Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

No-man's land: the difference between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs

The AP quotes Abbas' demands:

In a television interview, Abbas said the Palestinians want to establish a state on 6,205 square kilometers (2,400 square miles) of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was the first time he has given a precise number for the amount of land he is seeking.

"We have 6,205 square kilometers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," Abbas told Palestine TV. "We want it as it is."

According to Palestinian negotiating documents obtained by The Associated Press, the Palestinian demands include all of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, east Jerusalem and small areas along the West Bank frontier that were considered no-man's land before the 1967 war.

Let's talk about those small areas:

Two Bay Area visionaries have teamed up to turn a Jerusalem battlefield into a peace park.

San Francisco environmentalist and philanthropist Richard Goldman, the man behind the Goldman Environmental Prize known as the "Green Nobel," and celebrated landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, designer of the FDR Memorial in Washington and the new Sigmund Stern Grove, will receive a special award in June for their part in creating a 1 1/2-mile promenade linking East and West Jerusalem.

The promenade was built across Government Hill Ridge, a mountainside in southern Jerusalem that was no-man's land between Jordan and Israel from 1948 to 1967.

According to the New Testament, this was the Hill of Evil Counsel, where 2,000 years ago Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver on the eve of the crucifixion. More recently, it was where the Six Day War erupted in Jerusalem in 1967.

Thanks to Goldman and Halprin, the site is today a vast, tranquil park with a picture-postcard view that is shared by Muslims, Jews and Christians from across the city and around the world.

The Haas Promenade -- named in honor of Goldman's parents-in-law of the Levi Strauss family, and designed by Halprin -- was completed in 1987. It allows visitors to enjoy a spectacular view of the ancient Old City of Jerusalem, the surrounding biblical landscape and the new neighborhoods of East and West Jerusalem across a park with more than a mile of twisting pathways among olive trees and shrubbery.

The same team extended the park to create the Goldman Promenade, which was opened in 2002. This smaller path meanders eastward through a forest of Jerusalem pines toward an observation point overlooking the Judean Desert, the Dead Sea and the Mountains of Moab in Jordan.

Rather than "Judaizing" Jerusalem, as the Arabs always claim, these Jews worked with the Israeli government to build a beautiful park and promenade for all of Jerusalem to enjoy - Arabs, Jews and Christians.

Now, Mahmoud Abbas, that man of peace, not only wants all of East Jerusalem - not only does he want the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, not only does he want the Western Wall of the Temple Mount - but he is also "demanding" an area that was never even Jordanian.

An area that Jews cultivated and beautified for all of mankind - he wants to take away so it could become another Arab slum. He would prefer to see it turn into another Hamastan rather than let the hated Jews control it.

In the mind of even the most "moderate" Palestinian Arab, Jews must be restored to their rightful, second-class dhimmi status by any means possible. Negotiations, terror false promises of peace - they are all the same as long as the end result is that Jews control less land in the Middle East.

The contrast between Abbas' bigotry and extremism, and Israel's desire to compromise and find solutions for everybody, has never been more striking. His demand for an area that was never "Palestinian" on any map proves yet again that the goal of Fatah is identical with the goals of Hamas - not to gain "Palestinian" Arab lands but to take away land from Jews.

From 1948 to 1967, Palestinian Arabs didn't care when they were under Jordanian or Egyptian rule. their desire for a state was close to non-existent, and their efforts were aimed towards taking away Jewish land, not establishing a "Palestinian" Arab state. And this has not changed one bit.

The international community, cowed by fears of Arab terror, are more than willing to convince themselves that yet another Arab state in part of Western Palestine will help keep bombs out of their cities for a few years. It is that fear, rather than any real desire for truth of justice, that fuels the relentless pressure on Israel to keep on conceding more and more land over and over again in exchange for worthless promises that usually get broken within months. Annapolis is yet another exercise in this chapter of the vast effectiveness of terrorism in accomplishing its goals.

And the diabolical brilliance of Yasir Arafat was in his starting his major terror campaigns against Western airplanes - and then stopping to concentrate only on Israel. He understood that continuing to directly confront the West would bring his downfall, but to offer the West a deal where they only have to sacrifice Israel to mollify the terrorists was an irresistable offer to a world that has no love for Jews to begin with.

