Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 26, 2007

October Qassam Calendar

As usual, this is far from complete, and it is more to show how ignored the Qassam issue is rather than to show how many are being fired. Many Qassams never make it in the news, and the rare times that the IDF publishes statistics shows that I am usually undercounting by about 50%.

This list does not include mortars being shot from Gaza, which are usually 3-4 times higher on any given day.

Previous calendars:
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February

Hamas mass wedding for 100 grooms. Where are the brides?

From IHT:

The Islamic rulers of Gaza organized a collective wedding party Thursday for 100 couples, distributing almost a month's salary on grooms who celebrated without their brides in observance of Islamic law.

The party, sponsored by the head of the Hamas government, featured a band of drummers, Islamic songs and chocolate bars. About 2,000 relatives attended the party, including the brides, who sat in the audience.

"This is an Islamic wedding. The men are separated from the women," explained Ashraf al-Rifi of Hamas, who helped organize the party.

Despite economic sanctions imposed on Gaza, Hamas has been paying regular cash stipends and monthly allowances to supporters and workers, using money from smuggling and indirect aid.

The wedding party was the latest example. Each groom received a financial donation of $300 (€210), almost a month's salary in the impoverished territory.

The grooms, wearing green sashes with Hamas' name plastered on it, walked from the mosque nearby to the local park where the party was held. They then stood on a stage and swayed to the drumbeats. They were flanked by little girls dressed as brides.

This human interest article, almost as an aside, points out that Gaza's Hamas leaders give money to the people it likes - and doesn't help anyone else.

Egyptian newspaper compares Israeli prison - and Gaza - to Auschwitz

More imbecilic hate from Egypt:

At the notorious Kitziot Prison, a real concentration camp minus gas chambers, crack Israeli soldiers have been ganging up on helpless and fettered Palestinian prisoners, shooting, beating and humiliating them under largely concocted pretexts....

The pogrom-like attack on the helpless Kitziot prisoners lasted for more than two hours as a huge cloud of smoke hovered over the area...
Another man, a plasterer, also unemployed because Israel won't allow raw materials, such as cement, into the Strip, insists on more daring language. "I don't know why the world doesn't call things by their real name. Here the Jews are starving us to death. Gaza is a large concentration camp. It is very much like Auschwitz. Yes, there are no gas chambers and crematoria. But people are dying for lack of food and lack of medicine.

The entire article is so riddled with lies and omissions that it is no wonder that Egyptians hate Jews and Israelis as much as they do - they are incited by pseudo-intellectual haters like this one.

Forgetting the absurd claims that Gaza is a death camp - at least that part is only quoted, not stated as fact (even though the headline screams "Much like Auschwitz") - even comparing Ketziot to a concentration camp is simply Jew-hating slander meant to incite. While Ketziot is no picnic, prisoners watch TV and get newspapers, and a large number of them smuggle in cell phones.

Not to mention that at Ketziot, a thousand prisoners rioted and burned down their own tents, which caused the "huge cloud of smoke" mentioned in the article.

Contrast this with Egypt, whose prisons are scenes of exceptional torture. A recent Al-Jazeera report on torture in Egyptian prisons resulted in Egypt arresting the female reporter and throwing her into one of them. A video of one Egyptian prisoner being sexually assaulted with a stick caused a brief flurry of news earlier this year, and Egyptian authorities regularly use electric shock against prisoners. In 2005, Egyptian police sexually assaulted women at a peaceful demonstration in broad daylight - and they were protesting Egyptian prison torture. Police who do manage to get tried for torture are routinely freed.

If one wanted to compare prisons to concentration camps, one would find that Egypt's prisons fit the definition much better.

The magically disappearing nuclear reactor

From the NYT:

New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.

Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.

The Syrians reported an attack by Israel in early September; the Israelis have not confirmed that. Senior Syrian officials continue to deny that a nuclear reactor was under construction, insisting that Israel hit a largely empty military warehouse.

But the images, federal and private analysts say, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, calling it a tacit admission of guilt.

“It’s a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow,” said a senior intelligence official. “It doesn’t lower suspicions, it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It’s incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away.”

Any attempt by Syrian authorities to clean up the site would make it difficult, if not impossible, for international weapons inspectors to determine that exact nature of the activity there. Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna have said they hoped to analyze the satellite images and ultimately inspect the site in person. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that released a report on the Syrian site earlier this week, said the expurgation of the building was inherently suspicious.

“It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity,” Mr. Albright said in an interview. “But it won’t work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing.”

h/t EBoZ

PLO, version 2

From the Jerusalem Post:

Palestinian Authority officials here expressed concern on Wednesday over attempts by Hamas and other Palestinian radical groups to create a new PLO at a conference due to take place in Syria and the Gaza Strip early next month.

