Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Lessons from the bombings in Iraq

The recent horrific car bombs in Iraq, targeting an obscure religious sect that presumably doesn't meet some Muslim clerics' standards, illustrate a point about Israel that bears being made explicit:

If Israel would do all the things that the Left demands - if Israel would take down the fence, if all Palestinian Arabs were allowed to move where they wanted to in Israel, if Israel stopped all raids and arrests and roadblocks, if it opened the borders to Gaza - then the Jewish sections left in the area would look the way Al-Qataniyah and Al-Adnaniyah in northern Iraq look today.

The interesting thing is that, intellectually, the Left must realize this. They might mouth predictions that Israeli concessions would bring a happy, peaceful Palestinian Arab society in its wake but no one can seriously believe it. The Jews would be treated far worse than the Yazidi were this week if the terrorists are given half a chance. The unremitting terror attacks from 2001-2004 in Israel is proof of that, and if Hamas and Fatah had access to bigger and better explosives, they would have used them as well.

Even given these obvious facts, the Left seems to prefer an insecure, terror-ridden Israel that meets their standards of "morality" to a state that actively protects its citizens from the surrounding, hostile millions. They would prefer the inevitable resulting mass murders in Israel to having Israel do anything defensive that might, possibly, violate the "rights" of anyone else.

Is it anti-semitism? Is it self-hate for Western culture? Is it the complete absence of sense? I don't know, but whatever it is, a clear picture of what they advocate can be seen today in Iraq.

Former PalArab legislator convicted of involvement in 2002 terror attack

From Jerusalem Newswire:

A member of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction of the PLO, and a former legislator in the PA parliament, was found guilty Wednesday of sending a "suicide" bomber to Tel Aviv in 2002.
The attacker blew himself up in a coffee shop in the coastal city, killing Rachel Tcherkhi, an Israeli woman.

Jamal Tirawi was convicted of sending the bomber and thus of deliberately murdering Tcherki.

Remember - this guy is part of the group that the West supports as "moderate."

YNet adds:

According to the indictment, the suicide bomber that blew himself up in a coffee shop in the city in March 2002 made his way to Israel from the Nablus home of PLC member Jamal Tirawi.

The Fatah member is also accused of recruiting potential suicide bombers.

A little factoid about him from before the terror attack:

Like other leading activists, Mr Tirawi is mindful of the long arm of Israeli intelligence. Behind the lace curtains of his living room, he sat surrounded by 16 of his men. All were armed with M-16s or Kalashnikovs, and his six-year-old daughter played with a Belgian-made pistol.

But despite the assortment of weapons, Mr Tirawi said he was against vigilante justice for suspected Israeli agents.

While he might be against extrajudicial killing of "collaborators," it doesn't stop him from using the idea to do that recruiting he wants:

Wanted Tanzim terrorist Rabi'ah Abu Alil originally tried to employ the boy as a suicide bomber after he and his father quarreled over money. The boy refused, and was taken to an apartment by Abu Alil and another wanted Arab terrorist, Jamal Tirawi. Tirawi is also a high ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence officer, the IDF said.

"Despite the youth's pleas that he be released to his home and left alone, Tirawi and Abu Alil threatened him that if he did not cooperate, they would kill him and distribute a communique claiming he had been collaborating with the Israeli army," the IDF announcement stated. Terrorists photographed the boy wearing a vest and holding a rifle and a copy of the Koran.

Now, try to find a Palestinian Arab "moderate" who is willing to condemn this guy. Good luck with that.

Celebrity deathmatch: Tzipi Livni vs. Julia Roberts

Tzipi:

Ms Livni, a key figure in Israel's contacts with the new Abbas-established administration, said: "I know that it looks tempting and I know that the international community is eager to see a kind of understanding between Hamas and Fatah." But she warned at a news conference with her visiting Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso: "This is wrong. This is a mistake. Big mistake. Huge."

Julia: (as Vivian in Pretty Woman)

Vivian: You people work on commission, right?
Shop assistant: Yeah.
Vivian: Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now.

