Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Another peaceful day in Hamastan

Just this morning's headlines in the Palestine Press Agency Arabic website:
- Internal Hamas fighting in Gaza City, a number injured (autotranslate says "killed" but I believe that is a mistranslation of "shot" from the context)
- The PA Health Ministry condemned Hamas taking over medical and pharmacy services
- Hamas attacked two Palestinian Arab journalists and destroyed their cameras
- Another Hamas attack on the "courts compound" in Gaza
- Someone burned a Hamas car in Jabaliya

All of these events were reported today.

Peace is at hand!

Arabs importing poisonous "holy water" to UK

From Arab News:

Allegations that poisonous Zamzam water is being smuggled into Britain are exercising the minds of UK Muslims. The containers, which sell for the equivalent of SR25 each, are purporting to come from Makkah on their labels.
Containers that have been analyzed by UK health and safety officials have been found to hold water that contains raised levels of arsenic and nitrates that, if consumed over extended periods of time, could prove fatal.
Saudi Arabia forbids the sale of Zamzam. The holy water is freely distributed at its source. Its bottling and distribution is strictly controlled and monitored by the government and commercial export is illegal. Each year, however, millions of foreign pilgrims carry containers home as private export.
Genuine Zamzam, analyzed in 1971, contains greater quantities of calcium and magnesium salts than most other waters. It also contains fluorides that strengthen teeth’s enamel.
However, some of the fake Zamzam has been analyzed and found to contain almost three times as much nitrate and twice as much arsenic as the World Health Organization believes is safe. Children under six months and elderly people are particularly vulnerable to excessive nitrate while regular consumption of arsenic in water is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year in southeast Asia.
...The Health and Social Services website of the Central London Mosque (www.iccservices.org.uk) quotes a BBC article reporting the seizure of a consignment of suspected fake Zamzam at the start of Ramadan by Westminster City Council.
The “Muslim Weekly” in the UK reported last week that inspectors in the London Borough of Hackney seized a vanload of contaminated counterfeit cases of the water.
Similar seizures have been carried out in Gloucester, Barnsley and Leicester.
The potential for fraud and the profit in sale of fake Zamzam to the unwary is huge. In a recent case quoted by Teinaz, an Islamic bookshop was selling an estimated 20,000 liters of Zamzam water a week.
Teinaz said he “was aware” of examples of vans transporting vast quantities of the fake water to mosques where their imams ordered their followers to buy the substance. Some of the water, according to customs officials, is smuggled into Britain in crates of vegetables and furniture.
Speaking to “Muslim Weekly”, Teinaz said traders had misled the authority at air and seaports for years telling them that Zamzam was for external use.
“I would like to urge those selling the water to fear Allah. They’re making money at the expense of their brothers and sisters’ health who will end up very ill by consuming the contaminated water,” he said. “It is very sad to see a Muslim cheating another Muslim.”

As opposed to....?

The Arab News is adamant that this water is not from the real Zamzam well, seemingly based on a chemical analysis from 1971. It would be interesting to see if newer analysis confirms that.

Misoziony at a San Francisco art gallery

From Oy Bay:

Himmelberger Gallery, a well-known art gallery located in San Francisco’s tony Union Square, has decided to cancel plans to publish an art catalogue of one of its represented artists, noted author Alan Kaufman, who is under contract to the gallery. The decision is due to use of the word Zionism in the catalogue’s title ‘Visionary Expressionism: A Zionist Art.” Kaufman said in response:
For myself, I want to say that to see oneself and ones colleagues censored for expression of a Zionist perspective is one of the most shocking experiences I’ve ever had as an artist, or writer. But what made it especially hard was to see my fellow writers, David Twersky, David Rosenberg, Etgar Keret, Polly Zavadivker, also censored. It was then that I understood that this was not merely censorship of me: this was censorship of an entire community, of my people, the Jewish People; of my colleagues, my fellow writers and artists. This drove home to me like nothing else that I must never accept such censorship from anyone, under any circumstances. I must stand up proudly as a Zionist and express myself freely, without shame or reservation.

