Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 29, 2006

Ahmadinejad acknowledges the Elders

Ina fascinating New York Observer article written by Ahmadinejad's interpreter while he was in New York comes this tidbit, during a speech by the Iranian president to an enthusiastic room of Iranian-Americans - who gave him a standing ovation:

“Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world. You can do it elsewhere,” he said, as if speaking directly to the mysterious 2,000, “but not in Iran. It’s impossible—it’s not doable.”

I am privileged to be one of the infamous, mythical Two Thousand.

And, Mr. Ahmadinejad will be frightened to know, our power does not stop at the borders of Iran.

How to get a guaranteed job in the PA

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs prints its reservations on the EU resuming funding the PA. Most of the things they bring up are familiar but some details were new to me. In the aggregate, it is hard to conclude anything other than the fact that the "moderate" Fatah party actively supports fighting and terrorizing Israel. (Translation by Daily Alert:)

Is Financial Aid from the West Supporting Palestinian Terrorists? - Jonathan D. Halevi

EU members have been expressing great interest in renewing financial support to the Palestinian Authority. On September 21, 2006, the office of the Palestinian president signed an agreement with the World Bank for the transfer of $46.6 million to maintain basic services in the Palestinian Authority. In order to encourage donating countries to transfer as much money as possible to finance its budget, the PA is striving to magnify the image of a "humanitarian crisis" in the territories. However, without proper supervision, the West's financial aid might directly or indirectly find its way to funding Palestinian terror.

The PA allocates $48 million a year to security prisoners in Israeli jails and to released prisoners. Every Palestinian prisoner or Israeli-Arab in an Israeli prison is entitled to receive financial aid from the PA if he was imprisoned for the struggle against "the Israeli occupation." In addition, a released prisoner is entitled to a government position if he spent more than 5 years in prison. A prisoner who spent over 25 years in prison is entitled to the position of deputy minister and the rank of a brigadier-general in the security forces. The PA also transfers millions of dollars per month to organizations, run mostly by Hamas, that support the families of prisoners, dead terrorists, and the wounded.

This system of support, which aids murderous terrorists, suicide bombers who were caught, and those who launched them, conveys the message that the Palestinian Authority supports the armed struggle against Israel. The West's financial aid to the PA, if renewed without the proper precautions and supervision, might end up supporting thousands of former and current Palestinian terrorists. (JCPA-Hebrew, 27Sep06)

So the longer you are in prison for terror activities, the higher your rank in the peaceful PA.

In other words, the EU wants to give money to a people who explicitly and consistently idolize and support terrorists.

Yeshiva boys rejoice

And yeshiva parents, beware:

Tosfos.com is here.

Hat tip to Junior Elder.

Notable articles about Arabs

Enlightening articles on similar themes:

Observations on Arabs
Tribalism
which is itself a long commentary on this: Why We Will Never See Democracy in the Middle East

I do agree that the Arab psyche seems to predate Islam by quite a long period of time. I would venture to guess that Islam was heavily influenced by this Arab tribalist mindset overlaid with a religious motif.

As a trivial example, I once noted thatArab women covered their faces centuries before Mohammed. Islamic law apparently took the Jewish concepts of female modesty, applied it to justify the existing custom, and then used it to strengthen the laws of Islamic modesty beyond the original legal requirements. The Koranic laws may have been codifying and organizing existing Arab customs and mores.

A PalArab leader who really is a leader - and one who isn't

Palestinian Arabs themselves have historically always been far more pragmatic than their "leaders," who almost invariably are more interested in destroying the Zionist state than in building their own.

But once in a great while, you can find an exception:

LIKE every Palestinian town, Beita, a dusty home for 10,000 people spread across a hillside in the middle of the northern West Bank, has seen its fortunes dive since the start of the second intifada in 2000. Never prosperous, reliant on the wages of labourers who worked in Israel, it now has around 65% unemployment.

