Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 23, 2006

Anti-semitism as a career move

A well-known Jewish Israel-basher and anti-semite, Gilad Atzmon, has generated some controversy by playing jazz saxophone at a club in England.

Thinking himself hilarious, and perhaps showing some Borat envy, he created a fictional character named Artie Fishel who is his caricature of everything wrong about Jews. Artie believes that jazz was created by Jews and anyone who denies it is an anti-semite:

Artie: What do you mean? Are you a Jazz denier? Don’t you know that where jazz is coming from? Jazz is Jewish, Zwing is Jewish. Just get use to it. Do you want another Shoa, and then the another Schindler Liszt? Let’s stop right there. We ask for our music back, no more, no less.

Angie: But, Artie, jazz had its origins in America dating back to a time when former slaves were free to – never mind. Why don’t you introduce us to the musicians in the Promised Band?

Artie: Of course, I love to talk about us! I, myself, play the Zaxophon und Schwartzephon, what some people call the misery stick, what the goyim call clarinet. From time to time I zing as well. Hoy, I have such a beautiful voice, don’t you think so? Angie, why do you laugh? Don’t you like my voice? Anyway, you are an anti Semite. Actually I don’t really care what you think.

Angie: Come on, just get on with introducing the band, please.

Artie: On Droim we have Peter Foreskin. What a wonderful drummer! He is so violent, and angry, and aggressive and relax and quiet and he never, never, never misses the one, and even when he does occasionally misses the one, we always follow him, because we are so tune to each other. This is all due to our Kosher brotherhood. I tell you, once you go Kosher, Zwing is no torture.

Angie: And who is the bassist?

Artie: Hoy, Jaco Pastrami on the Boss. What a great player! The technique, the intonation, I tell you, he sounds like melting Philadelphia cream cheese mixed with smoke salmon.

Shimshon Gib Shoin on Gitoyer. Believe me, once you listen to him, you forget Hendrix and Clapton. Gitoyer is a Jewish instrument. It is noisy, but it can cry and break your heart as if a pogrom is going on.

Angie: Wow! Shimshon Gib Shoin is that good, eh? But the "gitoyer" is not a Jewish instrument, Artie.

Artie: What do you mean ‘not Jewish’? So what is it? Marrocan? Jordanian, Yeguslavian? Every people has its musical instrument so why we the Jews cannot have the Gitoyer? Aren’t we people like other people?

Atzmon is parlaying the criticism leveled at him from the Board of Deputies of British Jews into press releases and articles pushing his "Artie" album. Essentially, he is using his reputation as an anti-semite to make money, in much the same way that Holocaust deniers have.

And his anti-semitism and single-minded anti-Zionism is so extreme that other Marxists and far left moonbats have distanced themselves from him.

As the Jerusalem Post reported:

The Observer newspaper reported in an article in April 2005 that at a conference at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, Atzmon said, "I'm not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act." He also repeatedly spoke of Jewish and Zionist influence around the world and referred to the US as the "Jew-nited States of Jew-merica."

In April of this year, in an article called "Self-Haters Unite," he wrote: "It is always the proud self-hating Jews who transform Jewishness into an ethical message." "Jews are capable of anything. They run the show, they own the world, and they are brutal, monstrous cannibals," he added.

Sue Blackwell, a Birmingham University academic who led the 2005 campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions, has blacklisted Atzmon. On her Web site, in the aptly named section titled "Nazi Alert," she has severed all ties to him, saying: "Some notorious far-right individuals and organizations are jumping onto the Palestinian bandwagon in an attempt to hijack the cause of the Palestinian people for their own anti-Semitic ends."

Atzmon also peddles conspiracy theories. In a 2005 address at the Marxism conference in London he said that MI6 and the CIA were there among the IDF units who "flattened Jenin Refugee Camp" in 2002 and that Israeli officers were advising the American and British armies in Basra and Fallujah.

The article goes on to mention that Atzmon has praised Holocaust-denial materials on his website.

