Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Another half-ton of explosives found in the Sinai

An Egyptian security source says that 500 kilograms of explosives and 40 mines had been uncovered during the last two days near the border with the Gaza Strip.

As quoted by the French news agency, the Egyptian source said that the explosive materials and mines found in two locations near the border with the Gaza Strip were intended for smuggling into the (Gaza) sector."

I have not seen this yet at AFP or any other news source yet, but PalPress has been pretty reliable over the past on topics like these.

PalArabs counterfeiting Girl Scout badges

Forget counterfeiting currency - now the Palestinian Arabs are going after more serious stuff. From Ma'an (Arabic):

The Palestinian Girl Scouts and Girl Guides Association accused merchants of Scout uniforms in the Palestinian cities of printing any insignia does not depend from Scouts and Girl Guides Association of Palestine.

The Assembly, through its warning, said that is the printing and marketing such decals beyond the instruction was contrary to the traditions of the Palestinian Scout uniforms, and will be working on pursuing legal claims against them.

But why should Girl Scouts have to work hard and act responsibly to achieve their goals when their parents haven't learned that lesson either?

75-year old man shot and killed in Qalqiya

Ma'an Arabic reports that three masked men, apparently in a stolen Israeli car, drove past and shot to death 75-year old Saleh Omar.

Our 2008 PalArab self-death count is at 36.

Moving - and staying

Yesterday, US Ambassador to Israel Richard H. Jones, upon seeing the overcrowded haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem, said that he was aware of the shortage of housing, but added: "Sometimes people do have to move to a different location. They cannot always stay close to their families." He was clearly talking about Israel building new houses and apartments in Jerusalem.

Many in the JBlogosphere correctly slammed these comments.

Sultan Knish says:

After 2000 years of Jews being told where they could and could not live, walled into Ghettos, given designated Jewish areas, the State of Israel was founded in order to create a place where Jews could live freely, only to have the US Ambassador stride into its capitol, which the US continues to refuse to recognize, sniff around and proclaims that Jews cannot live in their own capitol city.

Boker Tov Boulder, a bit less diplomatically:

Remember how Dhimmedia told us time and time again, prior to the disengagement, how OVERCROWDED Gaza was? Funny, it's always the Jews who have to move. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think that's getting old already. How 'bout Jews live wherever they damn well please?

Atlas, even less diplomatically (as is her style):

What nerve. Tell it to the Gazans. Tell it to the Arabs with all their ginormous land. The nerve on this antisemite.

I wouldn't go so far as to call him an anti-semite, but the comment does betray an immense double-standard that has become quite acceptable even among Israel's friends.

Why is no one telling the Arab world to "move" their Palestinian Arab brethren elsewhere? Why is their claim to a piece of land that they pretty much turned into a wasteland when they lived there more powerful than that of a people who have lived there, died there and cried to return there continuously for 3000 years, and whose entire belief system is in no small part dependent on that land? In Arab history, Palestine was always a subdistrict of Syria (including much of today's Jordan), and Arabs freely moved between all Arab lands, while the Land of Israel was always the only place that Jews are commanded to live - so why do the Jews always have to move?

The reason is that, as always, Jews are regarded as being more "reasonable" and malleable, more open to reason, more likely to compromise. So why bother making a big demand on people who may just turn around and bomb you in response when it is so much easier to ask the more reasonable Israelis to do all the compromising?

Treppenwitz answers the ambassador brilliantly:

Although not specifically stated in the article, such a tour should have caused any reasonably intelligent observer to reach the conclusion that 'natural growth' in and around Israel's capitol city is an internal issue and not something open to international debate. Yet the conclusion that the U.S. Ambassador reached was exactly the opposite; that rather than allow the natural urban sprawl, such as surrounds nearly every major city in the world, Israel - so as not to cause offense - must instead relocate its growing population to unspecified remote locales, rather than build new neighborhoods just down the block.
Well I have a few news flashes for His Excellency, Mr. Jones:

We've done enough moving thankyouverymuch. We've spent the last two millenia moving from one place to another, all the time trying not to give offense to our hosts and neighbors. Yet despite being an industrious, peaceful people that has enriched our hosts far beyond all proportion to our modest numbers, we have been systematically victimized, caged, enslaved, slaughtered, disenfranchised, outlawed and expelled more than any single people in recorded history. And ... though we are (very) occasionally tolerated for short periods of time by progressive people like yourself... these periods of relative quiet are inevitably followed by more victimization.