The officials told The Jerusalem Post that they were trying to persuade the Syrian government to ban the conference.

They called on the Arab countries and the US to join their efforts to thwart the planned conference.

The conference, which will bring together several Palestinian "rejectionist" groups, has been called in response to the US-sponsored peace conference, which is due to be held in Annapolis, Maryland, late this year. The conference will be held simultaneously in Damascus and Gaza City through a video-conference link.

"The conference in Damascus will deepen divisions among the Palestinians," warned a senior PA official. "This is the first time that several Palestinian factions are talking about the possibility of establishing an alternative to the PLO, which is still regarded by many Palestinians as their sole and legitimate representative."

In addition to the extremist groups, a number of prominent Palestinian figures have been invited to the conference in Syria, including estranged and veteran PLO leader Farouk Kaddoumi. The Tunisian-based Kaddoumi, who also serves as secretary-general of Fatah, is an outspoken critic of the Oslo Accords and the current PA leadership under Mahmoud Abbas.

Invitations issued by Hamas and its political allies described the Syria parley as the "Palestinian National Conference for Resisting Schemes Aimed at Liquidating the Palestinian Cause."

"Their declared goal is to foil the Annapolis conference," said another PA official. "What's worrying is that the conference will be held under the auspices of the Syrian regime, which is also unhappy with the US efforts to reach a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians."

Notice how the PA official accidentally acknowledges that the current PLO is only considered by "many" PalArabs as their representative, not "most."

Notice also how Hamas manages to set up video-conference links. They must really be starving!

Most of all, though, this is truly deja-vu from the original creation of the PLO:

As in 1964, this movement is not an indigenous Palestinian Arab movement but it sponsored by a separate Arab country (Egypt in 1964, Syria now.)

As in 1964, this new movement is not interested in an independent state but rather in destroying Israel and creating a pan-Arab or pan-Muslim nation-state. (The PLO version 1 didn't put a state in their platform until 1974 and that one was to replace Israel.)

Finally, as in 1964, this version of the PLO has one major political tactic: terrorism.

Four women murdered this week in the PalArab territories

From Ma'an:

Four women were killed in the Palestinian territories this week in an apparent series of feminicides.

A young Palestinian man from the West Bank city of Qalqiliya was accused of killing his two sisters on Thursday. The bodies of Sima and Iyman Al-Adil were found in the family's home Thursday afternoon.

Eyewitnesses said the two women appeared to have been shot. The motive behind the killings is unclear.

The Palestinian General Intelligence Service announced the suspected murderer admitted to killing his sisters after he was arrested. The suspect said his motivation was to protect so-called "family dignity."

Separately, Palestinian medical officials in Gaza City discovered the body of a female university student near Salah Addin Street Thursday.

The officials said the woman, the daughter of a university professor, had disappeared three days ago. They said the woman had been shot several times.

Iyhab Al-Ghussain, a spokesperson for the de facto Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip, said the security forces are investigating the apparent killing.

Also on Thursday Palestinian security forces in Qalqiliya announced the arrest of suspects in the apparent killing of a twenty-nine-year-old woman named Wafa Wahdan, who was found dead on Monday near a landfill.

I already had reported on the last woman, so the Palestinian Arab self-death count for the year has now climbed to 561, with 37 of them being women and 40 dead children.

Why the horrible Israelis inspect Gaza-bound sugar

From Israel Insider:

The defense establishment decided that Israel will continue to supply products that are essential to prevent hunger, but "luxury" items will not be allowed.

"Oil, they'll get from us. Balsamic vinegar - no," Haaretz quoted a security source as saying.

Since Israel changed Gaza's status, it has blocked the shipment of certain merchandise into the Strip, including cigarettes, electric appliances, furniture, and toys. After Gaza-based terrorist groups tried to hide potassium for use in explosives in sacks of sugar, Israeli authorities also started inspecting sugar being brought to Gaza.

Do you think that the pro-terror crowd will mention that when they whine about Israeli restrictions on goods to Gaza?