In the case of pathetic people like Atzmon, Norman Finkelstein, Uri Avnery and others, it seems likely that their views have become more extreme over time as they see that the neo-Nazis and far Left embrace them so wholly (Jews who criticize Jews serve to inoculate the Left from charges of bigotry.) They literally become famous for their extreme hate. Fame feeds their egos and they keep going.

In this case, Atzmon decided that his career as a jazz musician would benefit as well from trafficking in anti-Jewish stereotypes. I don't know whether he is truly as ideologically far out as he says he is, but it is clear that when it comes to pursuit of money and fame, he is willing to trade on his Jew-hating reputation.

What is the truth in Beit Hanoun?

This morning, 7 Palestinian Arabs were killed and more injured in Beit Hanoun. The same story is covered in wildly different ways by different media.

Reading the PalArab news in Arabic, as usual, one thinks that the IDF just came to Beit Hanoun for no reason and started firing indiscriminately.

The PalArab English news admits that Israel may have been targeting some terrorists from the PRC.

Haaretz quotes PalArab residents who claim that the IDF opened fire on "militants" who were paying a condolence call. The terrorists fired initially at another family, thinking it was an internal feud, and then shot towards the IDF.

YNet quotes different PalArab sources saying that the IDF only started firing after they accidentally thought that gunfire between the two warring families were meant for them.

The Jerusalem Post says that all seven people killed were gunmen, including a senior PRC member responsible for rocket launches.

So what is the truth?

My guess is that the YNet account is closest, and that not all of the victims were from Israeli fire, based on a quote in Haaretz: "When the smoke cleared, seven Palestinians were dead and
some 20 wounded, a Palestinian Health Ministry official said, blaming IDF gunfire for all the casualties and basing his account on information from ambulance crews at the scene." The Palestinian Health Ministry is known to lie and will definitely cover up any internal PalArab fighting.

So in the end, we know that all seven of the dead will be blamed on Israel, and no one will bother finding out the truth since the propaganda is so much more valuable.

UPDATE: Haaretz now reports that witnesses said six out of the seven were armed.

WAFA: Arabic news completely different from English news

WAFA is the "Palestinian" news agency, and, like the "Palestine News Network," its webpage is available in English, Hebrew, French and Arabic.

And, just like with PNN, they actively censor any news in English that makes Palestinian Arabs look bad.

Today's example: The English webpage has articles about Israeli harassment of PalArabs at checkpoints, a story talking about how the Rachel Corrie play is a smash hit, and a story from ISM about a PalArab man who will not tell his kids that Israel destroyed their house because he doesn't want them to hate. All stories tailor-made for propaganda purposes to put the best possible light on PalArabs and the worst on Israelis - which means it is not "news" at all.

But when one looks at the autotranslated Arabic site, things get a little more interesting:

Masked gunmen killed 25-year old Atta Faraj in the Gaza Strip.
Unidentified gunmen killed Alaa Mubarak in Tulkarem, apparently a Hamas member.

Also, yesterday, "gunmen" on motorcycles killed someone who was autotranslated as "struggling Douglas" in Jericho.

Thanks to the Arabic news, we reconfirm that Palestinian Arabs violently murder each other daily, with no arrests, and very little coverage even by their own press (the Jericho murder wasn't mentioned in any other news source I could find.)

Our PalArab violent self-death count since late Operation Summer Rains began is now at 124.

"Palestine News Network": English vs. Arabic

The "Palestine News Network" publishes editions in English, French, Arabic and Hebrew. Interestingly, the article selection is different in different languages.

For example, the Arabic site mentions a wave of car thefts in Bethlehem. The English site does not (nor does the Hebrew.)

The Arabic site mentions the murder of a Fatah terrorist by "unknown masked men" and the violent reaction by Fatah against Hamas, torching cars and shooting at houses. The English site ignores that.

(The PalArab self-inflicted violent death count is now at 121.)

Archaeological Temple artifacts drive PalArabs crazy

A few years ago, in a major crime against history, religion and archaeology, the Waqf in Jerusalem excavated and trashed tons of material from the most valuable archaeological site on the planet, the Temple Mount. It was a clear attempt to erase any shred of Jewish history from the area so the Muslims can continue to lie about the supposed ancient mosques that they claim were there, a story that gets mosre insane with each passing year.

