Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Playing with numbers

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions counts about 18,000 Arab houses demolished by Israel in the 40 years since 1967. They aren't breaking down the circumstances behind the demolitions - like how many are from illegal building permits, how many from terrorists living in them, how many are on each side of the Green Line, how many Arab citizens are compensated for their houses, how many are because of unsafe living conditions, how many are from building on lands zoned for public utilities or parks, or any other meaningful statistics.

The implication, of course, is that every single home demolished by Israel is a kind of apartheid against Palestinian Arabs. There is a reason they don't break down the numbers - because the truth will not sound nearly as bad as the scary number "18,000" taken out of context.

So, let's try to provide some context with what little information we can find:

18,000 homes over 40 years comes out to 450 homes a year. So barely more than one house every day over 40 years is being destroyed in the entire country. Hardly what one would expect from systematic ethnic cleansing.

In 2005, Israel destroyed 1200 Jewish homes in Gaza alone, and I don't know how many were demolished in "illegal" settlements in the past few years but it is probably in the hundreds. Israel also destroys illegal Jewish homes within the Green Line and destroys illegal extensions on Jewish homes in Jerusalem. So for this decade, it appears that Israel has destroyed about as many Jewish homes as Arab homes.

According to the EPA, over 300,000 homes are destroyed every year in the US, mostly in inner cities. Assuming that the US is about 50 times bigger than Israel, this means that the US destroys about 13 times as many homes per capita as Israel every year.

In addition, Palestinian Arabs are building illegal homes much, much faster than Israel is destroying them. 6000 illegal Arab homes were built between 2001-2005, far dwarfing the numbers demolished by Israel for not having building permits.

But advocates for Palestinian Arabs at the expense of Palestinian Jews do not have the intellectual honesty to give any information out that might weaken their cases.

More evidence of bias at Google News

I've talked about Google News before and how it has an unfortunate tendency to index hate sites and anti-semitic articles as "news."

For fun, I decided to submit my site as a news site and see what they would respond. Here's the reply back from Google:

Thank you for your note. We reviewed http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com and
are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We currently only
include articles from sources that could be considered organizations,
generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, availability of
organizational information, and accessible contact information. When we
reviewed your site we weren't able to find this evidence of an
organization.

We appreciate your willingness to provide your articles to us, and we'll
log your site for future consideration.

Thank you for your interest in Google News.

Regards,
The Google Team

That's all well and good, as long as they are consistent about it.

Well, they aren't.

Google News indexes a "peace" blog (Google says it is called "Baqa'a Refugee Camp, UK", while the blog itself calls itself "Desert Peace" and is based out of Jerusalem. )

Like me, he uses an alias; like me, he has no organization behind him. But unlike me, he is unremittingly critical of Israel and religious Jews, yet hardly has a bad word to say about Arab terrorists not Islamists.

"Desert Peace" is not generally a hate site (except against Orthodox Jews) and I wouldn't put it in the same category as the slime that comes out of some other Google News indexed websites like The People's Voice or Uruknet.

But if that site is considered a news site, why is mine not?

The Lebanese army wakes up

Tens of thousands of rockets and tons of explosives to Hezbollah intended to be used against Israel can pass under the Lebanese army's eyes without a problem, but they suddenly become a bit more vigilant when the weapons will be used against them:

The Lebanese army seized a truckload of weapons coming from Syria intended for use in new battle fronts to ease pressure on Fatah al-Islam militants locked up in fierce fighting with army troops trying to crush the terrorists entrenched inside the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared.

The daily An Nahar on Wednesday said Lebanese authorities also discovered a depot containing more than 200 kilograms of explosives in house raids on suspected Fatah al-Islam militants in the northern Akkar province.

Meanwhile, Lebanese troops maintained their siege of Nahr al-Bared for a 17th day, fighting on-again off-again gunbattles with militants on Wednesday.

But wait - the plot thickens:

Security officials told the Associated Press the arms belonged to Hizbullah.

They said the shipment of Grad rockets and ammunition for automatic rifles and machine guns was seized late Tuesday at a random army checkpoint at Douriss near Baalbek, a Hizbullah stronghold in east Lebanon's Bekaa valley.

Six Hizbullah members in the truck were let go but the confiscated weapons were taken to the nearby Ablah army barracks, the officials said.

There was no immediate comment from Hizbullah on the weapons' seizure.

