Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Spam and Islam

As I wait in line at the Times Square TKTS booth to hopefully get discounted tickets to Spamalot tonight (I wisely indoctrinated the kids in Monty Python when they were younger), I urge you to read Omri's post on the Robert Spencer's blogger conference call,. Those of us who struggle with the hope of moderate Islam can always use a little cold water splash of reality.

Mixed blessing

It is wonderful to see the amount of support that Christian Zionists give to Israel.

It is even more wonderful when thousands of them make the decision to actually visit Israel and publicly show their support, by the thousands:

Israelis and foreigners take part in the annual Jerusalem parade October 10, 2006. More than 5,000 evangelical Christians, including believers from as far afield as Congo and New Zealand, marched through Jerusalem on Tuesday to voice their support for Zionism and the state of Israel. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

G-d knows that Israel needs all the support she can get, and from what I can see nowadays, the support from evangelical Christians seems heartfelt and sincere, without strings attached.

And yet....

In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a proto-Zionist movement among Christians as well. Some Christian denominations openly called for the "Restoration of the Jews" to Palestine, and the wisdom of that support was debated among various prominent Christian preachers, both in the US and in England.

It would be hard to deny that the success of the early Zionist movement up through the Balfour Declaration was in some part due to this subconscious desire on the part of the Christian leaders in England to see Biblical prophecy fulfilled. Newspapers at the time showed intense interest in any story relating to Jews in Palestine, especially Jews immigrating to Palestine, and Jews being successful in agriculture in the Holy Land.

Sometimes the interest would appear to be more of an political or humanitarian nature than overtly religious. But even then, the religious and historical dimension was clear, as in this petition to President Harrison in 1891:

But there is another part of the Christian biblical prophecy regarding the "Restoration of the Jews" that is a bit more troubling. In the early part of the 19th century, just as the words "Restoration of the Jews" were understood to mean the return of the Jews to Palestine, they were just as often used and implied with two more words: "The Restoration and Conversion of the Jews."

This is an entire book on the topic (which you can download), and not the only one. Other books debated the wisdom of the Restoration and whether it fit into Christian Biblical prophecy (this one from 1828) - but the subtext was that the Jews would have to be converted to Christianity, either before such restoration or afterwards.

In fact, there were entire societies in England (and Scotland) dedicated to the conversion of Jews to Christianity, that seemed to reach their greatest influence in the early to middle 19th century.

The conversion aspect of Christian proto-Zionists seemed to die out as the actual reclamation of Jews to biblical Israel accelerated mid-19th century, and it was hardly mentioned publicly by 1900. Nevertheless, this history is enough to make one pause as to the true intent of today's friendly Christian Zionists. The idea of mass conversions of Jews may no longer make sense but the thought of an ulterior motive that lines Israel's fate up more with perceived prophecies than with what is actually good for Israel is not something that is so easy to overlook, despite the many sincere friends that Israel does indeed have today among the Christian Zionists.

Very funny ad, but let's get serious

David Zucker, the same man who co-directed and produced many very funny movies, created an ad for the GOP that is really quite funny:

My only problem is that for the past five years the Bush Administration had done close to nothing about North Korea either. Since naming North Korea as one of the members of the "Axis of Evil" in January 2002, has anything concrete been done to stop their actions? North Korea continues to arm terrorist states, it continues to develop and test long-range missiles, and it continues to develop nuclear weapons. GWB has talked tough but it is apparent that nothing concrete was done.

And Iran is watching very, very closely.

It may be fun to try to score political points and point fingers. But in the face of Iranian and Korean nukes, isn't it time to stop the stupid partisan games between Democrats who think that Bush is evil incarnate and Republicans who refuse to think that perhaps the Iraq war was not thought through correctly?

