Sunday, March 25, 2007
Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, March 25, 2007Elder of ZiyonHunted women of the GazaAs horrible as this is, I question the reporter's credibility.
ON a windswept winter day last week, just before afternoon prayers, three gunshots rang out across the damp sand dunes of northern Gaza. Mohammed Yousef was just about to climb the minaret of the beach mosque to summon the faithful when he heard the distinctive crack of a Kalashnikov, a sharp, violent, intrusion that has become a soundtrack for the turbulent Gaza Strip, especially this month.
He hurried outside, looking first down a rubbish-strewn strip of beach that leads to the Mediterranean, then left towards a low-set concrete fence. Just inside a narrow entrance lay the crumpled body of a small woman, wearing a green Islamic gown and a full black veil. Her blood seeped into the puddles of sandy water around her head. Mohammed didn't bother with an ambulance. He need not have bothered with the police.
The dead woman was Dalal al-Behtete, a young woman from a struggling family in central Gaza. Seven other women have met the same violent and lonely fate across Gaza during a 10-day stretch this month. According to their assassins, their deaths gave them honour that their conduct in life had not. All the women had been accused of immoral behaviour. Some had been labelled prostitutes; others were branded for fraternising with men outside their immediate families.
So-called honour killings have been carried out here in the past, but even in this ramshackle, anarchistic and fractured society, women have never before been hunted down so blatantly.
Gaza, more so than anywhere else in the Palestinian territories, has been a feudal battleground of countless agendas, historical enmity, ideology and greed. Historically, clans and tribes have ruled the roost here, with factionalised militant ideologies running a close second. But the balance appears to have shifted during the past six months. Strict observance of Sunni Islam seems to have encouraged a fundamentalist trend that is making a play for influence, through the rigid enforcement of radical Islamic law espoused by the global jihad network that follows the bin Laden world view.
Sharia law appears to have drifted into Gaza, alarming Muslim and militant groups alike and sharply rattling the neighbour across the security barrier, Israel.
Change had begun in Gaza long before its women began to fall. Late last year, several internet cafes and music stores were bombed. In February, six pharmacies in the southern town of Rafah were also attacked because they persisted in selling Viagra to youths. In the past year, the name of a new group, first heard of after the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last June, persistently has been linked to the unrest.
It calls itself the Army of Islam and consists of self-styled morality warriors who claim links to al-Qa'ida. Hamas, the most powerful of the militant groups and a joint partner in the new unity government, steadfastly denies that al-Qa'ida has established an organised presence in Gaza. If it is true that al-Qa'ida has done so, it cripples Hamas's claims to be fighting for a Palestinian state alone and not being standard bearers of the global jihads.
Saha Rijab had never heard of the Army of Islam until she was dragged by her hair and tossed into a car by masked men with assault rifles hours before Dalal was murdered. From her hospital bed in central Gaza, she agrees to tell Inquirer of the ordeal that has left her legs riddled with bullets and nearly led her to become the eighth victim of Gazan women's most terrifying month.
"I was taking clothes to my female neighbour and I had to pass my cousin's house to get there," she says, wearing a yellow-knitted cardigan and a brown hijab. "My cousin was inside and saw me passing and he opened the door and came outside. I didn't look at him and he slammed the door against the wall."
Saha's cousin, Wael Rijab, is the head of the Hamas executive force in the northern Gaza Strip, the vanguard of the militant group's strike power and a key player in the blood-soaked factional in-fighting of the past three months. He has accused his cousin of immorality for the past five years, seemingly because of her preference for jeans, tops and sometimes flowing hair instead of the Islamic jilbab. Just as damaging was his accusation of treachery; she was an avowed supporter of the Fatah movement that Hamas deposed in elections 14 months ago. Both groups have since been entangled in a struggle for power in Palestinian society.
"I kept walking and gave my neighbour the jilbab, then came back home," Saha says, with her shocked 12-year-old son sitting beside her. "After that I took a taxi to the shop to buy fruit and some militants from the Hamas executive force were sitting in a Mitsubishi with darkened glass. Their windows were half open and they were looking at me.
"I was scared but I decided to just keep walking to my street. What else could I do?