I think Julia has the edge. She comes off as more self-assured.

Hamas: Buses legit targets, no Jews in Palestine before 1917, goal to wipe Israel out

From MEMRI via Front Page:

The following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on August 6, 2007.

To view this clip visit: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1527.htm.

Interviewer: "Islamic law has forbidden aggression during jihad – by forbidding the killing of women, children, the elderly, clerics who devote themselves to the worship of God, and other noncombatant civilians who do not serve in the enemy's army. Do you consider all the Jews in Palestine to be combatants who have plundered the land? We've witnessed martyrdom operations that targeted buses and restaurants."

Osama Hamdan: "First of all, let me clarify something very important. What is the ruling regarding those who live in Palestine, in the so-called Israel, and who are aggressors and plunderers of the land? The way we see it, they all came to Palestine from abroad, whether before the declaration of the Zionist entity or after it. If you were to conduct statistics within the Zionist entity, you would find that all these people have their origins in other countries – they came from Europe, Eastern Europe, from America, South America, or other places."

Interviewer: "In other words, there were no Palestinian Jews?"

Osama Hamdan: "No, there were no Palestinian Jews. When the British Mandate began in 1917, there was only one settlement on Palestinian land, which included several dozen Jews, who were living there in violation of the law at the time. I would like to mention that under the Ottoman state – regardless of the many reservations we have about it – there was a law that prohibited the Jews from staying in Palestine for over a month.

"Their passports and personal documents were taken away from them, and they were given an Ottoman permit at the border, which allowed them to stay for a month on Palestinian land. The only group that can be called Jewish was the one in Nablus. They still live there to this day. The Palestinians regard them as part of the makeup of Palestinian society, and they number no more than several hundred. As for those who immigrated from various countries – they are not Jews.

"Anyone who comes to live in a war zone is a combatant, regardless of whether he wears a uniform. That's one thing. Secondly, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian resistance force intentionally killed civilians. You mentioned the buses. What's an easier target – a bus, which is protected by various security measures, or a school [or] a theater, or a stadium, for example? These civilian targets – in which the killing of women and children is intentional – were not targeted by
"Why were buses targeted? Because they are the means of transport used by the soldiers as well. The Zionist soldiers, who go from their homes to their bases and back, use public transportation, because it is free or almost free. In my opinion, the occupation soldiers also have a security motive in using public transport: They shield themselves behind the so-called 'civilians' within the Zionist entity.

"Therefore, the way I see it, they need to stop using public transportation, or else society should prevent them from using it, because it is the soldiers who are targeted. Just to prove it, in the dozens of operations that were carried out, the Zionists never announced, for example, that 20 children were killed, or that 50 women were killed. On the contrary, if you were to examine who was killed in martyrdom operations that targeted buses, you would find that 70% were occupation soldiers, and they may even have been in uniform at the time of the operation." [...]

"The Final Goal of the Resistance is to Wipe This Entity Off the Face of the Earth"

"We are making the preparations for a confrontation. This is not because we need to be prepared for an Israeli act of aggression – after all, aggression is intrinsic to this entity – but because the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the Earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out."

Interviewer: "Do you think that Mahmoud Abbas, who has found himself in the crisis of the confrontation with Hamas, plays the role of a policeman, who is thwarting the Intifada, the resistance, and the jihad against the Zionist occupation in the Palestinian lands?"

Osama Hamdan: "He plays a role that is even worse than that. Mahmoud Abbas is doing this out of ideological conviction. He has been calling for a settlement ever since 1973. It was Mahmoud Abbas who created the Oslo Accords, and who was brought in by the Americans to serve as prime minister in order to confront Arafat. In my opinion, he plays this role willingly and out of conviction, which is worse than if he were doing it out of commitment to the occupation."

The number of lies per sentence in this little interview is even higher than the usual number that comes out from Arab terrorists.