So many people spend uncounted hours hung up on Valerie Plame or Swiftboating or whatever today's perceived smoking gun is to prove once and for all that the Other Side is shallow and dishonest. Meanwhile, all that is being proven is that both sides are shallow and dishonest. Both sides are so disconnected from reality that they can both watch the same video and come to radically different conclusions. (I didn't watch it myself, so I cannot comment either way.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we are facing some real threats. Let's concentrate on them for a change.

Death toll update: 108 PalArabs (UPDATED - 110)

One really has to scour the Palestinian Arab press to find stories of people who are killed in internal clashes. Most of their newspapers ignore the stories altogether, even the Arabic ones.

Dr. Moawiya Hassanen, head of the Emergency Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reported that one Palestinian security officer, member of the Presidential Guard Force, died of wounds suffered during internal clashes last Sunday.
The officer, Rafeeq Siyam, was seriously injured last Sunday and was moved to an Israeli hospital for further treatment; he died of his wounds at the Israeli hospital.

Yes, you read right: the horrible, bloodthirsty Israelis routinely try to save the lives of Palestinian Arabs being shot by other Palestinian Arabs.

Slightly more press is given toPalArabs who die in more noble and glorious ways:

Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip reported that rescue teams extracted a body of a Palestinian fighter who was killed in a tunnel explosion west of Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

Mohammad Naji, 25, member of the Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad was killed on Monday evening when an explosive charge went off while he was training other members of the brigades.
The traning camp is located in place of the evacuated settlement of Atzmona, west of Rafah.

The body of the fighter was severely mutilated and burnt as a result of the blast.

It is worthwhile to compare this story, translated by IMEMC to English, with its Arabic original (autotranslated):

One of the members of the martyrdom of Al-Quds Brigades in the internal explosion in Rafah
Khan Younis-together - medical sources in Abu Yousef Al Najjar Hospital in the town of Rafah in the martyrdom of the young Muhammad Naji (25 years) and of Deir el-Balah and the Al-Quds Brigades activists one by an explosive charge he was training a group of members of Al-Quds Brigades in a training sites in what is known as the settlement> Atassimona> west of Rafah. The sources added that the body of the martyr was taken to hospital and the charred body was found riddled result of the bomb attack in which a large volume directly.

It appears that the PalArabs know that all that talk about how people who blow themselves up are "martyrs" doesn't play well in the Western world, so they purposefully mistranslate the news story for English-language readers.

So our count of confirmed PalArabs killed by PalArabs since late June is now at 108.

And our count of official Palestinian Arab or international sources who bother to keep their own count of violent Palestinian Arab deaths that have nothing to do with Israel remains at zero.

UPDATE: 109, when Rafik Siam died of injuries from Hamas earlier this month. Interestingly, the article refers to him as a "martyr" and only alludes to his cause of death.

UPDATE 2: 110, when a Fatah member died as a result of injuries from Hamas last May.

McGreevey's former aide denies everything

This isn't really the sort of story I generally follow, but in the wake of the publicity tsunami that the former New Jersey governor has embarked on to push his autobiography, no one seems to mention a very basic fact:

His Israeli "gay lover" denies everything in McGreevey's book, including being gay. He claims he was sexually assaulted by the governor and that he is looking for a nice Jewish girl to marry.

I don't know the truth, but shouldn't the other party have at least as much of a chance to say his side of the story? And shouldn't those people who are sweetly interviewing McGreevey know that it is possible that they are joking around with a sexual predator?

"Call them ZioNazis because it pisses them off"

A remarkable piece of truth, telling the Arabs how exactly to use propaganda and lies:

Ayoon Wa Azan (Enraging the Zionists)
Jihad el-Khazen Al-Hayat - 09/10/06//

About a month has passed since I made my suggestion to popularize the term 'Nazi Zionist' and the derivative 'ZioNazi', and readers are still discussing the matter....
What I say about myself is what I said when I put the term forward on September 5, 2006. I said at the time that the objective of the term was to exasperate the Zionists, because nothing vexes them as much as associating them with the Nazis. I do see the term as an exaggeration, since the crimes of the Nazis against the Jews are greater that the crimes of the Israeli government against the Palestinians and the rest of the Arabs. There is nothing between the Arabs and the Jews that is the equivalent of using gas chambers.

