Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Today's Gaza news you won't read anywhere else

Hamas attacked a medical clinic in Rafah. The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that this is only the latest incident where Hamas has closed down Gaza medical centers and fired health workers, as well as confiscated medicines and equipment.

Jamal Watt, the Palestinian Minister of Religious Endowments, said that Hamas has embezzled many funds meant for charity. Watt said that this is not a crime against his ministry, but against Islamic law. He also complained about Hamas' politicization of mosques in Gaza.

Egyptian forces discovered another half-ton of explosives near the Rafah crossing. The cache included mortars and rockets, already separated into smaller bags for transport through smuggling tunnels under the border.

Hundreds of Arabs killed, no one cares

There are some Arabs in the Middle East who have been in a constant state of war against a professional army.

Their food supply has been cut, and they are desperately short on fuel. The government forces have cut all communications links. Hundreds have been killed in a short period of time.

And nobody really cares, because it isn't a Jewish government doing the fighting:

SA’ADA, May 25 — A fifth war between the Yemeni army and Houthis has broken out fiercely in numerous Sa’ada districts, Amran governorate’s Harf Sifyan district and Sana’a governorate’s Bani Hushaish district, leaving hundreds on both sides killed or injured, tribal sources said Sunday, adding that the war is the fiercest ever since fighting between the two sides first erupted in June 2004.

In Sa’ada’s Matra district, believed to be the main stronghold of Houthi loyalists, local sources reveal that government troops have been attacking the area for two weeks, using helicopters, tanks, Katyusha rockets and other heavy weaponry.

The same sources add that the government’s troops are facing fierce resistance by Houthis, thereby hindering them in achieving any notable progress on the ground.

Additionally, there are ongoing bloody confrontations between republican guards and Houthis in Dhahian city, located 8 kilometers east of Sa’ada city, but neither side scored victory.

As a result, government forces were obliged to dispatch more republican guard troops. Backed by helicopters, the newly dispatched troops are fighting fiercely with Houthis in several areas of Haidan district.

This latest war has left hundreds on both sides dead and other hundreds injured in a relatively short time period while the Yemeni government imposes an information blackout on battlegrounds after cutting off all wired and wireless communication means, local sources note.

They express concern about the governorate’s worsening human situation amid shortages in diesel and gasoline supplies and soaring propane gas prices due to the blocking of nearly all roads leading to Sa’ada governorate.

The clashes resulted in food shortages, the closure of markets and the suspension of traffic on the Sana’a-Sa’ada Highway.

I don't know enough about the Houthis to know which side is in the right, but I do know enough to say that most "human rights" groups spend much more time caring about one set of Arabs than any other.

Best metaphor for Iran contest

Recently, Iran's president Ahmadinejad referred to Israel as, among other things, a "stinking corpse." He has also called Israel a "dead rat."

Since we have scientifically proven that Iran's government is much closer to extinction than Israel is, we need to find a better metaphor for Iran than the rather prosaic "stinking corpse."

So, at the suggestion of the illustrious EBoZ, who better than my beloved readers to come up with the best pithy description of the Iranian regime, suitable for use by heads of state?

My initial try was "a maggoty, pus-filled festering wound on the armpit of the world" but that is a mouthful.

Any good ideas?

And, as my brother added,

After that we need a "A World without Persia" conference at Columbia University. Then a cartoon contest to parody the Iranian casualties in the Iran-Iraq war, followed by another conference denying that the conflict even happened.

But first things first. What do we call that sickening excuse for a nation?

Another "mysterious explosion" injures Gaza mom, daughters

PalPress reports:

Palestinian medical sources announced at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Tuesday morning the injury of a mother and her two children in a mysterious explosion in the Shojaeya district east of Gaza City.

This is the same neighborhood in which a Qassam rocket fell on Saturday.

A real mystery, I tell ya.

Hamas porn filter slowing Gaza Internet service

The "pornography" Internet filter that Hamas had installed for all of Gaza - which probably is also used to spy on the Internet habits of everyone in Gaza - has slowed down all of Gaza's online access to a crawl.

The poor Gazans, most of whom supposedly eat only one meal a day, are having a hard time going online with their computers that run on the non-existent electricity in Gaza.

Hamas admitted that this slowdown was caused by its filtering software and says it is working hard to fix the problem.

Because they are all about customer service.

Terror attack in Jerusalem yesterday?

Palestinian Arab press is reporting that the "Galilee Freedom Brigades" that claimed responsibility for the Mercaz HaRav massacre is claiming to have killed an Israeli in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem in his apartment.

I cannot find any stories about a murder in Jerusalem yesterday.