So were the weapons meant for Fatah al-Islam, for a sympathetic Islamist group allied with Fatah al-Islam, or for Hezbollah?

Since they are all supported by Syria anyway, and they all share the same Muslim supremacist ideology, these are distinctions without a difference. But here we have Hezbollah clearly implicated in smuggling arms to be used against the Lebanese army while Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government - and yet no one has been talking about any possible Hezbollah connection to the Fatah al-Islam terrorists, until now:

The big question on everyone’s mind Ahmad Yasseen, a local analyst told Ya Libnan : “Is Hezbollah siding with the terrorists? “. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last week warned the government not to enter the Nahr el Bared camp where the army is engaged with Fatah al Islam terrorists and trying to finish them off for the past 17 days. Nasrallah called entering the camp a “ red line” . Many anti Syrian March 14th politicians ridiculed Nasrallah for his “Red Line “. But the fact that Syria is the common denominator between Hezbollah and Fatah al Islam according to Yasseen , this has raised the question about Hezbollah position and whether it is siding with the terrorists to please Syria .
Many analysts have criticized Hezbollah for not offering to help the army in its war on terror. One analyst Ali Hussein suggested : “ Hezbollah has a lot of experience in dealing with such warfare and should offer the army a helping hand . The way the battles are going, the army does not seem to need any help but it would have been a good gesture from Hezbollah , in showing allegiance to Lebanon”

The naivete of the "analyst" in the last paragraph is particularly funny. To the Lebanese people, however, the fact that Hezbollah is still being treated with kid gloves despite its involvement in Lebanese terror is insanity.

Last summer, Hezbollah copied Hamas by kidnapping Israeli soldiers. This summer, will Hezbollah copy Hamas again by shooting rockets into Israel to try to stop a Lebanese civil war?

A Palestinian Islamic militant shouts at a photographer for allegedly pointing his camera at his wife at the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in the southern city of Sidon, Lebanon Tuesday, June 5, 2007. (AP Photo / Mohammed Zaatari)

How does he know that that's his wife?

UPDATE: Dave at Israellycool notices that the wire service photographers love this guy. He has lots of pictures of Big Bicep Guy at his blog.

Palestinian Arabs preferring occupation

The New York Times has taken notice of a MEMRI article describing how some Palestinian Arabs are saying an obvious fact t hat was previously unthinkable for them - that Israel's terrible "occupation" was better than what they can accomplish on their own:

Recently, a few Palestinian columnists have broken a political taboo by referring to the Israeli occupation as perhaps preferable to the current chaos.
For example, Majed Azzam wrote in the Hamas-affiliated weekly Al Risala in Gaza that Palestinians “should have the courage to acknowledge the truth,” that the only thing that “prevents the chaos and turmoil in Gaza from spreading to the West Bank is the presence of the Israeli occupation.”
Another Palestinian writer, Bassem al-Nabris, a poet from Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, wrote in the Arabic electronic newspaper Elaph that if there was a referendum in the Gaza Strip on the question of whether people would like the Israeli occupation to return, “half the population would vote ‘yes.’ But in practice,” he continued, “I believe that the number of those in favor is at least 70 percent, if not more.”
“If the occupation returns,” Mr. Nabris added, “at least there will be no civil war, and the occupier will have a moral and legal obligation to provide the occupied people with employment and food, which they now lack.”

Not surprisingly, the NYT implies that it is only the security chaos and Hamas-Fatah battles that are the reasons for this attitude, but al-Nabris went much further:

[It did not begin] with the internal conflicts, but even earlier, in the days of the previous Palestinian administration, which was corrupt and did not give the people even the tiniest [ray of] hope. The fundamentalist forces which came into power [after it] also promised change and reform, but [instead, people] got a siege, with no security and no [chance of] making a living...

MEMRI clearly gets under the skin of Arabs and terror supporters, because it shows the Arab people in such a bad light. This article accuses MEMRI of cherry-picking articles to make Arabs look bad and of being Zionist, which is of course a crime to the critics. These critics (including Norman Finkelstein, Juan Cole and Ken Livingstone) seem to believe that the blood libel accusations, videos designed to encourage children to blow themselves up to reach an amusement park paradise, and Holocaust denial is not nearly as bad as MEMRI choosing not to translate Arabic weather reports. But not once do they accuse MEMRI of mistranslating.
(H/T EBoZ)

Before the Six Day War

There are a lot of revisionist historians out there today making absurd claims about how Israel was the aggressor in 1967. History books rarely capture the atmosphere of the time, and understanding the fear and concern in the days before the war is critical to understanding it.