So even though the author knows that the term is ridiculous and has no relationship to truth, the important thing is that it makes Jews angry - and that is a worthwhile goal, in and of itself!

I wonder if he would agree that it would be fair for the West to do the same with Islamists - perhaps we should always refer to Mohammed as "Pedophile Prophet Mohammed" because we know that would upset Islamists, and in some strange universe that is considered a Good Thing to do. (Not to mention that it is probably a whole lot more accurate than "ZioNazi.")

Or is he proposing rules to the game that only one side has to adhere to?

Nah, that couldn't be the case.

(Why am I not surprised that one of the major advertisers in this website is NPR International?)

Righteous Arab Gentiles

In January, I highlighted an article about Muslims in Albania, Turkey and elsewhere who saved Jews from the Holocaust.

Today's Washington Post has an similar important article about the heroic Arabs who saved Jews from being murdered in the 1940s, as well as those who collaborated with the Nazis:

The Holocaust's Arab Heroes

By Robert Satloff
Sunday, October 8, 2006; B01

Virtually alone among peoples of the world, Arabs appear to have won a free pass when it comes to denying or minimizing the Holocaust. Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has declared to his supporters that "Jews invented the legend of the Holocaust." Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently told an interviewer that he doesn't have "any clue how [Jews] were killed or how many were killed." And Hamas's official Web site labels the Nazi effort to exterminate Jews "an alleged and invented story with no basis."

Such Arab viewpoints are not exceptional. A respected Holocaust research institution recently reported that Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all promote Holocaust denial and protect Holocaust deniers. The records of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum show that only one Arab leader at or near the highest level of government -- a young prince from a Persian Gulf state -- has ever made an official visit to the museum in its 13-year history. Not a single official textbook or educational program on the Holocaust exists in an Arab country. In Arab media, literature and popular culture, Holocaust denial is pervasive and legitimized.

Yet when Arab leaders and their people deny the Holocaust, they deny their own history as well -- the lost history of the Holocaust in Arab lands. It took me four years of research -- scouring dozens of archives and conducting scores of interviews in 11 countries -- to unearth this history, one that reveals complicity and indifference on the part of some Arabs during the Holocaust, but also heroism on the part of others who took great risks to save Jewish lives.

Neither Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to Holocaust victims, nor any other Holocaust memorial has ever recognized an Arab rescuer. It is time for that to change. It is also time for Arabs to recall and embrace these episodes in their history. That may not change the minds of the most radical Arab leaders or populations, but for some it could make the Holocaust a source of pride, worthy of remembrance -- rather than avoidance or denial.

The Holocaust was an Arab story, too. From the beginning of World War II, Nazi plans to persecute and eventually exterminate Jews extended throughout the area that Germany and its allies hoped to conquer. That included a great Arab expanse, from Casablanca to Tripoli and on to Cairo, home to more than half a million Jews.

Though Germany and its allies controlled this region only briefly, they made substantial headway toward their goal. From June 1940 to May 1943, the Nazis, their Vichy French collaborators and their Italian fascist allies applied in Arab lands many of the precursors to the Final Solution. These included not only laws depriving Jews of property, education, livelihood, residence and free movement, but also torture, slave labor, deportation and execution.

There were no death camps, but many thousands of Jews were consigned to more than 100 brutal labor camps, many solely for Jews. Recall Maj. Strasser's warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film "Casablanca": "It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here." Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.

About 1 percent of Jews in North Africa (4,000 to 5,000) perished under Axis control in Arab lands, compared with more than half of European Jews. These Jews were lucky to be on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, where the fighting ended relatively early and where boats -- not just cattle cars -- would have been needed to take them to the ovens in Europe. But if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.

The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews; and a brave few even helped save Jews.

