Israel losing the Internet propaganda war

A very good article in Omedia shows the problems Israel has in getting its message across:

Yonatan Dahoach-Halevi, who is a former head of the IDF’s Department of Information and Public Affairs, is responsible for the IDF Spokesman’s website, is a political content consultant to the ministry of defense, and an associate researcher with the Jerusalem Center for Public and Political Affairs, sees the internet as a world of unlimited possibilities. Israel, explains Halevi, does not exploit it correctly, even in the most basic sense of publishing official data, using the internet as a creative tool through blogs, forums, etc. “Israel doesn’t publish information in a free and flowing way on the internet. There is no Israeli database that academic researchers can use to write articles, or for researching the subject of Israel. If an academic researcher wants to write a position paper he goes to the internet and only finds Palestinian information and no Israeli data. Any information published by Israelis is put there by the Betzelem organization and other human rights organizations. The information they publish isn’t always accurate, but given the lack of other resources, the academics will use that data. The UN also uses their information. This creates a situation where the falsehoods and misinformation put out by the Palestinians becomes reality, their perception of reality”.

Dahoach-Halevi’s opinion was supported by one of the conference participants, who reported that she had contacted the IDF Spokesman’s Unit on numerous occasions to request information and had received no reply. Betzelem on the other hand had answered her inquiry quickly and supplied the information efficiently. It is only natural that journalists or academics carrying out research will ultimately use that information.

No Pioneers, No Brakes

Lately Dahoach-Halevi has been working in Canada and knows the Canadian media up close. As someone who can see the Israeli conflict through foreigners eyes, it is important for him to put across points which seem clear to us but aren’t clear abroad. “The Israeli approach” he explains “namely, that it is enough if we just tell the truth, is wrong”. For example, he recounts, incidents like time when left wing activist Rachel Corey was run over by a bulldozer have not gone away. They are alive and kicking on the internet, where Israel’s opponents are sure not to let their side of the story fade away. Borrowing an image from the world of football, Dahoach-Halevi, says that Israel is playing on the internet without a proper defense.

Dahoach-Halevi warned that the Palestinians are using the internet to rewrite history and to create the past through their eyes. They fastidiously post historical documentation in scrupulous detail of their narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict thus putting Israel’s very existence in question. Eli HaCohen, the professional director of the Netvision Institute for Internet Research, refined the problem; “We should consider not only the fact that they are rewriting the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are also rewriting the history of the Jewish People. By this I mainly refer to the various websites denying the holocaust, which have recently sprung up all over the internet”.

Dahoach-Halevi doesn’t just bemoan the situation he also suggests ways to correct it: “If we want to succeed in the information war on the internet against the Palestinians, it would be very good if we copied how they do things. I mean, for example, the Israeli sites should appear in more languages. Exactly like the Hamas site which appears in a large number of languages, not like the foreign ministry site which is in very few languages”. Dahoach-Halevi also suggests ways of using blogs, video clips, and RSS updates. Above all, he thinks that the IDF Spokesman, Israeli Intelligence, and the foreign ministry should join forces and work together on the internet as information agencies in every sense to tell the Israeli side of the conflict.

It is worth reading the whole thing.

Part of the reason that this blog exists is because I try to put things in perspective in ways that Israel's government does not. It is indeed frustrating that there are no central databases for things that I end up doing - why isn't there an official count of Kassam rockets or of PalArab self-violence? Where can one look up any specific Israeli action in the territories and find out the reason and context? Beyond that we have the problem of Israel accepting responsibility for various PalArab deaths prematurely (like al-Dura).

As the article mentions, there are also plenty of things that Israelis take for granted that the world does not understand. While the Israeli response to the Mughrabi gate digs wasn't terrible, in reality the best responses were from the Israel Antiquities Authority and it took way too much time before anyone even thought about creating a map or pictures to show how absurd the Arab claims were.

I only have a couple of hundred readers, and it takes a lot of time to keep this blog going. It is frustrating to know that in many ways I, and other bloggers, are doing a better job than the government of Israel itself in bringing historical perspectives and objective context to the conflict.