Since then, many volunteers have been sifting through the rubble, finding priceless antiquities. I quoted an article last year about it, and now more has been found. From Ha'aretz:

By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

The project of sifting layers of Temple Mount dirt has yielded thousands of new artifacts dating from the First Temple period to today. The dirt was removed in 1999 by the Islamic Religious Trust (Waqf) from the Solomon's Stables area to the Kidron Stream Valley. The sifting itself is taking place at Tzurim Valley National Park, at the foot of Mount Scopus, and being funded by the Ir David Foundation. Dr. Gabriel Barkai and Tzachi Zweig, the archaeologists directing the sifting project with the help of hundreds of volunteers, are publishing photographs and information about the new discoveries in the upcoming issue of Ariel, which comes out in a few days.

The bulk of the artifacts are small finds - the term used for artifacts that can be lifted and transported, rather than fixed features. The dirt was removed in the course of excavating the mammoth entrance to the underground mosque built seven years ago in the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount. The Waqf and Islamic Movement in Israel separated dirt from stones, then used the ancient building blocks for rebuilding, in case the police barred construction materials from being brought in.

Most of the finds predate the Middle Ages. The finds include 10,000-year-old flint tools; numerous potsherds; some 1,000 ancient coins; lots of jewelry (pendants, rings, bracelets, earrings and beads in a variety of colors and materials); clothing accessories and decorative pieces; talismans; dice and game pieces made of bone and ivory; ivory and mother of pearl inlay for furniture; figurines and statuettes; stone and metal weights; arrowheads and rifle bullets; stone and glass shards; remains of stone mosaic and glass wall mosaics; decorated tiles and parts of structures; stamps, seals and a host of other items.

The sifting project is precedent-setting: This is the first time dirt from any antiquities site is being sifted in full. Among the many volunteers are soldiers, tourists, high-school students and yeshiva boys. Visitors over the past few months have included ultra-Orthodox MKs and rabbis, who usually steer clear of archaeological digs.

When the dirt was originally trucked out, the late director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Amir Drori, termed it "an archaeological crime," and the attorney general at the time, Elyakim Rubinstein, said it was "a kick to the history of the Jewish people." Now it turns out that the dirt removed from the Temple Mount harbors thousands of small finds from diverse periods.

...The most striking find from this period is a First Temple period bulla, or seal impression, containing ancient Hebrew writing, which may have belonged to a well-known family of priests mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.

Many other findings date from the Persian period (Return to Zion), Hasmonean, Ptolemaic and Herodian periods, as well as from Second Temple times. Second Temple finds include remains of buildings: plaster shards decorated a rust-red, which Barkai says was fashionable at the time; a stone measuring 10 centimeters and on it a sophisticated carving reminiscent of Herodian decorations; and a broken stone from a decorated part of the Temple Mount - still bearing signs of fire, which Barkai says are from the Temple's destruction in 70 C.E.

The project has also yielded artifacts from the Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Early Arab periods. According to Barkai, the Byzantine finds radically alter the assessment that the Temple Mount was empty at that time.

The Muslim reaction in the Arabic papers is predictable. Notice his title, which may or may not be an accurate translation from Google of an al-Hayat article:

Sheikh Taysir Al Tamimi, the Chief Judge of Palestine, chairman of the Supreme Council for the Elimination of Forensic and preacher of Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi reports of the allegations and claims Israeli official in archeology found relics of the structure of Jews under the foundations of Al Aqsa Mosque in 1999, He described the allegations as sheer lie and a falsification of historical facts, If this claim is true for the established minimum and Agaadoha Since then, archaeologists have announced that the Jews repeatedly not finding any trace of their alleged temple, or of Jewish history in Jerusalem. Despite this, they decided to continue the excavations in order to undermine the foundations of the mosque and causing the collapse of its architecture.

"Supreme Council for the Elimination of Forensic?"

