was still being discussed. The donation was announced in April to make up a shortfall left by an aid cut-off by the United States and the European Union and Israel's freezing of the transfer tax and customs receipts to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian government.

For all the Iranian bluster about how much they support the Palestinian Arabs, the reality seems to be somewhat different.