Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Latest YES commercial

Ahmadinejad announces that Israel will be destroyed on Monday, but the Iranians don't want to miss their favorite Israeli TV shows, in this latest ad from Israel's YES cable network.

Partial translation (and hat tip) here.

Hamas leaders in hiding

Firas Press reports (autotranslated):

Sources in the Hamas movement say that the movement expects Israel to make a number of assassinations of prominent leaders of the movement at the last minute that precedes approval of the "calming" proposal from Egypt.

The Al-Hayat of London newspaper quoted sources as revealing that "a number of Hamas leaders finally vanished from sight for fear that Israel carried out its threats of military action in the sector before accepting the calm", in a reference to the statements of Minister Ehud Barak, the Israeli army, which threatened to implement a military operation in the sector before the truce.

Another way that Israel is making the lives of Gazan terrorists miserable.

Book review: The Truth About Syria

The Truth About Syria, by Barry Rubin, effectively illuminates the inner machinations of the Syrian leadership and how the West should act towards that state.

The newly-released paperback edition was forwarded to me by Professor Rubin to review.

Syria is unique in that it is a weak country that has managed to make itself critically important at minimal risk to itself. Using a combination of publicly available articles and MEMRI translations, Dr. Rubin shows many examples to describe the Syrian leaders' mindset and strategy.

Briefly, the overriding concern of the late Hafiz Assad and later his son Bashar is to stay in power, no matter what. At this, they have been remarkably successful.

From the 1940s to 1970 Syria went through many coups and regime changes. Much like Iraq, Syria is a multi-ethnic nation and is always in danger of serious internal conflict. Hafiz al-Assad's takeover of the then-ruling Baath Party in 1970 ushered in a long period of stability, and Rubin examines how he succeeded.

Modern Syria has consciously styled itself in the Soviet mold. As the USSR collapsed, Assad made sure that he would not make the same mistakes, and he and his son remain steadfastly against any internal reforms that they could not keep under control. Through an ingenious combination of rewarding supporters and punishing detractors, Syria has made internal dissent simply not worth it.

The ruling Alawites, Rubin notes, are not even considered Muslims by most other Muslims. Nevertheless, the Assad family has not only styled themselves as Shia Muslims but they have come up with a way to use the new religious fervor throughout the Muslim world to their advantage. While the regime started off as deliberately secular, it has co-opted religious institutions in Syria while carefully limiting their power.

The major way that the Assad father and son have kept internal problems at bay has been to represent Syria as the vanguard of the pan-Arab nation and to externalize all threats to Syria as threats to the Arab world. The regime thrives on crises that are outside Syrian borders, as it uses them as excuses to avoid reform and preach Arab unity to bring together Syria's disparate communities.

As a result, Syria has a great interest in fomenting instability in the region around it. As long as there are external problems, Syria can avoid dealing with internal ones. This appears to be a deliberate policy, and Westerners who try to argue that Syria would be better off it it would reform itself miss the point entirely - Syria's leadership is not interested in improving the lives of its citizens but only in self-preservation.

More than any other nation, Syria excels at exporting terror. Between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iraqi terrorists and others, Syria has managed to fight its enemies entirely by proxy - in others' lands - since the 1973 war with Israel. Syria maintains deniability as to its own part in these battles, and the West is eager to believe it. At little cost to itself it can maintain a battlefront against Israel, basking in "victories" while paying nothing in terms of damages. The 2006 Lebanese war is a perfect example of this - even though Syria was not necessarily behind the specific fuse that lit that particular event, it set up the atmosphere for it to happen at any time.

Syria's effective takeover of Lebanon is Syria's way to improve its economy. Friends of the regime - specifically Sunni Muslim middle class merchants - profit from the captive Lebanese market, and this has become such an important part of the Syrian economy (as well as Syria's traditional worldview that Lebanon, as well as Palestine, are really a part of Syria proper) that any Western incentives for Syria to abandon Lebanon are foolhardy.

More recently, Syria has managed to co-opt the the pan-Islamism of its internal Muslim Brotherhood into traditional Syrian pan-Arabism.

All the while, Syria manages to manipulate the West into offering more and more concessions at little cost. Syria's tiny contribution to the Gulf War gave it a bonanza of Western benefits, and more than once Syria gained praise from gullible Americans - including the State Department - by simply lying about closing terrorist offices in Damascus. The baldfaced lies about their involvement with Hezbollah and their control of their borders multiply, yet Westerners stricken with terminal wishful-thinking are ready to believe them.

Bashar, who was given plenty of slack by the West as being a Western-educated reformer, has done nothing of the sort, and his rhetoric often surpasses that of his father. He has made some major mistakes, though, in subsuming Syria's self-image as the pre-eminent Arab leader by showing an immature enthusiasm towards Hezbollahs' Nasrallah as well as turning Syria into a client state of Iran.

Rubin shows that Syria does have the ability to act more responsibly, but only when it feels that the alternative is much worse - namely, the threat of an invasion on its own soil. Although he doesn't say it, if Israel would have made clear that it considers Hezbollah to be a part of Syria and that any attack from Lebanon will result in retaliation against Damascus, then the Second Lebanon War would probably never have occurred.

