Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

This week's best terror arrest

Israel today arrested a longtime wanted terror leader here in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

According to Israeli security officials and Palestinian sources in Ramallah speaking to WND, the terrorist was arrested while having car sex just a few hundred feet from late PLO leader Yasser Arafat's gravesite.

Khaled Shawish, an officer in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Force 17 presidential guards, was captured by undercover Israeli police forces following scores of shooting attacks he is suspected of carrying out. Shawish, who doubles as the Ramallah chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, previously boasted of involvement in a West Bank shooting attack in December 2000 that killed Israeli ultranationalist leader Benjamin Kahane and Kahane's wife, Talya.

The Brigades is the declared "military wing" of Abbas' Fatah party.

After the Kahane murder, Shawish was extended refuge by Arafat to live in the late PLO leader's Ramallah compound, widely known as the Muqata. Arafat is buried at the entrance to the Muqata.

Shawish continued the past seven years to live in the Muqata, from which, according to Israeli security officials, he directed the Brigades to carry out scores of shootings against Israelis driving on West Bank roads.

Several years ago Shawish sustained an injury during a gun battle with the Israel Defense Forces and has since been confined to a wheelchair, although he is still able to drive.

According to Israeli security officials and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades sources in Ramallah, Shawish was arrested after the Israeli police stormed his jeep, which was parked in a lot outside the Muqata, about 200 feet from Arafat's grave. The sources said at the time of his arrest, Shawish was having intercourse in the back seat of his jeep with a Palestinian woman, whose identity is being withheld by WND. The woman was not his wife.

The Brigades, founded by Arafat, largely considers the late PLO leader's resting place to be a sacred site.

I wonder if he still rates the 72 virgins when his time arrives? I hope he finds out soon.

Another hypocritical "human rights" statement

The "Palestinian Center for Human Rights" got a bit upset when their office in the Jabalya camp was damaged on Saturday:

At approximately 23:00 on Saturday, 26 May 2007, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a security room belonging to the (Hamas - EoZ) Executive Force of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior near Timraz fuel station in the center of the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. The missile hit the room from the south and penetrated its roof. It then hit the ground causing heavy damages to PCHR’s branch office in Jabalya, nearly 40 meters away, and to dozens of houses and shops. Additionally, 15 Palestinian civilians were wounded by shrapnel. This attack apparently aimed at causing maximum damage to civilian property.

The hypocritical PCHR admits that the IDF shot its Hamas terror target exactly and then turns around to claim that Israel intended to cause maximum damage to civilians.

Beyond that, PCHR does not say a single word about the fact that Hamas operates out of civilian areas, endangering civilians in a cynical ploy to avoid getting hit itself.

Once again, "human rights" is not what PCHR is about - demonizing Israel is.

The civil war isn't over

While there have been few recent deaths, just today it is reported at PalToday that a tunnel was discovered leading to government buildings in Gaza, and that a PalArab judge had been shot multiple times.

A Ma'an poll in Arabic shows that two thirds of its readers say that Hamas' firing rockets at Sderot helped prevent fighting between Hamas and Fatah. Killing Jews is a time-honored formula for Arab peace, at least in the short term.

UPDATE: A "mysterious explosion" in the Nuseirat camp, two killed. PalToday says it appears to have been internal, not from an airstrike. Our self-death count rises to 273.

UPDATE 2: 3 dead from the explosion. 274.

A Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs - part 2

Although Jewish immigration to Palestine predates Zionism by centuries, the first major waves occurred in the late 1800s. Accurate demographic information about the Arab population of Palestine in the same time period is impossible to find, but it is apparent that the Arab population increased in concert with the Jewish population. An Ottoman population report for the Jerusalem district, which may not be accurate but is still instructive, shows the total population of the Jerusalem district (2/3 of Palestine) to increase dramatically between 1885 and 1910:

Year:	1885	1890	1900	1910
Population in Thousands:	233.2	336.1	341.6	382.1

While many claim "natural increase" to explain the Arab population growth, I have yet to see anyone explain why such natural growth should have only started in that time period. A regression analysis of the numbers above would indicate an absurdly tiny population in Palestine in the 18th century but by all indications it remained fairly steady at least since Christian pilgrims started writing about their travels there.

