Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Top advisor to Assad assassinated

Syria's formerly airtight grip on internal security seems to be unraveling.

From Jordan's Albawaba:

Well known sources informed Albawaba that General Mohammed Suleiman, an adviser to Syrian president Bashar al Assad, was assassinated on Friday. Suleiman also served as Syria's liaison officer to Lebanon's Hizbullah movement.

According to the sources, Suleiman was shot dead by a sniper in the Syrian port city of Tartous. They added the funeral service will be held on Sunday in Suleiman's home-town of Driekesh which is located less than 20 kilometers away from Tartous.

The sources told Albawaba the Syrian authorities have been making huge efforts to prevent the publication of the news regarding Suleiman's killing. It should be mentioned that on February 13, 2008 Imad Moughniyeh, the military commander of Hizbullah, was assassinated in Damascus.

Peaceful PalArab weekend

It is a little hard to keep up with everything going on, but....

At least nine were killed in clashes between Hamas and the Fatah-linked Helles family in Gaza. At least one of the dead was a 14-year old child from that family. There are reports of 90 wounded. The fighting included lots of mortars and machine gun fire. Hamas has been blaming that family lately for the bombing a week ago that killed 5 Hamas members.

At least two of the dead today were Hamas members.

There are reports that Hamas prevented ambulances from reaching Helles family members during the fighting.

Hamas has also been using machine guns against Army of Islam members in Gaza, no reports on injuries there.

There have been a number of arrests in Gaza of Fatah members, and Fatah in the West Bank has been retaliating against Hamas members there as well.

In the West Bank, two were killed and several wounded in fighting in the town of Jaba under unclear circumstances. One of the dead was also a 14 year old boy.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 137.

UPDATE: PCHR counts the bodies: 8 from the Helles clan, 2 from Hamas, one other. Unlike earlier reports, no children dead.

All of the Helles deaths were from gunshots to the head or chest, making it sound like executions.

The count is now at 139.

UPDATE 2: Clan clash in Bethlehem, one dead. 140.

UPDATE 3 (8/4): Another member of the Helles family has succumbed to injuries from Hamas. 141.

Tunnel collapse! Plus more!

At least 5 Palestinian Arabs were killed and 14 injured when a smuggling tunnel being dug collapsed in Rafah.

Also, a 65-year old Khan Younis man died of a heart attack while witnessing his son being beaten by Hamas terrorists who entered his home.

An Al-Quds terrorist was injured in a "work accident" when a bomb exploded in his home.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 132.

UPDATE: The tunnel didn't collapse while being built, the Egyptians blew it up, so the count is back to 126 for the moment.

"Top ten intellectuals all Muslim"

The Arab American News joyfully reports:

Two prestigious Western magazines — Foreign Policy in the United States and Prospect in Britain — asked their readers to choose which among the world's 100 public intellectuals deserved the top honours.

Over 500,000 people cast their votes via the internet. The results published this July were surprising. The first ten names on the list were Muslims, from countries as diverse as Turkey, Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, Iran and Uganda.

Heading the list was the Turkish Sufi scholar, Fethullah Gülen. He was followed — in order of voters' preference — by Muhammad Yunus, the microfinancier from Bangladesh; Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian cleric who hosts the popular “Sharia and Life” TV programme on Al-Jazeera in Qatar; the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk; the Pakistani lawyer and politician Aitzaz Ahsan; the Egyptian television preacher Amr Khaled; the Iranian religious theorist Abdolkarim Soroush; the Islamic philosopher Tariq Ramadan; the Ugandan cultural anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani; and the Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi.

Wow, the top ten intellectuals are all Muslim? Is it coincidence, does it reflect Islamic intellectual superiority, or does it mean something else?

One only needs to look at Foreign Affairs magazine to see the answer:

Rankings are an inherently dangerous business. Whether offering a hierarchy of countries, cities, or colleges, any such list—at least any such list worth compiling—is likely to generate a fair amount of debate. In the last issue, when we asked readers to vote for their picks of the world’s top public intellectuals, we imagined many people would want to make their opinions known. But no one expected the avalanche of voters who came forward. During nearly four weeks of voting, more than 500,000 people came to ForeignPolicy.com to cast ballots.