Notice the bald-faced lies: it was the Arabs who excavated under the Temple Mount, and archaeologists all agree that the Second Temple existed at that site (although there is still controversy about the First Temple) - let alone that the city was a Jewish city at that period.

Palestinian Arab TV is repeatedly broadcasting even more absurd claims, such as that no Jews were in the area until the 16th century and that the Western Wall was built as part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (which was built 11 centuries later!) And it gets even better:

In a previous interview with WND, Kamal Hatib, vice-chairman of the Islamic Movement, claimed the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built by angels and that a Jewish Temple may have existed but not in Jerusalem.
"When the First Temple was built by Solomon – God bless him – Al Aqsa was already built. We don't believe that a prophet like Solomon would have built the temple at a place where a mosque existed," said Hatib.

"And all the historical and archaeological facts deny any relation between the temples and the location of Al Aqsa. We must know that Jerusalem was occupied and that people left many things, coins and other things everywhere. This does not mean in any way that there is a link between the people who left these things and the place where these things were left," Hatib said.

These are the lies that get broadcast and printed in Islamic media every day, not to mention printed in their textbooks.

When truth is held in such low regard, how can anyone believe anything these clowns ever say?

A little more media bias

Omri notes the bias at the LA Times in reporting on Hezbollah firing cluster bombs all over northern Israel.

LAT was only slightly worse than most news outlets, and even the HRW report itself compares Hezbollah cluster munitions with Israel's:

“We are disturbed to discover that not only Israel but also Hezbollah used cluster munitions in their recent conflict, at a time when many countries are turning away from this kind of weapon precisely because of its impact on civilians,” said Steve Goose, director of Human Rights Watch's Arms Division. “Use of cluster munitions is never justified in civilian-populated areas because they are inaccurate and unreliable.”

"Not only Israel..." In other words, we expect immoral acts of war from the Jewish state, but we are shocked that our heroes in Hezbollah would lower themselves to that level!

While it is not known when and how Hezbollah obtained these foreign-made cluster munitions, and while Hezbollah used far fewer cluster munitions than Israel did in the recent war, the new findings raise serious concerns about the proliferation of these weapons to non-state armed groups, as well as states.

So the LAT was just taking the lead from a hugely biased "human rights" organization, that took two months to realize that damage like this was not caused by a crude Qassam-like rocket:

But the Gold Star for media bias in this case goes to AFP, who put this photo out on their wire in response to the report:

Members of the Mine Action Group (MAG) search for cluster bombs in southern Lebanon, on October 9. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has said that Hezbollah fired cluster munitions into northern Israel during this summer's 34-day war with the Jewish state.(AFP/File/Marwan Naamani)

That's right...to illustrate Hezbollah's use of cluster bombs they had to find a file photo of people looking for Israeli explosives.

I guess it would just strain their resources too much to call up an Israeli stringer to shoot a photo of a damaged building in Kiryat Shmona.

Happy Jerusalem (Qods) Day! - part 3: Jerusalem in Islamic Art

After scouring the Internet, here is every picture of Jerusalem that I could find from Islamic sources before the 20th century:

And here are a very tiny number of the pictures of Jerusalem done in Jewish art:

Wall painting by Eliezer Zusman Katz in the synagogue of Unterlimberg, Germany, 1739 (extant)

Wall painting in the Nicolina Synagogue, Jasi, Romania. The building was destroyed a few days after the photograph was taken

This MIZRACH - SHIVITI is an early American papercut,made in the U.S.A. in 1861. The upper frame contains a gate, presumably that of the Temple in Jerusalem. It carries the inscriptions: "This is the gate to God", and above it, in two separate medallions, "I have set the Lord always before me." As a Mizrach, it would always be placed o the wall of the house facing Jerusalem.

The Second Temple in Jerusalem, wood-cut from the 19th century.

From the 1695 Amsterdam Haggadah, the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Ahmadinejad threatens the free world. Isn't that cute?

The problem with the prevalent Western liberal attitude is that it cannot accept the existence of a fundamentally irrational player on the world scene. If one believes that all problems can be solved through negotiations, as the EU, UN and American Left do, then one must also believe that the other side is always rational and has the roughly same value system that you do.

