Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Followup on Irish woman in Gaza

In the latest on the Irish woman who was stuck in Gaza, the BBC writes:

Treasa Ni Cheannabhain, her daughter and an Egyptian niece were allowed back into Egypt on Thursday.

However, Ms Ni Cheannabhain was immediately taken in for questioning.

On Saturday, she said she was given a choice by the Egyptian authorities - to come before a military court, or to return to Gaza indefinitely.

I guess this woman who spends her life preaching her solidarity with poor Palestinian Arabs has decided that Egyptian military court provides better odds for a good life than her Hamas buddies.

Adar 4

Egypt is starting to control the crowds of Palestinians pouring in from Gaza.

Everyone is being put into a line, given a special plastic bracelet, and there is a limit of three bombs per person.

-Jake Novak

Gazans celebrate an 8-year old's injury

A tiny throwaway paragraph in YNet's coverage of Saturday's Qassam rocket attack that injured two brothers, with an 8-year old severely injured in his legs:

Within Gaza, terrorists celebrated their "success", as gunmen from the Al-Quds Brigades fired in the air and broadcasted victory messages from mosque loudspeakers.

From this single sentence we can learn three things:

1. Palestinian Arab terrorists remain depraved as ever, celebrating the pain of innocent civilians.
2. Islamic Jihad's morale must be amazingly low, as they continue to lower the bar of what they consider "victory" just so they can have something to celebrate and not feel like total losers.
3. Mosques in Gaza are used, today, to promote terrorism.

Adar 3

Since I won't be posting on Shabbos, he is the joke for the third of Adar...

Ethel, a little old lady with a lovely smile, makes a living selling roses on the corner of Middlesex Street for £1 a rose. Maurice, on the other hand, works for a bank in Middlesex Street and is doing very well for himself.

Maurice has always felt sorry for Ethel and whenever he leaves his office for lunch and passes Ethel, he always gives her £1. But Maurice never takes a rose from her and although this has been going on for 2 years, the two of them have never spoken to each other.

One day, as Maurice passes Ethel and leaves his usual £1, Ethel speaks to him for the first time. "I appreciate your business, sir. You really are my best customer, but I must point out to you that the price of a rose has now gone up to £1.50."

Adar 2

From last night's Tonight Show:

A minister, a priest and a rabbi go into a bar. After a couple of drinks they get somewhat philosophical. The bartender asks them, "What would you want people to say at your funeral?"

The minister says, "I would hope that they would say that I was a good family man and that I always found the time for my congregants."

The priest says, "I would hope that they would say that I was kind, charitable and always thoughtful."

The rabbi says, "I would want them to say, 'Look! He's moving!'"

Church being built in Qatar

From Radio Netherlands:

The Arab emirate of Qatar witnesses the building of the first church since the coming of Islam. Conservative Muslims are furious, but the reform-minded emir of Qatar thinks it is time to show that Islam is a tolerant religion.

"If all goes well, we will celebrate Easter in our new church", says father Yashun of the almost completed church of the Virgin in the Qatari capital Doha. The Catholic church, which will open next month, is the first church to be built in Qatar since the coming of Islam 14 centuries ago.

Like other countries in the Arabian peninsula, Qatar does not have an indigenous non-Muslim minority, but among the guest-workers that have come there in the past decades are many Christians. The new church will serve no less than a hundred thousand Catholics residing in the tiny emirate, most of whom are from the Philippines, India and Lebanon. A Protestant church is also under construction.

"A few years ago, opening a church in Qatar was sort of impossible", the Italian ambassador in Doha, Ignatio Di Pashi, recently told a local Qatari newspaper. "But Qatar has changed since the coming of the new emir."

Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani is a reform-minded man who, when he came to power in 1995, decided it was time to show the tolerant face of Islam and to accommodate the new Christian minority in his country.

Since 2001, a yearly 'Conference of the 3 Religions" is held in Qatar during which representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam engage in dialogue. Dialogue between Muslims and Christians is rather common in the Arab world, but a religious dialogue including Jews is revolutionary.