Lather rinse repeat.

So guess what... now that we've finally managed to regain ownership of the only patch of land to which even your own family Bible gives us undisputed ownership, we're done moving. Go sell your plan elsewhere.

To the east of us is a spanking new country called Jordan that was created out of whole cloth by the British Mandatory power (at our expense). Not only is more than three-quarters of that country's population ethnically 'Palestinian', but there are huge, unused tracts of land east of the Jordan river that nobody is even looking at, much less fighting over. If you feel the burning need to find some suitable contiguous land to offer the poor Palestinians, why not start there?

But wait... I'm not done yet, there's more!

To the west of us is a vast empty chunk of land called the Sinai peninsula that is nominally administered by Egypt, but is for all intents and purposes abandoned. While the interior of Sinai is largely un-arable desert, the long fertile Mediterranean coastline, up to and including the Gaza strip, is nearly unparalleled in potential to provide a crowded, downtrodden people with a spacious (and contiguous) future paradise. Why not try that?

Why is it that you are demanding that Israel eviscerate herself to make room in her soft underbelly for a Palestinian state that will have no natural resources, little potential for development and above all, no chance for contiguity (at least so long as Israel remains stubbornly extant)?

Could it be because you know perfectly well that Jordan and Egypt won't consider having a real or defacto Palestinian terror state stirring up discord and unrest in their midst? Could it be that it is much easier to bully little Israel into slitting open its belly and allowing an openly antagonistic and parasitic entity to metastasize inside her than to ask Jordan or Egypt to tolerate a restive and radical Palestinian entity on their flank?

Read the whole thing.

Saudi Vice, episode 12: Flying sorcerors

It was a busy day for our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

First, they managed to chase a young couple into the path of an oncoming truck.

But there was another, more nefarious evil happening, unbelievably, in the holy Kingdom itself:

Sorcery.

Two Yemenis and a Sudanese man were practicing the black arts in Dhamad, Jizan. They had books and formulas showing how to cast spells, ready to do the most horrible things to innocent Muslims who stumble across their paths.

Luckily, our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice found out about these criminals and arrested them.

As the Saudi Gazette reports:

The three are charged with “malicious activities” to break up marriages and inflict harm on people for money. They reportedly slaughtered black sheep as part of their sorcery rituals.

And once the Muttawa were done with them, the three confessed to these heinous crimes.

The newspaper explains the crime of practicing "malicious magic":

As per Shariah law, Saudi Arabia prohibits sorcery. “Malicious magic” is perceived to have the power to influence the mind, body or possessions and cause disease, sickness in animals, bad luck, sudden death, impotence and other such misfortunes.

Truly, how fortunate the Saudi people are that they have people who put their own manhood at risk in order to save the rest of the Saudi males from magical impotence.

Another stellar day for our heroes, and now Saudi men can sleep better at night knowing that they are safe from black magic.

A young man and woman in Saudi Arabia decided to do the ultimate act of evil: to take a drive together in the man's Toyota Camry.

Of course, a man and woman being alone together - even in a car - is known as "khulwa" as can be punished with many lashes and a prison sentence.

Our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice got tipped off about this flagrant violation of human decency and started to go after the criminals.

The suspects, knowing that the SUV coming after them had the distinctive style of our Muttawa heroes, decided to try to avoid being detained.

Saudi law states that the Muttawa should never engage in a car chase, but should call police to arrest the criminals. Our heroes, though, knew that the police were not as efficient nor as single-minded about stamping out serious crimes like these as the members of the Commission, and it is an insult to think that the Muttawa cannot chase cars as well as any police officer.

On the Madina-Tabuk Road, in the Tabuk area, the chase ended when the Camry rammed head-on into a truck and burst into flames.

The man’s body was totally charred. The woman’s body was ripped into two by the force of the impact. They were too disfigured for immediate identification.

But most importantly, our heroes managed to stop a flagrant act of khulwa, and, especially, any unspeakable acts that might have followed.

Another fine day for our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice!

