Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Meanwhile, in the Negev...

I count 10 Qassam rockets today, making it the worst day this week.

UPDATE: The total is 12.

And #13 came just before midnight.

AFP falls for Hamas Valentine's Day propaganda

AFP publishes a bleeding-heart story about how Gaza cannot export beautiful flowers for Valentine's Day:

In past years, Ziad Hejazi's colourful Gaza-grown carnations would would adorn the homes of lovers across Europe, bringing an early springtime splash of color to wintry Valentine Days.

But the 35-year-old farmer from the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah says that this year his flowers will be fed to animals because of a punishing Israeli economic lockdown of the Hamas-ruled territory.

"I apologise to the lovers on the day of their love because I cannot bring flowers to them," Hejazi says. "Our flowers have become food for the sheep."

Flower farmers across Gaza, whose sunny climate allows for year-round exports to Europe, have been hard-hit by an Israeli closure regime tightened in June after the Islamist Hamas movement seized power there

...The carnations that might have adorned February 14 festivities in Europe have meanwhile flooded the local market, taking the place of other flower varieties kept out by Israeli restrictions.

"Last year I had 30 different kinds of flowers but now there is only one, the carnation, and very few roses," says Wasim Abdu, 28, a flower shop owner.

His shop is ablaze with red hearts and candles, artifacts of a more cheerful and romantic time in the increasingly impoverished coastal strip.

The rest of the surplus flowers will end up in Gaza's trash heaps and vacant lots, their pastel colors fading in the cool winter sunlight.

The Arabic WAFA version of this story is interesting in comparison (autotranslated):

Roses fragrance emitted from agricultural greenhouses, in the city of Rafah, south of Gaza Strip, not only marred Ruth beasts that has been ignored, on the eve of Valentine's Day, only meal of fresh roses American ready for export.

Millions of red and white flowers and UV trampled cattle and sheep himself in different parts of the Gaza Strip. Varud become the President of the cattle diet, not a luxury, but a copy of the images painted by frivolous Israeli siege on Gaza.

On the brink of agricultural greenhouses in the town of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip presented Majed farm buildings, hundreds of bouquets of roses free of a shepherd who arrived cart donkey cart, which also had a share of the meal and fresh flowers. وفي

On the other side of the greenhouse, shaking the tail cows eat up this meal is rare in the day 'sweetheart'.

So AFP is saying that only carnations and very few roses are available in Gaza because Israel doesn't allow flower imports. But WAFA is saying that roses are being eaten by the animals, not being resold (certainly for more money.)

It is possible that the autotranslation really meant carnations, but the word "varud" above is cognate to the Hebrew "vered" which means "rose."

What seems more likely to have happened is this: There was a major cold snap in January in Gaza, with the frost destroying millions of dollars of agricultural goods. The flowers in that "sunny climate", especially fragile roses, were probably ruined. Which means that they were only useful for animal feed.

And when feeding animals roses, why not get some propaganda mileage out of it, from gullible reporters from AFP and Reuters?

"The Muslim Youssef Wali"

In a press release about Joseph's Tomb, Mahmoud Abbas refers to the son of Jacob as "the Muslim Youssef Wali" - Youssef meaning Joseph and Wali meaning "friend" or "master."

Aaron Klein at WND has more:

In the wake of an attempt by Palestinians to burn down Joseph's Tomb – Judaism's third holiest site – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction issued a statement denying it will help restore the shrine, referring to both the shrine and the biblical patriarch as "Muslim."

"Pay no attention to the rumors that we will work with Israel to restore the burial site of the holy Muslim Joseph," said the statement, issued from Nablus, the biblical city of Shechem. "We are going to guard this holy Muslim site."

Joseph's Tomb is the believed burial place of the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into slavery and later became viceroy of Egypt.

Palestinian security officials in Nablus said Monday they were called to the tomb to find 16 burning tires inside the sacred structure. A Palestinian police official who inspected the site told WND there was some fire damage to the tomb.

He said the Palestinian Authority, fearing embarrassment, immediately formed a joint committee from the PA's Force 17, Preventative Security Services and Palestinian intelligence, to find out who was behind the fire.