From a single small newspaper, the Columbia Missourian from May 28, 1967, here are all of the stories about the Middle East situation for just that one day, on pages 1-3 of the paper:

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

PalArab student stressed during finals. So he started shooting.

From Ma'an:

Employees in the Nablus education directorate office were shocked to hear shooting on Tuesday coming from inside the office of the director, Lutfi Yassin. When they rushed to the office, they found an armed member of the public; there were no casualties or injuries.

Yassin, 50, told Ma'an, "An armed man broke into the office and shot inside it when we refused to give him approval to sit the 'Tawjihi' [end of school] exams because he did not meet the conditions for such exams."

Eyewitnesses said that the angry man repeated shooting in front of the department when he was forced to leave by other employees.

Why are people surprised that PalArabs who grow up learning that violence solves all problems start using violence to solve all their problems?

Keep in mind that this is not even in Gaza.

Stoning the hand that feeds you

It doesn't get better than this:

Some 300 activists from the left-wing group Peace Now gathered in Hebron on Tuesday for a demonstration marking 40 years since Israel annexed the West Bank in the Six Day War...

However, local Palestinians threw stones at the Peace Now bus and a police vehicle after the demonstration. No one was hurt in the incident.

How perfect is that - Jews demonstrating against the "occupation" and PalArabs throwing stones at them. Makes one think that perhaps the real object of their enmity is not "occupation," but "Jews."

The Jerusalem Post, editing this article from AP, inexplicably lets this sentence get through:

The group was protesting, among other things, the occupation of a Palestinian house by local settlers in April.

I guess AP thinks that this is more accurate than saying "the legal purchase of a house by Jews in March." Because when truth and the MSM myths intersect, the myth always wins.

(H/T Shrinkwrapped)

Easy way to plant trees in Israel

HAS, which uses innovative methods to raise money for Israeli charities, now has a browser toolbar available. If you download the toolbar, JNF will plant a tree in Northern Israel, and for every 180 Google searches done through the toolbar, another tree will be planted. They have a goal for 10,000 trees.

They have a neat Flash showing the names of the people who are responsible for the trees.

The toolbar can be found here.

Nasser's lies and Arab honor

Today is the 40th anniversary of the start of the Six Day War.

One of the most interesting aspects of that war was the role of lies. Nasser lied about Egypt's readiness for war, he lied to his citizens about early victories, he lied to Jordan's King Hussein about how he was shooting down hundreds of Israeli planes, he lied to the Russians and others saying that America had joined Israel in the fighting.

Almost all of these lies were a direct result of the Arab sense of "honor." This has been a pattern of Arab leadership throughout the past century.

By any measure, Nasser was a popular leader. He was charismatic and macho, swaggering with his inciteful rhetoric. Lying is an integral part of Arab politics because the desire for honor, and the desire to avoid dishonor, is ingrained in the Arab psyche. Admitting problems is perceived as a sign of weakness and the Arab masses emphatically do not want technocratic, practical leaders - they want Saladin, someone to sweep the Arab nation into pre-eminence again.

It has been noted that Moshe Dayan's 1967 Sinai campaign was virtually identical to the 1956 Sinai campaign. The reason that the Egyptians didn't anticipate this was because they managed to get Israel out of the Sinai in 1956 politically, so to Nasser's mind it was a victory and no lessons needed to be learned.

There is a symbiotic relationship between the Arab masses who thirst for a powerful leader and the leaders who thirst for power. Exaggerations and lies are eagerly consumed by the people and their adulation is lapped up by the leaders. Inevitably, fantasy replaces reality as the idea of admitting mistakes becomes more remote. The leader becomes imprisoned by his lies and his public image.

A proud Arab warrior cuts off the heads of hundreds of infidels on his way to glory - he doesn't appoint Commissions of Inquiry into mistakes he's made.

The Arab leaders surround themselves with people who won't dare point out the truth, and get rid of those who might sent the entire edifice of false honor crashing down. Lying becomes habitual until the leader himself cannot distinguish between truth and lies anymore. We've seen this with Nasser, with Arafat, with Saddam Hussein, with Hafez al-Assad - almost every Arab leader who did not inherit his position relies on his lies for popular support and tries to convince the rest of the world to believe his lies as well.