And in 2005, the emir announced that churches would be built for the Christians in Qatar, who until today have to conduct their religious services in private homes or schools.

The building of the church has shocked conservative Muslims of Qatar and has led to heated debates in the local media. Most Qatari Muslims belong to the Wahhabi sect, one of the most conservative currents in Islam and the state-doctrine in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Opponents of the church quote a Tradition attributed to the prophet Mohammed which reads: "There shall be no two religions in the Arabian peninsula." Alluding to this Tradition, articles have appeared in the local press bearing titles such as "No cross shall be raised under the sky of Qatar and no church-bell shall ring!"

But advocates of the church, too, support their views with religious arguments. One of them is Dr Abdelhamid al-Ansari, former dean of the Qatari shari'a college. "Establishing places of worship for different religions", he writes in one of his articles in favour of the building of churches in his country, "is a basic right guaranteed to all human beings by the Koran and the Tradition of the prophet." Dr Ansari also recognizes the prophetic Tradition quoted by his opponents, but says it only applies to the Hijaz, the province of the two holy cities of Islam Macca and Medina.

Another Qatari shaykh, Ali al-Qardaghi, went even further by assuring a French reporter that Islam does not prohibit the building of churches "nor any other places of worship." His statement is significant because traditional Islam indeed explicitly grants all kinds of rights to Christians and Jews - the so-called 'people of the Book' - but has great difficulty in recognizing the beliefs of Hindus and Buddhists as 'religious.' And after all a large section of the guest workers in Qatar are not Christians but Hindus from India.

The church, which costs 18 million dollars, will contain a conference hall, a library, accommodation for clerics and a café. But it will have no cross on the outside and the catholic cardinal heading it had to promise the authorities that he will not engage in missionary activities.

A miniscule step in the right direction, but one that gives an indication of how long the journey will be.

Clan clash in Gaza City

Palestine Today reports on the death of Muhammad al-Badawi, 25, for reasons of "family revenge."

How honorable!

The 2008 self-death count is now at 16.

Ian O'Doherty on stupid pro-PalArab activists

The Irish Independent has a somewhat snarky column that mentions the Irish woman stuck in Gaza:

Really, if anything proves the utter credulousness and stupidity displayed by many of the members of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, it has to be case of Galway woman -- quelle surprise she's from Galway -- Treasa Ni Cheannabhain and her daughter.
The pair smuggled themselves illegally into Gaza and are now complaining that they are not being allowed to get back into Egypt.

The pair were refused entry into Gaza but entered illegally by wearing those charming full length niquabs (the charming black dress that makes women look like a walking letter box) and met up with some ministers from the charming Hamas government -- which caused the humanitarian crisis in the first place -- and then went around distributing money to local charities.

And how have indymedia.ie responded to the Egyptian authorities not allowing these people back into Egypt?

Well, according to them: "Treasa Ni Cheannabhain, from the Galway Palestine Solidarity Campaign, on a humanitarian mission to besieged Gaza with daughter, Naisrin, is now trapped there by the Israelis."

Um, sorry guys. It's the Egyptians. Still, facts are only a Zionist conspiracy, eh?

Although the quote from Ni Cheannabhain on the situation in Gaza was interesting in its insight and political understanding: "We hadn't expected this -- it's very scary."

The phrase dumb and dumber springs to mind.

MSM keeps ignoring Hamas war crimes

AP released a dispatch yesterday:

Hamas policemen seized a convoy of humanitarian aid bound for the Palestinian Red Crescent on Thursday evening, the second convoy it has taken from the aid agency, aid employees said.

Policemen from Hamas halted 14 trucks filled with food and medicine at a checkpoint after it crossed an Israeli checkpoint into Gaza on Thursday, said employees of the Palestinian Red Crescent, who declined to be named, fearing reprisals from ruling group Hamas. A Hamas official said the aid was seized because the organization was distributing aid to former Fatah fighters and not to impoverished Palestinians.

Employees from the Red Crescent said they were meant to distribute the aid to some 8,000 needy Gaza residents from lists of people the organization keeps. The aid came from the organization's regional headquarters in Jordan, an employee said.