The move comes after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced last week he would ask Israel's Defense Ministry to work with the PA to reconstruct and restore the tomb, parts of which were destroyed in 2000 by Palestinians, including known PA security officers.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, which granted nearby strategic territory to the Palestinians, Joseph's Tomb was supposed to be accessible to Jews and Christians. But following repeated attacks against Jewish worshippers at the holy site by gunmen associated with then-Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat's militias, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak in October 2000 ordered an Israeli unilateral retreat from the area.

Within less than an hour of the Israeli retreat, Palestinian rioters overtook Joseph's Tomb and reportedly began to ransack the site. Palestinian mobs reportedly tore apart books, destroying prayer stands and grinding out stone carvings in the Tomb's interior. A Muslim flag was hoisted over the tomb.

Every single ancient Jewish shrine in Israel has been belatedly claimed by Arabs - usually only in the past hundred years - to be Muslim shrines instead, as they desperately try to erase any connection between Jews and Israel.

PLO considers all of Israel "occupied"

The Palestine Media Center, which issues press releases for the PLO, has included this tiny item:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) announced Tuesday the opening of its new Jerusalem office in the Israeli-occupied Jerusalem.

Yet the ZOA press release does not mention the address of the new office - so the PLO cannot know what part of Jerusalem it is in. But our "peace partners" are certain that it is "occupied."

Which proves, once again, that to the "moderate" Palestinians, all of Jerusalem even within the Green Line is "occupied."

And by extension, this must mean all of Israel.

One more for the list

This year has beenseemingly more peaceful than last year in the PalArab terrortories, and I am convinced that Hamas is hushing up various deaths by making them look like they came from Israel, but the official 2008 self-death count has risen to 17 as "a 21-year-old Palestinian man named Ahmad Abu Wadi was stabbed to death on Wednesday in the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia by unidentified people."

The Fatah connection to Mughniyah

Time has an interesting tidbit about the late terrorist Imad Mughniyah:

A U.S. official told TIME that Mughniyah had been linked to the 2002 discovery of 50 tons of weapons by Israeli Navy commandos who intercepted a freighter called Karine A in the Red Sea.

Wikipedia mentions:

The captain of the vessel was Omar Akawi, a Fatah activist since 1976 and former member of the Palestinian Authority. According to the Beirut newspaper The Daily Star, the alleged purchaser of the weapons, Adel Salameh (aka Adel 'Moghrabi`) was a former member of Yassir Arafat's staff until the early 1980's "when he was dismissed for conducting private business which conflicted with his official status."

Robert Satloff wrote an extensive article about the Karine A affair, and says

the karine-A was a joint undertaking of Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Islamic Republic of Iran, facilitated through the good offices of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hizballah.

The facts are these: On August 31, the head of the PA'S procurement department, one Adel Awadallah (a.k.a. Adel al-Mughrabi), purchased a 4,000-ton freighter in Lebanon with $400,000 provided by a man named Fuad Shobaki. With the rank of brigadier general in the Palestinian military; Shobaki held the tide of director of the Military Financial Administration; in practice, he was widely considered to be Arafat's closest financial advisor. The acquisition itself was supervised by two PA naval police officials, Fathi Razam and Omar Akawi. On September 12, the day after the World Trade Center/Pentagon terrorist attacks, the boat was registered with the Kingdom of Tonga and renamed the Karine-A. After steaming to Aden, Akawi took over as captain, with a crew of nine Egyptians and Jordanians--who evidently did not know about the arms smuggling plan--plus four armed and well-trained Palestinians. The ship proceeded to waters off the Iranian island of Kish. There, under the watchful eye of a chief aide to Imad Mughniyah--Hizballah's operations commander and the man thought responsible for the bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon and the bombings of the Israeli embassy and Jewish community center in Argentina--the boat was loaded with eighty crates of weapons. Though the weapons were not an outright gift from the ayatollahs to Arafat, they were sold at steep discount--$30-50 million of goods for just $10 million.

So the same "moderate" leaders of the PA were intimately involved in working together with this master terrorist - and murderer of hundreds of Americans as well as Argentine Jews.

No wonder the Palestinian Arabs are so upset that this mass murderer is dead.