Denying reality to promote misoziony

Here's a useful place to use the word I coined yesterday.

A few days ago, the Iranian ambassador to Chile showed up at the launch party of a book about Hashomer Hatzair and he chatted a bit with the Israeli ambassador:

Shortly after the beginning of their conversation, Jalali leaned over and whispered: "I have to tell you something, but don't be offended, it's nothing personal. We are forbidden from speaking with Israeli diplomats."

How does Iran react to this horrible breach of Iranian etiquette? By denying that it ever happened:

An informed source at Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denied certain media reports that Iran's ambassador to Santiago, Chile, had held talks with a Zionist regime diplomat.
The source told IRNA that the news has been published by a daily based in the occupied lands.
He said such propaganda raised by the Zionist media was not something new and authenticity of such claims has never been confirmed.

This is not the first time this has occurred - only last month we saw very similar circumstances:

Officials from Israel and Iran put aside political animosity Tuesday to work together in using Israeli forensics expertise to identify their dead from the crash of a jetliner on a Thai resort island.
"It's human nature to help in solving this problem as soon as possible," Safdar Shafiee said at the Iranian Embassy in Bangkok after shaking hands with Yaki Oved, head representative of Israeli police in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
"In situations like this, you forget the division," Oved said. "The main thing is to help. You don't think about the politics."

And the Iranian reaction?

Iran's envoy to Thailand has denied the allegations that Iranian and Israeli teams had cooperated to identify the Thai plane crash's victims.

Mohsen Pak Aeen said that the Iranian team received help from Thai experts, Iranian and Thai travel agencies and Iranian nationals living in Thailand to identify the crash victims.

Pak Aeen added there was no contact between the Iranian consulate in Phuket and Israeli nationals.

This is pure misoziony - the seething hatred of all things Israeli causes Iranians to deny events that were witnessed by dozens of people. (It is so pathological that they cannot bring themselves to say the word "Israel.")

The inherent irrationality of misoziony discredits anything that Iran says - yet it is so strong that they hate Israel more than they value their own credibility.

Jew severely beaten in Lakewood

From the Star Ledger:

An Orthodox Jewish man was hit on the head with a baseball bat in Lakewood last night, leaving him with life-threatening injuries as authorities searched for suspects, police said.
The unidentified beating victim, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, was found lying unconscious in the street on Princeton Avenue, near 12th Street, about 8 p.m., Lt. Michael Mooney said. Mooney added injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

Police responded to the scene on reports of a man down.

Although the victim was dressed in Orthodox Jewish clothing, police are not treating the incident as a bias crime at this point because they have no suspects or motive, Mooney said.

A baseball bat was found near the victim, and K-9 units were being used in the search.

Egypt: Shalit in "good condition." How do they know?

From AFP:

An Israeli soldier held by Gaza militants for more than 15 months is in good condition, Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was quoted as telling an Israeli minister today.
"Gilad Shalit is in good condition. He feels well and has even gained some weight because he does not do any exercise," Suleiman told Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai who held one-day talks in Cairo yesterday, one of his senior aides said.

Since the Red Cross is not permitted to visit Shalit, the only ways that Suleiman can know this is:

- He believes what Hamas says, showing that Egypt is hardly an honest broker.

- Shalit is in Egypt and Egypt is complicit.

- Suleiman has gone to Gaza to see him.

In any of these cases it seems to indicate that Egypt tilts more towards Hamas terrorists than to Israel.

Aspen TV station considering airing Holocaust denial video

From the October 6 Aspen Times:

ASPEN — A controversial Holocaust denial film is raising questions about free speech at GrassRoots TV, the Aspen community-access station.

Steve Campbell, founder of Citizens for 9/11 Truth, asked the station to air “Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II” on Monday, but GrassRoots TV board members stopped the screening.

The one-hour program features Dr. Frederick Töben, an Australian national and member of the Adelaide Institute, an organization that denies that the Holocaust ever happened.

“This film is offensive not only to Jews in the world, but to any sensible person,” said GrassRoots TV Executive Director John Masters.

But the question of airing the film he called “like an homage to [Joseph] Goebbels” has stirred a “healthy debate” at the station, Masters said.