Yet since coming to office in December 2004, Arab Asharafa, the town's engaging and energetic mayor, has achieved something of a turnaround. He has widened the main road running through the town, is landscaping a new public park and opened a fruit and vegetable market that brings the council $100,000 a year in revenues (the market has gained at the expense of tightly-restricted Nablus, which used to be the main trading hub for the region). He has even started a project to bottle water from the town's spring and sell it, perhaps for export to Jordan.

What makes this remarkable is that the Beita council is dominated by Hamas, which ousted Fatah from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in elections this year. Well before the world's economic boycott of the PA began in March, foreign funding to local councils had begun drying up as Hamas took them over. Beita used to get 30-40% of its revenues from abroad, says Mr Asharafa; now it gets none.

Instead, Beita, under its Hamas mayor, provides an example of how Palestinians might start to wean themselves off donor-dependence. Its success comes partly because, while at the national level Fatah and Hamas are at loggerheads (talks on a national unity government, which seemed a done deal two weeks ago, are now stalled again), in Beita, as in many other mixed local councils, they co-operate.

It is also due to Mr Asharafa's mixture of charisma and creative thinking. He cracked down on electricity theft and non-payment of utilities bills while giving amnesties to students and the unemployed. He saves money by buying bulldozers and reselling them at the end of a project, instead of hiring. He talks businessmen into investing in public projects and taking a cut of the proceeds; at one point, he offered to put his own house up as collateral.

Politically, too, Mr Asharafa can permit himself statements that Hamas's senior leaders cannot. “Hamas must make peace with Israel,” he says, claiming that 90% of Palestinians want a two-state solution, and that the main obstacle—and reason why Hamas will not take the step of recognising Israel outright first—is a lack of trust.

While I, and every poll I've seen, disagree about the 90% number, this mayor symbolizes what Gaza could have been after Israel's withdrawal. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and blame, he actually acts to make life for his people better. He thinks creatively and he solves problems.

He sounds Jewish!

Too bad, Mr. Asharafa is the exception that proves the rule. He is more likely to be murdered for his views of a two-state solution than to be promoted to a ministerial position in the PA.
On the other hand, we have "leaders" like the current chairman of Fatah, Faruq Qaddumi. He advocates overthrowing the PA government because he doesn't like the infighting between Hamas and Fatah. But one of his quotes is very telling:

Fatah secretary general and head of the PLO politburo, Faruq Qaddumi, sharply criticized the Hamas and Fatah movements, warning that "their stubbornness will lead to fighting between Palestinian factions," and accusing those of taking in part in negotiations of "not wanting to reach an agreement."
In an interview to the London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper, Qaddumi claimed that the lead negotiators between the movements "are not interested in reaching an agreement." He called on the Palestinians to overthrow their government "so that Israel will bear the responsibility for the lives of the Palestinians who still are under the fire of occupation."

In other words, this "leader" who still operates out of Tunis wants the Palestinian Arabs to remain in refugee camps forever. He realizes that if PalArabs take responsibility for their own nation, and try to improve it - try to make the lives of their people better, try to build an economy, try to fight the clan wars and infighting, try to bring real peace and security to the region - then the pressure will be off of Israel!

This has been the face of the PalArab "leadership" - ignore the people except for their usefulness as pawns to pressure Israel. Happy Palestinian Arabs are very counterproductive to people like Qaddumi (as well as Haniyeh), because they don't turn into terrorists. Happy citizens actually go to work, provide for their families, and build an economy. Unhappy citizens attend protest after protest and blame others for their problems. As long as their "leaders" can channel their hate towards Israel and not towards the leaders themselves, they remain secure in their destructive policies.

It is a bit ironic that in this case, the real leader is the member of the recognized terror group and the destructive "leader" is a member of the "moderate" Fatah. But it is not surprising: Fatah is no more enlightened than Hamas is; it just has better PR.

What "dialogue" means to Muslims

I've mentioned before how, whenever Muslims call for "dialogue" with Christians or the West, they really mean that they want the opportunity to recruit more Muslims and that they have no interest in actually, you know, listen.

In other words, when they say "dialogue" they mean "Muslim monologue."