Such an outpouring reveals something unique about the power of the men and women we chose to rank. They were included on our initial list of 100 in large part because of the influence of their ideas. But part of being a “public intellectual” is also having a talent for communicating with a wide and diverse public. This skill is certainly an asset for some who find themselves in the list’s top ranks. For example, a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites. Others issued press releases or gave interviews to local newspapers. Press coverage profiling these intellectuals appeared around the world, with stories running in Canada, India, Indonesia, Qatar, Spain, and elsewhere.

No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day.

Zaman, the Turkish newspaper that promoted the contest so heavily, has a circulation of 700,000, far more than the number of votes cast, which means that this list was essentially a list of intellectuals chosen by Muslims. (And Noam Chomsky was #11.)

Like all online polls, this one reflects nothing. It is striking that people who are supposedly "intellectual" would lobby for votes so cravenly; this reflects not intellect but egoism.

But as usual, idiots will use this "poll" as reason to push their own political agendas.

Good Israel News Friday

Blooming Deserts Turn Israeli Water Industry Into Money Magnet

A hip reconstruction that mimics nature

Jasmine as a cancer fighter

An exoskeleton that helps paraplegics walk

Making plants use water more efficiently

Hamas hints at taking over the West Bank

In yet another little-reported story, Hamas on Thursday made a slightly oblique threat to the PA. From Ma'an:

Hamas refused to rule out the option of taking control of the West Bank if Fatah do not change their policies towards Hamas activists in the area. The statement was made in a press release by Sami Abu Zuhri, the official Hamas spokesperson in the West Bank on Thursday.

Abu Zuhri said "the current situation in the West Bank is similar to that in the Gaza Strip before Hamas took control. Security forces are committing crimes in their interrogation and torture centers."

"We remind them [Fatah]," he continued, "that they planted thorns and they will harvest regret."

Hamas have been accused by Fatah of the creation of an executive to carry out a coup in the West Bank similar to the one in the Gaza Strip. They have previously denied any plans to overthrow the caretaker government in the West bank, and while this falls short of a declaration of such an intention, it will be seen as a stepping up of the rhetoric around this issue.

I've noted before that Hamas' support in the West Bank is extensive and Fatah's is not nearly as strong as wishful thinkers in the West assume:

In the local PA elections of 2005, before the Hamas victory in the legislative elections, Hamas won the majority of seats in Nablus (73% of the vote to Fatah's 13%) , Al-Bireh (72% of the vote) and Jenin (winning eight seats to Fatah's four.) Fatah didn't even win a majority in Ramallah; although it outpolled Hamas there it ended up tied with the Popular Front.

This is yet another elephant in the room that the international community chooses to ignore. While Hamas is probably not in a position to take over the West Bank today, chances are very good that in the aftermath of any Israeli withdrawal from territory for "peace" that Hamas would move into the vacuum before Fatah even realizes it. Hamas is better organized and has a stronger ideology than Fatah, and its strength attracts recruits. Fatahs' major security accomplishment has been a crackdown on car thieves.

In Gaza, Fatah didn't just lose - it folded rather than seriously challenge Hamas. What objective reasons can anyone bring to say that this couldn't or wouldn't happen in the West Bank? The hundreds of millions of dollars that poured into the PA coffers for "security" were completely wasted in Gaza, and chances are very good that they are being equally wasted in the West Bank, while Hamas is methodically increasing its budget, ties to Iran, operational efficiency and firepower.

And as usual, the West as well as Israeli liberals choose to ignore the lessons of last year's coup and barrel forth with an exact repeat of the mistakes of Gaza.

More Peaceful PalArab news

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas swept through Gaza and arrested many more Fatah leaders, as well as a 70-year old sheikh.

This happened only hours after Mahmoud Abbas ordered all of the Hamas detainees in the West Bank who had been arrested in the past week to be released.