The newspaper itself is firmly on the side of the oxy-moronic "truthers":

Our local television station, GrassRoots TV, this week faces a tough question of whether to air a video that’s offensive to many of its board members and viewers. The video takes a “critical view” of the Holocaust and goes so far as to suggest that Hitler’s Germany was under attack by an “international Zionist elite,” and not the other way around.

We urge GrassRoots to run the video, “Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II” — not because we agree with it but because Aspen shouldn’t be frightened of a dissenting viewpoint.

The GrassRoots board meets Thursday to discuss not only what to do about this video, but what to do with other questionable material. We hope the management and the board choose a path of openness rather than censorship; it’s in keeping with democracy and the spirit of public access television....

This video shows the Holocaust deniers for the crackpots that they are. If viewers wish to see it, then let them. Suppressing this stuff only gives it power.

This has nothing to do with free speech.

TV stations, and newspapers, (and university daises for that matter) have limitations on what I'll call "bandwidth." By choosing to allow hate to be broadcast, printed or otherwise spewed, no matter what the context, they give it legitimacy. Choosing what to allow in bandwidth-limited media is not censorship, it is editing, and it necessarily happens all the time.

The only media that has no limitations on bandwidth is the Internet. As a result, people who want to see this video are free to do so. Nobody's free speech is limited in the least.

Would the enlightened editors at the Aspen Times allow the publication of an op-ed that argues for the re-establishment of slavery?

Another Google "News" source with explicit anti-semitism

For some bizarre reason, Google started indexing as "news" a site called ProgressiveU.org which appears to be a bunch of drunk college students blogging random thoughts.

An example of pure anti-semitic drivel can be seen here. It is so over the top that I was convinced it was a joke ("Alot of people have known about the criminology of these Jews and since they own everything they are able to supress the victims from talking. well, not this victim. ReAD! Remember, the Nazi's were never found. Only a couple of scap goats were prosecuted. And they never found Hitlers body. I found out he was living with the British Monarchy up until his death in 2005. I met his son, in 1988. He was in his late teens back then. There has been a hugh cover up and it is time we did something to do about it! READ!") but then the author appended a long, more serious Jew-hating article.

There are other articles that are equally bad, all indexed by Google News.

Once again, if you want to complain to Google the URL is here.

Misoziony

While the irrational hatred of Israel and Zionism is often a good indicator of a hatred of Jews as well, use of "anti-semitism" is often a distraction from the argument being made, and overuse of that term waters it down over time.

Misoziony , although I'm not sure how it is pronounced, is a word that may solve this problem. Miso- is a prefix, based on the Greek misos, that means "hatred." Misoziony - the hatred of Israel and Zionism - is a fundamentally irrational loathing that is just as disgusting as anti-semitism but without the baggage.

Misozionists like to say, for example, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not anti-semitic because he allows a number of Jews to live in relative peace in Iran, as long as they keep in their place. Arguing that this is but a more subtle form of anti-semitism - which it is - takes away from the prime argument that Ahmadinejad singlemindedly wants to see the Israel utterly destroyed. Arab and Islamic anti-semitism is generally more subtle nowadays than their naked misoziony.

Hating Israel in grossly disproportionate ways compared to the behavior of any other nation is a sickness that is closely related to anti-semitism but it is not identical. Misoziony shows itself to be no less reprehensible than pure anti-semitism, because the desire to see the destruction of Israel is as disgusting as any bigotry.

Israel-bashers like to claim that Zionists use the term "anti-semitism" as a club to crush all criticism of Israel. The problem is, of course, that the same crowd uses the claim of Zionist use of anti-semitism as a means to avoid discussing real issues. The word misoziony can neatly solve that problem and can help re-focus the arguments back on their fundamentally untenable bases. Pointing out misoziony can help to sharpen the debate and point out the basic irrationality of the Israel-bashers.

It is also a much more convenient term when talking about the Jimmy Carters or Walt/Mearsheimers of the world. While they claim that they are not against the existence of Israel, there is no doubt that they suffer from misoziony, uniquely blaming Israel for a large number of world problems and simultaneously absolving everyone else. It is probably not accurate to call them anti-semites but they are firmly in the misozionist camp.

What do you think?

Egypt allows 30 Islamic Jihad terrorists into Gaza

Ma'an reports:

The Egyptian authorities on Tuesday morning permitted the entry of around thirty Palestinians into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Crossing, between Egypt and Gaza.