So the head-in-the-sand crowd will always insist that if only we keep talking like civilized humans, the other side will act reasonably - because that's what we would do, and we are all the same under the skin, let's sing Kumbaya together in four-part harmony.

Ahmadinejad's outrageous pronouncements have become so commonplace that the Western press seems to be treating him more like an eccentric Kaddafi than a Hitler. Let's look at what is happening, just today:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday called the U.N. Security Council and its decisions "illegitimate."

Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands gathered at a pro-Palestinian rally in the capital Tehran Friday that “Israel no longer has a reason to exist, and will soon disappear. The Zionist regime, thank God, has lost all reason to exist”.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Europe on Friday it was stirring up hatred in the Middle East by supporting Israel and said it “may get hurt” if anger in the region boils over.

“You should believe that this regime (Israel) cannot last and has no more benefit to you. What benefit have you got in supporting this regime, except the hatred of the nations?” he said in a speech broadcast on state radio.

“We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region. We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt,” he said.

"You imposed a group of terrorists ... on the region," he said, addressing the US and its allies. "It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow."

"Nations will take revenge," he told a crowd of thousands gathered at a pro-Palestinian rally in the capital Teheran.

Iran, nearing a confrontation with the West over its nuclear program, has developed a missile called "Zelzad 1." Its namesake is a Koranic verse that tells of a conflagration which precipitates Judgment Day. The missile is emblazoned with the slogan: "We will trample America under our feet. Death to America."

The fasting people taking part in the rallies are chanting such slogans as "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" to express their hatred of the world hegemonic powers.

By the way, the last sentence was repeated verbatim in no less than 11 different articles from the Iranian press.

So, we have a man who is openly pursuing nuclear weapons, openly threatening the Western world and openly laughing while the EU and UN continues to try to "negotiate" with him, buying him all the time he needs to turn Iran into a superpower.

He also knows that by repeating his ideas about Israel and America over and over again, he will get gullible "open-minded" Westerners to eventually think, "Say, let's investigate if what he says is true." It is not a huge leap from Ahmadinejad's words to those of Walt and Mearsheimer.

Ahmadinejad's threats cannily exploit the Left's fear of conflict. If supporting Israel will inevitably lead to war, and war is to be avoided at all costs, then maybe it is better not to support Israel. All the pseudo-intellectual anti-Zionist rationalizations follow from the primal fear of conflict. The Left's antipathy towards Israel is not from naked anti-semitism nearly as much as out of this fear.

It is another variant of the century-old threat of the mythical "Arab street" which worked so effectively with Britain and its White Paper as to result in the deaths of untold thousands or millions.

Oh, we will talk a good game, saying how unacceptable it is for Iran's president to speak like this. But we won't actually do anything, just as we didn't do anything about North Korea despite a decade of warning.

Short-term self-interest of the West is the greatest ally that Ahmadinejad has.

Partisanship makes smart people stupid

I just saw this posting at DovBear:

Last night, former AG John Asshcroft implied to the Daily Show's audience that their host Jon Stewart, a great American, would not go to heaven. Here's how it went down (paraphrased):

Stewart: Let's make a bet. If the Cardinals win tonight, I'll give you a TDS tee-shirt. If the Met's win, I go to heaven.

Asshcroft: Well, my father was a preacher and he used to say he was in sales, not management... I'll tell you what. If the Mets win, you can move to St. Louis and you'll think you've gone to heaven.

So now this ancient grounds for anti-Semtism, and the pogroms and acts of mass murder that followed, is being played for laughs? Asshcroft can concede that he thinks Jews lack the spiritual stuff needed to enter the eternal kingdom of the Lord and no one boos? Suppose Stewart was black and he asked for admission to the White-only restroom. Would the audience have then tittered so appreciativly?

I just saw the clip and DB quoted it pretty accurately.

But what on Earth made him think that Ashcroft made an anti-semitic comment? Because Jon Stewart is Jewish????