It is true that the Israeli government is somewhat hamstrung by the fact that it has to be accurate in everything it says. But even that problem can be solved - a central database that keeps track of issues and events, even with incomplete information, would be tremendously helpful especially for journalists who are otherwise clueless.

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PalArabs winning 115-18 so far this year

Every week, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights puts out an exquisitely detailed report of what they consider human rights violations by Israel against Palestinian Arabs, with painstaking detail given to counting up cumulative statistics of injuries, deaths, arrests, and many other events given without context. This is one of many sources that feed the PalArab propaganda machine which in turn feeds wire service reports showing how terrible Israel is.

Of course, these same champions of "human rights" all but ignore Palestinian Arabs killing other Palestinian Arabs. They used to put out reports on a subset of these attacks in terms of "misuse of weapons and security chaos" but they do not attempt to keep track exhaustively of these numbers.

One statistic that you will never hear from them is that for the past six weeks, at least, the number of Palestinian Arabs killed by other PalArabs has exceeded the numbers killed by Israel every single week.

According to my statistics, 115 Palestinian Arabs have been killed so far this year by their neighbors, and PCHR counts 18 killed by Israel. This week, four Palestinian Arabs were killed or died from earlier wounds from attacks by other PalArabs (not counting any killed in Iraq, for example) and none at all were killed by Israel.

One would expect a true "human rights" organization would focus on the real violations of Palestinian Arab human rights rather than their weekly exercise in demonizing a nation that allows tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to enter it just for medical reasons.

But PCHR is clearly not interested in human rights.

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The media's love affair with Arab dictators

Diane Sawyer's obsequious interviews with the Syria's dictator and Iran's madman are hardly the first times that the Western media tried to turn terror-supporting Muslim leaders into heroes.

Read, if you can, this fawning 1955 cover story from Time magazine on Gamal Abdel Nasser. Here are some excerpts:

Gamal Abdel Nasser, a handsome, dedicated soldier of only 37, is the one man in Egypt who could give such an order and have it obeyed. Last week, further curbing some of his impatient lieutenants and the Moslem hotheads who would like to provoke a full-scale war with Israel, he endorsed United Nations efforts to create a buffer zone or stretch a barrier along the border dividing Israel and Egypt at the hypersensitive Gaza strip. There is an intimate connection between Nasser and The Strip. It was there that the fuse was lit to Egypt's 1952 revolution, and it was Gamal Nasser who struck the match.

Seven years ago, Egypt, a power in the Moslem world, had come sweeping across the Sinai Peninsula to throttle the infant Israel at its U.N. birth. But decades of corruption in palace and government paid off disastrously in lack of ammunition, inferior arms and cowardly officering. Captain Nasser's unit was surrounded at Faluja, a few miles from Gaza. He saw his commanding officer wringing his hands and crying: "The soldiers are dying! The soldiers are dying!"

Dug in under Israeli fire, Nasser, as he later wrote, reflected: "Here we are in these foxholes, surrounded, in danger, thrust treacherously into a battle we were not ready for our lives the playthings of greed, conspiracy and lust which have left us here weaponless under fire." Said a comrade, "Gamal, the front is not here, it is in Cairo." Nasser turned to the front, plotted a revolution, toppled a king and rose to be ruler of Egypt's 22,500,000, the most powerful, most energetic and potentially most promising leader among the long divided, long misled Moslems of the Middle East.
...
The shortcomings and setbacks have disappointed those—both inside and outside Egypt—who began to talk of a new Ataturk when the dashing young soldier sprang up from obscurity and took charge. Yet in Western capitals, Nasser is still looked upon as Egypt's best hope for decent government, a moderate among the hotheaded many who would fight Israel even at the cost of suicide, a man who perhaps some day can grow into the dominant Middle Eastern leader he aspires to be. Even in Israel, officials say privately that they would be sorry to see Nasser fall from power. "Without Nasser," says a British Foreign Office diplomat, "Egypt will be one unholy mess, another Syria."
...
Nasser does not look like a man with a chip on his shoulder. He carries 200 Ibs. with the lithe grace of a big, handsome All-America fullback. His wiry, close-cropped hair is greying at the temples and thinning just above the forehead, where there is a faint scar made by a police club. He has a big, slightly hooked nose and a close-trimmed black mustache, a row of regular, white teeth and a brilliant, easy smile. His eyes are piercing and brown, and he talks quietly, gently, and has never been known to raise his voice or lose his temper. Beneath his apparent softness, there is a streak of rough, tough ruthlessness. Last week in his Cairo office, he talked quietly, but he let the toughness come through.