"I was 20m away from my home, then their car moved and another one arrived; the cars started moving closer to me. They opened the door. They were masked and they were running after me, the driver and two others. I was a few metres away from a clothes shop, but they reached me and put their hands on me. They dragged me by the hair and clothes and pushed me inside the car. They blindfolded me and they tied my hands.
"When I took the blindfold off I was in a street full of taxis. They said: 'Where are you going?' And I said: 'I am going to my street, I swear to God.' They said: 'You know God and you dress like this?' I said: 'I know God better than you.' They said: 'Are you Fatah or Hamas?' I said: 'I am Fatah', and they replied: 'We spit on Fatah."'
Then they announced their allegiance as followers of the Army of Islam and told Saha she should dress liberally only for her husband.
She retorted: "This is politics and you are trying to avenge something. I have nothing to do with it. If this is just about the way I dress I will start wearing the jilbab.
"They said: 'We will beat you and force you to say, 'I had sex with my son.' Then they covered my eyes again. I could hear the sound of the sea and their mobiles were ringing all the time. We went to a market and they said: 'So, you promise you have not been in contact with any other men?"'
Terrified and haunted by the recent deaths of other women, Saha drew little comfort from the next words she heard: "OK, don't worry. We will take you home."
She was right to be wary. Minutes later, she tells Inquirer, the car stopped and she was thrown outside into the dirt. She wriggled furiously to free herself as the first bullet thudded into the bone just below her knee. Two more pierced her lower legs before the gunmen sped off.
At the Jabaliya police station, which notionally investigates crime in the north of the Gaza Strip, five officers usher us inside the dingy office of the lead junior officer. Two officers sit behind a desk, and others sit on old foam mattresses on single beds along the wall. There is no computer, let alone a typewriter, no files or cabinets, not even a notepad. The officers received about 30 per cent of their annual salary last year and have no operational budget of which to speak. But it isn't their dearth of resources that has left them hamstrung; it is the impossible task of taking on the perpetrators.
"What could we do even if we wanted to?" asks an officer, who refuses to be named. "We are ruled by the tribes and we will not fight the Hamas executive force."
In the case of Dalal, after escorting her body to the morgue and advising her distraught father of her death, the police will play no further role. Justice, if it is delivered, will be played out Gaza-style, in a cycle of vengeance.
But with the rising power of the so-called Army of Islam, even that seems unlikely. Dalal and three other women murdered during the 10-day stretch - Ibtisam Mohammed Abu Genas, Samira Tohami Debeki and Amany Khamis al-Hussary - were victims of killers who claimed the ideological backing of the fledgling group, even if the murders stemmed from bids for family honour.
The deaths pose a significant issue for the new unity government on many fronts, especially Hamas. No one in the uneasy Fatah-Hamas alliance wants to be seen to be linked to extremism, especially of the Salafi-Islamic kind.
Israel has long feared that Gaza will be turned into a platform for al-Qa'ida and the consortium of international jihadis that have emerged in its likeness. Creeping sharia law at the border is a worst-case scenario for the Jewish state; it fears it will lead to imported and intensified jihadism.
For Hamas, the links appear to be just as troubling. Saha says she recognised her tormentors as being members of the Hamas executive force.
Soon after Inquirer's visit to Dalal's grieving family, our translator receives a phone call from a cousin confessing to the murder. In a menacing tone, the man says he too is an executive force member and warns us not to publish the dead woman's story.
"These are the worst days ever here," Saha says, knowing well the risks she faces for speaking out.
"Hamas believes that women cannot be the ones who lead. So long as Hamas is in Gaza, the situation will keep developing."
Sunday, March 25, 2007Elder of Ziyon
Saturday, March 24, 2007Elder of Ziyon
Saturday, March 24, 2007Elder of ZiyonPalestinian medical sources stated that the corpses of two Palestinians were found on Friday evening.Fatah is blaming Hamas and vowing revenge.
The sources added that the corpses are a Palestinian teacher and a preventive security officer.
The teacher was found in the area of Salateen street in the north of the Gaza Strip, the officer was found in Al Mughraqa in the central Gaza Strip.
Sources from Ash Shifa hospital said that the teacher, 40 year old Mohammad Aishan from Sheikh Radwan, Gaza City, arrived at the hospital dead, his body riddled with bullets.