Arrest in Lakewood rabbi beating case

From the Asbury Park Press:

Police have arrested a suspect and charged him with attempted murder of an Orthodox rabbi and schoolteacher, who was viciously beaten with an aluminum baseball bat the night of Oct. 9 while walking to synagogue to pray.
Lee Tucker, 37, of Ventura Drive is charged in the attack on Rabbi Mordechai Moskowitz, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon. Tucker was being held at the Ocean County Jail, Toms River, on $375,000 bail, Detective Lt. Joseph Isnardi said.
Tucker was arrested Wednesday afternoon near the Lakewood Community Center, about eight blocks from Princeton Avenue and Carey Street, where the attack occurred.
Moskowitz, 53, of Lakewood, is a third-grade teacher at Lakewood Cheder School, Detective Steve Wexler said. He remains hospitalized in a rehabilitation center for injuries to his face and head.
Moskowitz's nephew, Moshe Rothberg of Lakewood, called the arrest like having a huge weight lifted from the family. Rothberg said the attack had taken a terrible toll on the family, and speculation that it was a bias attack made dealing with it even more difficult.
"We were focusing on him getting better," Rothberg said. "The last thing we wanted it to be was bias. You don't want to think that someone has so much hate that they would do that."
Police had said from the start that they did not believe the attack to be based on bias, although they have not established what the motive might have been, Isnardi said.
Rothberg praised the Police Department and particularly Chief Robert C. Lawson, who worked with the family, assuring them that detectives would solve the crime, Rothberg said.
"He answered every question and had said he strongly believed it was not a bias incident," Rothberg said of Lawson. "The detectives were working double shifts, and now we can finally rest. They went way beyond the call of duty."
Police developed additional leads on Tucker after the Vaad — Lakewood's Council of Orthodox Leaders — and the Anti-Defamation League offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, Isnardi said. People came forward with pieces of information, Isnardi said.

Sometimes it appears that people bend over backwards to deny bias - not because of the facts but because they don't want to deal with the reaction.

As I mentioned previously, one news outlet reported that the attacker was yelling "Jew! Jew!" during the attack. And, interestingly, the Asbury Press article declines to identify the race of the accused attacker - a somewhat relevant fact if it was a bias crime. (He is black.)

More Holy Temple denial

Yet another prominent Palestinian Muslim (probably the same as in this Arabic article from yesterday) is claiming that there was never a Temple on the Temple Mount, and that Jews should not be allowed to worship at the Kotel:

The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque.

"There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple," he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. "Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."

Sabri rejected Judaism's claim to the Western Wall as part of the outer wall of the Second Temple.

"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque," he said. "There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews."

Asked if Jews would ever be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount under Muslim control, he replied: "It is not the Temple Mount, you must say Al-Aksa. And no Jews have the right to pray at the mosque. It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area. No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aksa. Everyone knows that."

"Zionism tries to trick the Jews claiming that this was part of a Jewish temple, but they dug there and they found nothing," Sabri added.

Notice the typical Muslim extremist "logic" - that if you want "peace" you must allow Muslims to take over everything. "Everyone knows that."

I have put here some of the "nothing" found there - Hebrew letters spelling "To the house of the (shofar) blast to..." Josephus wrote that a Kohen would blow the shofar from on top of the Temple every Friday afternoon to announce the coming of the Sabbath, and every Saturday night to announce that the Sabbath was over, and he did this from a high wall of the Temple Mount enclosure in order for most of Jerusalem to hear.

Treppenwitz' comments on this must be read as well.

UPDATE: Aussie Dave at Israellycool mentioned that this former Grand Mufti said the exact same thing four years ago.

The hypocritical Mufti

As we mentioned last month, the Waqf is systematically destroying priceless Jewish artifacts on the Temple Mount, with the permission of the Olmert government. The Israeli Antiquities Authority does have some archaeologists on site to watch the destruction being done with heavy machinery and to possibly retrieve bits and pieces of what doesn't get crushed by the Muslims.

A couple of days ago, in an earthshaking find, some artifacts from the First Temple period were discovered:

The artifacts, which date to the First Jewish Temple period—the eighth to sixth centuries B.C.—were found by employees of the Waqf Muslim religious trust doing maintenance work, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) reported.

The artifacts may be the first physical evidence of human activity at the Temple Mount—also known as Solomon's Temple—in that time.

Jerusalem's district archaeologist Yuval Baruch is supervising the Muslim maintenance project.

Baruch and Sy Gitin, director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, Ronny Reich of Haifa University, and Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, concluded that the finds might help reconstruct the dimensions and boundaries of the Temple Mount during the First Temple Period.

The findings include animal bones; ceramic bowl rims, bases, and body sherds; the base of a juglet used to pour oil; the handle of a small juglet; and the rim of a storage jar, according to the IAA.

The bowl sherds were decorated with wheel burnishing lines characteristic of the First Temple Period.

In addition, a piece of a whitewashed, handmade object was found. It may have been used to decorate a larger object or may have been the leg of an animal figurine.
"This is the first time we have shards from the Temple Mount with a [uniform] date," Haifa University's Reich told National Geographic News.