And this has been as consistent across all streams of Islam that I've seen. The terrorist front group CAIR has always called for "dialogue" as the answer for every problem, but look how they define it (in the recent example of the Pope kerfuffle):

"The proper response to the Pope's inaccurate and divisive remarks is for Muslims and Catholics worldwide to increase dialogue and outreach efforts aimed at building better relations between Christianity and Islam. This unfortunate episode also offers an opportunity for Christians to learn more about Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Islamic concept of jihad.

The rest of the press release is, of course, a lesson in whitewashed Islam, cherry-picking Koranic statements to make it sound moderate.

Further proof about what "dialogue" means to Muslims comes from a favorite Palestinian Arab sheikh, who explicitly rejects the idea of dialogue - when the person initiating the dialogue is a Christian. (The amount of projection in his description of Catholic "dialogue" is classic.):

Pope Benedict XVI's meeting this week with a delegation of Muslim leaders and his calls for interfaith dialogue following earlier remarks about Islam are really "Crusader conspiracies" to subjugate the Islamic faith and force "Christian-Zionist" worldviews upon Muslims, a prominent Gaza Strip preacher told WorldNetDaily in an interview.

Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called the pope a "puppet" for "that Crusader George Bush."

The Gaza imam said the only Christian-Muslim dialogue that is acceptable is one in which "all religions agree to convert to Islam."

"The call for so-called dialogue by this little racist pope is a Trojan horse with the main goal of reaching a new system in which the ideals (of Christianity) are a new ideology that will rule relations between nations and people. The dialogue he wants is dangerous," said Abu Saqer, speaking to WND from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

"The pope is the spiritual and religious wing of the Crusader ideology," Abu Saqer said. "He is totally coordinated with Bush. Through this dialogue he hopes to break the lines of unity between Muslims and polarize the Muslim world, which has some partisans who will accept this new dialogue. But true believers know Islam must rule all relations. The only dialogue we will accept is when all other religions agree to convert to Islam."

Will we be seeing the "moderate" CAIR, or any Muslim leader for that matter, disagree with these statements?

A suggestion for the Z-Blogosphere

I spend a fair amount of time browsing Google News for articles of interest that may have escaped the notice of the mainstream media. In many cases, the most virulently anti-semitic and absurdly pro-terrorist articles are concentrated in a relatively few set of "news" sources.

Some of them are predictable - loony left sites such as Indymedia, and English-language Arab or Iranian sites.

But the Internet has spawned a number of other Web "news sources" which claim to not have an ideological bias, and are in fact just collections of articles that can be written by pretty much anyone. Examples include:

Scoop
OpEdNews
The People's Voice
Axis of Logic

There is no shortage of borderline psychos who tirelessly submit articles to these sites to push their agenda to make the Middle East, and the world, Jew-free. The sites themselves seem more interested in providing content to attach advertising to rather than in pushing a real agenda.

My suggestion, which I haven't yet had time to do myself, is for the Zionist Blogosphere (Z-Blogosphere?) to submit articles to these outlets. We can even rework old blog posts of which we are particularly proud. For most of us, it would increase our readership and allow us to counter the vile filth that passes for journalism or reasoned opinion on these sites.

Any articles that get rejected would, if nothing else, show the bias that the "unbiased" editors really have.

Any interest?

Latest peaceful PalArab poll

Unfortunately, the raw data for this poll is not available online (as was the case in past polls,) and the Palestinian Arab press release for the poll completely ignores the inconvenient support for terror that was uncovered, so I am relying on this Jerusalem Post report about the poll:

63% of PalArabs support shooting rockets into Israeli cities.
57% support terror attacks against Israeli civilians inside the Green Line.
75% support kidnapping Israeli soldiers to trade them for PalArab prisoners.

Yet "77% of Palestinians support a cease-fire with Israel and 74% believe that Palestinians cannot rely solely on armed struggle and must reach a political settlement with Israel."

The only way to interpret these contradictory results is to realize that to the Palestinian Arabs, peace is not the goal - the eradication of Israel is the goal, and they believe that this can be accomplished by diplomatic as well as terroristic means.

