Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

A magical place where terrorism always pays

Hadi Saud had a problem.

Last year he was shot in the leg and he never got proper treatment. He was also unemployed and he was jealous of all those Palestinian Arabs who manage to get jobs doing nothing. Even though he was a long-standing member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, the pay was apparently not very good.

So he hatched a plan.

He kidnapped three American women aid workers who were in Nablus, called up the AP and said that he would release them in exchange for medical treatment and a job.

Nablus' district governor negotiated with Saud and they did what Arabs are famous for - they bargained.

In the end, Saud released the women. In exchange, he will get medical treatment and will not be prosecuted for the kidnapping.

The PA: where terrorists always win.

AP's misleading headline

It seems that the wire services send out their articles with a default, suggested headline thatmost newspapers will copy verbatim. So it is interesting to see dozens of headlines in Google News that say:

The article slowly clarifies exactly who this "Palestinian"was:

Israeli troops on Wednesday fatally shot a West Bank leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group who was involved in an attempted bombing near Tel Aviv, the army said.

Mahmoud Abu Obeid, 24, was traveling in a car in the center of Jenin when undercover Israeli troops shot and killed him, Palestinian witnesses said. An Israeli combat helicopter was seen in the area at the time, they said.

Abu Obeid had fired in the air with an M-16 rifle and then pointed it at troops when they shot at him, said a commander in the Jenin area, Col. Hertzi Halevy.

Abu Obeid was wanted for recruiting a Palestinian from the Jenin area who was caught by Israeli security in Tel Aviv on Tuesday trying to carry out a suicide bombing, the army said. Abu Obeid also had supplied the bomber with the explosives, the army said.

Abu Obeid oversaw the preparation of bombs for the militant group, and the car he was driving was full of explosives, Halevy said. Troops tracked down Abu Obeid due in part with information given to security forces during the interrogation of the bomber caught on Tuesday, Halevy said.

But people glancing at the paper or website will only see that Israel has killed yet another innocent Palestinian Arab for no reason.

Bahrain's hot new club

Bahrain was the site of yet another protest against Israel. But I got a kick out of the name of the organization that organized the protest:

"We are against any interference at one of the most holy places for Muslims and we strongly condemn what Israel is doing," said chairman of the Bahraini Society Against Normalisation of Relations with the Zionist Enemy, Mohammed Al Aradi, who led the protest.

Demonstrators condemned the demolition of some portions of Al Aqsa Mosque by the Israeli occupation forces and said Israel should be immediately stopped from digging tunnels around it. "This is a direct affront to Muslims," said Mr Al Aradi.

"This is damaging the foundations of the historic structure and the whole action smells of a Jewish conspiracy."

He said any damage to Al Aqsa Mosque would hurt the feelings of Muslims around the globe and called on the UN to intervene.

The BSANoRwtZE is definitely the "in" place to be in Bahrain.

This is not the first time Mr. Al Aradi has been in the news. Previously, his organization's name was slightly different:

Mohammed Al-Aradi, head of the Society for Resisting Normalization with the Zionist Enemy in Bahrain, expressed outrage at the government decision and said bilateral agreements could not override Arab League decision, according to a report by Arab News.

Obviously, the SfRNwtZE name does not have nearly the pizazz as BSANoRwtZE.

It appears that Mr. Al Aradi also has a government job in Bahrain, as a public prosecutor where he prosecutes fairly petty cases.

Sounds like a very hip dude.

How Israel treats Muslim archaeological finds

As I've mentioned before, the major issue that the Muslims have with any archaeological digs in Jerusalem is the possibility that Jewish items and buildings will be found, and hence the digs will end up "Judaizing" Jerusalem.

What they refuse to admit is that many of the digs have uncovered critical periods of Islamic history as well.