The find "most certainly" indicates the presence of people in the temple during the late eighth century and seventh century B.C., he said.
"From an archaeological standpoint, this is the first time this has happened," Reich said.
"You can say that this was written in the Bible—but the Bible is a text and texts can be played around with. This is physical evidence."

As one would expect, the Muslims who completely deny that Jews ever lived in ancient Jerusalem - the same ones who deliberately destroy all evidence of Judaism on the Temple Mount - are strongly denying that these finds mean anything. Here's an autotranslation of an Arabic article from Al-Hayat al-Jadida:

Astonished Sheikh Mohammad Hussein General Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian imam and the Al-Aqsa mosque, yesterday, allegations of Israeli occupation authorities and the so-called alleged Temple Mount during excavations carried out by the Waqf Islamic before the close of the extension the electricity cables in the Al-Aqsa mosque.

The Mufti statements issued several months ago on the effects of Israel and which claimed to have found remnants of dust effects in which the Waqf Islamic factions in 1999 outside the Al-Aqsa mosque.

He said: that these allegations are lies and fabrications denying the existence of any implications for the structure of the alleged yards in the Al-Aqsa mosque or the mosque or close to, adding that this earth that the Waqf Islamic factions are superficial and external back to the Ottoman era and not from the Old Testament as they claim.

The Sheikh Hussein that the city of Jerusalem had been many times for demolition and landfill because of earthquakes in Palestine throughout history, so the soil is excavated in recent times have been of the effects they are talking about nothing.

He added that the occupation authorities claimed each time she found the alleged effects of the structure and mean it behind interference in the affairs of Al-Aqsa mosque and the withdrawal of Endowments and the transfer of powers to the conflict and is impeding the restoration.

The discourse and spending excavations carried out by the occupation authorities since 1967 on the Al-Aqsa mosque and the bottom of walls, occupation authorities warned of the consequences of interference in its affairs.

He appealed to all international bodies and organizations to intervene to stop these practices against the Palestinian holy sites, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque, also called the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference to move soon to stop the campaign Althudi of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque.

If chutzpah wasn't a Yiddish word, it would have to be invented in Arabic. In the same breath where he claims that there are no problems with excavating directly on the Temple Mount, he calls on the world to condemn Israeli excavations far away from the Al Aqsa Mosque - excavations that are being done with utmost care.

The Mufti's casual dismissal of any finds as being from the Ottoman period - and any sixth-rate archaeologist can easily tell the difference between pottery from the 7th century BCE and pottery from 2400 years later - shows how he is, in the most simple terms, a liar. But his embrace of the destruction of Jewish artifacts while calling on Israel to stop their own work is breathtakingly hypocritical.

Of course, when his purpose is to establish Islamic supremacy and deny any Jewish history in Jerusalem, then his statements are quite consistent, if still as dishonest as can be. Making up fairy tales about Mohammed's flying horse being tied for a couple of hours to the Kotel, which is a story made up entirely by the Grand Mufti in the 1920s in order to get the Jews away from the Western Wall, proves to anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty that the Muslim claim to Jerusalem is exaggerated specifically in order to de-legitimize Judaism itself.

It is a scandal that the West places equal weight on the liars.

For the Red Sox fans

Once upon a time I made some Hebrew logo equivalents for some sports teams. Here's the Boston Red Sox logo I made:

Not my best, though.

"Kill Jews everywhere"

Another Palestinian Arab terrorist momentarily forgets the fiction that he is only supposed to hate Zionists, not Jews:

Prominent leader of the Popular Resistance Committees Abu Al-Sa'id on Wednesday called on the de facto Palestinian government to hasten disbanding the Palestinian Authority and establish a 'Resistance Authority' instead in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Speaking during a press conference, Abu Al-Sa'id urged Palestinian resistance factions, particularly the Salah Addin Brigades of the PRC, to "kill Jews everywhere without waiting for permission", in retaliation for the murder of Muhammad Al-Ashqar and the violent treatment of Palestinian detainees at Ktziot prison.

The PRC and Hamas are linked together, there have been numerous cases where they worked together for terror attacks.

Yesterday' s airstrike against a Qassam cell is a case in point:

An Israeli aircraft attacked a car in central Gaza on Tuesday, destroying the vehicle and killing a senior security official in the Hamas government, Palestinian officials said.
Hamas radio identified the dead man as Mubarak al-Hassanat, a senior official in the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry. The ministry oversees all Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip.
Al-Hassanat, 37, also was a top member of the Popular Resistance Committees, a Hamas-linked group that frequently fires rockets into Israel.

So Hamas has effectively just declared open season on Jews worldwide. And since the vast majority of Arabs have no problem with Jews, only Zionists, we can expect to see a torrent of Arab and Muslim condemnations against this anti-semitic statement any minute now.