And if you are curious about the Jews in Nablus that he's talking about, he's referring to Samaritans. It is possible that by defining them as Jews he is also defining the Jews who have lived in Palestine continuously as infidels, not dhimmis, meaning that they are all legitimate targets for being killed.

Of course, we cannot expect too much consistency from people who rewrite history at will, and who conveniently forget terror attacks against schools, shopping malls, discos, bar mitzvahs, cafes, pizza shops, and hotels.

PalArabs celebrate their 11th honor killing this year

From PCHR:

at approximately 18:00 on Monday, 13 August 2007, the body of En’am Jaber Deifallah (37) arrived at Shifa Hospital. The victim is from El-T’wam area in northern Gaza City, and was a mother of one child. Medical sources indicated that she was killed by beating with a sharp object on the head. The victim’s family informed PCHR’s fieldworker that one of the victim’s brothers killed her inside her house in a murder motivated by “honor.”

It is noted that “honor killings” have increased over the past few years in the Gaza Strip. Deirallah is the 11th victim of such crimes this year.

See how much they honor their women?

Google News has nothing about this. The only news source I've seen mention this so far is Ma'an Arabic.

Our PalArab self-death count is now 507 for 2007.

Dr. Mamdooh Fahmy was a surgeon at the Albyaan Menfhoh Medical Center in Riyadh. His colleagues noticed that he didn't seem to practice Islam and they started trying to convince him to become Muslim and practice a religion that despises coercion.

After some time of enduring their repeated invitations to become Muslim, Fahmy finally told them that he was a Coptic Christian, and he would not be changing his beliefs any time soon.

Soon thereafter, Dr. Fahmy received a friendly visit from our heroes, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They insulted him in front of patients and staff, confiscated his car keys, cell phone and wallet, handcuffed him and shackled his feet, and dragged him to a car where they nicely drove him to his house. They then raided his house and confiscated all his written materials, took him to the police station and placed him in solitary confinement.

After five days of this Muslim hospitality, they started interrogating him and referring to him as an 'infidel'.

His crime: Fahmy was accused of missionary activity. It seems that not allowing oneself to be pressured into becoming a Muslim is equivalent to asking people to become Christian, in Saudi Muslim thought.

When the Muttawa finally released him and he tried to get back to his home in Egypt, the Saudi government refused to give him a visa.

Finally, after months calls and letters, Saudi Arabia allowed him to go to Egypt this week.

Once again, the Commission has shown its hatred for vice and its promotion of virtue. Saudis can sleep soundly at night knowing that such zealous defenders of their lifestyle are on constant watch, ready to pounce at even the slightest whiff of infidelism.

Last episode here.

From left to right, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, react during a press conference in the West Bank town of Jericho, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007

Saeb Erekat is one of the most accomplished liars in history, who has said things like "Hamas' running in elections is tantamount to giving up weapons" and "You know, the Jenin refugee camp is no longer in existence…" and "people were massacred. And we say the number will not be less than 500."

In other words, he's a good representative for the Palestinian Arab people. How smart it is to negotiate with a known liar is a different question.

IAP skit: "I am Hamas and I'm going to kill Jews"

From a Fox News transcript for Hannity and Colmes last Friday, on a video shown in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation showing skits put on by the Islamic Association for Palestine:

LOWRY: Steve, as far as I can tell, these skits seem to be classic incitement, anti-Semitic propaganda, urging people on to kill Jews in the name of the intifada.

EMERSON: Well, they're pretty horrifying. They took place in the United States and they were skits put on by the Islamic Association for Palestine, which was a sister organization to the group that's on trial, the Holy Land Foundation.

And the person who makes the statement, "I am Hamas and I'm going to kill Jews" is Mufid Abdul Qatar. He's one of the defendants. And though it takes place in the late 1980s, the fact of matter it goes directly — it's directly relevant to the mindset of those that are on trial today.

It's like a pedophile who's on trial. If a pedophile says, in years before his trial that "I want to rape children," that's relevant to the mindset.