Pure brilliance

If you haven't been following the whole Archbishop of Canterbury/sharia flap, the best description humanly possible can verily be founde at Iowa-hawke, whereby he presenteth
the newly-discovered Tale of the Asse-Hatte.

Judeopundit notes a strange image at the Ramattan English website.

At first it looks like the image was "pwned" by an anti-Hezbollah site who changed the image to make fun of the terrorists, but this image is hosted by Ramattan.

The font is a Walt Disney signature font; and it looks like it is trying to translate into some sort of English the Hezbollah logo, as can be seen in the corresponding Arabic story:

Of course, Hezbollah does mean "Party of God" but the champagne bottle makes no sense, especially for an Islamist party. And they never translate Allah as God.

I'm stumped.

Happy Eid al-Hob

I believe that is how "feast of love" would be translated into Arabic, as anti-Valentine's Day fever spreads.

AFP adds more information about the campaigns in the Gulf against the color red:

"We have not been selling red roses for a week and we will not bring in any until Valentine's Day is over," said Alan, a Filipino working at a flower shop in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
He said a member of the religious police, known as Muttawa, visited the shop a week ago and ordered the florists not to display any red roses in the runup to February 14.
At a gift shop in the city, a salesman said the Muttawa had told him to remove from the shelves any red-colour gifts symbolising the feast of love.
"We also removed red gift boxes so as not to expose ourselves to punishment, which could be to close the shop and arrest staff," said Mohammad Hassanein al-Hawari.
The Muttawa, whose formal name is the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, does not stop at just openly inspecting shops. "Agents" in camouflage clothes check to ensure their orders are heeded, he told AFP.

In neighbouring Kuwait, where liberals and Islamists invariably clash over Valentine's Day, Islamists have raised the tone this year.
The head of the Islamic Sharia College at Kuwait University, Mohammad al-Tabtabai, issued a fatwa stipulating that the feast is banned under Islam, and two Islamist MPs demanded that the government ban Valentine's Day celebrations, which they said promote immorality.
But main supermarkets and flower shops in the Gulf emirate are filled with Valentine's Day paraphernalia, while hotels publish adverts tempting couples to a dinner and a one-night stay at discounted rates.
In Bahrain, Islamist protests appear to have been drowned by the increasing popularity of Valentine's Day.
"Last year, we imported 20,000 red roses for Valentine's Day. This year, we increased the quantity to 25,000" due to rising demand, said Varghese Modiyil, manager of one of Manama's flower shops.
"I usually give my wife a bouquet (of red roses) on Valentine's Day ... It's not a celebration in the full sense of the word -- just a gesture to renew our love," confided Nawaf al-Ghanem, a 31-year-old Bahraini bank employee.
Red lingerie and heart-shaped jewellery, cushions and teddy bears, offer a wide choice at one shopping mall in Dubai, the most Western-oriented of the seven emirates making up the United Arab Emirates and where citizens make up only around 20 percent of the population.
Gift shops and jewellers in Qatar were also decked in red, even though the gas-rich Gulf state is not immune to the slanging matches over the occasion.
"It is unfortunate that some shopowners advertise these (Valentine's Day) items and use them to decorate their shops in pursuit of material gain, flouting our norms and violating our religion," a disgruntled Qatari wrote in a letter to the daily Al-Raya.

UPDATE: Palestine Press Agency (Arabic) has no problem with Valentine's Day, and offers tips for romantic meals that increase sexual potency. The autotranslation is hilarious:

Drink "pomegranate juice"

It is a natural sexual activated since it cleans the blood of harmful deposits exceeded the efficiency of the nerves in the transfer of messages and respond to stimuli in addition to appoint a person to remain steadfast and get rid of psychological anxiety and fears that bedevil the process of citizenship.

Comers "shrimp cocktail"

Zinc found in shrimp increase the number of sperm, and enjoyable to the state of ecstasy stronger as a study on fertility and infertility, in addition to containing amino acid, which reduces tension, as well as the hormone serotonin, which stimulates the feeling of happiness, according to the newspaper "Qabas."

Main dish "filleted meat"

Higher protein found in meat increases the production of body Hormone Alnorenjerin dopamine, which increased vigilance and vitality.