Arab collaborators were everywhere. These included Arab officials conniving against Jews at royal courts, Arab overseers of Jewish work gangs, sadistic Arab guards at Jewish labor camps and Arab interpreters who went house to house with SS officers pointing out where Jews lived. Without the help of local Arabs, the persecution of Jews would have been virtually impossible.

Were Arabs, then under the domination of European colonialists, merely following orders? An interviewer once posed that question to Harry Alexander, a Jew from Leipzig, Germany, who survived a notoriously harsh French labor camp at Djelfa, in the Algerian desert. "No, no, no!" he exploded in reply. "Nobody told them to beat us all the time. Nobody told them to chain us together. Nobody told them to tie us naked to a post and beat us and to hang us by our arms and hose us down, to bury us in the sand so our heads should look up and bash our brains in and urinate on our heads. . . . No, they took this into their own hands and they enjoyed what they did."

But not all Arabs joined with the European-spawned campaign against the Jews. The few who risked their lives to save Jews provide inspiration beyond their numbers.

Arabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews' valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. In the words of Yaacov Zrivy, from a small town near Sfax, Tunisia, "The Arabs watched over the Jews."

I found remarkable stories of rescue, too. In the rolling hills west of Tunis, 60 Jewish internees escaped from an Axis labor camp and banged on the farm door of a man named Si Ali Sakkat, who courageously hid them until liberation by the Allies. In the Tunisian coastal town of Mahdia, a dashing local notable named Khaled Abdelwahhab scooped up several families in the middle of the night and whisked them to his countryside estate to protect one of the women from the predations of a German officer bent on rape.

And there is strong evidence that the most influential Arab in Europe -- Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris -- saved as many as 100 Jews by having the mosque's administrative personnel give them certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could evade arrest and deportation. These men, and others, were true heroes.

According to the Koran: "Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world." This passage echoes the Talmud's injunction, "If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world."

Arabs need to hear these stories -- both of heroes and of villains. They especially need to hear them from their own teachers, preachers and leaders. If they do, they may respond as did that one Arab prince who visited the Holocaust museum. "What we saw today," he commented after his tour, "must help us change evil into good and hate into love and war into peace."

rsatloff@washingtoninstitute.org

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is author of "Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands" (PublicAffairs).

As with the Europeans, there were evil Arabs, indifferent Arabs and a small amount of heroic Arabs. We must not forget the good ones just as we must not forget the evil ones.

You need a scorecard

At least one Fatah terrorist was killed when a bomb prematurely exploded in an arms smuggling tunnel.

Another Fatah terrorist was shot and killed (and two Hamas terrorists critically injured) in PalArab infighting.

A young man shot and killed near Al-Masri (from a PalArab Arabic newspaper.)

Our PalArab self-death count is now at 103.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that I will know if the Hamas terrorists die, so as always I am erring on the side of confirmed dead PalArabs.
Chol HaMoed update:

On Friday, 6 October 2006, 3 masked gunmen opened fire at Mohammed ‘Adnan ‘Atiya, 26, near his house in al-Tannour neighborhood in the east of Rafah. ‘Atiya was wounded by several live bullets to the abdomen and the legs. He was evacuated to the hospital, but he died soon. No more information has been available concerning the reasons of this crime.

At approximately 11:45 on Thursday, 5 October 2006, a number of gunmen traveling in a civilian car (a white Peugeot 504) opened fire into the air for no apparent reason in al-Hawaja Streets in the center of Jabalya refugee camp, and then escaped. As a result, two children were wounded:

1. ‘Essam Musleh al-Maqadma, 6, wounded by a live bullet to the buttock; and

2. Ahmed Nabeel ‘Ali, 12, wounded by a live bullet to the right foot.

And here's a case where the PalArabs will undoubtedly consider the victim to be a martyr - but he fits our definition of a PalArab self-death:

A Palestinian man was shot and killed near the West Bank city of Nablus Sunday afternoon on his way to break the Ramadan fast with family, relatives said.