And in this case, the defendant, as well as the organization, clearly indicate their desire to carry out genocide against Jews.

LOWRY: So Steve, what does that do to the line of defense? In particular, the Holy Land Foundation says we were just supporting Palestinian charities and wow, it's really too bad that some of this money may have made it into the hands of bad actors?

EMERSON: Well, I think it puts a definite lie to that claim, because here you have one of the defendants, an official of the Holy Land Foundation, who actually blurts out and says, "I am Hamas."

And in the very end of this skit, which is pretty horrifying, the — Abdul Qatar actually kills the Jew. And you can actually hear children in the audience laughing and applauding.

By the way, the man in the skit who is pretending to kill a Jew, who is on trial as part of the Holy Land Foundation, is the half-brother of Khalid Mashaal, leader of Hamas in exile.

Happy blogoversary to me

3 years
over 3000 posts
well over a million words

Just for fun, I just pasted all my June and July postings into Microsoft Word as examples of typical months. Each one ended up over 140 pages long!

Thanks for reading!

Tunisia forbids access to Arafat's papers

From Ma'an:

The pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported on Wednesday that the Tunisian authorities have refused to open the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's office to the public.

The source added that there have been several attempts to obtain access to the personal archives of Arafat.

The archives include correspondence, documents and secret letters of Arafat, and are believed to reveal the personal life behind the public figure.

The main archives of Yasser Arafat in his Tunisia office are closed to the public.

One can understand how proof of his corruption and homosexuality might be a tad embarrassing.

Hezbollah wildly celebrates death

One of the themes of this blog is that it is a fatal mistake for Westerners to consider the Arab and Islamic mindset to be similar to ours. Both sides in this clash of civilizations will project their own attitudes onto the other, and as a result both sides will consistently overlook any attitudes that are utterly foreign to their mindsets as aberrations rather than mainstream.

This article describes how Hezbollah is celebrating the first anniversary of the war with Israel. Their museum contains items that would never appear in a Western museum, because while the West may have memorials to commemorate wars, it does not celebrate the deaths of enemies - and to Arabs, that is the entire point. This is not an aberration - this is mainstream Arab culture:

Nasrallah's speech last night was only the culminating moment in a summer marked by Hizbullah's celebration of its "divine victory" last year. The group even opened a museum last month in Dahia that commemorates its war efforts against the Israelis. Thousands of Lebanese have visited in recent weeks.

The museum's main exhibit - which is entitled "The Spider's Web" - is a macabre testament to Hizbullah's ongoing fascination with battling the Jewish state. At the entrance, children pose with badly-damaged Israeli armoured vehicles, adorned with placards giving the name of their model and the date of their destruction by the "resistance".

Moving past the tanks, one enters the main exhibit through an elaborately reconstructed Hizbullah bunker, where mannequins dressed in fatigues and holding Kalashnikovs stare ponderously at maps of the battlefield. In the "Living Post Model" inside the mock bunker, two would-be Hizbullah guerrillas recline on the floor watching television. An RPG leans against a bookshelf covered with Qurans, and Hizbullah flags and posters of Nasrallah dot the walls.

One emerges from the bunker into a large room filled with photographs from the war and weapons and ammunition captured from the Israeli military. Heart-wrenching pictures of Lebanese children wounded and killed in Israeli bombings are flanked by those of bloodied Israeli corpses. Airbrushed on one wall is a picture of an exploding Israeli warship that bears the caption, "Watch it burn, it will sink taking with it tens of Zionist [sic] Israeli soldiers"; adjacent to the warship, a wall-sized image of a contemplative, smug Nasrallah looks down upon droves of women and children lining up to snap pictures of Israeli rifles and rocket launchers with their camera phones. A replica of a dead Israeli soldier, outfitted in a captured IDF uniform and bearing an M16, lies in a shallow grave carved into the floor; ammunition, cans of Kosher food, and a smashed iPod lie to his sides.