Because casual lying is so much a part of Arab culture, the people are willing to forgive the lies after they become obvious, or go along with them in the name of pan-Arab honor. Faced with irrefutable proof of their lies, the leaders will exchange them for more palatable lies - "Israel didn't defeat Egypt, they had help from the US. " They will do anything to minimize the disgrace that comes from admitting mistakes. To the Arab mind, lying is not nearly as disgraceful as defeat.

Of course, the inability to admit mistakes means that these Arabs will never learn from those mistakes. Even on today's anniversary, the Arabic newspapers are filled with articles that justify their defeat in 1967 by making up fantasies about Israel and the US, and very few look upon it as a learning opportunity.

There can be no solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict without the ability for Arabs to admit the truth to themselves. As long as they can fantasize about being able to destroy Israel they will not accept Israel. As long as Palestinian Arabs keep fooling themselves that their problems are more from Israel than from their Arab "brethren" they will never be able to improve their lives. The exoskeleton of lies that holds up the Arab world is a jail cell that keeps them from progressing and becoming productive members of the world community.

Arab culture needs to start seeing deceit as being more disgraceful than defeat.

A Palestinian man smokes a water pipe as he sits in Khan Younis beach in the southern Gaza strip June 4, 2007. Residents of the Khan Younis refugee camp said their venture to the beach was a way to respite from the Israeli military actions that had killed over 50 Palestinians, mostly militants, in the last month. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA)

A Palestinian boy plays in the waters of the Khan Younis beach in the southern Gaza strip June 4, 2007. Residents of the Khan Younis refugee camp said their venture to the beach was a way to respite from the Israeli military actions that had killed over 50 Palestinians, mostly militants, in the last month. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA)

You see, it is congenitally impossible for Reuters to publish a picture of Palestinian Arabs having fun without finding some bizarre reason to slam Israel. If they look sad, it is because of Israeli actions; if they are happy, it is despite Israeli actions.

The fact that nearly 300 Palestinian Arabs have been killed this year by each other is no reason for a "respite" at the beach; no, Gazans don't get too bothered by that, in Reuterville. All their stress comes from Israel, of course.

And once again we need to wonder: why is there a "refugee camp" in Khan Younis? It's not like it is Syria or Lebanon - there is nothing at all stopping Palestinian Arabs from building new towns and villages for "refugees." Clearly the residents can come and go as they please, as this picture shows.

There is nothing stopping Arab nations from funding houses and community centers and town halls in Gaza.

Except for the fact that it would mean less money for RPGs, Katyushas, dynamite and Qassams.

Perhaps one day Reuters will ask these same questions, rather than parrot provable Palestinian Arab lies. But I won't bet on it.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad finds the exact fact I couldn't find a link to in the above article. In 1977, Israel actually tried to move Palestinian Arabs out of the "camps" and into real houses, and the UN condemned them for it, in UN General Assembly Resolution 32/90:

1. Calls once more upon Israel:

(a) To take effective steps immediately for the return of the refugees concerned to the camps from which they were removed in the Gaza Strip and to provide adequate shelters for their accommodation;

(b) To desist from further removal of refugees and destruction of their shelters;

To the UN, improving the lives of Palestinians is not desirable.

UN resolutions that Palestinian Arabs ignore

Much is made among the loony anti-Israel crowd about the many absurd resolutions that the UN has passed against Israel, as if that is meaningful. However, not too many of them call upon Palestinian Arabs to fulfill the items that UN resolutions have required of them. Of course, most of these include much harsher language and requirements on Israel, but we're talking about the UN here:
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1322 (outset of intifada)
Calls for the immediate cessation of violence, and for all necessary steps to be taken to ensure that violence ceases.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1397 (2002)
1. Demands immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1402 (2002)
Calls upon both parties to move immediately to a meaningful cease-fire. Reiterates its demand in resolution 1397 (2002) of 12 March 2002 for an immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1435 (2002)
Reiterates its demand for the complete cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction;
Calls on the Palestinian Authority to meet its expressed commitment to ensure that those responsible for terrorist acts are brought to justice by it.

There may be others but these what I could find immediately.

Palestinian Arab blood gets cheaper

The financially-strapped PA has cut back on its martyr's death benefits, from $350 to $6.

According to Ma'an:

Ma'an learned that the compensation paid for the son's death through the bank and agreed upon by the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), was NIS 24 (US $ 8 [sic - EoZ]), whereas previously it had been NIS 1.400 (~ $ 350 US).