The most obvious explanation for the increase in Palestine's population is that many Arabs moved there. Jewish immigration brought in new capital, Jewish effort increased the amount of agriculture and industry, and Arabs naturally migrated to where they could honorably take care of their families. The entire Middle East was under the administration of the Ottoman Empire and there were no borders to stop Arab migration.

Arabs have, to this day, been naturally itinerant. Recent studies show that 70% of the residents of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are immigrants and that "the world’s highest share of migrant population is to be found in the Middle East." The incomplete data we have coupled with the Arab history of migration and the Arab male's desire to support his family, together with the undeniable increase in the standard of living as the economy improved, all indicate a concurrent explosion of two immigrant populations in Palestine, Jews and Arabs, under the late days of the Ottoman Empire.

Interactions between the two groups seem to have been cordial although not as direct as one might think. Jews tended to employ Jews in the early decades of the Zionist movement and the Arab economic boom seems to have been more indirect from the infusion of new capital in the area rather than from direct employment.

It would be a mistake to confuse cordiality with respect, though - both the Arabs that moved to the area and the native Palestinian Arabs had a visceral hate for Jews as a people. A Christian travelogue published in 1874 noted the "Men in Palestine call their fellows 'Jew,' as the very lowest of all possible words of abuse." when explaining an insult of "Dogs, brutes, pigs, Jews!" So while practicalities and honor allowed Arabs to move to the area, and the Arab hospitality allowed them to interact relatively pleasantly, their innate hatred of Jews as a people far precedes Zionism.

(Part 1 here. It is going more slowly than I would like but these things take time....)

Israelis risking their lives to save Palestinian Arab children

The horrors and depravity of the Zionist apes and pigs never cease:

A Magen David Adom ambulance transferred an eight-day-old Palestinian baby from Gaza to the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer Sunday evening.

This humanitarian act took place during one of the more difficult days in terms of Qassam launchings, during which a 36-year-old Oshri Oz was killed in Sderot

The baby suffers from a congenital heart defect and without proper treatment will not survive long. He was transferred to the Erez crossing, where an MDA ambulance was waiting to transfer him to hospital ventilated and in an incubator.

"We transfer patients from the Gaza Strip under fire on a daily basis," said Moshe Vaknin, deputy manager of Lachish region of MDA. "Last week, our medics continued to treat a patient while shells were fired at the terminal at Erez. During the Shavuot holiday we evacuated another baby in an incubator, endangering our staff."

The baby is now hospitalized at the intensive care department at the Safra Children's Hospital at the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.

Dr Dudi Mishali, head of the Department of Pediatric & Congenital Cardiothoracic Surgery at the hospital, said: "The baby has a complete occlusion of his aorta. This is a severe defect, and if the child is not operated on as soon as possible he could die within a day.

'He will probably be operated on tomorrow (Monday) and the prognosis is good. He is currently on medication that is keeping him alive," he added.

Dr Mishali said that an average of three Palestinian babies with heart defects arrive at his department every week: "We have daily communications by phone and fax with doctors in Gaza. There is no heart surgeon in the Strip, so they transfer all of these children, and there are many, to be operated on here."

"Our treatment has not changed over the last few days. This cooperation has survived difficult times of terrorism and bombings," Mishali said and stressed that politics always stay outside the operating theater.

How to stop Qassams

YNet notes:

“The Qassam attacks from Gaza are one of the means we are using to resist the occupation by the Jewish state,” said Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau.

Which "occupation" is Hamas referring to? When you look at the Hamas-oriented Arabic press (and even the mainstream Palestinian Arabic press) they refer to Sderot as a "settlement" and the victims in Sderot as "settlers." Even though the Western media will consistently assume they are referring to the West Bank, it is clear that they are referring to the entire state of Israel.

Since this is the game they are playing, it is way past time for Israel to play the same game. Although the Israeli strikes at Qassam cells and Hamas leaders do have an effect, there is a relatively easy way for Israel to scare the terrorists to stop the Qassams, in a language they understand far better than airstrikes.