The majority of returning Palestinians were members of the Islamic Jihad movement.

Sources from Islamic Jihad reported that the majority were members of the military wing of the movement, the Al-Quds Brigades, and one was a Hamas loyalist.

Egypt, which denied that it released some 75 Hamas terrorists in late September, is breaking all of its agreements with Israel.

The EU Rafah "observers," still on the EU payroll, are sitting idly by.

Israel remains silent.

And Gazans now have more terror to look forward to.

Morning links

Front Page: Arab-Israeli Fatalities Rank 49th

Augean Stables: Insights into Honor-Shame Culture: Reflections of an American-born Israeli Officer among Bedouin Soldiers

Hot Air: Jimmy Carter on Darfur: What genocide?

Slate: Hitchens on The Price of Freedom

(h/t Omri, Backspin, LGF)

Israel's terrible Internet hasbara

Last July I quoted an Omedia article highly critical of the IDF's information policies. At least by judging from the website, it appears to be even worse nowadays - and the IDF is not alone in its horrendous record of hasbara, and the Israeli government's web efforts highlight these shortcomings all too well.

The IDF web site's English section is a joke. There is nothing about current operations, no press releases, no substantive articles describing its philosophy - almost nothing. And there is an empty video section. In the era of YouTube, this is unforgivable. Even the photograph section is impossible to navigate in Firefox and woefully out of date.

It's Hebrew section seems marginally better - at least there are some videos - but in general it is just as hard to navigate, and the world audience is not conversant in Hebrew.

The IDF is not the only Israeli organization that is failing in its obligation to tell the world its story. Even the Foreign Ministry website - better than the IDF's, to be sure - has stories on its front page that are months old. Its video section is sparse as well, with no indication of even what year the videos were created.

Even the IsRealli blog, which was launched with much fanfare a year or so ago by the Israel Consulate in New York, is being updated only once or twice a week.

Compare these with the Israel Insider website, the video site Israel Up Close, the excellent Israel21c site and its associated blog Israelity. These are professional, attractive and updated sites that do what Israel's official websites do not - inform the world about what is really going on and show a side of Israel that is never seen on the news.

The talent exists for Israel to do a better job in Internet hasbara. The poor track record needs to be improved, and quickly.

UPDATE: Two commenters mentioned Israelplug.com and it looks like a very good and entertaining site.

This week's marriage fatwas

MEMRI uncovered two interesting fatwas today:

A sheikh from Al-Azhar, Farahat Al-Manji, decreed that a marriage ceremony acted out by two actors for a film or a television show is valid and binding.
According to the fatwa, if the woman is already married, the second marriage is considered bigamous.

Source: Islamonline.net, October 2, 2007

Egypt's Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs has decreed that misyar marriages – "pleasure marriages" in which the woman gives up some of the rights granted her by Islam, such as the right to housing and financial support from her husband – are permissible in Islam.

The council, which is the major fatwa-issuing body in Egypt, added that the marriages are allowed as long as all provisions specified by shari'a have been met, and as long as they are not banned by the state.

Source: Alarabiya.net, October 2 2007.

Misyar marriages, of course, are pretty much Muslim-sanctioned prostitution for Sunnis. Muslims will go on business trips and "marry" a local girl just for sex. (A similar type of temporary marriage for Shias is called Mut'ah and it is a marriage for a pre-determined set amount of time - Shiites and Sunnis each strongly feel that the other type of marriage is forbidden.)

These two fatwas show that Muslims have watered down the definition of marriage and divorce so much that the terms are almost meaningless, and any social safeguards that the "decadent" West has for monogamy and respect for women are not only non-existent in Islam, but the concomitant disrespect for women is religiously sanctioned.

PA willingly cedes control of Jerusalem - to Jordan

From YNet:

Israel and the Palestinians have agreed that the Temple Mount as well as other parts of the Old City in Jerusalem will be under Jordanian control as part of a future peace deal, a Palestinian daily reported on Monday.

The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi reported that President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reached the agreement during recent talks in Jerusalem. Under the arrangement, the Old City's Arab residents will be granted Jordanian citizenship.

The newspaper did not say whether Israel would keep control of Jewish holy sites and neighborhoods in the Old City.

The arrangement will make the Jordanian monarchy a guardian of holy Muslim shrines in Jerusalem.