"We have no hostile attitude towards America," he said. "I have always tried to build up friendly relations, only keeping in mind that these relations must not take us toward any sort of domination. But gradually, I have realized that there is always some obstacle between us, and that obstacle is Israel. America helps Israel with money and moral support, and they use the money to buy equipment to be used against us. But when we ask America to supply us with arms for defense, nothing is done."
...
While he expands his personal power, Nasser is coming closer to the day next January when he has promised to transform his military rule into representative government and give Egyptians a parliament. Not even Gamal Nasser himself seems certain that he will keep that promise. "Throughout my life," he confesses, "I have had faith in militarism." The army is the only sector of power he so far has found it possible to trust, and even there he fears that unless he can provide more equipment, morale will fall and officers will weaken to subversion from the Communist left or the passion-inflaming Moslem extremists.
...
If earnestness were enough—which it is not—Nasser and Egypt would be making fast progress toward that goal. The Premier himself lives with remarkable austerity in a five-room, sand-colored house inside the army compound in Cairo's Abbasiya military district. He allows himself almost none of the personal privileges now within his means. "I did not go there before," he once explained to an associate who wondered why the Premier refused to go inside the fashionable Semiramis Hotel. In the first days of power he liked to wear a military bush tunic, open at the neck, with a couple of rows of ribbons and the insignia of a lieutenant colonel, but now he prefers a plain grey suit.
...
It is easy to read a plot into some of Nasser's recent moves. Cairo's Voice of the Arabs radio pours a stream of anti-French propaganda into Morocco, and Nasser gives warm asylum to old Riff Rebel Abd el Krim, a key North African troublemaker, as well as to Jerusalem's Jew-hating Mufti. In the Gaza strip he allows, if he does not approve, the arming and training of the Al Fedayeen commandos, teams of Palestine Arab refugees which periodically cross the border to raid Israel.
...

"I don't think I am a dictator," says Premier Nasser quietly. "I don't have the character for it. I am sentimental, like all our people. But I am going on with the revolution—until I meet a better assassin."

Wow...Time's reporters really had a great knack for getting to know someone, didn't they?

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Arabs destroy Tu B'Shevat trees

Tu B'Shevat, on the Hebrew calendar, marks the New Year for trees. Although this has various Jewish legal ramifications, in modern Israel it means that this was the traditional time to plant new trees.

From Arutz Sheva:

An American-born leftist and liberal rabbi led Arabs and foreign activists in an effort to prevent thousands of school children in the B'nai Akiva movement from planting trees in honor of Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish New Year for Trees.

The children this past week began to hike up a hill at the industrial area of the southern Hevron Hills, between Be'er Sheva and Hevron, in order to plant more than 5,000 pine and cedar trees.

Liberal rabbi Arik Ascherman, a few other left wing activists and several Arabs, stood in their path.

The police, fearing a confrontation, told the children not to continue until authorities from the Civil Lands Administration arrived and showed Ascherman documents and permits proving that the land belongs to the regional council. Regional council official Akiva London said permits were obtained for the event.

As Ascherman left the area, children overheard him say, "There is day and there is night." Two nights later, vandals uprooted approximately half of the 5,000 cedar and pine trees that the children had planted. Footprints leading to nearby Arab shacks indicated the source of the damage.

"How do you explain to children that Arabs uprooted trees they planted with their own hands?" asked Akiva London, an official of the southern Hevron Hills.

...The regional council is carrying out re-planting of the trees that survived the vandalism and plans to build a fence and install a surveillance camera in the area to prevent future more uprootings.