...The food aid was unloaded in the warehouses of the Hamas Ministry of Social Affairs, and two trucks of medicine were taken to a nearby Hamas-run hospital, he said.

The employee said that it was the second time Hamas policemen seized aid meant for the Red Crescent. Last month the group seized the aid from warehouses.

This article was essentially ignored by newspapers and other Web news outlets outside of Israel, and only a handful mentioned it buried in other articles about Gaza. And absolutely no one goes slightly beyond the article to ask the basic question of how much of Gaza's "humanitarian crisis" is being engineered by Hamas itself.

On a similar note, the number of Qassam rockets fired at Israel has increased dramatically in the past few days compared to a relative lull for a couple of weeks. This issue is also being all but ignored by news outlets, mentioning them in passing in other articles about the Egypt/Gaza border, for example. The fact that there are as few casualties in Sderot as there are is nothing short of a miracle.

Finally, yesterday's AP story of Hamas hiding rockets in a school was also picked up by only a dozen or so newspapers worldwide according to Google News counts.

Each of these stories show that Hamas and its partners are engaging in daily war crimes according to the Geneva Conventions. Shooting indiscriminately at civilians, using civilian areas to hide legitimate military targets and confiscating humanitarian aid are all explicitly illegal in international law as well as humanitarian law.

While Israel is constantly being accused of war crimes, either explicitly in the media or by their quoting handpicked "experts" to confirm the bias of the reporters, Palestinian Arab terror actions - all of these three in the past 24 hours - get a free pass, either ignored completely or reported in a passive manner.

The media is a big part of the problem, and a large reason why Hamas feels that it can act with impunity.

Hamas hid rocket launcher in school

Sometimes you have to go digging in the mainstream media to find a gem. AP writes:

An Israeli missile on Thursday struck a makeshift school that Hamas militants apparently used as cover to launch attacks, killing a Palestinian teacher.

Six militants also died when Israeli ground forces backed by warplanes exchanged fire with Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip, part of the escalating violence that is hobbling peace efforts.

...The 38-year-old teacher was killed when a surface-to-surface missile struck the agricultural school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, Hamas security forces said.

Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Gaza Health Ministry said the man was killed outside the school gate. The Israeli military said it opened fire in the area at a group of rocket launchers. It denied firing at a school.

Associated Press Television News footage showed the school to be a series of huts in a rural area. A rocket-launching device was spotted between some olive trees, indicating militants had used the school for cover to launch attacks.

Placing a rocket launcher on the grounds of a school is, of course, a war crime. But Hamas, as well as the "moderate" PA, will cynically use use the death of a teacher as proof of supposed Israeli attacks on civilians.

(h/t EBoZ)

Increase in Gaza motorcycle accidents since border breach

The media had a couple of pictures of "poor" Palestinian Arabs bringing motorcycles purchased from Egypt into Gaza:

Apparently, this cyclemania has some consequences. From Palestine Press Agency (autotranslated):

Palestinian medical sources announced this evening the death of a citizen and the injury of two others in a motorcycle collision domains in the Tel Sultan neighbourhood of Rafah town in southern Gaza.

For his part, Dr. Hassanein Maaouya director of emergency ambulance and the Ministry of Health "that the hospital sector received twenty injured in similar incidents [recently], including critical situations."

It is noteworthy that the hundreds of motorbikes purchased after opening the border with Egypt where he led teenagers failed to get a driver's license with it lacks those bikes for licensing and insurance.

It wasn't a handful of motorcycles bought in Egypt by the starving, poverty-stricken PalArabs - they purchased hundreds! And their poor, hungry kids without drivers' licenses are being given these gifts worth thousands of dollars, where they can crash into other poor Gazans with impunity.

Sounds like a wonderful society being built there.

(No, I will not count this in the self-death count.)

It's the first of Adar!

Which means it is time to dust off some old Jewish jokes!
--------------

During his school holidays, 17 year-old Avrohom decides to take a temporary job as a delivery boy for Minky’s Restaurant. One evening he delivers a meal to Bernie’s house. He hands over the meal and Bernie pays the bill. Then Bernie looks at Avrohom for a few seconds and somewhat begrudgingly says, "I suppose you also want me to give you a tip?"