Saudi marries off his daughter, 15, to a murderer

An unbelievably sick story out of Saudi Arabia, reported impassively by Arab News:

RIYADH, 18 March 2008 — Muhammad Al-Zahrani, a convicted murderer, was executed at the end of February in Taif. Al-Zahrani’s execution, which was postponed for four years, took place after the victims’ family refused to pardon him.
However, what makes Al-Zahrani’s case interesting is that the convicted murderer had married his daughter to another convicted murderer on death row in the same prison, Awad Al-Harbi.
The newly married groom now lives in the hope that he may be saved by the generosity of his victim’s family.
Reaction in society to the prison marriage was mixed. Some saw the father’s decision as a good thing, a way to give a friend and fellow prisoner a second chance in life. Others condemned the step and described it as being unfair to one’s daughter.
The marriage fulfills all legal conditions under Saudi law, according to Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, a member of the Council of Senior Scholars.
Al-Obaikan said should a woman accept a man on death row after knowing about his situation there is no reason why the marriage should be stopped from happening. When Arab News questioned Al-Obaikan on the girl’s sound judgment considering she is only 15, he said she is considered an adult and therefore eligible to marry.
Al-Obaikan said that a woman could get married and see her husband die soon after, which would be God’s will, and in Al-Awad’s case it would also be God’s will to keep him alive should the victim’s family pardons him.
As for the idea of marriage in Islam being a form of asylum and haven, and whether this condition applies while one of the spouses is in captivity, Al-Obaikan said that if it is a woman’s choice then no one should object.
Ahmad Al-Hariri, a Ph.D. in forensic psychology, said, “In other countries, a 15-year-old is considered a child and cannot be considered an adult until she turns 18.”
He added that even if such a marriage is legal then it is still considered an assault on her humanity and wellbeing.
Al-Hariri said this could not be accepted both socially and psychologically. “After choosing a suitable spouse, starting a family and having children are the natural outcome of marriage and in this case there is no guarantee for such a family to exist and thrive,” said Al-Hariri.
“The overwhelming possibility of the success of this marriage is bleak, and what we see for the future is a widow with orphans,” he added.
“Even if this marriage is legal, it is totally unacceptable on a humanitarian level as it will harm the girl’s interests. Should the Reconciliation Committee’s efforts fail she will loose a husband after having lost her father,” Al-Hariri said.

Even the liberal Saudi expert who is against the marriage doesn't state the obvious - that it is the worst form of child abuse to force your daughter to marry a convicted murderer! And yet, according to Sharia, this is perfectly acceptable.

The New York Times Magazine last Sunday had a lengthy article by Noah Feldman that talks about sharia and how it really isn't so bad, how the West isn't looking at it with enough nuance and how much better it was than English common law - in the 18th century. Perhaps he can defend this action better than the Arab News managed to.

The Shin-Bet starts a blog

The BBC reports:

The Israeli secret service has launched a new venture: it has started to carry an internet diary, or blog, written by four of its agents.
The agents discuss how they were recruited, and what sort of work they perform; they also answer questions sent in by members of the public.
The tone of the blog is chatty, at times even facetious.
The agents from Israel's internal security service, the Shin Bet, are shown in silhouette.
Agent Chet is the sole woman among them. She works in hi-tech.
She says she went to the agency because it offered her a better "work-life balance" than her previous job in the private sector.
There are parts of her job, she says, which she can't discuss even with her husband - but then again, at home, they don't much like talking about work.
Recruitment drive
Agent Aleph, dubbed "the expert" on the blog, attempts to debunk a few myths.
"We don't work in a basement," he says. "We don't spend the day wearing earpieces."
"And we don't get to have flashing blue lights for our cars. We have to sit in traffic jams like everyone else."
The blogs are intended to draw members of the public into other areas of the Shin Bet website - in particular the recruitment section.
Some of the positions are advertised with a red star and the slogan "hot job".
There is the opportunity to work on what are described as "irregular missions"; to work on one's own; and to acquire a variety of "special skills".
A Shin Bet official told the BBC that the idea was to inform the public that the agency offers work beyond just stopping Palestinian paramilitary attacks.
The official said that the agency had been cheered by the feedback from members of the Israeli public - keen to find out more about the jobs within Shin Bet, the pay and even the food.

The blog can be found here. Unfortunately, it is only in Hebrew.

The Elder breaks a story

Israel Today picked up on a story I did last week, linking to me.

Cool!

Latest Peaceful PalArab Poll

From The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research:

If new presidential elections were to take place today, Mahmud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh would receive almost equal number of votes, 46% for Abbas and 47% for Haniyeh. Haniyeh’s popularity today is the highest ever registered since Hamas’s electoral victory in January 2006.