For each Qassam rocket sent to Israel, the IDF should re-occupy at least a symbolic amount of Gaza. I would like to see a square kilometer but for our purposes, a dunam would do. The Gaza fence would be moved the equivalent amount and Israeli tanks would roll in. Even better, a mobile home or trailer for each rocket would be appropriate.

Israel should announce that this new occupation is irreversible and necessary to build a buffer zone. And each dunam should be reclaimed within a day of the rockets landing.

A Qassam resulting in property damage, an injury or fatality would result in larger areas being confiscated.

The most important part is for Israel to be firm about these confiscations being permanent and not subject to negotiation.

Anyone who honestly observes how the Palestinian Arabs have acted over the decades knows that the only thing they care about is Jews controlling land they consider Arab. Everything else is noise. The holy formula of "land for peace" has a second meaning that Israel needs to make clear: when there is no peace, Israel will take more land.

The first village built on reclaimed Gaza will be named "Kfar Qassam." The rest will be named after victims of the attacks.

This is far more humane and far more effective than any amount of military retaliation.

Muslims lying about how many there are in the US

A very nice article from David Harris that shows how consistently the media is willing to parrot Muslim claims of 6-7 million Muslims in America when in fact the number is much, much lower - closer to 2 million according to a recent respected study.

Another example of how Palestinian Arabs think

This editorial was printed in "Palestine Today" (Arabic) in reaction to Mahmoud Abbas calling Qassam fire ridiculous and counterproductive. It shows the depravity and mindset of these terrorist supporters. And this is not a Hamas newspaper (autotranslated):

Mahmoud Abbas resumed use of language that serve the Zionist entity, which does not serve the interest of our forces and, when stopping to describe Palestinian Rocket again as ridiculous, in an implicit reference to the Palestinian resistance, in an attempt to minimize the amount and value in an affront to the feelings of the Palestinians who see valuable resistance means defending the dignity and themselves.

Mr. Abbas's position is very resistance, which sees a futile, and had previously described one of the martyrdom operations carried out by the Islamic Jihad, stating that it (the menial), and this naturally to the media, which documented the video, as documented in sound and picture vocabulary yesterday.

Interviews with Olmert, what can be classified, and Embrace Embrace again, let alone conduct a long and tortuous negotiations, which is still in Eugena maze behind the other, all these matters are not considered absurd from the standpoint of Mahmoud Abbas, but Palestinians requested a abandon their resistance, and proven, causing panic in the hearts of Zionists and at all levels.

The position of Abbas came here in favor of the Zionist entity, because he did not recall the size of the suffering of the Palestinian people, and would like to see assassinations and physical liquidation daily, and all drive the cease-fire, and throwing down their arms and surrender Palestinians resisting the Zionist entity.

Betting on the settlement reported what the Palestinian people, and to Embrace Olmert km of prisoners liberated from the constraints, but what is the position of Abbas began defense of the Zionist position, and came at a time when the Zionist massacres are continuing, and interaction within the military institution especially in front of the continued Zionist missiles fall, that made a ghost town of Sderot.

Once again the position of Mahmoud Abbas in favor of the Zionist entity, does not take into account the other hand, the magnitude of the tragedy, which requires the logic of the need to retaliate and to deter the enemy.

Missiles are not ridiculous, but negotiations are useless, because it limits the minimum finding umbrella of settlement expansion, while Rocket, made the area around the Gaza unsafe areas, where no future for settlement.

Rockets opportunity and the means necessary to deter use to protect our people in the West, but the arms of the Zionists came only disasters.

The amount of fantasy that ordinary Palestinian Arabs can maintain simultaneously is staggering.

They honestly think that Qassams are deterring Israel from hurting them more.
They look at these rockets as a huge ego boost and they hang their very dignity on their ability to force Jews from their homes.
They say explicitly that terror is better than peace.
They don't care about their own people's welfare as long as they can hurt the "Zionist entity."

How anyone can think that it is possible to negotiate with people who have no grasp of reality to begin with?