Avrohom doesn’t answer immediately, but looks at Bernie for a few seconds before replying. "Yes, sir, that would be most appreciated, especially as the guy who normally delivers to this area told me that I shouldn’t expect much from you. He said I should be thankful if I got 10p."

"Well," says Bernie, "just to prove your friend wrong, here’s £2 for your efforts."

"Thank you very much," says Avrohom. "This will go into the fund I’m building up to pay for my future education."

"Really?" says Bernie. "So what are you going to study?"

"Applied Psychology," replies Avrohom.

Blair claims PA implementing roadmap - let's fact check

From Ynet:

International Middle East envoy Tony Blair said on Thursday the Palestinians were meeting their security obligations under a long-stalled Road Map peace plan and that Israel should start responding.
"I think it is important to recognise that what has happened here in Nablus over these past few months is, of course, precisely what phase one of the 'road map' asks for," Blair said during a visit to the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Really?

The roadmap includes:

At the outset of Phase I:
Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel.

So let's see some recent examples:

A new video clip broadcast continuously since October 2007 by Palestinian
TV promises a mother that that Palestine will be violence, claiming the
Palestinians have the right to all of Israel:

Oh Arab, oh noble son, your blood is my blood,
and your cause is my cause
This land is Arab in history and identity
Palestine is Arabic is history and identity.
We will live in peace, oh mother and
our lives will not be lost…
From Jerusalem and Acre
and Haifa and Jericho and
Gaza and Ramallah
From Bethlehem and Jaffa and
Beersheba and Ramla
From Nablus to the Galilee
and from Tiberias to Hebron
And from Nablus to the Galilee
and from Jenin to Hebron
We are all in the same ditch, oh mother
And our resolve is [as sharp as] a sword

Another video currently heard is a song called “My Enemy, My Enemy,”
broadcast many times in the past. It depicts the Jews as snakes twisting in the
earth (the snake is an anti-Semitic symbol for the Jews).

And here are a couple of cartoons published in the PA official or semi-official media since Blair was declared an expert envoy on the Middle East:

The Nablus PA operation was a cosmetic sham that was geared towards petty criminals and PR more than towards eradicating terror. Nablus is still the hub of terror in the West Bank, and Nablus is where 3 PA policemen murdered an Israeli in December.

Tony Blair, like most Western leaders, is letting his desire for a fictional "peace" cloud his common sense and ability to see facts clearly.

The PA has done next to nothing to implement Phase I of the roadmap except for superficial actions to fool Westerners desperate to believe them.

More counterfeit news

Looks like Hamas' printing presses have been busy....

Egyptian authorities have seized more than a million dollars in forged US currency allegedly produced in the Gaza Strip since the Gaza-Egypt border was toppled by Palestinian fighters two weeks ago, Egyptian sources told Ma'an on Thursday.

The sources expect more counterfeit banknotes to be discovered, as hundreds of dollars are being found every day. Egyptian merchants in towns bordering Gaza, such as Al-Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zwaid have helped investigators by saving counterfeit bills.

See also this posting wondering how Hamas manages to get so many pristine $100 bills.

WRMEA blames Israel for persecuting Gaza Christians

One of the more egregious examples of turnspeak I've seen lately, from the Arab lobby in Washington. Check this out:

AS THE SUN rises in the east on the first day of Advent, the bells of Gaza’s churches fill the air, mixing amicably with the Muslim call to prayer. There is an air of quiet serenity spiced with excitement as the faithful walk to their churches and mosques, the doors swinging open, and Christians and Muslims bid each other good morning on yet another Sunday.

Gaza’s oldest church, the Greek Orthodox St. Porphyrus, dates back to the 16th century. The majority of Gaza’s Christians are served by the Roman Catholic Church on Al Zayotoun St. and the Gaza Baptist Church, which offer living room prayer groups, interfaith outreach, several schools, and humanitarian/medical Christian charities staffed by both locals and internationals. Today Gaza is home to approximately 3,000 Christians, the majority of whom live near these Gaza City churches.