Meanwhile, for the first time in ten years, Jordan has started talking to Hamas.

One reason that Hamas is being seen as more mainstream is because of the existence of the even more extremist groups emerging. Today was apparently the anniversary of the fall of the Ottoman empire, and Hizb ut Tahrir (The Liberation Party) tried to demonstrate in the West Bank, but the PA arrested many of them instead. However, in Gaza, hundreds of its members demonstrated for the restoration of the caliphate, for all Muslims to live in that pan-Muslim state under Sharia law, and to continue to fight the Jews ("a conflict with no limits") - not the "Zionists" - as well as the USA and current Arab regimes.

To be sure, in this same time period there were much worse atrocities against Jews in Europe, especially Russia. But whenever Arab apologists claim that "For centuries, Jews and Arabs lived together in peace," keep in mind what kind of peace it was.

Family denies son of Hamas leader converted to Christianity

This has got to be one of the funnier denials of all time:

Reports that Massab Yousif, son of Sheikh Hassan Yousif a high profile Hamas leader, has converted to Christianity and rejected Palestinian resistance, have been denied by his family.

The initial report was printed on Thursday in Ha'aretz, a leading Israeli paper, which said that their correspondent had interviewed Massab.

The Ha'aretz interview quotes Massab as saying that "the nation, the religion, the organization," of his youth were what made him convert. The article claims that Massab does not want to be part of a society that he apparently described as, "sanctifying death and the suicide terrorists."

Suhaib, Mussab's brother, has strongly denied these claims. He said that while his brother is indeed in United States, he has not converted to Christianity and is adhering to Islam.

Suhaib went on to express his disappointment that Palestinian news outlets, including Ma'an, had picked up the story from Ha'aretz saying, "how could they report such news and quote Hebrew newspapers without contacting Mussab?"

The family said they are considering their legal options to deal with what they called a totally made up story.

Hmmm, who has more credibility - Ha'aretz or a Hamas family? This is a tough one....

Obama: "Israelis crazy not to accept Saudi peace plan"

Via Middle East Times, I have not yet been able to find the original:

Al-Hayat (London): Abbas: 'Obama Told Me Israelis Crazy Not To Accept Arab Initiative' – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the Palestinian community in Cairo that US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama had told him Israel would be "crazy if they don't accept" the Arab peace initiative, "because that would allow them to live in peace and security from Mauritania to Indonesia." Abbas said this was Obama's response when he explained to him the 2002 initiative, in which the Arabs offered to normalize relations with Israel in return for the latter's withdrawal from the territories it captured in 1967.

This plan is of course suicidal for Israel, as it calls for Israel to accept hundreds of thousands if not millions of Palestinian Arabs, for Israel to abandon 100% of its 1967 territories and return to a state that is nine miles wide, for Israel to abandon the Golan and to lose east Jerusalem including the Old City.

If this is what Obama believes then he is somewhere between stupidly naive and maliciously dangerous.

Today's peaceful PalArab news

Hamas infighting is intensifying; leader Ismail Haniyeh was injured when trying to break up a fight between members of the main two factions of Hamas, requiring hospitalization. The argument deteriorated into a fight and eventually to people firing bullets in the air. It was first announced that Haniyeh would be in the hospital for only a day, but now it is three days. Reporters are not allowed in the hospital.

Many believe that recent bombings in Gaza were the result of Hamas infighting, not from Fatah or Islamists.

There are reports that Hamas is now blaming the "Helles" family for the bombings that killed 6 last Friday; and that this family was retaliating for resisting the arrest of a member. The family denies it.

A man was shot dead upon apparently being released from Hamas detention in Gaza. There are claims that it was a clan clash but that is unclear.

There are reports that 21 people are in the Shifa hospital in Gaza recovering from a Hamas torture technique - poisoning them with cooking gas. (Separating fact from rumor is literally impossible, but I've seen this claim before.)

A terror group, apparently from Gaza, claims to have shot at some Israeli houses in the Negev. No confirmation from Israel.

Teh 2008 PalArab self-death count is now 126.