The gallery objects to the expressly Zionist focus of several essay contributions to the catalogue by well-known authors and journalists, including David Twersky, contributing editor of the New York Sun and senior adviser, International Affairs for American Jewish Congress; noted scholar David Rosenberg, author (with Harold Bloom) of The Book of J and most recently of Abraham: The First Historical Biography; Etgar Keret, widely acknowledged as Israel’s most popular young writer, and whose books include The Nimrod Flip-Out and The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be G-d ; and Polly Zavadivker, a young scholar completing graduate studies in Hebrew and Judaics at New York University and currently working as a grants officer at the Jewish Federation in Oakland, California. Kaufman, whose critically acclaimed books include the memoir Jew Boy and the novel Matches has an essay and an interview, conducted by Zavadivker, in the catalogue.

The catalogue was to present 15 of Kaufman’s paintings which are under contract to the gallery and whose subjects range from the Holocaust to Israel to the New Antisemitism. The gallery’s prices for the works in question have been cited at between $3,275 and $36,000. The works have hung in the gallery and a cross-section of them also appeared on the gallery website .

At a meeting between gallery head David Himmelberger and Kaufman, Himmelberger surprised the artist and author with an eleventh hour decision not to proceed with the catalogue due to the Zionist “agenda” of the essays as well as some of the paintings. Himmelberger said that such a presentation was antithetical to the aims of the gallery, which promotes “international understanding” and forswears all forms of nationalism and religion. But the authors see this as a transparent example of the way in which the word Zionism has been exiled from civil discourse and has been turned by the cultural establishment into a refugee of a word, a pariah of an idea, and a euphemism for Antisemitism.

The Himmelberger Gallery website seems to have deleted its web pages that used to feature Alan Kaufman (the Google cached versions are here. )

The reason given by Himmelberger, that the gallery "forswears all forms of nationalism and religion," seems highly improbable - it did once feature some 9/11-themed paintings that included the artist's interpretation of the American flag.

It seems far more likely that the very word "Zionist" used in a positive context is so viscerally disgusting to the gallery owner that he had to invent a reason to stop the exhibition that would save face.

Aspen station decides not to air Holocaust denial film

An Aspen public-access TV station has decided not to air a Holocaust-denial video that was being pushed by a 9/11 "truther":

The GrassRoots TV board of directors voted Monday to ban a controversial Holocaust-denial film.

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 Oct. 1.

But after prescreening the film, which questions conventional wisdom about the Holocaust, GrassRoots TV board members stopped the airing, pending further debate.

The board held an open forum on the matter Oct. 11 to gauge community reaction.

"The GrassRoots Television board has decided not to air the film 'Judea declares War on Germany,'" GrassRoots TV board chairman Alan Feldman said in a statement after the board meeting Monday.

"After careful consideration and community input, the board concluded that this film is obscene, repugnant to the generally accepted notion of what is appropriate in our community. GrassRoots TV will not allow the station to be used as a vehicle to incite hatred against any group. GrassRoots Television will issue a more detailed statement to our community in coming days."

Feldman promised a board policy in the future: "Our community spoke, and we have given it a lot of rational thinking," Feldman said. "We have the ability to refuse to air something if we believe it's obscene."

Campbell called it a "poor decision."

"Unfortunately, it shows basically what I and others have tried to say about this whole issue," Campbell said. "There are those who don't want you to see this information, and they'll do anything they can to stop you from watching it. And that's just what they're doing."

Campbell has shown other controversial films on GrassRoots, as well as on Rifle's public access station, he said.

He called the debate over "Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II" a matter of "conscious-raising."

"I just think that it's a travesty what's going on," Campbell said.

Campbell said he is not planning any legal action against GrassRoots but added, "By censoring this film, it's only going to make people watch it more."

Campbell said that while he is being censored now, "The truth will come out. It's just like the grass that grows between the cracks in the sidewalk."

He said he might try and air the film in another venue, but he was disappointed that the large audience in Aspen wouldn't see it.

"This is part of the beginning of the loss of our freedoms of expression and speech and the dissemination of information just so certain people can maintain their status quo," Campbell said.

As I mentioned last week, the Aspen Times newspaper editorialized that the film be shown.

Notice how they cover this story above: giving far more space to the illiterate anti-semite ("conscious-raising"?) than to the people who made the decision. Not to mention the oh-so-politically correct way of referring to one of the purest forms of hate speech as simply "controversial" and as "question(ing the) conventional wisdom about the Holocaust."

The "censored" video is available at Amazon (one reviewer, 4 stars) and can be seen on-line if you care to look for it.