It is obvious what Ashcroft meant with his "sales, not management" comment - that he cannot guarantee anyone's entry into Heaven but he can try to get people to buy the concept. It follows easily from there that what he can guarantee is that a visit to St. Louis is tantamount to a visit to heaven. All done in a very joking way, while seated on Stewart's "Seat of Heat."

This all comes back to the stupidity of partisanship. I touched on this theme last week and it has really been bugging me. It is not by any means limited to the Left, it is equally idiotic on both sides, as people obsess over the tiniest details of the lives of the people on the other side that they hate with a passion, convinced beyond all reason that the other side is Evil Incarnate.

And when Mr. Evil Incarnate makes a statement, it symbolizes Everything Bad about His Ideology and Those who Think Like Him.

How often do we have to see the moronic argument that "The other side says it is moral/just/progressive. Here is a case where someone on that side did something immoral/unjust/Neanderthal. Ergo, the entire group is a bunch of hypocritical subhumans and I cannot understand why any sane person would want to be associated with them." ?

And these are not stupid people making these stupid arguments. They are smart people who are so blinded by their ideology and their irrational hate for the Other Side that they completely lose any sense of logic or proportionality.

To use this example: Bigotry exists on both the far Right and far Left. If people are really concerned about anti-semitism or racism, let them work to eradicate it from their own side, not throw stones about the hypocrisy of the other side. If they don't, it means that they really don't care about bigotry to begin with, but only about scoring political points.

And that is the true hypocrisy.

Unfortunate and regrettable events (Self-death count now at 120)

Al-Quds newspaper reports on the three PalArabs killed in the past two days, along with kidnappings, shootings and various other mayhem. (I had already mentioned one of them in a previous post.)

It describes the events as "unfortunate."

Anyway, as best as I can piece together from the news report and from headlines at PCHR that link to nonexistent articles, it seems that yesterday:

In one "regrettable" incident, a man named Nabahin was killed as he tried to drive his car into his garage in the Bureij camp.
Another "policeman" died as a result of injuries from internal fighting last Sunday.
One guy in the Jabaliah camp was abducted, shot a couple of times and released.
A Fatah "activist" shot a Hamas "activist" in the back while he was guarding a hospital in Beit Lahiya.
The Qatshah family shot and wounded another "policeman" near Rafah.
The same family then beat another "policeman" in a field nearby.
Gunmen in two Mercedes, no doubt outraged at their poverty-stricken status caused by the Zionists, shot another person in Khan Younis.
Those ubiquitous "unknown gunmen" shot a student at Najah University as he was returning from prayers.
At a technical school in Khan Younis, about ten uniformed "militants" of the General Intelligence Service shot randomly in the air and the students responded with rock-throwing.

So we are now at 119 known PalArabs violently killed since late June. And the chaos seems to be growing.

It's a good thing they have all those thousands of armed policemen - who knows how much worse it would be without them keeping law and order?

UPDATE: 120.

hospital medical sources announced Shahid Kamal aggression in Beit Lahia town in northern Gaza last night killed one of the elements of the force executive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Jamil Sakr Basyuni young (21 years old) shot his colleague in Beit Hanoun.

.With three citizens yesterday, including a child in two separate armed city of Khan Younis..Medical sources indicated that Basyuni arrived at the hospital a critical situation where the difference in life because of the seriousness of his health because of his several shots in the body.

Happy Qods day - part 2

In celebration of the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 declaration of this Friday as Qods (Jerusalem) Day, here is an article from 1910 when early Zionism was in full bloom about how ruthless and bloodthirsty the Jews were as they reclaimed their land.

Can you imagine how awful life must have been for the Arabs there? Their economy went from practically nothing to a strong agricultural one. Real estate values soared. Hospitals were built. Railroads, electricity, telephones all arrived in Palestine.

Many Arabs became rich from selling land, worthless to them, to those strange Jews who actually thought it was valuable. Land that was considered by Arabs to be unusable were turned into gardens by the Jews - who then turned around and employed the Arabs.

Arabs from Syria and Transjordan, who stayed away from Palestine for hundreds of years, suddenly decided to move there - because those awful imperialist colonialist Jews were creating an economy where there was none.