Hamas contines to arrest and harass journalists

From Reporters Without Borders:

A TV crew working for the German television station ARD was detained on 15 May in Jabaliya, in the north of the Gaza Strip, by Hamas security forces after covering a demonstration organised by members of Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Cameraman Mohammed Al-Arabid and soundman Mwatasam Rashid were questioned for an hour and their equipment was confiscated.
Two journalists working for the Sudanese satellite television station Sudan TV were detained on 24 May in Gaza City while doing a report on what life is like for the city’s population. Reporter Samir Khalifa and cameraman Ahmed Al-Ras were questioned about their employer’s identity. They were suspected for working for the state-owned Palestine Broadcasting Corporation, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and has been banned in the Gaza Strip since June 2007. Khalifa used to work for the PBC but had to sever all contact with the station, which now operates out of the West Bank city of Ramallah.

It has been obvious for nearly a year that Hamas does not allow journalists to operate freely in Gaza and that it is now impossible to get objective news out of that area. Hamas harassment and threats of journalists is well documented. Western journalists have all but gone; all that is left are Arabs who fear, justifiably, for their lives.

The biggest example is Ma'an News, which was the single best source for reporting a year ago. Now its reports out of Gaza are carefully designed not to offend anyone in Hamas, to the point where they will continue to report on "work accidents" as being from Israeli missiles even after the terror groups themselves admit that it wasn't.

How can the casual reader know that they simply cannot trust any news that comes out of Gaza as being objective? It is all carefully scrubbed to make a group of murderers happy, yet even the major news agencies don't put caveats in their stories (as they do whenever the Israeli censor slightly limits their reporting.)

It is yet another example of how media bias is sometimes not only from within.

I smell a fatwa coming

Last month, a book was published named "Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out". Some predicted that Muslims would get very upset over the cover, which depicts a picture of Mohammed being ripped in half:

Even so, it seems to have sailed under the Muslim radar - until now.

I just saw a story about this book, and especially the cover, in the Palestinian Arab Firas Press.

So it is possible that this issue will percolate up in the Muslim world in the coming weeks.

Gaza crossing roundup

Since my last round-up on May 19, here are some of the things that have happened at Gaza crossings:

May 22 - massive truck bomb at the Erez crossing, killing the suicide bomber but no one else.
May 23: One mortar shot at Sufa.
May 24-25: Several mortars shot at Nahal Oz, three shot at Sufa.

But Hamas and Jimmy Carter want the crossings opened.

Jimmy betraying national secrets?

Once upon a time, strange as it may sound now, Jimmy Carter was the President of the United States. As president, he was privy to a great deal of secret information that he was honor-bound to keep private.

Now, everyone assumes that Israel has nuclear weapons. No one really knows how many, though. Chances are that the United States government does have a much clearer idea of how many such weapons Israel has, and, as Israel is an ally of the US, it keeps mum.

What does one do with a president who, after he leaves office, decides to betray the trust that Americans and their allies placed in him?

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

This is not some investigative reporter coming up with these numbers, this is an ex-president. As such, they appear to have more inside information behind them.

If a former Israeli prime minister would tell a public venue about US spies found in Israel, or perhaps about US military capabilities and weaknesses discovered during joint exercises, what would be the US reaction? If Tony Blair announced the exact location of US submarines when he was prime minister, what kind of an uproar would that cause? Because this is exactly what Jimmy Carter just did to Israel.

He just gave priceless information to Iran about Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Does this make him a spy? A turncoat? I don't know, but at the very least it should mean that whatever little credibility he still has as a decent human being is now utterly lost.

Hamas mirroring Hezbollah's fiber optic network

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas is building its own communications network similar to the private one that Hezbollah built in Lebanon. The network uses a fiber-optic backbone.

A fiber optic network has two major advantages to the terrorists: it cannot be jammed electromagnetically, and it is very difficult to tap. Any attempts to tap fiber optics require a physical presence on the ground, and they are easily noticed and isolated by the network infrastructure.

The Hezbollah and Hamas networks use Chinese components with features (and presumably architecture) built by Iran.

Academic terror supporter update

A couple of stories from this morning from the rarified world of academia....

The British University and College Union (UCU) is slated to debate once again whether they should boycott all things Israeli next week (h/t Global_Freezing). The very existence of Israeli universities - most of whom churn out people whose hatred of Israel rivals some of their British colleagues - is deeply offensive to some British academics, because of the "occupation" or "ethnic cleansing" or perhaps the fact that they are a bit too top-heavy with Jews. Last year the motion was handily defeated but they are back this year, with specific motions considering the "greylisting" of Ariel College, saying that all Israeli universities are "complicit" in murdering Palestinian Arabs, and calling for "twinning" and increased ties with Palestinian Arab institutions.
Not surprisingly, there are also motions for solidarity with Cuba and its "socialist revolution." British academia is still enthralled with the long-discredited positions of the Soviet Union of half a century ago, which could be why they like to call themselves "progressive."