Mickey Mouse and Jack Sparrow - ZIONIST INTERLOPERS

MEMRI does it again:

Following are excerpts from an Iranian TV report on Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean," which aired on the Iranian news Channel (IRINN) on July 27, 2006:
Anchor: Zionist ideology uses all means to impose its cultural control. Cinema, as an attractive and popular form of art, has always interested the Zionist circles.
Reporter: The hot news of cinema circles worldwide is: The "Pirates of the Caribbean" attack the silver screen. The example of "Pirates of the Caribbean" - Hollywood's latest effort to gain control - is all the more striking if we bear in mind the name of its producer: The Walt Disney company. Disney and its productions have been associated, more than anything, with the Zionist lobby in Hollywood. In 1995, when the pro-Zionist Jews were 2.5 percent of America's population, they made up 7.7 percent of Disney's board of directors. This clearly influences the content of this large company's productions, as well as its policies and guidelines. The Aladdin animated film series is one example of Disney creations that present Arabs in a negative light.

In 2004, Disney supported the Bush administration's expansionist policies, and refrained from screening the film "Fahrenheit 9/11," which harshly criticized Bush's policy in attacking Iraq. This film, which won the Palme d'Or award in the Cannes film festival, became the bestselling documentary in the history of the film industry. Disney's move brought it nothing but disgrace.

In any event, Zionism is not restricted to the capitalistic weapons companies, such as Lockheed and the banks that support it. Cinema is considered another, subtle, weapon in the hands of those who support this corrupt ideology. In Hollywood, Disney is the manufacturer of this weapon, and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" is its newest ammunition.

Those Iranians have figured us out again!

Might as well come completely clean:

	Captain Jack Sparrow: ZIONIST JEW
	Mickey Mouse: ZIONIST JEW MOUSE
	Genie: GENOCIDAL JEW ZIONIST
	Doc: JEW RABBI INFIDEL
	Dopey: GENTILE
	Lilo and Stitch: NEOCON ZIONIST CHRISTIANS

(H/T Daughter of Ziyon for most of the pictures)

Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Moderate Muslims

A very interesting article from the editor of American Muslim Perspective webzine, Abdus Sattar Ghazali, that pretty much makes the case that moderate Muslims do not exist - although that was not quite his point.

His central thesis is this one. Can you spot the gaping flaw in logic?

Gary Ratner, executive director of the Congress' Western region office in Los Angeles, says his group believes support for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is central to the definition of a moderate. The definition Mr. Ranter implies that a moderate Muslim should support:

Israel's occupation of the Palestinian land.
Israel's occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.
Israel's killing of unarmed Palestinian men, women and children.
Israel's right to imprison some 10,000 Palestinians.
Israel's right to imprison elected government of the Palestinians and their members of Parliament.
Israel's attack on civilian targets in Lebanon killing hundreds of innocent men, women and children.
Israel's sole right to have nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Israel's right to defy all the UN Security Council resolutions while Arab and Muslim states must comply under pain of sanctions.

Really? Accepting Israel's right to exist means accepting everything Israel does? Someone needs to tell Europe!

Mr. Ghazali goes on to describe how the Muslim reformers that were honored by the American Jewish Congress are eminently unqualified to be called Muslim. I can see how he has problems with Salman Rushdie, Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish, who have all renounced their faith. But look at his arguments against the other two honorees:

Pakistan-born Tashbih Sayyed is editor of Pakistan Today weekly that is supported by a number of Jewish groups because Muslims declined to give ads when he published pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian articles. Sayyed says it is debatable that Islam was spread by the sword and Prophet Muhammad's actions were divinely inspired.

India-born Salim Mansur is one of the leading members of Canadians Against Suicide Bombing (CASB). Mansur, a political science professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, argues that the Muslim world must stop blaming the West for all its own ailments, including poverty, illiteracy, injustice or extremism.

No, these cannot be called "moderate." To terror apologists like Ghalazi, a moderate is someone who wants the Middle East to either be Judenrein or have all Jews (and Christians) paying the jizya like good little dhimmis.

So he ends up proving his point quite well - any Muslim moderates are so far out of the mainstream of the Islamic world as to be considered lunatic fringe.