The name of the production company, believe it or not, is Amalek Productions.

Sixty years ago: Wishful Western thinking about Arab goals

Sixty years ago, in October 1947, the big news from Palestine was that both the US and the Soviet Union had accepted the idea of partition. It was still very unclear how exactly partition would occur - the prevailing thoughts were that a multinational force, perhaps the UN, would go into Palestine and enforce the partition.

The entire world was very concerned as to what would happen. The Arab League met in Beirut, plotting a response, and there were reports of Arab armies mobilizing on the borders of Palestine, getting ready to attack.

In the October 13th Palestine Post, Great Britain sought to assure the world that the Arabs were only posturing, and had no intent to actually attack. American experts concurred:

Arab leaders in Haifa rushed to assure everyone that while Arabs might want to use oil as a weapon against America for their support for partition, they would never attack anyone:

Three additional stories in the October 15 Palestine Post quoted various people who assured the world that there was nothing to worry about.

Great Britain had this to add:

Yes, everything would be orderly. They wouldn't just leave and allow the Jews to be indiscriminately slaughtered, would they?

And the Arabs also were at pains to show that they had no intentions of provoking violence, and any reports to the contrary were Zionist lies:

Experts had no problem weighing in as well. After all, the very idea of Arabs attacking was simply not logical:

On the 16th, it was reported that Egypt was sending troops to the Sinai border - but this move was also dismissed as just posturing:

Meanwhile, Syria and Lebanon openly called for war. But the all-knowing analysts for the Great Powers knew that they were not serious:

So sixty years ago the Middle East was on the verge of a momentous decision; a meeting at the UN to happen in November that would have far-reaching implications. The best and brightest political minds on the planet had an array of facts before them - Arab threats and statements, how Arabs had acted in the recent past, the seething hatred Arabs had for the Jews. And almost every single one of them chose to ignore anything bad that the Arabs did or said, and replace cold facts with wishful thinking and assumptions that Arabs are more pragmatic than they had shown themselves to be in the past.

Over this four day period, as the region was hurtling towards a war whose impact is still being felt, the prevailing conventional wisdom was that everything would be all right. Immediately after the UN partition vote would start a string of major Arab attacks against Jewish civilians from all directions.

In the months to come it would become more and more clear that despite all of these assurances, despite all these rosy predictions, despite promises that everything would be done to keep things peaceful - despite all that, no one would protect the Jews from the Arab armies who were preparing even this early to destroy them. The Zionists realized this and they knew that they could only rely on themselves, and God, to help them.

Sixty years later, the Arabs are making it clear that if things don't go the way they want, they will start a new round of violence. Even so, the world's superpower is assuring Israel that the Arabs have no intention of continuing their murderous ways, and is pressuring Israel to turn itself back towards how things were in1947, with hostile Arabs living once again amidst the Jews they hate with a passion. The great powers are promising that there will be no rockets from the West Bank, that Hamas is not biding its time for the PA to gain land diplomatically that could then become the basis for a West Bank Hamastan, and that - however improbably - Gaza will once again come under "moderate" PA control.

Once again, wishful thinking is replacing real analysis and observations, and empty promises are being offered in exchange for Israel's security.

The Arabs are highly sensitive to symbolism, and they are looking at November 2007 to be the watershed event that will help turn back the events of November 1947. And so far, they have willing partners in the UN, EU and United States - and even the Israeli government itself - all anxious to risk everything on the basis of blind hope.

After all, it is easy to gamble with lives when they are not yours.

Condi: Now is the time to reward terror

From AP:

Secretary of State Condoleezza said Monday it was "time for the establishment of a Palestinian state," and described Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as the most serious in years.

Let's see. In the seven years since the last great lame-duck presidential push to create a Palestinian Arab state, what have the Palestinian Arabs done to make them more deserving of a state?

Have they decided to compromise on land? No.
Have they decided to give up on their demands to destroy Israel demographically? No.
Have they done any concrete moves to stop terror attacks against Israel? No.
Have they stopped terrorists from taking over Gaza? No.