US academics are not immune from their tunnel vision where all things Israeli are evil and all things "Palestinian" are good. David Mumford, a far left academic (who is a donor to MoveOn and ultra-liberal politicians) at Brown University, gained the prestigious Wolf Prize for mathematics given by Israel - and promptly pledged his share of the money to Bir Zeit University and Palestinian Arab causes.

Mumford had previously lectured at Bir Zeit and must have been impressed with how many terrorists that university has generated, including the prestigious "Engineer" who used his chemistry training at BZU to build bombs to kill as many Jews as possible. This is, of course, a very progressive liberal position nowadays.

Carter to EU: Stop being wimps. Defy the US. Support Hamas

Jimmy just takes every opportunity he can to prop up his Hamas pals:

Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU's position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as "supine" and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as "embarrassing".
Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: "Why not? They're not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US."
The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia - the so-called Quartet - after the organisation's election victory in 2006, was "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth," since it meant the "imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees". "Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing," Carter said.
While being scrupulously polite to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who represent the Fatah movement, he was scathing about their exclusion of Hamas. He described the Fatah-only government as a "subterfuge" aimed at getting round Hamas's election victory two years ago. "The top opinion pollster in Ramallah told me the other day that opinion on the West Bank is shifting to Hamas, because people [i.e., Jimmy - EoZ] believe Fatah has sold out to Israel and the US," he said.
Carter said the Quartet's policy of not talking to Hamas unless it recognised Israel and fulfilled two other conditions had been drafted by Elliot Abrams, an official in the national security council at the White House. He called Abrams "a very militant supporter of Israel". The ex-president, whose election-monitoring Carter Centre had just certified Hamas's election victory as free and fair, addressed the Quartet for 12 minutes at its session in London in 2006. He urged it to talk to Hamas, which had offered to form a unity government with Fatah, the losers.
"The Quartet's final document had been drafted in Washington in advance, and not a line was changed," he said. [Nah, he doesn't sound like a bitter old man who gets ignored by the young whippersnappers who replaced him. - EoZ]
Last night, before a packed crowd at Hay, Carter spoke of his "horror" at America's involvement in torturing prisoners, saying he wanted the next US president to promise never to do so again.
He left an intriguing hint that George Bush might even face prosecution on war crimes charges once he left office.
When pressed by Philippe Sands QC on Bush's recent admission that he had authorised interrogation procedures widely seen as amounting to torture, Carter replied that he was sure Bush would be able to live a peaceful, "productive life - in our country".
Sands, an international legal expert, said afterwards that he understood that to be "clear confirmation" that while Bush would face no challenge in his own country, "what happened outside the country was another matter entirely"

Women screaming at mosque. Helpful Imam prays faster.

From Arab News:

Worshippers at the Imam Malik Mosque in the Al-Rawdah district of Jeddah had their attention drawn to the screaming of women in the mosque’s women section during Isha prayers on Saturday.
The commotion was caused after two men entered the women’s part of the mosque to rob women worshippers, while two of their accomplices stood guard outside. According to eyewitnesses the four men then fled in a blue car.
“My mom went out with two of our maids, my siblings and our driver,” said the 17-year-old daughter of a woman who was robbed. “At prayer time the women and children went to the women’s section, whereas the driver and my teenage brother went to the men’s section,” she added.
“Toward the end of the prayer a youth entered the mosque. He told one of the maids who was taking care of the young daughter that he was looking for his mother,” said the daughter, who asked her name not be published.
She added that the youth then stole some handbags and other belongings.
“When the maid started screaming, a man came in and held her mouth from the back to prevent her from screaming. The gang then fled before anyone could come and help from the men’s section,” she said, adding that handbags containing cash, credit cards and mobile phones were stolen.
Meanwhile, hearing the screams the imam hastened the prayer. However, by the end of the prayer, the four men had fled.

Now, here's an Islamic hero - someone who knows that his prayers are more important than women screaming in your own mosque, and they must be finished no matter what. It doesn't matter why the women were screaming - they might have been stabbed, too - all that matters is that the prayers get done properly.

But, in extenuating circumstances, they may be rushed a bit.

Poll: Iran inching toward collapse

A recent poll suggests that, nearly thirty years after the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Iranian regime is moving toward collapse.

Over 99.8% percent of the 2672 votes in an Elder of Ziyon online poll are of the belief that after the Islamic revolution in 1979, which started an Islamic regime responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the regime's power is nearing collapse.

(For more exposition, see my previous entry.)