Forgetting the utter stupidity and breathtaking shortsightedness of Kadima allowing Jerusalem to be divided again:

If Jerusalem is so important to Palestinian Arabs and has been so important for so many centuries, why would they willingly give up control to another nation? Why is Jordan a preferable custodian of holy sites in Jerusalem than Israel from a PalArab perspective?

The reason is, of course, because Palestinian Arabs do not want control of these lands! They do not want the headaches of running a real state and solving real problems. Their attachment to "Al-Quds" is a farce, and the numerous photos of the Dome of the Rock that grace every Palestinian Arab website and TV broadcast are only for show. Their entire existence as a people is due to their leaders deliberately separating them from their Arab brothers for the past sixty years, for the singular purpose of using them as cannon fodder to help destroy Israel.

A real people, proud of their heritage and proud of Jerusalem, would never accede to giving their holiest and most important site to a completely different nation. The only goal here is to take away land from the Jews rather than to own and cherish it themselves. As long as Arabs own it, it matters little to them who controls it - just as long as they are not Jews. The entire idea of Palestinian Arab nationalism is shown to be a farce by this agreement.

(I am well aware of the irony of the first sentence of the last paragraph, as it shows that the Israeli Left is equally dismissive of their own religious and cultural heritage. If something is not done soon, we will in a couple of years witness Israeli policemen forcibly dragging Jews away from the Old City in the name of "peace" - proving that the blind pursuit of an illusory "peace process" is more irrational than most religions are.)

EU "observers" still silent on Hamas terrorists crossing Rafah

As I mentioned last week, Egypt allowed some 85 Hamas terrorists to enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing late last month.

Today, the EU BAM Rafah website still has not acknowledged that it was complicit in this event by allowing it to happen. Their last press release is from July 7, saying that even though Hamas had taken over Gaza they still plan to maintain their presence.

Now, that's a cushy job! Live in Israel, stay on the EU payroll and don't lift a finger to stop terrorists and weapons from freely entering Gaza.

Fatah spokesman in Arabic: Negotiations with Israel just another form of "resistance"

The Palestine Press Agency reports in Arabic (autotranslated):

(Ahmed) Abdul Rahman (senior advisor to Mahmoud Abbas) confirmed that the negotiations are a form of work for the Palestinian resistance option and Palestinian ending the oppressive Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Abdul Rahman added, "If the Israelis Mtandin negotiator with the Palestinian side does not mean that despair, but we will continue to work through all possible means to us, explaining that one of the forms of struggle that is the international conference called for by President Bush, especially since many of the officials said that the hour is hours of an independent Palestinian state and an end to Israeli occupation....

Abdul Rahman stressed that the issue of concessions is not included final and the Palestinian side had nothing to give him, but we have what we want to Nabdeh to end the Israeli occupation.

The word "struggle" is a code word for "terror", so Abbas' senior advisor is mollifying the bloodthirsty Palestinian Arab population by saying that negotiations are just another form of "resistance" aimed at getting everything from Israel without any compromise on the Palestinian Arab side. He also makes very clear that terror is still a very viable option for Fatah as a means to extract more from Israel - even after successful negotiations.

You will not find any Western media translating this interview.

Qods Day postscript

Qods Day has come and gone, but it is worth mentioning that this day that is meant to fake Islamic ties to Jerusalem was created by the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran in 1979.

Khomeini also was responsible for another novel legal rulin g (warning - this is mind-bogglingly disgusting):

"A man can marry a girl younger than nine years of age, even if the girl is still a baby being breastfed. A man, however is prohibited from having intercourse with a girl younger than nine, while other sexual acts such as foreplay, rubbing, and kissing are allowed. A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not committed a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged. If the girl, however, is permanently damaged, the man must provide for her all her life. But this girl will not count as one of the man's four permanent wives. He also is not permitted to marry the girl's sister."^[34]^[35]

Khomeini specifically described an act known as thighing that allowed an adult male to simulate sex with a female child without penetration:
"Thighing is a means for an adult male to enjoy a young girl who is still in the age of weaning; meaning to place his penis between her thighs, and to kiss her."^[36]

With such a prestigious pedigree, it is no wonder that Qods Day has gained popularity among many Shi'a Muslims!