Any....minute....now.....

Meanwhile, I will also wait for any other media outlet to publish this story. At the moment the phrase "kill Jews everywhere" comes up empty on Google News. I guess it is not newsworthy.

The Amnesty report on PalArab infighting

The Amnesty International report I mentioned yesterday is now online. I don't have time to read or comment on the whole thing now, but it can be found here.

From skimming the report it looks to give a decent overview of international law and how it applies to non-governmental fighters, and it also has many first-hand testimonies of some of the most horrible cases of abuse and torture by both Fatah and Hamas, many of innocent civilians.

Islamo-fascism Awareness Week

This week is being called "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" on some hundred college campuses. Led by David Horowitz, it is garnering an impressive amount of attention (hundreds of articles on Google News.)

Many are offended by the term itself. Christopher Hitchens defends it in Slate; the Huffington Post responds.

I am not thrilled with the term - it is great for publicizing events like these but it has the potential to obscure more than it illuminates; my preference would be "Political Islam" as it points out that the dangers of Islamism are not so much religious as political, and attacking a political movement is far different from attacking a religion. Alas, it isn't as catchy.

Some notable articles about this week include:

- Zombie's photo essay of Nonie Darwish's speech at Berkeley and the protests around it.
- Darwish's own speech and comments about the atmosphere there.
- The Daily Pennsylvanian on how it turned into "Terrorism Awareness Week" at Penn. Hmmmm.
- Robert Spencer on the entire topic.
- A Columbia U op-ed pointing out that the same people who were for Ahmadinejad speaking are against anti-Islamist speakers
- FrontPage's roundup of Day One.

Amnesty Int'l blasts Fatah, Hamas

From al-Guardian:

Amnesty International has slammed the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the rival Fatah group for serious human rights abuses in the recent factional fighting in Gaza and the West Bank.
Hamas is accused in a report published today of "increasingly resorting" to arbitrary detention and torture since its forces took control of the Gaza Strip in June. In the West Bank Fatah security personnel are accused of detaining, abducting and abusing hundreds of Hamas supporters, with help from Israel.
The Palestinian president and chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is the leader of Fatah and a key partner for Israel, the US and the west. Hamas has been boycotted as a terrorist organisation which refuses to renounce violence, recognise Israel or accept peace agreements.
"The leaders of both the PA and Hamas must take immediate steps to break the cycle of impunity that continues to fuel abuses, including arbitrary detentions, abductions, torture and ill-treatment by their forces," said Malcolm Smart, AI's Middle East director. "The ongoing factional struggle between Fatah and Hamas is having a dire effect on the lives of Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip ... exacerbating the human rights and humanitarian crisis caused by Israeli military campaigns and blockades."
Amnesty's report catalogues the infighting that culminated last June when Hamas seized control of PA security institutions in Gaza. Both sides "displayed a flagrant disregard for the safety of the civilian population by launching indiscriminate attacks and reckless gun battles in residential neighbourhoods," it says.
Lawlessness and impunity were already the norms before 350 people were killed. Both sides mounted attacks in and around hospitals and targeted patients in their beds. Fatah activists were thrown from tall buildings.
Amnesty has issued reports critical of Israeli practices in the occupied territories, and says it is anxious to demonstrate that it is not ignoring abuses committed by the Palestinians. "The international community must hold all Palestinian parties accountable to the same human rights standards," said Mr Smart.

The last paragraph is most interesting. It shows that the criticism of Amnesty as being one-sided about alleged Israeli human rights violations has stung, and Mr. Smart is pretty much admitting that it is true.

Of course, Amnesty cannot resist blaming Israel for some of the abuses mentioned above. And clearly Amnesty does not use the same yardstick when criticizing Fatah and Hamas because of the sheer number of reports that target Israel, whose alleged abuses pale in comparison to the daily murder and torture that Palestinian Arabs do to each other. Even so, this proves that shining a light on the absurdly biased condemnations that Israel has suffered, not only by NGOs but also at the UN, can cause enough discomfort to prod these organizations to take a deeper look at how Israel's sworn enemies act.

For an example on how bias still pervades Amnesty, do a search on "Qassam rockets" or "Sderot." Every mention of Palestinian Arab rocket attacks is "in context" of Israeli attacks against terrorists; there are no articles dedicated only to PalArab abuses. But there are plenty that mention only Israeli abuses, with perhaps a passing reference to Israeli "claims" that their attacks against terrorists are in response to rocket or terror attacks.

Still, it is a step in the right direction. As of this writing, the report is not yet on the Amnesty site.