The body of the preventive security officer, Arafa Nofal, who was abducted by masked gunmen in Gaza on Friday, was found dead just hours after his abduction. Medical sources said that Nofal was found with more than 30 bullets in his body.
Friday, March 23, 2007Elder of ZiyonQ : You have representation in the Legislative Council?
A: We are working on that we have representation in the government of National Unity.
Q: Do you prefer Fatah or Hamas?
A: We are not a political movement nor interfere in the policy of the State again, we Jews want to live, submit to the Palestinian state because the Palestinians of the right does not matter if Hamas or Fatah.
Q : Even if the government composed of an Islamic regime?
A: We prefer the Islamic regime of the Zionist regime.
Q : To what extent is your relations with Mahmoud Abbas?
A: Abu Mazen is subject to the American administration and Zionist, so it is bound to affect people's admiration for the "remains" to remain abroad and maintain informal relations and not public because this could harm him in the international arena, and we contacted as well as with Hamas and we are working on that we have a representative in the government.
Q : What do you think members of the Knesset Arabs?
A: Itattakdon Arab Knesset members, such as "Haredim," that they could fight for their rights through their presence in the Knesset and this is not true and therefore they recognize the Zionist Perkins says every time the Zionists occupy the ground and you sit down with them and recognize them.
Q : What is your opinion in Islamic thought by the Islamic world?
A : We prefer the control of the the Islamic movement to the world at this moment...
Friday, March 23, 2007Elder of Ziyon
When asked about that the what you expect this resistance to comprise from the new government , Abu Obaida, the spokesman of the Qassam Brigades answered that We don’t' expect the government to take any security action against resistance factions as with the case in previous governments but the government will not be involved directly in the resistance that is for the resistance factions to conduct .It appears that the new "unity government" will be acting as the silent partners for the terrorists.
Our task is to resist the occupation and reply to its crimes through out the Gaza Strip and the West Bank We don't expect the government to help us directly but we don't expect the government also to coordinate with occupation forces against resistance activists.
Abu Obaida added that " I would expect that Palestinians as a whole are in support of resistance and trying to grow the wide between government and resistance factions is not something accurate."
Regarding any action from the Qassam Brigades against the occupation forces , the Brigades will not stop its military operations as the occupation forces did not stop their aggression against the Palestinian people.
Friday, March 23, 2007Elder of ZiyonOccupation released Qassam Marwan Barghouti after 39 months and oblige him to house arrestI don't see this reported anywhere else yet.
Thursday, March 22, 2007Elder of Ziyon
media bias
Thursday, March 22, 2007Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, March 22, 2007Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, March 22, 2007Elder of ZiyonThe killing provoked widespread condemnation from the international community. Kofi Annan, UN General secretary, strongly condemned the killing and also called on Israel to halt its policy of assassination. The UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution condemning the killing supported by votes from 31 countries including the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa with 2 votes against and 18 abstentions. The Arab League council also expressed condemnation, as did the African Union.Well, here's your justification:
Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, said: "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself - and it is fully entitled to do that - against the terrorism which affects it, within international law. But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing and we condemn it. It is unacceptable, it is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives."
The White House equivocally condemned the action. Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, said, "We are deeply troubled by this morning's incident," but he added, "Israel had the right to defend itself" and stressed that Yassin had been "personally involved in terrorism".
A State Department spokesman said: "This does not help efforts to resume progress towards peace."
Thursday, March 22, 2007Elder of ZiyonHow easy it is to hate them
By Nadav Shragai
For the State of Tel Aviv, Hebron is an Arab city where a few hundred Jews are living temporarily until a "final status agreement" is signed. For broad segments of the religious and ultra-Orthodox communities, Hebron is the City of the Patriarchs, where David established his kingdom even before the conquest of Jerusalem, a city in which Jewish settlement has existed since "then" and will continue to exist "forever."
Hebron is also a reflection of the line that divides Israeli society between secular Zionism, for which the land is first and foremost a national home and a country of refuge, and religious, faith-based Zionism, for which the land is the land of the Bible, the Promised Land and the land of our forefathers.