The gap between the standing of Fateh compared to the standing of Hamas decreases significantly in three months from 18 percentage points to 7. If new parliamentary elections were to take place today, Hamas would receive 35%, Fateh 42%, other electoral lists combined 12%, and 11% remain undecided. This represents a significant increase in Hamas’s popularity compared to December 2007 when it received 31% compared to 49% to Fateh, 10% to other lists and 11% undecided.

49% say Haniyeh should stay in office as Prime Minister while 45% say he should not. Last September only 40% said Haniyeh should stay as prime minister. By contrast, today only 38% say Fayyad’s government should stay in office and 55% say it should not.

One of the elephants in the room is that the West Bank is not nearly as "moderate" as wishful-thinking Secretaries of State might believe. Even in the earlier municipal elections, Hamas beat Fatah in many major West Bank towns, and Fatah's hold seems to be pretty much Ramallah alone.

If the majority of Palestinian Arabs freely support terrorism, how much are they responsible for the actions of the terror government they support?

The Jewish St. Patty's connection

I heard on a TV show yesterday, and a number of websites confirm, that the idea of corned beef and cabbage as an Irish food is a purely American invention, unknown in Ireland.

Apparently, the Irish immigrants who settled in the Lower East Side wanted to make boiled bacon and cabbage, which is the traditional Irish dish. But they had no real choice but to frequent the many kosher butchers and delis that were owned by Jewish immigrants.

Obviously there was no bacon available at these shops, so they substituted corned beef from the kosher delis, and the rest is history.

UK journalist shows her "objectivity"

A reporter named Louisa Waugh from the Sunday Herald managed to get into Gaza to report on the situation there, and she makes it very clear what her stories will be like:

Gaza is being dragged to its knees in the face of shameful silence from the international community, including the EU. I have no doubt that before I leave Gaza in a few weeks, there will be more power cuts, more pointless civilian deaths, and more deafening international silence.

This story doesn't even mention the word "rockets" - except when referring to Israeli rockets. It is as if jackbooted Israel just decided to enslave a population for no reason except, of course, Jewish racism. She admits that she can only speak to people that are being pre-arranged to speak to her - something any real journalist will chafe under - but since she knows that her stories will be in sync with what she is being fed, she can pretend to be brave by parroting Palestinian Arab talking points.

Even so, interesting facts emerge, despite her spin:

One of my PCHR colleagues estimates that only 3000-4000 Gazans are allowed by Israel to travel outside the Strip. This is around 3% of the population; the remaining 97% cannot get travel permits, so cannot go anywhere.

So thousands of Gazans can travel outside and return? That doesn't sound like a "siege" to me.

Waugh does manage in another story to speak to a rocket manufacturer, and she paints him in a very sympathetic light - and gives useful advice to terrorists:

THE POPULAR Resistance Committees is a close ally of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. "Abed", a 28-year-old father of two, is one of the PRC's senior artificers, responsible for devising mines and designing and building rockets and mortars. It was with some surprise, therefore, that he started receiving phone calls from an Israeli spy.
"I was home two weeks ago, getting ready for evening prayers, sitting with my wife and child, and suddenly my mobile starting ringing. He said, I'm Rami, I'm from Shabak the Israeli security agency Shin Bet and I'm responsible for your area. What are you doing? I guess you're with your wife and your two children?' I said no, and he said Yes, your two children are with you, but now you've just moved out of the room'. I said, what do you want? He said If you don't stop your rockets it's only a matter of time before you are targeted'."

Anyone who has ever seen a modern spy movie knows what you're supposed to do next: hurl the phone as far as you can and then dive from the building before it or the telephone explodes. Next, go underground, and never use a phone or a computer again. Abed, on the other hand, merely hung up the phone. Half an hour later he was again nonplussed when Rami called back to continue the chat. "He threatened me again that we have our own ways to reach you, but the rockets we will use to assassinate you will be stronger than before.'"

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Other members of the Popular Resistance Committee reported receiving threatening phone calls - an interesting insight into Israel's capacity to use mobile telephone networks to monitor and, in this case, harass its enemies. But the reaction of Abed and his comrades to their calls from Shin Bet illustrates another aspect of the conflict: the remarkable operational naivety which is often displayed by Palestinian militants, even after scores have already been assassinated by Israel.