There was a recent report claiming that Israeli archaeologists had found an ancient Islamic prayer room three years ago and had covered it up. In response, the Israeli authorities pointed out that they had not determined what the find was yet, and if it was found to be an important Islamic find then they would preserve it. Of course, the Muslims accused Israel of being more nefarious:

Adnan Husseini, chairman of the Muslim council that oversees affairs at the holy site, expressed anger that Israel withheld news of the discovery for three years. "We didn't hear anything about this," he said. "They are always hiding things."

Let's see whether that argument has any merit.

When the Israeli archaeologists started digging at the southern part of the Temple Mount, they found the remains of an Omayyad palace as well as other finds that illuminated early Muslim life in Jerusalem. Rather than destroy this palace as the Muslims would have you think, they shared the information with the local Islamic authorities - who appreciated the gesture and allowed the Israelis to dig in other areas near the Temple Mount.

This story illuminates how Muslims have traditionally tried to politicize archaeology as much as possible:

(Meir) Ben-Dov (field director of southern Mount dig) tells the story of a visit to the excavation by Rafiq Dajani, the deputy director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities. Dajani remarked to Ben-Dov, “If we could leave politics to the politicians, I would heartily congratulate you on your work, revealing finds of which we knew very little up until now. The finds from the early Moslem period are thrilling, and frankly I’m surprised the Israeli scholars made them public.”

A foreign correspondent overheard Dajani’s remarks and included them in his story.

Two weeks later Dajani was summarily dismissed and later died in the prime of life.

And how did the hated Zionists sweep the discovery of this palace under the rug?

By placing it on a stamp, of course.

Contrast this with how the Waqf treats Jewish archaeological finds on the Temple Mount, and you can see yet another example of Muslim projection of their own attitudes and actions onto the Jews.

Hamas/Fatah truce update

Just because the Western media hasn't been reporting any fighting between Hamas and Fatah doesn't mean that they are playing happily together:

Ramallah - Ma'an - The Fatah movement warned on Tuesday that several "atrocities" had taken place in the Gaza Strip in order to gain "extra time". Since Sunday, there have been four violent assaults on various civilian targets in the Gaza Strip, the Fatah spokesperson, Jamal Nazzal, said, adding that the perpetrators have all been either the pro-Hamas Executive Force or still-unidentified armed men. Fatah has condemned all the attacks.

In one incident, 200 armed men, allegedly from the Executive Force, took control of a farm belonging to Ishaq Hassan. 20 of his family members were forced out of their homes and his 15-dunum farm, located in the Al-Mughraqa neighbourhood close to the evacuated Israeli settlement of Netsarim in the central Gaza Strip, was set ablaze.

In a separate incident, unidentified gunmen stole a car belonging to Palestine TV in Gaza City and brutally beat the car's occupants. The car was reportedly transporting Palestine TV employees in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in central Gaza City on Tuesday.

A day before, three unarmed Fatah members were also attacked by unknown gunmen in Gaza City.

Fatah also condemned the recent attack on "The Youth House for Culture and Arts" in the northern Gaza Strip where a children's library containing 7,000 books was set ablaze. The library was reportedly attacked because it was "contradictory to Palestinian traditions". In this regard, Nazzal added that the offices of dozens of publications and websites have been closed down in the Gaza Strip following frequent threats by the Executive Force against employees, particularly women.

This must be the PalArab definition of "peace."

Which is something to keep in mind when people talk about the "peace process."

Mecca accord lies

Maan News reports:

Ramallah - Ma'an - The head of the Fatah bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) has assured that all the demands of the Quartet are found in the Mecca deal.

The Quartet – comprising of the UN, EU, US and Russia – has stipulated that any new Palestinian government must renounce violence, accept the state of Israel's right to exist and adopt the previously signed peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The head of the Fatah bloc, Azzam Al-Ahmad, was speaking with PLC member Qais Abdul-Karim of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), in the West Bank city of Ramallah during a meeting with the press in the ministry of information. He added that great efforts had been taken to reach the Mecca deal and called on all parties to show more commitment to the agreement.

It seems that Fatah assumes, with good reason, that EUdiots and other liberals are so keen on pouring money back into the terrorist PA that they will accept any assurances that the Mecca agreement is the exact opposite of what it states.