The audio-visual presentations of the exhibit are its highlight. A television shows screen-shots of a Hizbullah computer game ("Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge"), whose object is to shoot IDF soldiers and blow up Israeli tanks. At the end of the main hall, visitors enter a darkened room where an enormous projection screen stands over the remains of a damaged Merkava tank. Images come across the screen of Hizbullah fighters firing RPGs and launching rockets at Haifa, as coloured lights illuminate the faux corpses lying by the tank. After an explosive climax, where sounds of screaming and crying fill the small room, the 10-minute movie ends with footage of Nasrallah proclaiming victory in front of thousands waving the yellow Hizbullah flag. The lights come up, and militiamen-cum-curators guide the onlookers back outside, where busloads of young children unload and line up to see the sights.

The last stop in the exhibit is the "Martyrs' Oasis", an abstract installation on the museum's lawn consisting of a few large blocks covered in white sheets and a stairway leading up to an open door, presumably signifying the entrance to heaven. And, as if the guarantee of paradise were not sufficient, the museum also boasts a gift shop, where those so-inclined can purchase Hizbullah DVD's, key-chains, car-fresheners, and perfume.

Even a whiff of such an attitude in the West would have liberals - rightly - screaming. If it is evil over here, why is it not evil elsewhere?

Gaza heats up again

A Hamas member was killed in a clash with a family in Gaza and six were injured. Palpress reports that it is the Daghmoush family which supposedly kidnapped Alan Johnston and that there were reports of two dead, but for now I'll only count Ma'an's one.

Palpress also reports on an Islamic Jihad print shop that was closed by Hamas.

Interestingly, one of the commenters on that page announced another Fatah rally at the Tomb of the Unknown Terrorist in Gaza on Frfiday, where the Fatah rally on Monday resulted in Hamas beating the demonstrators and confiscating cameras.

Our PalArab self-death count is at 505.

UPDATE: Maan and YNet confirm Palpress' report of two killed. 506.

Interview with Saraa, Hamas' 11-year old terror apologist

From McClatchy Newspapers (h/t Jihad Watch):

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Saraa Barhoum picked at the buttons on her pink bellbottom jeans as she twisted on a chair inside the bustling new Hamas television headquarters. The afternoon light bounced off the sparkly outlines of butterflies on her frilly top, and a colorful hijab framed her 11-year-old face.

Saraa wants to be a doctor. If she can't, the young star of Hamas television's best-known children's show said, she'd be proud to become a martyr. Saraa says little Jewish girls should be forced from their homes in Israel so that Palestinians can return to their land.

With the show's producer helpfully offering written tips during an interview, Saraa didn't get into how she hopes to die for her cause, be it suicide bombing, fighting the Israeli military or some other way. She carefully sidestepped any suggestion that she's subtly calling for the destruction of Israel .

" Israel says that we are terrorists," Saraa said minutes before an interview with her was interrupted by an errant Israeli airstrike that slammed into an apartment building on the adjacent block. "But they are the ones that must stop their attacks against us and our kids."

Saraa is the sweet face of "Tomorrow's Pioneers," a weekly, hour-long Hamas television children's show best known for bringing the world a militant Mickey Mouse look-alike and then having him killed off by an Israeli interrogator.

With her jarring mix of innocent charm and militant rhetoric, Saraa is at the center of the militant Islamist group's increasingly sophisticated campaign to become the dominant force in Palestinian politics.

Since it went on the air last year in the Gaza Strip , the Hamas -funded al Aqsa television has gained momentum and expanded its audience to include the West Bank .

Taking a lead from Hezbollah's al Manar television station in Beirut , Hamas is using al Aqsa to promote its agenda and challenge its rivals, in this case Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his fractured Fatah allies.

During its decisive June military showdown with Fatah in Gaza , Hamas used its television station to broadcast footage of Fatah leaders joking with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials. The message was clear: Fatah is in bed with America. After Fatah lost Gaza to Hamas , Fatah forces laid siege to al Aqsa's offices in the West Bank and arrested several employees.