This is another great opportunity to point out Elder's First Rule of Arab (and Muslim) Projection: Arabs will project their own crimes and worldviews on everyone else. In this case, Arabs are far more guilty of destroying Jewish-owned trees than Jews are of Arab-owned trees. Yet you will never see the mainstream media mention that fact.

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Saudi price to build hotel - in Tel Aviv

From YNet:

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is in negotiations to build a hotel on Tel Aviv's coastline.

Two architects have already started working on the project. The one is Bin Talal's private architect, who had worked with him on oriental hotels across the world, Basel al-Beiti. The other is former Tel Aviv Chief City Engineer, Yisrael Gudovich.

The planned project is a joint venture with the Abulafya family, which owns a structure on a 1-acre plot on Herbert Samuel Street.

According to the blueprints submitted to the Tel Aviv Municipality, an eight-story, 150-room hotel is planned to be built on the site.

Bin Talal is the nephew of the late Saudi King Faisal, and is believed to be worth $26.4 billion.

See also Time for some good news.

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Mughrabi Gate webcam up and running

It can be seen here at the Israel Antiquities Authority website. (The site works best with Internet Explorer.)

There are no further digs until Sunday morning. It looks like it is raining in Jerusalem at the moment.

Already some amazing things have been found, like a Byzantine mosaic.

Will the webcam convince any nutty Muslims who are just itching to riot that Israel has no intentions of harming the Al Aqsa mosque? Of course not, but at least Western liberals who still have half a brain will be able to see that Israel has nothing to hide.

UPDATE: AP confirms my suspicions:

However, angry Muslims said they were not satisfied with the cameras.

"This procedure is not enough," said Ismail Radwan, a spokesman for the militant Palestinian group Hamas. "The Zionist enemy is engaging in trickery and continuing its digging. We don't trust these procedures."

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Public domain English Talmud translations

Just messing around in Google Books, and I discovered:

Rodkinson's translation of Rosh Hashanah (Rabbi J. Leonard Levy, 1895)
Rodkinson's translation of Shabbath (Rodkinson and Isaac Wise, 1896)
Rodkinson's Shekalim and Rosh Hashanah (1901)
A Christian translation of Chagigah (Annesley William Streane, 1891)

Rodkinson usually only translated an abridged form of each mesechta, ignoring aggadata and what he considered irrelevant segues.

I didn't look too closely at the Streane Chagigah but just its existence is interesting. There were a number of Christian books about the Talmud in the late 19th century, all seemingly in the wake of a book about the Talmud written by Emanuel Deutsch in 1874. One interesting one was "The Criminal Code of the Jews: According to the Talmud Massecheth Synhedrin" by one Philip Berger Benny, who originally wrote it as a series of columns for a British newspaper!

But if you are really interested in such things, look at the English Hebraica blog.

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Another horrible example of Israeli apartheid

Since this is Israeli Apartheid Week, I would be remiss not to contribute a small example from the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News (English):

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Issa Al-Zananiri, 25, is an engineering graduate of Birzeit University near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Originally from the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Hanina, Al-Zananiri applied after completing his undergraduate degree to study a Masters in Engineering at the Israeli 'Technion' Institute of Technology in Haifa.

At Technion, Al-Zananiri found himself under the supervision of a professor who had lost his father in an armed operation against an Israeli bus in Egypt in 1990. Issa only discovered the truth about the supervisor, Yoram Shifton, while preparing for his interview for acceptance on Tecnhion's higher education program.

Issa told the Israeli newspaper 'Yedioth Ahranoth', "I arrived at the interview with many fears interacting inside me but I only found in my supervisor cooperation and help, far from any aggressive atmosphere."

When Zananiri arrived at the "Technion" institute, he did not know Hebrew and so he began studying it from home, making use of dictionaries, the internet and television.

As Zananiri's family home is on the West Bank side of the wall that runs through the suburb of Beit Hanina, Issa also greatly relied on the help of his supervisor to obtain the necessary permit to enter Israel for his Masters. Shifton stood by him until he graduated and then helped him obtain a job in the company "BGL1", which specializes in public transportation planning and is responsible for the planning of the proposed light railway in Tel Aviv in Israel.