As Petra Marquardt-Bigman points out concerning an article that Khaled Mahaal wrote in the Guardian:

Mashaal had all the reasons to present Palestinian demands and threats with the utmost confidence. He knows all too well that in Europe, quite a few people would rather join a demonstration shouting "We are all Hizbullah" than be accused of "blind support" for Israel. Moreover, a Europe that has to contend with Islamic extremists in its midst has become quite receptive to the "linkage" theory that blames Muslim radicalization on the unsolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, in turn, is often blamed on Israeli intransigence, made possible by US support.

Most of the Western media did not reprint the actual text of the Mecca agreement. There were two parts - the letter where Abbas calls on Haniyeh to "respect" (but not abide or adhere to) past PLO agreements, and then the actual agreement itself:

Based on the generous initiative announced by Saudi King Abdullah Ben Abdul Aziz and under the sponsorship of his majesty, Fatah and Hamas Movements held in the period February 6-8, 2007 in Holy Mecca the dialogues of Palestinian conciliation and agreement and these dialogues, thanks to God, ended with success and an agreement was reached on the following:

First: to stress on banning the shedding of the Palestinian blood and to take all measures and arrangements to prevent the shedding of the Palestinian blood and to stress on the importance of national unity as basis for national steadfastness and confronting the occupation and to achieve the legitimate national goals of the Palestinian people and adopt the language of dialogue as the sole basis for solving the political disagreements on the Palestinian arena.

Within this context, we offer gratitude to the brothers in Egypt and the Egyptian security delegation in Gaza who exerted tremendous efforts to calm the conditions in Gaza Strip in the past period.

Second: Final agreement to form a Palestinian national unity government according to a detailed agreement ratified by both sides and to start on an urgent basis to take the constitutional measures to form this government.

Third: to move ahead in measures to activate and reform the PLO and accelerate the work of the preparatory committee based on the Cairo and Damascus Understandings.

It has been agreed also on detailed steps between both sides on this issue.

Fourth: to stress on the principle of political partnership on the basis of the effective laws in the PNA and on the basis of political pluralism according to an agreement ratified between both parties.

We gladly announce this agreement to our Palestinian masses and to the Arab and Islamic nation and to all our friends in the world. We stress on our commitment to this agreement in text and spirit so that we can devote our time to achieve our national goals and get rid of the occupation and regain our rights and devote work to the main files, mainly Jerusalem, the refugees, the Aqsa Mosque, the prisoners and detainees and to confront the wall and settlements.

So the true agreement says nothing about even respecting past PA commitments and the only peaceful dialogue it calls for are between Hamas and Fatah.

Anyone who says that the Mecca accords address the Quartet demands, let alone fulfill them, is simply a liar. And a letter that Abbas sends Haniyeh is not an accord saying that Haniyeh even agrees with the murky "respect" clause - we would need a letter from Haniyeh to even imply that.

The fact that the world is so willing to accept an internal Palestinian Arab political power-sharing agreement as anything other than a complete capitulation by Abbas to Hamas is more testament to the power of wishful thinking over reality.

And as the rockets continue to rain down on Israel from the unified Palestinian Arabs without a single word of protest by any Palestinian Arab group, the idea that PalArabs have accepted the Quartet demands goes beyond absurd.

Ten years ago: Empire State Building PalArab terror attack

Ten years ago this week, a Palestinian Arab man shot seven people on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and killed one of them before killing himself.

At the time, his family and the US media all tried to paint this as the act of a deranged loner who was depressed over money problems and they did everything they could to distance this attack from terror. Initial reports said he was Egyptian, not a Palestinian Arab.

A few days later it was revealed that he was carrying a note blaming Israel, the US, France and England for Palestinian Arab troubles, but by then the news cycle had turned and the attack was almost forgotten:

NEW YORK -- The Palestinian teacher who went on a fatal shooting rampage atop the Empire State Building carried a note blaming the United States for using Israel as "an instrument" against his people.