Hamas leader's son converts to Christianity, loves Israel

From Haaretz:

Masab, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef who is also the most popular figure in that extremist Islamic organization, a young man who assisted his father for years in his political activities, has become a rank-and-file Christian. "I'm now called Joseph," he says...

Nor does he attempt to hide his affection for Israel, or his abhorrence of everything representing the surroundings in which he grew up: the nation, the religion, the organization.

"Send regards to Israel, I miss it. I respect Israel and admire it as a country," he says.

"You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death."

The full interview will be published tomorrow.

This news is the top headline in the Palestine Press Agency and one of the top headlines in Ma'an. There are no comments yet in the PalPress story.

Can Israel recover from the Olmert era? (TNR)

From Yossi Klein Halevi in The New Republic:

Is it really time for eulogies? Is the abyss known as the "Olmert era" closing? Ehud Olmert has been eulogized so often that, even now, after announcing his intention to resign as Israeli prime minister when the Kadima party holds primaries for a new leader in mid-September, some Israelis don't quite believe it. What's the catch, they wonder?

Like a parody of Jewish survival, Olmert has persisted, indestructible. The Lebanon fiasco of summer 2006 ended the careers of defense minister Amir Peretz and IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz, but Olmert lingered. So far, he has evaded a half-dozen police investigations. (Israeli joke: What do Olmert and the Torah have in common? Parshat hashavuah--a phrase that means the weekly Torah reading but could also mean the "scandal of the week.") He admitted to receiving cash in envelopes from New York fundraiser Morris Talansky, and Israeli newspapers have published copies of letters Olmert sent to prominent businessmen soliciting help for Talansky's business interests. But still the indictment tarried.

Then came the revelation that he may have subsidized family trips with funds stolen from the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and from an organization for handicapped children--a scandal the press called "Olmert Tours." How, we wondered, could even he survive that one? But Olmert--portrayed in one newspaper caricature as a bandana-wearing contestant in the reality show "Survivor"--has continued to make life and death decisions for the Jewish state.

Olmert is the embodiment of what has been, for Israel, the year of scandal: a president accused of rape, a finance minister accused of massive embezzlement, a deputy prime minister found guilty of forcing his tongue into the mouth of a young woman soldier. Olmert, two years after assuming office and promising to make Israel a more "fun" place to live, leaves us a nation in shame. He went to war in Lebanon to restore our military deterrence and destroy Hezbollah's military capacity. Instead, he shattered Israeli self-confidence in our ability to defend ourselves, and empowered Hezbollah as the strongest force in Lebanese politics, with an arsenal three times larger than it possessed before Olmert's war.

Olmert is the first Israeli leader--perhaps the first democratic leader anywhere --to threaten his own country with destruction if it rejected his policies. Israel, he warned, is "finished" if it didn't withdraw from the West Bank. Yet in failing to defeat Hamas, he has insured the impossibility of a two-state solution for the foreseeable future, leaving us without a political or military option.

Perhaps Olmert's greatest offense was in debasing our public discourse with terms like "Talansky's envelopes" and "Olmert Tours," diverting our attention from the imminent nuclearization of Iran and the growing power of Hezbollah and Hamas. Instead of focusing on Israel's survival, we have been preoccupied with the melodrama of Olmert's survival.
Now comes the hard work of restoring sanity to Israeli politics. Neither of Kadima's leading candidates to replace Olmert--Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz--has the trust of the public. Livni is seen as honest but ineffectual, lacking minimal security credentials; Mofaz, though a former IDF chief of staff, is a lackluster politician with a credibility problem. (As a former Likud leader, he promised to remain in the Likud and immediately abandoned the then-sinking party for Kadima.)

Whoever wins in the Kadima primaries will almost certainly try to create a national unity government that will include the Likud. So far, though, the Likud is insisting it will remain in opposition until general elections are held. But that could abruptly change if Israeli military intelligence concludes that Iran is about to go nuclear--a threat whose neutralization requires the credibility of a unity government. The emergence of such a government will be the most telling sign that the country is beginning to heal itself from the tabloid scandals of the Olmert years and is now ready to restore Israeli deterrence by dealing with the Iranian crisis.