In fact, since 2000, they launched a major terror war against Israel, they've launched hundreds of rockets and thousands of mortars, they've killed thousands of Israelis and each other, they've freely elected a terrorist government, they've cheered Israeli and American deaths, they showed allegiance to Saddam Hussein, they've smuggled thousands of weapons into Gaza, and they've increased their anti-Israel rhetoric. They've watched their justice system collapse, they've hired thousands of terrorists to be their "security forces," they've fought each other, they've circumvented democracy, they've threatened and kidnapped journalists. The relative peace that Israel enjoys now is entirely because of Israeli actions, and not at all because of the PA. Hamas still has great influence in much of the West Bank outside Ramallah. Fatah still exists as a terrorist organization behind many terror and rocket attacks, despite being part of the "government." Palestinian Arab heroes are those who managed to kill the most Jews. Their universities churn out terrorists; their imams broadcast incitement against Israel and America on TV, every official from the President on down continues to extol the "resistance".

So, Condoleeza, why exactly is now the time for them to get their own state? I'd love to know what they've done to impress you so much since 2000. Installing (probably illegally) a well-respected prime minister who is too scared to speak against terror publicly seems to be their greatest accomplishment from your perspective.

From their own perspective, however, their greatest accomplishment had been to get the Secretary of State to respond to all of their 7 years of terror and incitement with a statement that now is the time to establish a Palestinian Arab state.

How else can this be perceived besides being a reward for terror and hate? If there is another way to interpret this, please enlighten us, Condi. I must be too dense to figure it out.

Anti-semitic act at the UN? Reporters stay mum.

Steven Edwards in the National Post writes an opinion piece saying that sometimes it is best to ignore racist and bigoted acts because publicizing them plays into the hands of the haters. The example that he brings, of a Jewish/Israeli colleague brushing off such an incident, seems to imply that someone at the UN made a threat against a Jew there:

A Jewish colleague recently returned to his desk at the United Nations to discover someone had anonymously dropped off a full-colour map showing Nazi-controlled Europe in 1942.
An Israeli, he had days earlier been among journalists Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the anti-Israel Iranian President, had approached after giving a press conference.
Ahmadinejad had no idea who any of the journalists were as he sought to charm them with a handshake, and quickly withdrew his hand when my colleague announced he was a "proud Zionist."
The colleague could have made all sorts of fuss about the appearance of the Nazi map, suggesting there had been a connection between that occurrence and the handshake with Ahmadinejad, or even other anti-Israel sentiment at the UN, of which there is much.
To my surprise, he did not dwell on the incident, saying only he wouldn't mind knowing who exactly left the map and why.
It seems likely the map depositor was trying to make some sort of negative -- even threatening -- point. My colleague's reaction disempowered that person.

With all due respect to Mr. Edwards and his friend, an explicit anti-semitic act at the United Nations should be exposed. This is not the same as a random swastika in a public place, which is bad enough, but this implies that an employee or associate of the organization that is supposed to be a major upholder of peace is guilty not only of misoziony but also of naked Jew-hatred. That is, by definition, newsworthy.

It is arguable whether the Jewish victim disempowered his attacker by ignoring him, or it is entirely possible that his ignoring it could empower that person to do something worse later, but what cannot be denied is that this event is something that should have been exposed.

For that matter, so should the handshake incident between this Israeli and Ahmadinejad. I could find no record of this, from any of the hundreds of journalists that covered the Iranian thug's visit, just as they ignored Karnit Goldwasser's encounter with Ahmadinejad - witnessed by dozens of reporters and academics.

What the hell is wrong with journalists when they argue that they should be reporting less, or when they accept invitations from a dictator for dinner and refuse to report it, as Brian Williams and Christiane Amanpour evidently did?

Journalistic bias should be towards more news, not less, especially in an era of unlimited Internet bandwidth. Imagine the outcry from journalists if a politician would argue that they shouldn't have covered the Columbia bias cases last week.

These stories not being reported seem to indicate that the mainstream media is an old-boys club as opposed to a group of people dedicated to exposing real news.

These guys love him!

Only Israel can "raise tensions"

From Arab News:

The Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) is set to renew its excavations soon at the Al-Magharebah Gate in the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound near the Western Wall (Al-Buraq Wall) in Jerusalem after receiving the approval of an Israeli ministerial committee, which may exacerbate tensions with neighboring countries ahead of next month’s planned Annapolis peace summit, the Israeli organization Ir Amim reported yesterday.

Also from Arab News:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday she will tell Israel that its expropriation of Arab lands erodes confidence in its commitment to a two-state solution.