A notable correlation to his thesis is that Egyptian and Jordanian leaders who nominally recognize Israel, as well as Mahmoud Abbas, are also completely outside the pale of Islam. It would be interesting to hear how he would dig himself out of that hole - would he claim that they do not really recognize Israel and only said they did for political purposes, or would he say they are off-the-scales wackos whom most real Muslims regard as traitors?

I'd love to know his answer, because either way he ends up proving the point.

UN pretzel logic allowing Hezbollah to run free

A couple of days ago the NYT reported:

TIBNIN, Lebanon, Sept. 24 — One month after a United Nations Security Council resolution ended a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, members of the international force sent to help keep the peace say their mission is defined more by what they cannot do than by what they can.

United Nations officials in Tibnin say part of their job is to stay neutral.

They say they cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example, they say they can not stop it. They cannot do any of this, they say, because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution that deployed them, they must first be authorized to take such action by the Lebanese Army.

The job of the United Nations force, and commanders in the field repeat this like a mantra, is to respect Lebanese sovereignty by supporting the Lebanese Army. They will only do what the Lebanese authorities ask.

These are, of course, the same Lebanese authorities that allowed Hezbollah to bring in an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets to begin with, often past Lebanese army checkpoints at the Syria border who waved them through.

So the UN is now effectively a Hezbollah proxy army. Here's a bit of evidence of their "neutrality":

But now today we hear that Hezbollah has started re-arming, under the noses of the UN, but on the off chance that the UN would slightly impede their determination to build a new terror army they have a new strategy:

Hezbollah has been transporting rockets and heavy weaponry to Palestinian camps in south Lebanon just a few miles from the Israeli border, according to Lebanese officials.

Palestinian groups, including Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, maintain armed bases in Lebanon, mostly in the al-Naemeh province just south of Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley, near Lebanon's border with Syria and Israel.

A senior Lebanese official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND Hezbollah started building a new set of bunker systems, this time in Palestinian refugee camps.

"The Lebanese Army doesn't have the authority to patrol inside the camps," said the official. "Hezbollah knows it is safe there to rebuild their war bunkers, and they began doing so with Iranian help."

A second Lebanese official confirmed the information, which came one day after Israel's Army Radio reported Hezbollah was seen by the Israeli army dismantling 14 outposts near the border with Israel, removing rockets and equipment for transport.

The Lebanese Army and a contingent of several thousand international troops have deployed in South Lebanon. None of the forces are authorized to enter Palestinian refugee camps.

The Lebanese government has stated its army will not confront Hezbollah or work to disarm the group. An agreement reached with Hezbollah last month allows the Lebanese militia to retain its weapons as long as it doesn't display the arms in public.

Let's follow the thread of illogic:

The UN will not do anything that the Lebanese army doesn't tell it to do.
The Lebanese army will not lift a finger to stop Hezbollah from re-arming.
Neither of them are authorized to enter the Palestinian Arab camps where Hezbollah is now known to be stockpiling weapons and building new bunkers.

And why exactly can the Lebanese not enter "refugee" camps in their own territory?

Because they are run by the UN!

For some reason, the UNIFIL forces in Lebanon cannot enter the UNRWA-run terror camps because they need Lebanese permission, which cannot be given - without permission from the UN!

And the UNRWA, which has been complicit in raising generations of terrorists throughout the Middle East and increasing the "refugee" population of Palestinian Arabs from 600,000 to some 4 million or so, jealously guards its own turf because it knows that it is a useless organization whose only purpose is to perpetuate Palestinian Arab misery so that they can continue to pressure Israel. Hezbollah fits very neatly in the UNRWA calculations - and even a castrated UNIFIL doesn't.

Genocide of Arabs and Muslims

A great article in Maariv translated by Imshin. Go read the whole thing. In a nutshell, it compares the numbers of Arabs killed by Israel since 1948 with the numbers killed in other conflicts since then, and goes on to analyze why the world is fixated on the comparatively puny numbers Israel is responsible for.