The Hebron of the Israeli media is also a land of black and white. How easy it is to hate the settlers, to portray them as absolute evil, as occupiers, as dispossessors and violent invaders. After hundreds of Palestinian suicide bombers, the Jewish community in Kiryat Arba grew its own first Jewish suicide terrorist: Baruch Goldstein. Then came "petty incidents" such as the "slut" curse, the comparison between leftist activists and neo-Nazis, or overturned stands in the market and even attacks on Arabs following Arab terrorist incidents. Add to that the fact that even externally the Jews of Hebron try hard not to look like the Israelis from Tel Aviv, and you have a recipe for total rejection of the Jewish settlement in Hebron by the enlightened Israeli.
But the reality is far more complex, and for the most part just the opposite. Here are several facts that have not received wide coverage: The city of Hebron is about 18 square kilometers. Fifteen square kilometers were handed over to the Palestinian Authority in the Hebron agreement. This area is closed to Jews, although the agreement guaranteed Jews freedom of movement in the city. In most of the remaining area, which is ostensibly "Jewish" (H2), a Jewish presence was also forbidden, but most of it is open to Arab movement and presence. The Jews are today limited to 0.6 square kilometers, or 3 percent of Hebron, where thousands of Arabs continue to live. The PA operates various institutions in this area, with the declared purpose of "suffocating" the Jewish settlement.
As a result of the "Oslo War," which erupted in September 2000, and a series of attacks in which dozens of Jews were killed and wounded, the defense establishment limited Arab vehicular traffic in the "Jewish district." The area in which Arab traffic is completely banned, the area that has stirred the left's outcry, is limited to several hundred meters only.
While many of the Arabs of Hebron enjoy the natural and basic right to purchase and own real estate, this right has been almost totally denied to the Jewish population. The houses, the stores and the land left behind by the Jews of Hebron, who were expelled from the city after the 1929 riot, were confiscated after the Jordanian conquest in 1948 and were never returned. The Israeli government has become reconciled to this injustice. The Jews are generally denied the natural right to purchase homes and to enjoy the right of purchase. Palestinian law decrees a death sentence for an Arab who sells his house to a Jew, and the State of Israel has reconciled itself to these racist laws as well. In the course of about 20 years, building permits in the tiny Jewish district have been given to only three houses, so that those suffering from urban suffocation are not the Arabs, who are building high rises in the west of the city, but the Jews.
An Arab who harasses a Jew in Hebron - incidents documented in a detailed report - is not only a story that will not be broadcast, it will usually not be dealt with either. On the other hand, a Jew who throws stones and curses back is always a good story. But those Jews in Hebron, all of them - always all of them - disgust many Israelis, and therefore the context is unimportant. It makes no difference who started. The Jews of Hebron will always get the blame.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007Elder of Ziyon
Wednesday, March 21, 2007Elder of ZiyonIN HIS DEC. 16 address to the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s (MPAC) sixth annual convention, held at the Long Beach Convention Center, journalist Robert Fisk cited two major changes since he first was assigned to the Middle East in 1972.
“Muslims are no longer afraid of the Israelis,” stated the Independent correspondent who is regarded as the foremost journalist writing on the Middle East. “In 1982, when the Israelis dropped flyers telling them to flee the invading Zionist army, they ran away. This summer, when the same message was dropped from the sky, they laughed and stayed.”
The second change, he said, is that while in the past different Mideast militias fought each other, now, he stressed, all the region’s armed forces are against the West.
Discussing the conference held earlier that week in Tehran, Fisk said it would have been far wiser for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad to acknowlege, rather than deny, the Holocaust, then say, “Yes, yes, six million Jews were foully murdered, and it’s true—but we didn’t do it.”
“Over and over again, the Arabs are blamed for the Holocaust,” Fisk said, alluding to right-wing Israelis who bring up the Jerusalem Grand Mufti’s meeting with Nazis prior to World War II.
A massive refugee flight from southern Lebanon was under way yesterday as tens of thousands of mainly Shia civilians took to the roads after almost a fortnight of relentless Israeli attacks...Refugees described gruelling journeys from the besieged city of Tyre and the towns and villages south of the Litani river, where some 300,000 people were ordered to evacuate by leaflets dropped late last week from Israeli aircraft.Sounds like a comedy club!
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