Let's review a couple of stories from just the past couple of weeks:

Palestinian Arab negotiators demand to control the holiest spots in Judaism
Arabs turned Joseph's Tomb into a garbage dump
Palestinian Arab leaders threatened a third intifada if they don't get what they want
The PA newspaper had a cartoon calling on Allah to kill Americans

For some strange reason, none of these news stories was accompanied with phrases saying how these Fatah moves could "exacerbate tensions" with Israel, or that they could "erode confidence".

It's almost as if these "negotiations" are pre-determined to be completely one sided! Naaaaah, there must be some other explanation.

PalArabs love statistics. So do I.

The PA put out a press release today saying that since 1967, some 191 Palestinian Arab prisoners have died in Israel jails. As usual they are spinning this as an example of horrible human rights abuses by Israel, and they painstakingly break down how many were jailed pre-Oslo and post-Oslo, how many died from alleged torture and other causes. Lots and lots of numbers.

Let's forget the fact that this year alone at least 540 Palestinian Arabs have been killed by each other, which makes 191 dead over 40 years seem to be a pretty good record. But let's try to look at the numbers.

At the moment, there are some 11,000 PalArab prisoners in Israeli jails, and that number has been rising the past couple of years. In 2004 there were 7000. During the Oslo process, Israel had released practically all of its prisoners; in 1997 there were only about 250 and in 1999 there were at least 650. In 1980 there were close to 3000.

Another Palestinian Arab organization claims that since 1967, some 650,000 Palestinian Arabs have been detained by Israel.

These are hardly complete numbers, but it sounds like a reasonable assumption that at any point in time since 1967, a couple of thousand Palestinian Arabs would be in jail on the average.

Now, according to the CIA Factbook, the current mortality rate in the West Bank is 3.85 deaths per thousand, and in Gaza it is 3.74. So in any given year, one would expect some 4 prisoners per thousand to die anyway (this could be considered misleading because the majority of prisoners are young males, but the media age for Palestinian Arabs is only about 16 years old anyway and there are significant risks of death for young males in the territories from both Palestinian Arab and Israeli defensive actions.)

We would assume that, mirroring standard Palestinian Arab mortality rates, and guessing that the rate of increase in numbers of prisoners from 2000 to 2007 is fairly steady, that just in the years 2000-2007 we would have seen over 180 prisoners die. However, only 68 have died since 2000 according to the new statistics.

For the years prior to 2000 it is a bit harder to guess, but from 1993-1999 we will assume 400 per year average, which would come out to an expected total of 10 to die in that timeframe.

Similarly, if we assume a steady average of 3000 prisoners at any time from 1967 to 1992, we would expect to see 11 to die a year, which would add up to 275 dead prisoners since in that timeframe.

So, if we assume a constant mortality rate over all those years (which is clearly underestimating the real numbers), we would have expected about 465 prisoners to die naturally, rather than the 191 recorded.

The only conclusion one can make is that Israel treats its Palestinian Arab prisoners far better than they would be treated in their hometowns, and that when they are in prison they die at less than half the rate that they would be expected to die at home.

This doesn't jive with the reports of torture and horrid prison conditions that Palestinian Arabs love to tell the world.

I would like to thank the PA for releasing these statistics that show the world that even Palestinian Arab prisoners, in less than optimal conditions directly under Israeli control, are still treated far better than they pretend.

HH CXXXVI

Haveil Havalim #136, a compendium of the best of the JBlogosphere, is out at Soccer Dad.

This week I am honored that he chose my posting on Misoziony. My thirst for the power of coining a new word continues unabated - Google now has 11 listings for that word, almost all of them from automated aggregators that picked up on my postings, but still...

Check out HH!

Terrorists for Hillary

Excerpts from an article by the incomparable Aaron Klein in the Jewish Press:

There is a tendency to think of terrorists as living like barbarians in caves. Actually, a lot of terrorists, certainly those in Gaza and the West Bank, reside in well-decorated apartments with all the trappings of a modern production company. They have some of the most advanced communications equipment in the world and are quite Internet-savvy.

While terrorists spend much of their time in the field carrying out or planning attacks or undergoing or leading military training, they also find the time to follow the news media closely....