Mohammad's brother confirmed that the new compensation is 24 NIS and that this is in accordance with the new law.Mohammad's brother confirmed that the new compensation is 24 NIS and that this is in accordance with the new law. "The issue is not the money, we have refused to receive the money," he said "but such rules are humiliating to the blood of martyrs, these rules do not appreciate the struggle of the fighters."

I'm sure that there is much more martyr money coming from Iran and elsewhere, but this is a good consequence of the minor reduction in aid that the PA receives.

Of course, it looks like that aid has started up again through the PLO bank account, and hundreds of millions have already gone into the coffers of the Fatah "militants," so we'll see how long this austerity towards terrorist families lasts.

Another Gaza kindergarten graduation video

Complete with little girls holding toy rifles in one hand and baby dolls in the other. Also scimitars, for that traditional look.

Notice the large crowd of doting parents, shepping nachas from their lovable tykes with suicide bomb belts.

(H/T Israel Insider.)

"Human rights" organizations show their true colors

In a press release today, the International Solidarity Movement which claims to support "using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles" to destroy Israel shows how committed to peace it really is: Excerpts:

This resistance is integral part of the history of the Palestinian people - the 1935 – 1939 Great Strike, the crushing of the Palestinian Resistance in September 1970 in Jordan, later in Lebanon or the two Intifadas (1987-1992) and the Intifada Al-Aqsa in September 2000.

Palestinian resistance also acts against the liquidation plans of the freedom national project as the Oslo agreement, the Geneva Initiative or the Quartet Roadmap (UN, USA, Russia, and European Union). Since the creation of the illegitimate State of Israel in 1948, more than 40 peace plans were adopted, without results, because they were not based on the application of these basic humane principles : There can be no justice in the presence of occupation, and there can be no peace in the presence of a racist colonial-settler entity.

The September 2000 Intifada as well as the elections on January 2006 – Hamas victory -, are the expression of the refusal of the legitimacy of the Israel's colonial project over historic Palestine. It is the expression of the people living under occupation's right to resist, which remains the angular stone of its freedom national project in reconstruction.

The question of Israel's legitimacy remains at the core of the conflict and the Palestinians give an answer to it every day by their passive or active resistance in the territories occupied in 1948 or 1967.

We will support the Arab Palestinian struggle till the complete liberation of their historic land, the only solution which will guarantee the return for the refugees.

It would take a great deal of semantic gymnastics to try to explain this praise for Palestinian Arab acts that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Jewish civilians (the "Great Strike" in the 1930s killed hundreds itself, including many Arabs as well) as being "non-violent."

But even more telling is the list of signatories to this communique, a "call to action" to destroy Israel, including many so-called "human rights" groups who show exactly how much they care about the rights of Jews to live in the Middle East. Here are some of them:

Al-Bahrain Center for Human Rights - Bahrain
Association of Bahreni Youth for Human Rights - Bahrain

Canadian Peace Alliance, Canada

Arab Program for Human Rights Activists - Egypt

Arab European League, Europe
Campo Antiimperialista - Europe

Collectif Paix Comme Palestine, Avignon, France
ISM-France (International Solidarity Movement - France)

Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons, Iraq
Iraqi Communist Party - Leadership Committee, Iraq

Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism, Italy

Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan (AOHR-Jo), Jordan
Socialist Thought Forum - Jordan
Arab World Center for Democracy and Human Rights - Jordan

Communist Workers and Peasants Party (CMKP) - Pakistan

National Association Against Zionism, Syria
National Committee for the Boycott of US Commodities in Syria, Syria

The Front for Rights and Liberties, Turkey

New Jersey Solidarity - Activists for the Liberation of Palestine, USA
Al-Awda New York, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, USA

al-Afeef Cultural Association - Yemen
al-Shaqa'eq Arab Forum for Human Rights - Yemen
Democratic Social Forum - Yemen
Yemeni Youth Shoura Council - Yemen
National Assembly for the Defence of Rights and Liberties - Yemen
National Organization for the Development of Society - Yemen
The School of Democracy - Yemen
Yemeni Organization for the Defence of Rights and Liberties - Yemen
Yemeni Youth Development Center - Yemen

With all of these Arab and communist organizations supporting "peace" and "democracy" and "human rights" one need never worry about peace again! It is heartwarming to know that they've solved all their internal human rights issues and are now so gung-ho to sign petitions on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs who they refuse to grant citizenship to - for their own good, of course.