Relatives said Ahmed Yousef Tirawi, 25, was walking with his wife on a path off limits to Palestinians when soldiers fired a single bullet to his head, killing him.

The Israel Defense Forces said it was unaware of any shooting incident in the area and its forces had not opened fire.
So we are at 105.

UPDATE 2: 106.

Also on Thursday, medical sources at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City declared that Ussama Ahmed al-Shiekh ‘Eid, 24, a member of the Executive Force, died from an injury he had sustained on Monday, 2 October 2006. Al-Sheikh ‘Eid was injured by a live bullet to the abdomen during clashes between the Executive Force and members of Fatah movement, which left dead two civilians and injured 25 others.

"Queer Rite of Jews"

One of the fascinating parts of looking through old newspapers is seeing how Jews were described in the American press in the 1800s and early 1900s. Invariably, they are looked upon as being quaint "others" but not as a part of real America.

The descriptions of Sukkot are a good case in point:

Other articles are somewhat more accurate:

And sometimes you see something a little more interesting:

חג שמח

Muslims riot! A brief survey.

I once came up with a short list of bizarre things that Muslims have rioted over in the past.

Here are a few more:

Source: Associated Press
Moslems angered by a short story they consider insulting to the Prophet Mohammed rioted for a third day today in Karnataka state, and police said they shot and killed one rioter. Police gunfire has killed at least 16 people since Sunday during protests over a fictional story in the largest English- language newspaper in the southern state.

Published on December 9, 1986, Page 6C, San Jose Mercury News (CA)

The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973) - Washington, D.C.
Date: May 19, 1962

The American Consulate at Peshawar, Pakistan, was damaged yesterday by a mob demonstrating against reported plans of a U.S.-Italian movie firm to make a film of the life of Mohammed, the State Department reported.

Reuters
Jerusalem Post
04-06-1997
KUALA LUMPUR - Police detained about 250 anti-Israeli protesters on Friday after demonstrating against the presence of an Israeli cricket team in predominantly Moslem Malaysia.

Riot police used tear gas, water cannon and batons against 500 demonstrators when they refused to disperse after shouting anti-Israeli slogans for an hour at Malaya University, where a match between Israel and Argentina was to take place.

The demonstrators from the opposition Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) hurled stones and wood when police fired tear gas canisters and sprayed the crowd ...

The Washington Post
Date: Nov 17, 1936
Beirut, Syria, Nov. 16 (AP). -- At least three persons were killed and more than a score reported injured today in a series of clashes between Moslems and Christians over the new treaty between France and Lebanon.

Moslems Riot On Bombay's First Dry Day
55 Persons Injured
Hindus Stoned
10 P.M. Curfew Ordered
The Washington Post
Date: Aug 2, 1939

Bombay, India, Aug. 1. -- The Bombay government tonight imposed a 10 p.m. curfew for 14 days in an effort to prevent further violence following today's riots in which 55 persons were injured in fighting over the new prohibition law.

Syrians in Israeli prisons sending telegrams to Syria?

In an incoherent article from Syria's "news" agency, celebrating their "victory" in the Yom Kippur War (you know, the victory where Israel went past the purple line and took Syrian territory, shelling Damascus), we are told:

DAMASCUS, (SANA) - Captives of the occupied Arab Syrian Golan sent on Thursday a cable of congratulation to President Bashar al-Assad on October war for liberation in which they depicted it as "the greatest world war."

Life must be rough in those Zionist gulags where prisoners can write and publish any propaganda they feel like.

Ronnie Kasrils makes an idiot out of himself again

We revisit the case of the South African Minister of Intelligence [sic] , Ronnie Kasrils:

RONNIE KASRILS says young Jewish people should not just listen to their parents’ stories about Israel.

The Minister of Intelligence, who said he was proud of his Jewish origin but considers himself an atheist, said young Jews should learn the history and facts about what really happened in the Jewish state.