Now, today, which Arab population in the Middle East enjoy the best living standards and the most freedom?

The ones who stayed in Palestine to live together with those horrible, racist, Zionist Jews in 1948 during the "naqba"!

Happy Qods day! (updated)

This Friday is Qods Day, when Muslims pretend to care about Jerusalem. It was instituted by the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran's "Religious Weblogs Office" wants all blogs to commemorate this day, so who am I to disagree?

Let's talk about how important Jerusalem was to the Arabs in the nineteen years the Old City was under Arab rule, from 1948-1967:

Did Jordan, which annexed the West Bank and Jerusalem in 1950, move its capital to Jerusalem? Ummmm...no.
Jewish families who lived in the Old City's Jewish Quarter for centuries were kicked out.
Did the Arab Muslims who are supposed to be so committed to religious pluralism allow Jews to worship or even visit Jerusalem? Ummmm...no. (The 1949 Armistice Agreement specifically stipulated that Jews should be allowed to visit their holy places.)
During Jordanian rule, more Palestinian Arabs moved to the East Bank than any who immigrated westward and into East Jerusalem. The population of Muslims in Jerusalem did not increase all that much in those 19 years.
In 1951, the Jordanian king Abdullah I was assassinated - inside the Al Aqsa Mosque, by a Palestinian Arab who heard rumors that Jordan and Israel were considering a peace treaty.
Christians in Jerusalem were also persecuted during that time period: their schools were forced to close on Fridays rather than Sundays, they were not allowed to purchase land.
While the Dome of the Rock was accorded a measure of respect, the rest of Jerusalem was pretty much ignored throughout the Muslim world.
Jordanian radio broadcast Friday prayers from Amman, not Jerusalem.
No foreign Arab leader visited Jerusalem during those 19 years.
The PLO's founding document does not mention Jerusalem. (last three from Daniel Pipes, h/t Soccer Dad.)

It would be a safe bet that this is a model of how Jerusalem would be treated if it should ever come under Muslim rule again.

Thank God that will never happen. For centuries, Jews risked their lives to move to a Muslim-ruled Jerusalem that was thoroughly neglected by the Muslim world, and Christians made regular pilgrimages there as well. Jerusalem, under Muslim rule, was a filthy and disgusting ruin, not even a shell of how it looked before the Romans conquered it.

Three times a day for nearly two millennia Jews prayed for the restoration and rebuilding of Jerusalem. It was a beautiful city whose destruction was considered a tragedy beyond comprehension by all Jews.

For nearly two millennia others conquered Jerusalem but no one bothered to rebuild it. The only people to truly care about Jerusalem were the Jews. And the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 is considered a holiday for all Jews today.

So, I am happy to celebrate Qods Day this Friday, the last Friday of Ramadan, because when it comes to Jerusalem, the good guys won.

Observations on Palestinian Arabic media

As readers of this blog know, I've been spending some time over the past few days reading auto-translated PalArab media websites. Here are some general observations:

Unlike newspapers all over the world, including Arab newspapers, there are almost no local "human interest" stories. A great majority of "local" news is dedicated to Israeli actions.
Local crime, especially "clan clashes" and Fatah-Hamas violence, is only sporadically reported and definitely downplayed. While the 15 killed earlier this month did get some press the other violent acts that are a part of daily life are either considered normal or something meant to be minimized. Almost no individual acts of local terror will get covered in every newspaper the way that an Israeli arrest or incursion does - I have to look through many papers to find a single mention.
There is some obsession with local Israeli politics, pretty much a funhouse mirror version of Haaretz or Yediot. Small stories get large headlines and vice versa.
When it comes to paranoia, Jews don't come close to Arabs. There are many stories about Western attempts to obliterate Islam altogether, and lots of articles about imaginary plots by Jews to destroy the mosque on the Temple Mount.
As can be expected, the theme that Jews have no historic or religious connection to the land is prevalent. Articles will regularly say things like "historians have proven that there was no Temple in Jerusalem" or that Jews going to Joseph's Tomb to pray are "desecrating" it.
Normal journalistic standards that can be expected in Western media, as well as in most English-language Arab media - the pretense of objectivity - is in much shorter supply. I have no doubt that it is not as bad as in the past, now that many Arabs can read English and can compare for themselves, but the Arabic media is tilted away from the truth compared to their English-language counterparts.