A Palestinian man runs with an injured boy after an Israeli missile strike on a Hamas base after they gathered at the scene of an earlier airstrike in Nusseirat, central Gaza Strip, Friday May 25, 2007. An Israeli airstrike hit a Hamas training center south of Gaza City on Friday, destroying the compound and lightly injuring at least three, witnesses said. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

A Palestinian evacuates a wounded boy after an Israeli air strike at Hamas Executive Force position in the central Gaza strip May 25, 2007. Israeli aircraft fired missiles into the central Gaza Strip on Friday, hitting a position used by the ruling Hamas Islamist movement, residents said. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA)

A Palestinian man runs with an injured boy after an Israeli missile strike on a Hamas base after they gathered at the scene of an earlier airstrike on area in Nusseirat, central Gaza Strip, Friday , May 25, 2007. An Israeli airstrike hit a Hamas training center south of Gaza City on Friday, destroying the compound and lightly injuring at least three, witnesses said. (AP Photo/Majed Hamdan)

Nusseirat Refugee Camp, -: A Palestinian man carries a wounded boy as he flees following an Israeli air strike on Hamas's Executive Force building in Nusseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza strip, 25 May 2007. Warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip for a ninth day today as Palestinians continued to fire rockets into Israel despite a call from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas for a truce. AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMS (Photo credit should read MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images)

Abandoning Gaza gets retroactively dumber every day

Besides the facts that since Israel abandoned Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian Arabs have killed each other; Israelis who lived in Gaza are still living in trailers and have been all but abandoned by their government; the Gaza economy has gone to hell; the greenhouses Israel left behind were destroyed; the only growing industries are tunnel digging and Qassam building; PalArabs that can afford to are emigrating in huge numbers; PalArabs living in Gaza are now ruled by terrorists who are proud of it as opposed to the terrorists who were slightly embarrassed by it beforehand - forgetting all of that:

When Israel left Gaza it left a trillion cubic feet of natural gas for Hamas to screw up:

The militant Hamas movement has launched a stinging attack on BG Group and vowed to block a potential £2 billion deal being brokered by the company to supply Palestinian gas to Israel.
The Islamist group told The Times that any agreement would be equivalent to a modern-day “Balfour Declaration” – the British Government statement that formally approved the creation of an Israeli homeland in 1917.
Ziad Thatha, the Hamas economic minister in the Palestinian Government, said: “BG Group is an embarrassment to the Palestinian people.
“When a company sells Palestinian gas to the Zionist occupation, it is similar to acts of theft the Israelis are practising against our land every day.”

The comments threaten to overshadow key negotiations BG Group hoped would lead to the development of the Gaza Marine gas field it discovered seven years ago. Talks over a 15-year contract are due to begin next week and the Israeli Foreign Ministry said it was keen to conclude a deal “as soon as possible”.
The Gaza Marine field is Palestine’s only sovereign natural resource and its development could generate £500 million for the Palestinian economy in royalties from BG Group. The gas would meet 10 per cent of Israel’s annual energy requirements. BG Group said that its priority was thrashing out a deal acceptable to the Israeli and Palestinian authorities. “We need a bilateral agreement for this project to get across the line,” a spokesman said.
However, Hamas controls a majority of the seats in the Palestinian Government. The more moderate Fatah Party reiterated yesterday that it wanted guarantees over how cash payments would be made before signing off any deal.
Mohammad Mustafa, the economic adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, said: “We hope that we will reach an understanding and remaining obstacles will be overcome.”

To Hamas, there is no distinction between Israeli buying things and Israel stealing things. Which explains a lot.

Two day round-up

During the two days of Shavuot (in the Diaspora):

Two men tied up two more men and set a cafeteria on fire in Gaza;
A 57-year old was killed and his son injured in Gaza when more anonymous gunmen shot their car;
Three Fatah men were injured from gunfire in Gaza;
A Hamas fighter injured during the Fatah/Hamas fighting died and hundreds attended his funeral.
A Fatah Fatwa against Hamas, saying that Hamas acts too Jewish.

So, by PalArab standards, it was a pretty quiet two days.