Issa said, "They accepted me to work with them without hesitation because of the recommendation of my higher studies' supervising professor".

Issa describes himself as a Palestinian who, during his studies at Birzeit University, opposed the bombing operations and even the throwing of stones at Israeli cars. He said that he is grateful for being absorbed into the Israeli community. He currently lives in an apartment with his brother in Haifa and works in Tel Aviv in the planning team of the city's trains.

So the terrible apartheid state of Israel allows a Palestinian Arab who opposes terror to work on its public transportation system that has been attacked and bombed numerous times by other Palestinian Arabs.

A professor whose father was murdered by other Arabs is his main champion.

Yup - this sounds exactly like the Israel that is being described by the idiots behind "Israel Apartheid Week."

Bonus question: where is it safer for Zananiri to live, among the racist Jews in Haifa or among the patriotic PalArabs of Beit Hanina, especially after this interview where he stated that he was against "even" stone-throwing at Israeli cars?

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Guess who Iran blames for the Lebanon bus bombings?

The question is rhetorical.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini on Tuesday condemned bombings in Bikfaya in Lebonan.

"These explosions are suspicious activities which are in the service of the Zionist regime," he said in a statement.

Hosseini also said the bombings were carried out "to target Lebanese people and their solidarity and resistance against the plots of the Zionist regime".

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Aid to PA skyrockets: rich get richer, poor get poorer, Hamas gets more powerful

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics just released an interesting report:

The president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Luay Shabaneh, has revealed that the rich in the occupied Palestinian territories became richer and the poor became poorer over 2006, in spite of the international community aid which amounted to some US $816 million in 2006, compared with $ 352 million in 2005.

Speaking in a forum organized by the ministry of information in Nablus in the north of the occupied West Bank, Shabaneh added that the rich and the poor accounted for 10 percent each of the national income in 2005, but in 2006 the rich people accounted for 36 percent of the national income and the poor were only accounting for 3 percent.

I've seen other numbers showing how aid has increased to the PalArabs under the "boycott":

The European Union in 2006 gave 27 percent more aid to the Palestinians than in 2005, about €700 million, or $910 million, through a mechanism designed to aid individuals but formally bypass the Hamas-led government.

Even according to the PCBS, the amount of international aid skyrocketed in 2006 despite the "international boycott." This aid was meant specifically for the poorest of the PalArabs and supposedly bypassed the Hamas-run PA. Yet somehow, the rich Palestinian Arabs managed to get much richer and the poor seem to have received very little of this aid, all under the watchful eyes of the non-corrupt Hamas-led PA. (The report itself is not yet available on their webpage.)

The corruption in the PA is endemic, widespread and staggering.

Yet international aid organizations are ready to blame everyone but the Palestinian Arabs themselves. Oxfam just came out with a report showing that millions of euros are wasted in bank charges and therefore recommends giving money directly to the terrorists again - but completely ignores that even with this waste, Palestinian Arabs are getting far more aid than the previous year.

Interestingly, the EU aid mechanism and the US and Olmert's attempts to bypass Hamas and support Abbas has ended up supporting Hamas itself, by relieving the pressure on Hamas to provide basic services. As a Palestinian Arab wrote in the Yemen Observer last week:

The US, European countries, and Fatah leaders pledged that Hamas would not stay in power for more than three of four months due to Palestinian public pressure after discovering that Hamas will not be able to run a government isolated politically and financially. But observers see that Hamas will not make any concessions or leave governance without a pressure from the Palestinian street. With a Palestinian people taking salaries and grants from international community and Israel via Abbas, there is no need to change the Hamas Government.

It is ironic, but not surprising, that the methods meant to bolster the "moderate" PalArab terrorists have ended up strengthening the "extreme" PalArab terrorists.

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Time for some good news

The Tel Aviv stock exchange hit record highs today.

Investors are rarely philanthropic. They are out to make money, and as such, a stock market is usually a pretty good indicator of the thinking of the smartest financial minds in the world (there are exceptions, of course, when a herd mentality or fad takes over.)