The station, which operates with a license from the Palestinian Authority, also features religious lessons, cartoons, advice shows and militant music videos. One video hailed a female suicide bomber whose young daughter vows to follow her mother's example.

"Tomorrow's Pioneers" sparked an international furor in April when it began featuring Farfour, the Mickey Mouse look-alike who sounded more like Iran's firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than a Disney character.

After two months, Farfour was beaten to death on the show by an Israeli interrogator. Nahoul, a larger-than-life bee, is now carrying his message.

"A lot of people in Palestine have died as martyrs, and lots of Palestinians hope to be martyrs," Saraa said of Farfour's demise. "This is one of the ends."

Asked if she hoped one day to be a martyr, Saraa instinctively nodded her head.

"Of course," Saraa said. "It's something to be proud of. Every Palestinian citizen hopes to be a martyr."

Saraa helps deliver similar messages to Palestinian children from a Hamas TV set filled with colorful numbers and pictures of kittens. During the show, Saraa fields calls from Palestinian children who warble songs about Islam, liberating Jerusalem and finding answers in the barrel of a machine gun.

On one show, she cut off a caller who was singing about surrendering herself, presumably to God's will.

"We don't want to surrender," Saraa told the caller. "We want to resist."

On the show, Saraa offers moral lessons to viewers and urges them to do what they can to fight Israeli occupation. After some prodding in an interview, Saraa offered a personal message for Israeli girls her age.

"They have to leave," she said. "This is our country. They kicked us out and stole our happiness. This is a natural result."

This is pure child abuse and brainwashing for the singular purpose of ridding the Middle East of Jews.Teaching children to aspire to death shows, better than anything I can write, the depravity of Islamism.

Israeli research helps keep breasts perky

Sure, Israeli research is helping fight terrorism, reduce our dependence on Arab oil and save people's lives. But they are also doing their part for women's breasts worldwide.

What's not to love?

The MIM technique (Minimally Invasive Mastopexy), developed by the startup of the same name, promises to reshape, support and lift breast soft tissue in a much more minimally invasive manner than today's cosmetic breast surgery. They're calling their breast support kit the 'Cup&Up'.

"Today in aesthetic surgery, plastic surgeons reshape many body parts - the nose, butt, hands, tummy - most of the procedures are very intensive, risky ones, with long recovery periods, problems with scars, inconvenience. We're trying to develop a method to replace those surgical procedures with minimally invasive kits," says the MIM CEO Adi Cohen.

..."What we've done is build a silicon bra, insert it into the body and attach it to the ribs and to the fascia. It's like a normal external bra," he continues, "where a strip lies on the shoulder and attaches around the body. We attach it to the ribs instead of to the shoulder, and to the fascia in the lower part of the body."

...The procedure is minimally invasive requiring two small openings through which the device is attached to the ribs.

"It may sound scary but take a look at cosmetic and plastic surgery - that's much more invasive," said Gur. "The most prevalent procedure in the world is breast implantation. Who is the crazy woman who agreed to be the first woman to put silicon into her body? Very strange things happen within the cosmetic world and the MIM is not as crazy as it sounds; that's the end point of what I'm saying."

Cohen founded MIM in 2004 as part of the Meytav technological incubator in Kiryat Shmona. Within three years they have produced a final prototype which has undergone rigorous testing.

According to Gur, tests applied included strength, fatigue and endurance "because the device in the body will have to endure running, spinning, bike riding."

In the holy city of Medina, a Bangladeshi man decided to wash his car.

Luckily, our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice noticed him and arrested him.

As you may have surmised by now, he was washing the car during prayer times.

Unfortunately, after his arrest there was a horrible accident, he "fainted" and died while in custody of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

The head of the Muttawa said that three Commission officers were questioned and found completely without guilt in the man's death.

Once again, our heroic Vice Squad has been proven to be an effective force in stopping immorality and vice, and promoting virtue, all throughout the Kingdom!

The last episode can be found here.