I was stunned by how closely some terrorists follow U.S. developments – how familiar they are with our political system and a lot of the top players. The day after the April Democratic debate, I happened to call Abu Jihad, one of the leaders of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terror organization, for an article I was writing about Palestinian rocket capabilities. Out of the blue during our interview, without any prompting on my part, Abu Jihad commented on how thrilled he was with the Democrat debate.

"We see Hillary [Clinton] and other candidates are competing on who will withdraw from Iraq and who is guilty of supporting the Iraqi invasion. This is a moment of glory for the revolutionary movements in the Arab world in general and for the Iraqi resistance movement specifically," said Abu Jihad. "I think Democrats will do good if they will withdraw as soon as they are in power."

...One of Abu Jihad’s bosses, Nasser Abu Aziz, the deputy commander of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the northern West Bank, said the debate proved "the invasion of Iraq was judged by Allah to be a failure. America needs to stop letting its foreign policy be dictated by the Zionists and the Zionist lobby. The Democrats understand this point and want to prevent this scenario." He declared it is "very good" there are "voices like Hillary and others who are now attacking the Iraq invasion."

With America heading toward 2008 presidential elections, I talked with the terrorists about which parties they favor and who specifically they want to see in the White House.

Overwhelmingly they told me they hope Americans sweep the Democrats into power, in part because of the party’s position on withdrawing from Iraq – a move, as they see it, that ensures victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," said Jihad Jaara, an exiled member of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. "This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq."

...Regarding the Democrat debate, Ala Senakreh, chief of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank, said making statements is not enough, but Democratic policies make him hopeful.

"It is not enough to compare Iraq to Vietnam. There must be a big campaign to start this withdrawal. What is happening now in the Congress is encouraging, it gives hope for a change, but I am afraid that it will still take time. As for us, this proves that the resistance always succeeds by the end of the day."

I read to the terrorists an interview on CBS’s "60 Minutes" in which then-House Minority Leader and now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, stated, "The jihadists [are] in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean we stay there. They’ll stay there as long as we’re there."

Muhammad Saadi, a leader of the Islamic Jihad terror group in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, laughed. "There is no chance that the resistance will stop," he said.

An American withdrawal from Iraq, Saadi explained, would "show the resistance is the most important tool and that this tool works. The victory of the Iraqi revolution will mark an important step in the history of the region and in the attitude regarding the United States."

Abu Ayman, an Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin, said he is "emboldened" by those in America who compare the war in Iraq to Vietnam.

The exiled Al Aksa member Jihad Jaara said an American withdrawal would "mark the beginning of the collapse of this tyrant empire [America]." He added that America’s vacating Iraq would also "reinforce Palestinian resistance organizations, especially from the moral point of view. But we also learn from these [insurgency] movements militarily. We look and learn from them."

Hamas’s Abu Abdullah argued that a withdrawal from Iraq would "convince those among the Palestinians who still have doubts in the efficiency of the resistance."

...I asked them about particular presidential candidates. Overwhelmingly, they favored Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Brigades chief Ala Senakreh, who planned and orchestrated multiple suicide bombings and has himself carried out at least a dozen shooting attacks against Israelis, told me he "hope[s] Hillary is elected in order to have the occasion to carry out all the promises she is giving regarding Iraq.

"I hope also she will maintain her husband’s policies regarding Palestine and even develop that policy. President Clinton wanted to give the Palestinians 98 percent of the West Bank territories. I hope Hillary will move a step forward and will give the Palestinians all their rights."

Abu Hamed, leader of the Al Aksa Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip, said,"...The Iraqi resistance is succeeding. Hillary and the Democrats call for withdrawal. Her [Clinton’s] popularity shows that the resistance is winning and that the occupation is losing. We just hope that she will go until the end and change the American policy, which is based on oppressing poor and innocent people."

Ramadan Adassi, leader of the Al Aksa Brigades in the Anskar refugee camp in the northern West Bank, said he also backs Hillary. With a straight face, Adassi said he was worried that if Hillary defies Israel she will be brought down like her husband, claiming White House intern Monica Lewinsky was an Israeli implant sent to lure Bill Clinton into a sex scandal after he pressured the Jewish state to evacuate territory to the Palestinians.

"If Hillary goes too much against the Zionist interests she will face the same conspiracy like her husband who fell into the trap of Lewinsky," said Adassi. "I have no doubt [Lewinsky] was planted by the Zionists, who wanted to send a message to all future American presidents – do not go against the Israeli policy. Bill Clinton made the Oslo agreement and promoted peace but the Israelis did not give him a chance."