The book itself, I am sorry to say, is not as well organized nor as easy to read as it should have been. There is a large amount of repetition; the same speeches and examples are cited multiple times throughout the book, as are the conclusions. Dr. Rubin is at a disadvantage as there really isn't that much source material available in the West, and the Assads do not make that many public speeches, but this should mean a shorter book. Also, even though the book itself was written from the perspective of late 2006, I was disappointed that the Iranian/Syrian relationship was not expanded nearly as much as those of Lebanon, Israel and even Turkey.

Even so, it is an important book and worth having for reference. I wish I would have read it before my brief conversation with a member of Congress on this topic last month.

Tunnel collapses!

From Ma'an:

A Palestinian man was killed on Monday evening when an underground tunnel collapsed in the city of Rafah, underneath the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian medical sources identified the victim as 20-year-old Fadi Khalifa. His body was taken to Abu Yousif An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah.

Earlier on Monday, Palestinian sources said that 27-year-old Majdi Khdair was killed in a similar tunnel collapse in the Salam neighborhood of Rafah.

Our 2008 PalArab self-death count is at 85.

Have a good Yom Tov

I won't be blogging until (at least) Tuesday night.

For those who celebrate Shavuos, have a great yom tov!

Carnival!

A post of mine made it into Dr. Sanity's weekly "Carnival of the Insanities."

The same post also made it into the weekly Haveil Havalim #168.

Check them out!

Popular lies

Ma'an reports, with little fear of contradiction:

Israeli forces violently broke up a peaceful demonstration against the construction of the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank village of Nil'in, near Ramallah, on Sunday, shooting a foreign cameraman with a rubber-coated metal bullet.

Three protesters were injured. The coordinator of Ni'lin's popular committee against the wall, Salah Al-Khawaja identified the arrestees as 'Ahid Al-Khawaja, Ibrahim 'Amira and an unnamed foreign solidarity activist.

Al-Khawaja explained that his committee organized the rally in attempt to stop work on the wall. Farmers from the town lied on the ground in their fields to stop Israeli bulldozers from digging up the fields and erecting the wall. According to Al-Khawaja, the farmers succeeded to stop the work for one hour. He said bulldozers have uprooted 90 trees in the village in just three days.

He added that the foreign and Israeli solidarity activists participated in the rally along with local residents using mirrors to reflect sunlight at the Israeli soldiers who in return fired rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters at the protestors.

This vision of heartless Israelis building an "apartheid wall" and uprooting hundreds of olive trees while Palestinian Arabs protest peacefully has turned into a news cliche, a meme that has entered the world's consciousness as accepted fact.

Yet if one digs a little, one can see that things in Nilin are not quite as reported.

Here is a photo from today's demonstration:

A Palestinian demonstrator uses a sling shot to hurl stones as tear gas fired by Israeli troops can be seen during a protest against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Nilin, near Modin, Sunday, June 8, 2008

So much for the "peaceful demonstrator" part.

As far as the "bulldozing olive trees" part, guess what the IDF is doing in Nilin?

The Israel Defense Forces and the Civil Administration have decided to relocate some 440 olive trees belonging to Naalin residents to a nearby area, due to the construction of the separation fence in the area.
The Palestinians have protested this decision, claiming that it would badly harm their livelihood.

The IDF plans to relocate the olive trees under the supervision of a Civil Administration officer, but Naalin's residents do not intend to cooperate with the move, as they reject any act related to the construction of the fence.

Security sources told Ynet that the separation fence was being built according to law and that the State was doing all it could to minimize the damage caused to the Palestinian life fabric. The defense establishment is coordinating the entire construction process with the local population, they stated.

"There are always those who will not approve of the State's decisions, including Israeli citizens, and will do all in their power to break the law and stop the fence construction," a security official said.

"The handling of the olive trees, for example, shows how things could be done differently," the source added. "The proof is that the defense establishment, on all levels, knows how to collect all the trees in a professional manner and move them somewhere else, in a way that will not harm the Palestinian farmers."

Israel is spending untold amounts of time and money in order to minimize any damage done to the tree and Palestinian Arabs' livelihoods while still maintaining security. This is hardly what one would expect from the brutal IDF than is being portrayed day in and day out by both the Arabs and the major media who are only too happy to echo the lies.

Israeli Arabs claim to have built their own rockets

This video from Ma'an shows what is supposed to be a rocket built by an Israeli Arab terror organization, the Ahrar Al-Jalil Brigades, who have claimed a number of attacks internally in Israel - some of which seem to have never occurred, others are dubious.

The video could easily be of a painted cardboard tube, but it is still something to be aware of.

The brigades said in a statement that accompanied the video that is "the first time in the history of the 1948 Arabs that they have produced a homemade projectile which is now set up in the Al-Jalil hills (Galilee) and is ready to be launched."

In the statement the brigades sent a message to the Israeli leadership that if the Al-Aqsa mosque is attacked, the brigades will attack the Israeli defense ministry in Tel Aviv.

Arabs accuse Jews of poisoning the wells

Blood libels never get old in the Ummah!