Happy Laylat ul Isra and Mi'raj!

Tonight, Muslims celebrate the anniversary of Mohammed's "Night Voyage" where tradition says he went to the "farthest mosque" (the Isra) and then took a side trip around heaven (the Mi'raj), where he bargained with Allah (on Moses' advice) to reduce the number of daily prayers from fifty to five.

The entire Muslim claim to Jerusalem comes from this story, of which the Koran only elliptically alludes to, in verses 1 and 60 of chapter 17:

1. Glory to (Allah) Who did take His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did bless,- in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who heareth and seeth (all things).

60. Behold! We told thee that thy Lord doth encompass mankind round about: We granted the vision which We showed thee, but as a trial for men,- as also the Cursed Tree (mentioned) in the Qur'an: We put terror (and warning) into them, but it only increases their inordinate transgression!

The idea that the "farthest mosque" is Jerusalem is far from universal, even among Muslims.

In this translation, the translator identifies that mosque as being in heaven:

17:1 "The Aqsa Mosque" means "the farthest place where there is prostration," many billions of Light Years away. This verse informs us that Muhammad, the soul, was taken to the highest Heaven to be given the Quran

And four years ago MEMRI translated an Egyptian article that claimed that the furthest mosque was in Medina:

This text tells us that Allah took His Prophet from the Al-Haram Mosque [in Mecca] to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Thus, two mosques are [referred to] here, the first of which is the Al-Haram Mosque, and the second of which is the Al-Aqsa Mosque. 'Al-Aqsa' is a form of superlative which means 'the most distant.' Therefore, the place to which the Prophet was taken must be a mosque, and not a place where a mosque was to be established later, nor a place where a mosque had once stood. This place must be very far from the Al-Haram Mosque. It need not be [actually] built, as the Al-Haram Mosque [itself] was at that time merely an open space around the Ka'ba [and not a building].
"But in Palestine during that time, there was no mosque at all that could have been the mosque 'most distant' from the Al-Haram Mosque. During that time, there were no people in [Palestine] who believed in Muhammad and would gather to pray in a specific place that served as a mosque. Most of the inhabitants of Palestine were Christians, and there was among them a Jewish minority. Although the Koran refers respectfully to Jewish and Christian houses of worship, it does not call any of them a mosque, rather 'churches and synagogues' (Surat Al-Hajj [22]:40). The construction of the mosque situated today in Jerusalem and known as the Al-Aqsa Mosque began only in the year 66 of the Hijra of the Prophet – that is, during the era of the Omayyad state, not during the time of the Prophet nor that of any of the Righteous Caliphs. So much for the mosque."

"As for the word asra, if we open the Koran and trace the instances in which it occurs we find the following [five] verses.… [3] Hence [the verbal noun] isra' means 'moving secretly from a place of danger to a safe place.' The meaning of the [Koranic] expression 'He took His servant by night' is that He ordered him to journey in secret from his enemies to a place where he and his mission would be secure. In other words, the text speaks of the Hijra of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina, and not of a visit to Palestine. [Indeed], the Hijra of the Prophet [to Medina] was carried out unbeknownst to his enemies.

Of course, the Koran never mentions Jerusalem at all. Jerusalem's "Al Aqsa" mosque was built a hundred years later and named for this fairy tale.

But since Islam can't stand to see Jews controlling Jerusalem, the lie that the Koran refers to that city will continue for a long time.

Recent Elder scoops

Very occasionally, I like to brag.

Today, the Jerusalem Post reported on Hamas shaving off the mustache of a Fatah leader - nearly 36 hours after I did.

On July 17, I reported on the PalArab claim that Zionists trained rats to terrorize Jerusalem Arabs - two days before any other media outlet picked it up.

And just going through my July postings, I see many other articles that no other English-language media noticed or reported.

To quote Men in Black, "Best investigative reporting on the planet. But go ahead, read the New York Times if you want. They get lucky sometimes. "