Side dish "sweet potato roasted"
They are rich in potassium, which reduces tension and turmoil, but warned that it put a lot of salt because the sodium potassium discouraging effect, and you can take them some kind acid, which is another source of protein catalyst for sexual desire.

Authority "authority spinach"

In addition to the many health benefits, it contains a lot of iron and vitamins, spinach is a rich source of magnesium, which helps to extend vessels and blood flow necessary for the erection, according to a Japanese study.

" Sweet "chocolate with fresh blackberries tourist"

British scientists discovered the serotonin (or what is known Bhrmon happiness) found in chocolate is agitating sexually for women, in addition to the caffeine content of chocolate, which makes you alert.

In this way, make sure that you, my dear husband will spend the night of the "Valentine's Day" will never forget, sans will always behind these things that make you distinctive characteristic on the night will forget.

Hamas' statements crack me up

In reaction to the assassination of Hezbollah uber-terrorist Imad Mughniyya:

For its part, Hamas considered the assassination to be a great loss of a major resistance leader.

"The assassination indicates the ugliness of terrorism of the Israeli entity which depends on assassinations, killing and physical termination," said Isma'il Radwan, a Hamas spokesperson.

You mean, Israel uses assassinations, killing, and physical termination?

Wow. It may be time for them to scale back to merely assassinations and killing. Doing all three to mass murderers is just cruel.

Adar 7

Two Jews, one old and one young, travel in a train in old Europe.

The young Jew asks the old Jew: -What time is it?

The old Jew does not answer.

After asking him 25 times, the young Jew seem to give up and asks the old Jew: - Tell me, why don't you want to tell me what time it is?

The old Jew answers: - Because then you are going to ask me where I am going to and I will have to answer that I am going to Zlabodka to visit my beautiful daughter Lea and you will certainly ask if she is single and I will have to say that she is single and you will certainly ask to meet her for a Shiduch and the last thing I want in my life is my beautiful Lea to marry someone who does not have money even to buy himself a watch!

The "Zionist Octopus"

We've graduated from being sons of apes and pigs!

"We urge the Muslim and Arab nations to act decisively against the Zionist octopus that threatens the security of Arab and Muslim countries," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said.

And we are a cute octopus, if I may say so myself.

Arab nations ignore UNRWA appeal for Gaza

Arab leaders that talk incessantly about their "brothers in Palestine" consistently refuse to do anything serious to actually help their supposed kin. From IRIN, the UN news agency:

A UN special appeal for the Gaza Strip has managed to bring in only a small percentage of the US$9.8 million needed for urgent food aid and cash assistance for the enclave's most vulnerable refugees.

On 6 February, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, began to distribute food aid in Gaza funded by a $100,000 donation from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Red Crescent Society. The money came in response to the special appeal issued by UNWRA in late January.

The UAE donation will pay for food packages sufficient for three months for 2,700 refugees, deemed "special hardship cases" in four camps in Gaza. UNRWA - the largest distributor of aid in Gaza - said it needed over $5 million for food aid as part of this appeal.

Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwalid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud and the Kingdom Foundation donated another $100,000, which UNRWA said would buy fuel supplies. In the appeal UNRWA said it needed nearly $1 million for fuel costs.

However, this is all the special appeal, which initially targeted Arab donors, has managed to collect, with one UNRWA official noting it was "disappointing".

That means that Arab countries donated 2% of what the UNRWA says it needed.

One possible reason that no one wants to give money to Gazans:

Meanwhile, a Jordanian aid convoy of some 16 trucks with humanitarian goods such as food and medicines was allowed by Israel to enter Gaza on 7 February, with the intention of delivering the items to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). However, police from the Islamic Hamas movement, which has governed Gaza since a takeover last June, impounded the convoy.

A spokesman for the police said Hamas was the authority in the enclave and would determine how the aid would be distributed.

Hamas told a Jordanian newspaper that the seized convoy would be given to the UNRWA for distribution - and, of course, it lied:

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) denied that Hamas handed over Jordanian aid sent to the agency in the Gaza Strip. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri had told al-Arab al-Yawm that Hamas will hand over the supplies that Jordan sent to UNRWA, instead of the Palestinian Red Crescent, to disperse to the needy.