The notion of Lewinsky as an Israeli agent is commonly believed in the terror community. It came up many times in my conversations and interviews with Palestinian terrorists.

The terrorists weren’t familiar with the particulars of some of the other presidential hopefuls, but they all knew of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. He is quite famous in terror circles for the time in 1995 when he booted Yasir Arafat from an invitation-only concert at New York’s Lincoln Center celebrating the UN’s fiftieth anniversary. ...

"Giuliani doesn’t deserve to live or even to be mentioned," said Brigades leader Ala Senakreh. "He wants war and he will most probably receive war. He hates Palestinians and we hate him. He hates Arafat and I tell him that it is Arafat who brought us to be very close to our independent state after decades during which Israel and your government did everything in order to prevent us from having our state."

Ramadan Adassi threatened Giulani: "If I had the occasion to meet him, I would hurt him. For the sake of the American people Giuliani shouldn’t be elected. He is a disgusting guy and I think Americans must think very hard about their future and their soldiers who will be killed when they come to elect their leaders."

A few notes on Coulter

The Ann Coulter/Donnie Deutsch kerfuffle has elicited a lot of comment in the JBlogosphere, with the battle lines seeming to mostly depend on the political leanings of the specific blogger. Right-leaning Jews tended to defend her, saying that her comments were simply a statement of her beliefs which coincides with that of many Christians. Left-leaning Jews tended to label her anti-semitic. At least one crossed party lines but then came back (although his viewpoint seems to be far more nuanced than most.)

While it appears that her "replacement theology" is not necessarily universal Christian thinking, I think we can safely make the assumption that she was espousing a set of personal beliefs that many other Christians share. For a Jew who is secure in his/her beliefs, this should not pose a problem - everyone who has a belief system, by definition, thinks that others are wrong.

Her comments were not anti-semitic by any means, but they were offensive.

Jews who grow up as a minority in a largely Christian nation often must fend off unwelcome but well-meaning attempts by Christians to embrace their beliefs, and, yes, to become "perfected." This can be considered a minor annoyance or a major offense, depending on the temperament of the receiving party, but in no case are these considered welcome. Religion is a personal thing and when others feel it is their right to try to enlighten you, they are by definition causing offense on some level. The fact that most religions condone proselytizing is no excuse for actually proselytizing in a multi-religious society - as with one's fist, the right to swing it ends at my face. Most Christians know this. Coulter cannot be unaware that while her beliefs are not offensive, describing them to a mass audience is offensive to Jewish listeners.

Coulter is a very intelligent woman. Unfortunately, as with most loudmouthed pundits, intelligence does not equal wisdom, and Coulter is far from wise.

IQ-type question

What is the next number in this series:

1,0,17,27

Bonus: What's the ninth number in the series?

The Iranian inferiority complex - Nobel Prize edition

According to the Iranian Fars news agency:

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2007 was awarded to Doris Lessing, an English writer of Iranian origin.

Lessing who was born in Iran's western province of Kermanshah is now a citizen of Britain.

Now, her real biography says:

Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

She may have been born in Persia (not Iran), but she is far from Iranian. As the BBC says, she was a "child of the British empire," and she is British through and through.

For Iranians to have such a compelling need to pretend that a prestigious prize has anything remotely to do with them betrays a massive inferiority complex. Reading the Iranian press shows this to be true - the smallest accomplishments are trumpeted as huge victories and Iran is especially sensitive in the area of scientific and military research, trying mightily to show how advanced it is.

While the Iranian psyche is not the same as the Arab psyche - Persians are much harder workers and value education more - this inferiority complex is a trait that Iranians share with the Arabs. The common denominators is probably the honor/shame culture combined with the West's supremacy in practically every cultural and scientific sphere. The fact that Iran and the Arab world "loses" in most of these "battles" (as they would think of them) is a constant source of pain to their pride, so whenever they actually accomplish something, no matter how trivial or peripheral, it takes on a huge symbolic importance.

Life in honor/shame cultures is a zero-sum game - if they "win" a Nobel Prize, for example, they think they have also caused the West to "lose" it and therefore they think that they have "humiliated" the West. This is of course their projection of their own thoughts every time a Westerner (or, especially, an Israeli) does something that is way beyond their own abilities.