A short summary of Arab/Muslim deaths in some countries since 1948, using the lowest estimates.

Algeria	600,000
Sudan	2,600,000
Afghanistan	2,000,000
Somalia	400,000
Bangladesh	1,400,000
Indonesia	400,000
East Timor	100,000
Iraq	1,540,000
Iran	450,000
Lebanon	130,000
Yemen	100,000
Chechnya	80,000

Most of these Arabs/Musims were killed by other Arabs/Muslims.

And in the Israel/Arab conflict? Total 60,000, of which only a few thousand are Palestinian Arabs and the vast majority died in wars that Arabs themselves started.

Compared to over ten million Muslims killed in the same time period.

The entire article is lengthy but worth it.

H/T: OceanGuy.

Don't make fun of them. It's their culture!

Here's a tiny surreal detail of the bizarro world of the Middle East, where Jews defending Jews are called terrorists and people who blow up babies along with themselves are heroes:

A few terror groups really enjoy calling press conferences. It appears that in Gaza, press conferences are an indication of importance, and the groups that just hate seeing Abbas and Hamas hog all the headlines call their own press conferences often.

The funny part is that the contents of their press conferences are rarely reported, but pictures from these circuses sometimes make it to the wire services. Here's some from yesterday:

This must be the only place in the world where press conferences feature more weapons than reporters, where the people who call the press conference do not want the reporters to know who they are, and where nothing of importance is ever said.

Well, hardly ever. It turns out that the Saturday dog-and-machine gun show did include a few interesting facts:

Four armed Palestinian groups are threatening to target any Palestinian government that recognizes Israel.

Such a government would be a “legitimate target” and would be treated as an extension of the “occupation,” the groups said in a press conference in Gaza over the weekend.

The groups include the Na’sir ‘Salah A-Din Brigades (an arm of the Popular Resistance Committees), The Al-Aq’sa Martyrs Brigades, the Monotheism Brigades and the brigades of Ahmad Abu A-Rish.

The groups called on Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud ‘Abbas to retract comments he made at the United Nations General Assembly last week.

‘Abbas said the future Palestinian government would recognize previously signed agreements with Israel, implying the government would recognize Israel.

Shortly after ‘Abbas spoke, senior Hamas adviser Ahmad Yousuf also rejected the idea.

I find it morbidly fascinating that Arabs have no problems crowing over Palestinian Arab "democracy" and yet see no problem with having the Hamas government abrogate existing agreements. Can you imagine how they would react if Israel would elect a new government who then says that "Oslo is from a previous government - we can ignore that agreement. "

Also glossed over is the small fact that the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades is still nominally headed by the very same Mahmoud Abbas that they are threatening. The media can't be bothered to Chances are many of these thugs are moonlighting as respected "policemen."

I also love the names of these groups. I had never heard of the Monotheism Brigades before. But killing other monotheists in the name of religion is an accepted part of this depraved culture that the world is willing to overlook.

It is just weird how, over time, such crazy and outlandish behavior becomes accepted as normal by the "enlightened" nations, yet any actions that are less than perfect from Israel is quickly condemned.

It seems that there must be a physical law, the Law of Conservation of Responsibility. If the territories have no responsibility whatsoever, then Israel must make up for it by being hyperresponsible for everything they do.

Judging from the photos above, we can also formulate along the same lines the Law of Conservation of Morality, Law of Conservation of Beauty, and Law of Conservation of Intelligence.

Police stop Jew from blowing a shofar. In Israel.

This story is so fundamentally disturbing on so many levels.
Hat tip to Jameel:

A Jewish man was hauled off to the Old City police station in the middle of prayer for sounding the shofar during Rosh HaShanah services at the area known as the Kotel HaKatan.

The incident occurred around 7:30 in the morning, at the northern-most section of the accessible Western Wall - a little-known area called the Kotel HaKatan, the Small Wall. It is considered to have extra sanctity, as it stands opposite the presumed spot of the Holy of Holies of the Beit HaMikdash.