It is remarkable that - even with the threats facing Israel every day - it is considered a very good place to invest.

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Who's afraid of the truth?

As I've mentioned before, the major problem that Arabs have with any digs in Jerusalem has nothing to do with mosques, holy places or weakening foundations. Their major concern is that they don't want anything Jewish to be found by archaeologists, because they want to keep their myths alive that Jerusalem has no Jewish history.

Another proof that the issue is "Judaizing" and not anything else comes from the Palestine Center for Human Rights press release concerning the digs, with the headline "As the International Community Remains Silent, Israeli Occupation Authorities Continue the Judaization of Occupied Arab Jerusalem."

Again applying Elder's First Rule of Arab Projection, let's look at the Palestinian National Commission for Education, Culture and Science webpage and specifically its page about Jerusalem.

Almost nothing is mentioned about any Jewish rule or influence in Jerusalem's history. No David, no Solomon, and the Second Temple is only mentioned as possibly existing for less than a century. Here's the only section (out of 30) that acknowledges any Jewish claims on the area, and interestingly it is the only section that does not include a picture:

23. Al-Buraq (The Western Wall, Wailing Wall)

One of the Islamic holy places, this wall is part of the western wall of the Haram al-Sharif. It is named after al-Buraq (the elevation) that carried the prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon him) on his journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. Moslems believe that it was tied up at this site.

The Jews called it the Wailing Wall. They claim it as part of the wall around their Temple that was built by Herod the Great in 18 BC and was destroyed by Titus in 70 AD. It is a holy place for them and they used to weep whenever they visited it, thence the name Wailing Wall.

The site is an endowment of the Algerian family Abu Midain. In the reign of Muhammad Ali Basha Jews used to obtain permits to visit the site in return for 300 pounds a year. During the British Mandate some Jews broke the “status quo” by bringing seats, lamps and curtains and claiming it as their property. The result was a revolt, called the al-Buraq revolt, of August 1929. More than 116 martyrs fell, 232 people were injured, 1000 were imprisoned and three were executed, namely Ata al-Zear, Muhammad Jamjaum and Fu’ad Hijazi.

The decision was taken in 1930 that the Moslems are the sole owners of the wall, but Jews were given the right to pray there under the conditions stipulated by the committee.

The simple fact is that Jews, by digging in Jerusalem, are not afraid of what will be found. Jerusalem archaeology is replete with finds from not only Jewish periods of history but also Byzantine, Roman, Islamic and Jebusite. This is not considered a threat, as the truth is not something to be feared.

But even a cursory look at this one entry in the Palestinian Arab "educational" site shows that the truth is the furthest thing from the minds of those who create the PalArab educational curriculum - it is nothing short of brainwashing. To mention the 1929 riots purely in terms of numbers of Arabs killed (by the British, not Jews) and to ignore the massacres against Jews in Hebron, Tzfat and Jerusalem is astonishing.

And this aversion to truth, and stubborn adherence to clear lies, is endemic even among the Arab intelligentsia. Look at this article that has been spread widely among Arab and far left website in the past day by "journalist" Nicola Nasser:

The eye of the present storm is Bab al-Magharibah, located in the southern section of al-Haram al-Sharif's western wall, which connects Al Aqsa Mosque compound with Jerusalem's southern neighborhoods; it was used by the residents of the Magharibah Quarter which was demolished by Israeli bulldozers in June 1967 to build the “Jewish Quarter” in its place. On 28 September, 2000, the comatose former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, used Bab al- Magharibah as his entry point to “visit” the Haram al-Sharif, igniting a firestorm of protest and sparking the Al Aqsa Intifada (uprising), which brought the peace process to a deadlock until now. In August of 1929, the same site sparked an uprising known in Palestinian political literature as the “Al-Buraq Revolt.”

Al-buraq is the Arab-Islamic name of Al Aqsa compound’s western wall, which the Jews called the “Wailing Wall” before changing it to the “Western Wall (of the Temple Mount, a widely-spread knowledge that has yet to be vindicated by historical fact or archeological findings) after the creation of Israel in 1948. The Israeli Occupying power after its overwhelming victory in 1967 confiscated by force the keys to Bab al-Magharibah from the Islamic Waqf to make them ever since Israel’s “Achilles’ heel” or “Joha's nail” to claim its imposed “partnership” on the Haram al-Sharif, later using that self-proclaimed “partnership” at the Camp David negotiations in 2000 to demand joint sovereignty over the mosque area.