"After that I realised that when talking on the phone that someone was listening to me," muses Abed.

"I changed the SIM card, but it seems like they were following the sound of my voice, because even after changing the SIM card I could hear someone was listening. My brother borrowed my mobile, and when he was talking to his friend someone else was talking to him on the same line."

It seems that Abed and his fellow militants do not know that when a mobile phone is connected to a network it identifies itself not only by its SIM card but also with the handset's own unique code. To foil detection it is necessary to change both SIM and telephone, not the SIM card alone.

Isn't it interesting that Israel knows where the rocket manufacturers live - and yet they don't kill them outright? Waugh "knows" that "Abed" should have jumped out of the house when the phone rang, because her knowledge of what Israel is likely to do comes from spy movies. But Abed knows quite well that he is safe as long as he is with his family, a fact that escapes Waugh.

She can't even get basic facts right:

Since the present uprising began more than seven years ago around 4000 Palestinian missiles, mostly Qassams and home-made mortars, have been fired into Israel or its former Gaza settlements and military bases, part of a cycle of bombardment, blockade and invasion which has proved far more injurious to Gaza than to Israel.

Actually, the number of Qassams and mortars to the Negev alone is more than double that number.

Such is the quality of UK journalism - advocating for terrorists and providing them with a willing platform.

HH CLVIII

Haveil Havalim- The Almost Purim Edition is up at Jack's Shack. I am honored to have had two postings chosen for this weekly roundup. Check it out!

In honor of it almost being Purim, I will post the probable lyrics to part of an old Saturday Night Live sketch that is seemingly impossible to find online (from season 5):

Listen to the story about a man named Abdul
Poor Bedouin trying to keep his family full
Then one day he was shooting at some Jews
Up from the ground comes a bubbling ooze
Saudi soda
Persian Perrier
Kuwait Kool-aid

Next thing you know old Abdul's a billionaire
Kin folks say "Abdul move away from there"
Said "California is the place to set your lair"
So they got up and they moved to Bel Air
Next to Beverly Hills that is
Swimming Pools
Movie Stars
Jews

The Bel-Airabs!

They had two episodes, one of which made fun of Abscam (remember that?)

Terrorist life insurance

YNet reports:

The family of Muhammad Shahade, the Fatah and Islamic Jihad man killed by the IDF along with three other Palestinians in Bethlehem Wednesday evening, received a phone call from Hassan Nasrallah's office Friday evening, Palestinian sources reported.

Hizbullah representatives reportedly spoke with Shahade's widow and informed her that Nasrallah decided to designate her husband as a Hizbullah martyr, therefore entitling his family to a "martyr allowance."

"We do not alienate ourselves from our people and we will assume the financial burden involved in this," Hizbullah told the widow.

But that's not the only windfall for the Shahade family, who (the YNet article goes on to say) very possibly was the mastermind of the Mercaz HaRav massacre with Hezbullah help. Our moderate friends from the PA is also paying life insurance to the terrorist's family: (from Palestine lPress, autotranslated):

The Minister of National Economy Kamal Hassouneh on Saturday visited the mourning tent Bethlehem Nativity built in the Bethlehem Nativity Plaza. Hassouna said.. that he had issued instructions to the Ministry to direct crews from tomorrow rebuilding the house of martyr Mohammed Shehadeh destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces last month.

So what exactly is the difference between Hizbollah and the PA again?

Even PalArabs believe that Western aid increases corruption

From Ma'an:

Two out of three Palestinians believe that financial assistance from the West fosters corruption and foments the conflict between Fatah and Hamas.

This is one of the findings of a new report by Fafo, the Norwegian research institute that hosted secret talks between the PLO and Israel in Olso 1993 that later led to historic peace negotiations and the inception of limited self-rule in Palestine.

Fafo's researchers interviewed 4,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, between 22 February and 4 March, about the political and economic situation in the occupied territories. Most of those surveyed to not believe that aid from the West has improved conditions.

According to the study, 63% think the aid encourages corruption and that the aid does little or nothing to fight poverty. 69% percent believe financial support aggravates the conflict between Fatah and Hamas.

One out of five Palestinian households includes a person who wants to leave, 20% to the West. The remaining 80% of those who want to move wish to settle elsewhere in Palestine or in other Arab countries. Only 42% believe they will get the chance to move.

...Just 44% support Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, down from 77% in December 2006.