Once again we see that the West cares far more about the well-being of Gaza and Palestinian Arabs than the Arab world does. Using ordinary PalArabs as political pawns is so ingrained in the Arab world that I'm not sure if they even realize it anymore. Their "support" for their Palestinian brethren has always been far more focused on helping them kill Israeli Jews than with getting them jobs or prospects for the future.

Hamas' new glossy magazine

From IHT:

The cover boy gracing Gaza's new glossy magazine wears military khakis and a bullet belt and carries one of the territory's hottest accessories — an assault rifle.

His face is covered with a black mask, as are many of the faces in "Qassamis," the new magazine published by Hamas to show off its Islamic fighters. The 80-page magazine also comes with sleek advertisements and a women's section.

The magazine was delivered to The Associated Press and other news organizations by a Hamas employee on Monday. It was distributed to libraries sympathetic to Hamas, apparently targeting a highbrow readership.

The magazine wants to show "the development of our fighting capabilities and show progress on the ground," he said. Hamas officials would not say how many they printed or whether there would be future editions.

Hamas also won't say how much the magazine cost to publish. It looks expensive, a stark contrast to the environment that produced it — the crumbling, impoverished Gaza Strip.

Inside, the magazine describes Hamas' military wing as an "army."

"It has more than 10,000 fighters with weapons who are a real army under military formations," the magazine claims.

The section aimed at women is illustrated with lilies and hand grenades. One photograph shows women training to use guns while wearing floor-length robes in military khaki.

A chart details Hamas attacks, including 2,252 rockets it said it has fired at Israel. The rockets have killed 12 Israelis since 2001 and have drawn military raids and crippling sanctions that have pushed the territory further into poverty.

Hamas has used the closure to whip up anger in the Arab world, painting a picture of poverty and hunger in Gaza. But that hasn't prevented the Islamists from building up a costly media machine.

Last year it launched a daily newspaper, which frequently publishes exclusive interviews with Hamas leaders. The group also runs several internet Web sites, a radio station and a satellite television station that broadcasts news and children's shows.

Hamas is less tolerant of independent media. It has harassed reporters and media outlets it sees as hostile, and a Hamas-dominated court last week ordered the closure of al-Ayyam, a paper associated with its moderate Fatah rivals, because it published a caricature of a senior Hamas official.

The PDF of the magazine is available on the Hamas website; I copied it here. The pictures in this posting come from the magazine.

It appears that they keep their masks on even when faxing!

This must have been the sports section, where Hamas claimed the top two prizes in the Terror Olympics.

I wonder what the poor Gazans think when they see this slick, expensive publication.

Bakeries closing - Arabs running out of bread!

A shocking story of food shortages - in oil-rich Saudi Arabia:

Many Jeddah bakeries closed their doors to customers because of ever increasing high flour prices.
Bakery owners waiting for flour from flour distributors said they were like beggars waiting outside a mosque.
"I have closed one of my bakeries that has been in operation for 40 years, after tomorrow I will close the others," said Abu Ahmad who owns several bakeries in Jeddah.
Ahmad said that outside the Grain Silos and Flour Mills Organization (GSFMO) the atmosphere is more closely related to a mafia rather than a government flour distributor.

"There are a lot of people who sell the flour at unreasonable prices - they bought it from the government for SR22 then they sold it on the black market for more than SR80," Ahmad said.

Ahmad said that when he reported the high prices to the GSFMO about the illegal practices of the grain dealers, they responded by saying that was none of their business.

Flour sellers like Jadal Haq Hosein said he cannot provide customers with flour in sufficient quantities because he himself does not get enough from the distributors.

"Flour shops do not sell more than five kilograms per customer for two reasons: the first being we want to satisfy all our customers and secondly the distributors of flour don't supply shops with enough quantity," Hosein said.

Some customers spend up to three hours looking for bread. Many have asked the government for help. Adnan Kutubkhana, a Saudi customer said that bakeries cannot meet the demand of their customers in the conditions as they are.

"At these rates, after three days, the supermarkets and bakeries will be out of bread," Kutubkhana said.

"I looked for bread in more than 10 supermarkets, when I found it the bread vendor refused to give me more than two riyals' worth."
Many bakeries in Makkah, nearby villages and Taif have also closed due to the shortage of flour.