How many lies can you find in this article? But these lies are the currency of discourse among Arabs, and their greatest fear is the existence of hundreds of Jewish buildings, ritual baths, coins, pottery shards, Hebrew inscriptions and other evidence of how Jerusalem has been the center of the Jewish universe since King David.

Finding this evidence - uncovering the truth - is the greatest fear of the Arabs.

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It's time again to play: Who's Telling the Truth?

Palestinian Arab news:

Gaza – Ma'an - Palestinian security sources said that 20 year old, Mohammad Shakir Sa'eedi, a member of the Al Aqsa Brigades, the main military wing of Fatah, was killed by Israeli forces, east of Gaza City on Tuesday morning.

Medical sources said that an ambulance that was transporting two injured Palestinians, including Sa'eedi, was targeted by the Israeli forces, Sa'eedi died and the other sustained serious wounds.

Eyewitnesses said that Sa'eedi was injured along with another man in an armed clash with the Israeli forces, near the border fence east of the Gaza Strip, medical sources confirmed the injury of two Palestinians on Tuesday morning, and told Ma'an that the Israeli forces shot at the ambulance while transporting the two men at 8 am.

Israeli news:

A Palestinian man was killed during a gun battle between an armed cell belonging to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Fatah, and IDF forces near the Karni crossing in northern Gaza.

The cell was carrying an explosive device, which detonated during the exchange of fire, killing one of the gunmen.

The Karni goods crossing has been a frequent target of attacks in the past. (Hanan Greenberg and Ali Waked).

Which one passes the smell test?

Wafa and IMEMC Palestinian Arab sources don't mention a thing about them being in an ambulance.

UPDATE: YNet adds much more detail now:

A Palestinian was killed Tuesday morning in exchanges of fire which erupted near the Karni crossing between Israel Defense Forces soldiers and gunmen of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military wing.

During the exchanges of fire, an explosive device belonging to the gunmen exploded, killing one of them. Kalashnikov rifles were found in the area.

Shortly before 9 a.m., IDF soldiers spotted two gunmen attempting to plant an explosive device on the border fence near the Karni crossing. Soldiers from the Givati Brigade arrived at the area and exchanges of fire erupted between the troops and the gunmen.

During the exchanges of fire, the gunmen's explosive device exploded, killing one of them. The soldiers searched for the other gunman.

IDF officials estimated that the two planned to carry out a terror attack, as rifles and weapons were found in the area.

Palestinian sources reported that the man killed in the incident was Muhammad Saidi, 20, a member of the al-Aqsa Brigades.

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Egyptian MP would rather see Al-Aqsa destroyed than Israeli dig

From Reuters:

'That cursed Israel is trying to destroy al-Aqsa mosque,' Mohamed el-Katatny of President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) told a heated parliament session held to discuss the Israeli digging.

'Nothing will work with Israel except for a nuclear bomb that wipes it out of existence,' he said.

Is there any clearer indicator of Arab intentions towards Israel?

Is there any clearer indicator of how little importance the "Noble Sanctuary" has in Arab thought, to say that it is preferable for it to be blown to bits than to have Jews have any control over it?

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PalArab self-death count update

Two Arab alleged "collaborators" were murdered today near Ramallah - including a man who murdered his own brother.

Our counts of Palestinian Arabs violently murdered by other PalArabs has now risen to 318 killed since Operation Summer Rains and 113 killed just this year.

UPDATE: A corpse was found in a Gaza cemetery, shot dead. 319 and 114.

UPDATE 2: The brother of the general whose house was torched by Hamas in January has died from his wounds in that attack. 320 and 115.

UPDATE 3: A man near Jericho tried to kill his pregnant wife in an apparent honor killing and stabbed his 14-month old daughter to death. 321 and 116.

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