The note found in Ali Hassan Abu Kamal's pocket contains "rambling, angry stuff," and appears to contradict claims by the man's family that the shooting had nothing to do with politics, a high-ranking police source said last night.

The letter also expressed anger at France and England for using Israel as "an instrument" against Palestinians, and indicated that Mr. Abu Kamal planned to vent his anger at the Empire State Building, the source said.

Seven tourists were shot Sunday, one fatally, on the 86th-floor observation deck of the famous landmark, long a symbol of romance and tourism. Mr. Abu Kamal then killed himself.

That Mr. Abu Kamal -- a 69-year-old Palestinian in the country only two months -- could buy a Beretta semiautomatic handgun "is totally insane," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said at a news conference.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir described Mr. Abu Kamal as "one deranged individual working on his own."

An anti-terrorist task force was still part of the investigation, Mr. Safir said, but so far it had found no evidence that Mr. Abu Kamal was aligned with any terrorist group.

In Mr. Abu Kamal's hometown of Gaza City, relatives said he had been distraught over losing his life savings of more than $300,000 and had no ties to Palestinian radical groups. Mr. Abu Kamal called home Sunday and said he could not send tuition money to one of his sons, who is studying civil engineering in Russia, a son-in-law said.

The letter in Mr. Abu Kamal's pocket discussed personal issues but did not mention the loss of his life savings, the police source said. How he lost the money is a mystery.

Now it is revealed that the family lied the whole time - under pressure of the Palestinian Authority:

(IsraelNN.com) The family of Ali Abu Kamal, who opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building a decade ago, now admits that his attack was politically motivated. The family had claimed for years that the attack, in which one person was killed and six were injured, was due to a mental breakdown which Kamal suffered after losing his life’s savings.

A letter found on Kamal’s body at the time pointed to a political motivation for the attack. However, sources in the Palestinian Authority worried that publicizing Kamal’s true motivation would erode Israeli and American trust in the Oslo Accords. So PA officials invented the story about Kamal’s supposed loss of savings and convinced his family to repeat it.

Kamal’s daughter, a UN worker in Gaza, said that at first “we didn’t know he was martyred for patriotic motivations.” Even after becoming convinced that Kamal was in fact a terrorist, the family covered up that fact and destroyed evidence out of fear. Family members say they are now admitting the truth because they are tired of lying.

If the PA would successfully pressure families to lie ten years ago, what percentage of news stories out of Gaza and the West Bank about supposed Israeli crimes are lies as well?

When the acting "government" of a people cannot be trusted to tell simple truths - if in fact they go out of their way to mislead and lie to the world - how can negotiators today trust a word that they say?

A true Arab terror attack occurred in a New York City skyscraper ten years ago, right between the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and because of a combination of the PA's lies, wishful thinking on the part of the New York police and politicians, and the desire to downplay anything that could derail the Oslo "peace" process, the media and the local governments all agreed that this was not a story that was worth pursuing.

And the PA was behind a massive cover-up that can only be learned about today.

Once again there are lessons to be learned from history. Yet it seems unlikely that history's truths will outweigh the wishful thinking agendas of the US, EU and Kadima.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin ties this case to other cases of "lone gunmen" who happen to be Muslims and whose terrorist motivations are consistently downplayed. (hat tip One Jerusalem)

Isn't unity wonderful?

Now that the PA has unified under the terror Hamas leadership, they of course want that wonderful Palestinian Arab unity umbrella to spread even wider.

They invited two other terror organizations, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP, to join the government as well.

Islamic Jihad said "no thanks" and PFLP is still considering it, but it shows even more clearly what "unity" means to the Palestinian leadership - it means supporting terror, pure and simple. The world's darling "moderate" Abbas did not utter a peep in protest against this move, proving beyond any doubt that the Palestinian Arab idea of a government is for one that officially calls for the death of millions of Jews in the pursuit of the destruction of Israel.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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."

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.