The self-death count for the year rises to 268.

The 23-week winning streak that Palestinian Arabs had in outkilling the IDF when their own people were victims was finally ended, with Israel winning, 32-20. To put this in context, during the same week some 77 Palestinian Arabs and others were killed in Lebanon by other Arabs.

Also, another difference between Ma'an News in English and Arabic: besides referring to Palestinian Arabs killed by Israel as "martyrs," the Arabic service also refers to Israeli towns being bombarded by Qassams in the Negev that are within the Green Line as "settlements." This is by far the best journalism that Palestinian Arabs are exposed to, and it is filled with lies.
(Background can be found here. )

UPDATE:

citizen killed Samih Hussein Massoud Shawahneh 45 years killed and five others were injured after a family quarrel of families in the village of Ras Tireh south of Qalqilya.

269.

UPDATE 2: 1 killed, 15 injured in Fatah/Hamas clashes. 270.
UPDATE 3: Man in Gaza found tortured to death. 271.

"Cease fire" update

During a funeral for a Hamas terror leader on Monday there was some cross-factional cease-fire shooting that didn't get reported anywhere. Today, one of those shot, a fifty year old man who was also a member of Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades, died from his wounds. (IMEMC seems to indicate that the shooting was last Monday, not yesterday.)

Yesterday there was also a cease-fire shooting of two Hamas students in Khan Younis and one died last night, and their "university" library building was set on fire.

Our PalArab self-death count climbs to 266 for 2007.

Meanwhile, on the other front...

The Western media has reluctantly started mentioning Qassam attacks on the Western Negev and Sderot, usually in articles that are headlined about how Israel is bombing poor overcrowded starving Gazans. But you will never see articles like these mentioned:

An explosive device has been found by soldiers on Tuesday in a Palestinian car at a checkpoint near the West Bank town of Qalqiliya.
Sappers defused the device safely.

A pipe bomb was found during an IDF scan of the Jenin area on Monday afternoon. The pipe bomb was detonated under a controlled detonation, and not one was injured.

Every single day the IDF finds bombs built in the West Bank for the purpose of killing Jews. Almost every day someone is caught at a checkpoint (often women and children) with weapons.

In other words, those horrible repressive IDF actions that "human rights" organizations spend so much time condemning are saving lives every day. It would seem that "human rights" and saving lives are incompatible according to these defenders of terror.

Leader of Coptic church calls Jews "Christ-killers"

From Religious Intelligence (h/t Zionist Spy):

Pope Shenouda in anti-Semitic outburst
Monday, 21st May 2007. 10:55am

By: George Conger.

THE LEADER of the Coptic Church, Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria told Egyptian television last month the Western Churches were wrong to exonerate Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and criticised recent statements apologising for Christian anti-Semitism.

In an interview with Dream 2 TV broadcast on April 8, Shenouda was asked if the Coptic Church would follow the lead of the Western Christian churches. Shenouda responded that the Christian Churches had “done nothing that warrants an apology,” adding he believed the apologies were being “done for appearance’s sake.”

Asked whether Jews were “Christ-killers”, responsible for the crucifixion, Shenouda stated, “The New Testament says that they are,” and asked rhetorically whether the Vatican was “against the teachings of the New Testament?”

Shenouda stated he had banned Copts from visiting Israel for fear they will “be influenced by the Israeli media, and we will not be able to prevent this. Who knows what ideas they will return with?”

This is not the first Christian leader in the Middle East who has been infected with an extreme case of dhimmitude, where the ones actually oppressing his people are not criticized at all - see our Dhimmi of the Year 2006 and his runner up.

UPDATE: A commenter at Discarded Lies, Frank IBC, points out the resemblance between our esteemed Coptic pope and a more famous icon of royalty:

Reuters reports an Islamic miracle

Female Palestinian suicide bombers attend a news conference in Gaza May 21, 2007. The bombers, members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, declared that they are ready to blow themselves up in attacks against the Israeli army if it attacks Gaza. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

Wow. They look really good for being suicide bombers! I wonder how they managed to keep themselves together.