A rare Hamas voice of introspection

From Reuters:

A senior figure in Hamas, the Islamist group that heads the Palestinian government, published an article on Tuesday condemning internal violence and questioning whether it had become a "Palestinian disease."

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas who also acts as the spokesman for the Hamas-led government, said he was disturbed by growing factionalism in the Palestinian territories, including recent deadly clashes between rival political movements.

"Has violence become a culture implanted in our bodies and our flesh?" he asked in the sharply worded article, published in the widely read Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam.

"We have surrendered to it until it has become the master and is obeyed everywhere -- in the house, the neighborhood, the family, the clan, the faction and the university."

It was the second time in recent months that Hamad, who is based in Gaza, had written an opinion piece in al-Ayyam critical of Palestinian in-fighting.

In August, he criticized Palestinian militant groups fighting
Israel, saying they were not doing the cause of Palestinian independence any good by launching attacks at moments when it appeared progress was being made.

In the article published on Tuesday, Hamad said the presence of armed men on almost every street, and their attendance at every rally, whether political or not, had created an atmosphere of guns and violence that damaged prospects for calm.
...

Hamad wrote that 175 Palestinians had been killed by "Palestinian gunfire" since the beginning of the year.

His original autotranslated article is here. It includes this startling (for Palestinian Arabs) section:

Who should be responsible? Do we all bear responsibility? Yes!!! Are we participants of this great sin? Yes!

To see a Palestinian Arab blame his own people for their problems, and not the Zionists, is close to amazing. (Other Arab newspapers are not as charitable towards Palestinian Arabs.)

As far as his estimate of 175 of his people killed by their own people this year, the number is certainly higher, although it is hard to know exactly how much higher. I counted 116 dead since late June, and PCHR lists an additional 61 between February 21st and Operation Summer Rains. We can safely assume at least 20 more killed from January 1st to February 20th, and we have seen that PCHR does not count some of the deaths that other press mentions, as well as those who die from earlier injuries. I would conservatively estimate between 220-250 violent PalArab deaths this year so far from gunfire, work accidents, random shootings at weddings and funerals, clan clashes, honor killings (both women and men!) and the like.

(H/T Soccer Dad via email.)

Three PalArabs shot at checkpoint! Alert the media!

Three Palestinian Arab civilians from the same family were shot at a checkpoint west of Gaza City.

Of course, no human rights organizations will protest this - because the checkpoint was set up by a Palestinian Arab family:

at approximately 21:00 on Monday, 16 October 2006, a member of the Baker family fired at a civilian car that did not obey orders to stop at a checkpoint erected by the family in ‘Abu Hassira Street in the west of Gaza City. Three persons traveling in the car were wounded:

1. Sa’di ‘Ali ‘Ajour, 60, seriously wounded by several live bullets to the chest and the abdomen;

2. Firial Mahmoud ‘Ajour, 57, wounded by several live bullets to the legs; and

3. Tariq Sa’di ‘Ajour, 35, wounded by shrapnel to the back.

No doubt, the family decided to set up an armed checkpoint because of the Zionist humiliation they are suffering. Or maybe they charge a toll because of the crippling economic situation started by the Zionist infidels. One way or another, it cannot possibly be the fault of any Palestinian Arabs, where the word "responsibility" is used exclusively to take credit for bombing Jews.

On the Clan Clash front, a 13-year old boy died from wounds suffered last week as two Gaza families do their best to imitate the Hatfields and McCoys. During the funeral, the mourners burned down a house and four shops belonging to the other family, and a melee resulted with five injuries, four of them bystanders.

PalArab self-death count now stands at 116.

UPDATE: 117.
Amar Taher, a Hamas terrorist, was killed by those pesky unknown masked gunmen in Nablus. Hamas will call a general strike and Abbas condemned the killing.

I only saw this mentioned in a single PalArab newspaper.