Yesterday morning (Sunday), a group of some 10 men and two women gathered at the site, as they have done for several years on Rosh HaShanah, for early-morning prayers. The holiday prayers feature the blowing of the shofar (ram's horn) at several different times. Towards the end of the first shofar sounding, a Border Guard policeman came in, made an unclear motion with his hand as if to ask what was going on, and then left. He said nothing.

Shortly afterwards, Eliyahu K., the 20-year-old prayer leader, blew the shofar a second time, in the midst of his silent prayer (in accordance with Sephardic custom). Policemen came in once again and began trying to pull him away. However, Eliyahu was in the midst of reciting the Amidah - a long passage during which one must stand in one place without moving - and he therefore did not move.

The policemen informed their supervisors by radio that he was praying and refused to move, and reinforcements were soon sent - no fewer than 20 policemen, according to several witnesses.

They then started dragging him out, and when they stopped for a moment, he got up and resumed his prayers. They then began to drag him away again, and shortly afterwards again stopped for a moment - and again he resumed his prayers. At this point, the policemen allowed him to complete his prayers.

In the meanwhile, the other members of the prayer group came out and tried to prevent the policemen from taking Eliyahu away. At this point, the policemen started swinging their clubs violently; no one was hospitalized, but "it was a big brawl," in the words of one witness, with many people being dragged around and beaten while wearing their prayer-shawls and Sabbath suits.

Meanwhile, Eliyahu was taken to the small police station at the Western Wall plaza, and several of his friends followed him there. They wanted to go up the steps into the police station, and demanded that at least the shofar be returned, but the police again came down with their clubs.

They finally took Eliyahu by foot, accompanied by his fiancיe, all the way around the Old City, past Mt. Zion and through Jaffa Gate, to the Kishle police station inside Jaffa Gate. At this point, there was no longer any violence, and Eliyahu was released around 11:30 - after being charged with attacking a policeman, disturbing a policeman in the line of duty, and disturbing the public order.

One witness related, "It's not only that they stopped him from blowing the shofar, but rather the fact that the police beat us up very harshly. I was on my way to the Wall for prayers when I saw 5-7 policemen going with Eliyahu and protecting him very closely. I walked after them, and then a few of his friends came, and then the violence started. We asked the policemen to return the shofar, and they started kicking us and punching us."

The worshipers said that the police had apparently been called by an Arab woman who said the sound of the ram's horn disturbed her children.

A Jewish resident of the Old City told Arutz-7, "How ironic. The loud Arab weddings and nightly prayers by the muazzin [over a powerful loudspeaker] at 4:30 AM disturb our sleep every night." Similar complaints are heard from Jews living near Arab villages in Judea and Samaria.

Israel annexed all of Jerusalem decades ago. The days when Jews cannot worship where ever they want in the holy city should be well behind us.

This is a textbook case of human rights abuses that no human-rights organization would ever consider mentioning - because human rights abuses against religious Jews don't seem to count.

As the article goes on to mention, this echoes the disgusting British behavior during the 1920s and 1930s when they would routinely arrest Jews for daring to blow the Shofar at the Kotel. I talked at length about this here. The fact that a Jewish government does the same thing today is just mind-blowing.

More peaceful talk from a Gaza sheikh

Here's another heartwarming story about a Gaza preasher who only wants to bring secular Muslims back into the fold.

For holy war, of course.

Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called for holy war against the Pope.

"We did not need the words of the pope in order to understand that this is a Crusader war against Islam and it is our holy duty to fight all those who support the pope, who follow him and who did not condemn what this small racist had to say," commented Abu Saqer, speaking to WND from the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis.

"The day will soon come when the green flag of La Illah Illah Allah (There is no god but Allah) and Muhammad Rasul Allah (Muhammad is the Propher of Allah) will be raised upon the Vatican and all around the world and on the fortresses of those who want to destroy Islam because they know that this religion obliges them to face the truth that Islam is Allah's favorite religion. And until they join Islam hell is their last station," Abu Saqer said.

This fine example of tolerance has been greeted with the usual response from the Muslim world - agreement or silence.

It is yet another example of how Islamism, and probably Islam itself, does not distinguish between religion and politics.