The Iranian Alalam "news" states:

The Popular Committee to Oppose the Siege on Thursday warned against the Israeli regime's plans to spread lethal diseases in the Gaza Strip.

The Committee said with closure of Gaza City's Treatment Plant, the region was the target of environmental crisis.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in its latest report has accused the Israel of dumping wastes and sewage into Gaza Sea.

Director of Water Resources in the Gaza Strip, Monther Shoblak, told Alalam Thursday that Israel dumps 70 percent of its wastes into Gaza Sea, affecting tourism industry and the marine lives in the region.

I didn't know there even was a "Gaza Sea."

How dare Israel do anything to harm the thriving Gaza tourism industry. All those poor tourists, sunbathing on the beaches of the Gaza Sea, being forced to stay out of the water because of Zionist fecal matter. I can see why they'd be upset.

Four dead in Gaza "drug raid"

Ma'an reports:

A member of the de facto government's police force was killed and eight others were injured when the drug squad stormed a suspected drug den in the Ash-Shuja’iyya neighborhood of eastern Gaza City on Friday morning.

Spokesperson of the de-facto affiliated police Islam Shahwan told Ma’an that Captain Jamal Abu Al-Qumsan was killed when the force stormed the den and clashed with the gang they suspect have been dealing drugs.

Shahwan announced that two of the alleged drug dealers were killed in the clashes. He named the dead man as Nawwaf and Marwan Hassanein. Six others were arrested and large quantities of drugs were confiscated.

Palestine Today updates the number of dead to 4.

Given Hamas' control of the press in Gaza, it is entirely possible that these killings had nothing to do with drugs. Either way, by my definition, these are still self-deaths so the 2008 count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other is now at 83.

Egyptian man murders his bride

Firas Press reports on a horrific crime in Egypt, but its reporting indicates something even worse in Arab society.

In December, an Egyptian man from Zagazig named Hassan Mustafa Mohamed Hussein murdered his new bride, Abdullah Ahmad Bahgat, on their wedding night.

The reason? Because he thought that she wasn't a virgin.

He was just sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder.

Up until now, the story might be considered to be just another criminal story, similar to murders that happen daily throughout the world and reported as "strange but true" by wire services all the time.

The more sickening part is that the prosecutor waited for 45 days before charging Mr. Hussein in order to gather more relevant information.

The first important thing that he needed to determine was whether the groom was insane.

But the second part was to see if the bride was really a virgin. And, indeed, the forensics team determined that she was.

Clearly, if she had been found to have been a non-virgin, his sentence would have been much reduced.

Obviously no judge in Egypt would blame the murderer nearly as much in that case. Neither would the prosecutor.

"Honor killing" in Rafah

A 32-tear old woman was murdered in Rafah as an "honor killing."

Her 54-year old father admitted to police that his family members beat her to death because of her "immoral" behavior.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 79.

Clan clashes!

Two incidents of fatal clan clashes in Hebron in the past few days:

On Tuesday evening, a man was killed and 5 of his relatives were wounded when a number of gunmen opened fire at them in the context of a dispute between two clans living in the southeast of Hebron. In the same context, a child was killed on Wednesday evening during an exchange of fire between the two clans.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 17:00 on Tuesday, 3 June 2008, 5 gunmen opened fire at a number of members of the al-‘Ajlouni clan, who were near a grocery shop belonging to ‘Aayed al-‘Ajlouni in Jabal Jouha neighborhood in the southeast of Hebron. As a result, Mahmoud Sameeh al-‘Ajlouni, 31, was killed by several gunshots, and 5 of his relatives were lightly injured by shrapnel from gunshots.

At approximately 13:30 on Wednesday, 4 June 2008, Safawt Mohammed al-Salaima, 13, was seriously wounded by a gunshot to the head during an exchange of fire between the two disputing clans. Al-Salaima was with his father in al-Sahla car park in the southeast of Hebron. He was evacuated to the hospital, but medical efforts to save his life failed.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 78.

Palestinian Arabs not happy with Obama's AIPAC speech

Barack Obama's strongly pro-Israel speech at the AIPAC conference did not win him any fans in the Arab world. Here's Palestine Press Agency's cartoon reaction:

Israeli killed in mortar attack

From YNet:

One person was killed Thursday morning when a mortar shell fired from northern Gaza landed in Kibbutz Nir Oz, located within Eshkol Regional Council limits in the Negev. Hamas' Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades have claimed responsibility for the fire.

Two other people were seriously wounded in the attack, two more suffered shrapnel wounds and mild injuries and several others suffered shock.

All were taken to the Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba by Magen David Adom emergency services. No details were available on their condition.

The rocket hit a Nirlat Groups facility, located in Nir Oz. the council's security director and security forces swept the area, but no further injuries were reported.

As I've noted previously, far more mortars are shot at Israel than Qassams.

This is the second fatal mortar attack in a month, and the third fatal attack from Gaza in that time period.

Keep in mind that the proposed anti-missile systems Israel is working on do not protect against mortars. And that the latest mortars from Iran are deadlier and have their own propulsion, similar to rockets.