He said the wall built recently by Israel to cut off the Gaza strip was worse than the Berlin Wall because it was three times as high and it was longer (160km).

I agree wholeheartedly that young Jewish people should learn the facts about Israel. For example, the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip is only 51 km long.

Another "grim milestone"

As I've mentioned before, I have always suspected that my English sources at PCHR and other places were not telling us about all the deaths in the PalArab territories due to infighting and plain stupidity.

Thanks to Google Arabic translation now in beta, I can start to glean a little more about the many Palestinian Arabs who are killed by their own. Most Palestinian Arab newspapers in Arabic seem to ignore the self-deaths as well, but I found one that seems to report on them, Fasl Al-Maqal.

So far today I saw a story about a Christian woman who entered a car which then exploded last Sunday.

Widow of large crowds of Almgar and nearby villages on Sunday, the body of the murdered women, Ms. Aida Abu Shakarh (44 years old). , which killed as a result of an explosion of an explosive device placed under the car driven by her brother Milad Abu Shakarh.

And a man stabbed to death:

Young has reached the age of twenty-eight years, from the village of Allekaya in the Negev, was killed on the night of the day before yesterday, after it was attacked and stabbed with a knife.

The young man, the victim arrived at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba by his family but the crew medical examination could not save his life, and announced his death.
This, police sources did not disclose the name of the deceased young man, as it did not point out what believes the cause of this crime, note that the young man had no criminal record holders.

Combine this with the story of a Hamas man killed by four masked "militants" and we now have documented 100 Palestinian Arabs killed by their own people since Operation Summer Rains began in late June.

Human rights organizations of course ignore these cases because they do not consider Palestinian Arabs to be human - unless they are killed by Israelis. (The only exception is PCHR, and as we've seen they miss quite a few cases themselves.)

Israel's newest attempt to save the planet

I've talked about this before - how alternative energy sources are not only an ecological issue but a national defense issue. This article from Arutz-7/Israel21c mentions this explicitly, which is a good thing.

Personally, I think that similar research should be funded in the US by the massive defense budget, where a billion dollars can easily be found.

Israel is taking the lead in the effort to attain energy alternatives to oil. A new research initiative was launched at Israel’s Weizmann Institute and new cooperation with the US is in the works.

At Rehovot’s Weizmann Institute of Science, a new multidisciplinary research initiative into alternative, sustainable energy resources was recently launched. The goal is to significantly advance the search for solutions to the world's most pressing energy problems.

"Developing alternative means of producing energy is a necessary step for dealing with the continuing energy crisis," Institute President Prof. Ilan Chet told Israel21c. "Creating fresh, sustainable methods of producing energy in the required amounts will only be possible if we can gain the knowledge to invent completely new technologies.”

Finding true sustainable and affordable alternatives to oil would strip powerful Arab oil states of their ability to use oil as a tool of diplomatic pressure. “We believe we can help shape the planet's future," Chen said.

Institute scientists have already come up with several original approaches to producing alternative energy, such as the production of methanol, which is now extracted from fossil fuels, from the sun’s energy instead. If that method proves successful, it could provide a relatively clean, renewable, and environmentally friendly fuel, researchers say.

Physics and chemistry research groups are focusing on energy conversion, storage, and conservation. One research team, in the Institute’s life sciences department, plans to investigate ways of utilizing plants and biomass as energy sources.

A new bill, called the United States-Israel Energy Cooperation Act, was submitted to the U.S. Congress in July. The bill was sponsored by 100 congressmen, both Democrats and Republicans.

The bill passed in the House of Representatives and has moved to the Senate for ratification.

"There is nothing we can do that is more important than weaning the United States and the world off its dependence of petroleum,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) told Israel21c. “And the first step is research, and an important part of that research is cooperative research with other countries similarly dedicated to finding alternative energy. There is perhaps no better partner than Israel."