Until November 1947, when the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 181 partitioning Palestine, Palestinian Christians lived peacefully among the Muslim and small Jewish populations of the area. With the passage of the nonbinding resolution, however, Zionist forces began their ethnic cleansing campaign in earnest. At the time Christians represented 18 percent of Palestine’s population, with many families tracing their ancestry back to the time of Christ. Today Christians comprise less than 2 percent of Palestinians, with the loss of Jerusalem’s Christian community being the most profound—plunging from a peak of 51 percent in 1922 to just 4 percent today. By the time of the Deir Yassin massacre in early April 1948, over a quarter-million Palestinians—many of them Christian—had been displaced, either killed or made refugees.
...
It is well known that one of the most effective tools for rendering a society subservient is the tactic of divide and conquer. Thus the October kidnapping and murder of Rami Ayyad, the manager of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, presented a dangerous challenge. Speculations about the motive still abound: was it a hate crime or simply a random tragedy?

Father Manuel Musallam, the senior Roman Catholic priest in Gaza, doubts the attack was religiously motivated.

“Rami was not only Christian,” the priest explained. “He was Palestinian. Violent acts against Christians are not a phenomenon unique to Gaza.”
...
Asked if Christians in Gaza are being harassed by Hamas or the Palestinian police, all the students agreed that this is not the case.

“Every society has extremists,” Ali observed. “Like sometimes I’m criticized for not wearing my hijab. But that has nothing to do with being Muslim or Christian. Those people don’t represent our Palestinian society.”

Once again, Israel somehow manages to selectively oppress Christians, according to the apologists for Islamist terror against Christians. The Zionist war machine manages to force only Arab Christians to leave the territories while it keeps Muslims there.

Even though Israel's Christian population has grown over the years.

Compare to this recent article on Gaza's Baptists:

Hundreds of people crowded around a small stage on the sidewalk in Bethlehem. Traffic slowed not only to dodge those dancing in the street but so passengers could listen to the musicians publicly proclaiming God's love for the nations.

A visiting Gaza woman nervously looked around, checking the crowd for troublemakers at the outdoor praise and worship concert by Bethlehem Bible College students.

"We couldn't do something like this in Gaza. People are always watching," she whispered, afraid someone might hear. "Ever since our dear brother was killed for his faith, Gaza Christians live in fear."

Rami Ayyad, a prominent Baptist, was kidnapped and found dead less than a mile from a Christian bookstore he managed for the Palestinian Bible Society. Officials say there has been no progress in the investigation of the October incident. The bookstore was bombed last April but no one was injured.

Life has been increasingly difficult for Christians in Gaza since Hamas seized control of the coastal strip last June. Attacks against Christians have been rare; however, the Baptist community has been a target for extremists because of its evangelical work.

Many Baptist leaders have fled Gaza Strip, taking refuge in the West Bank. Pastor Hanna Massad and his family are among eight families who relocated because they felt it was too dangerous to remain in their homeland.

"The Lord is teaching us many things during this time. To follow Christ is very real to us now," Massad said. "There's a price to pay to follow our Lord. We see people willing to give their life for Christ. Every day, Gaza Christians are confronted with the question, 'Are you willing to follow?'"

These refugees spend much time worrying about their Baptist family back home and praying for their safety. Christians living in the Gaza Strip number around 3,000. Most are Greek Orthodox, but there are a few hundred Catholics and a small community of Baptists living in this 140-square-mile territory where more than 1.5 million Muslims live.

Massad said believers in Gaza have been robbed or threatened in recent months. When a 6-year-old girl answered the intercom system at her house recently, a voice told her he plans to kill her father.

"The man threatened isn't a leader in the Baptist church, but he is a very committed Christian," a Baptist worker said. "Most of those left in Gaza are not high-profile Baptist leaders, but they are still identified as part of the Baptist church. The threat to them is still very high and very real."

The Arab propaganda machine is spinning furiously.