Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Weeping over the ruins of Jerusalem

Today is Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem.

In the 19th century a large number of Christian pilgrims voyaged to the Holy Land, and a good number of them recounted their experiences in books and lectures back in their native lands. Here are three descriptions of how the Jews would, year-round, weep over the destruction of the two Temples from within the ruins of Jerusalem.

From "The Quiver", 1862:

THE Jews' Wailing Place," says Dr. Stewart, "is a narrow court or passage adjoining the western wall at the Haramwhich has been lately paved by a Jew tor the benefit of his brethren, and is one of the most interesting places in the city. No one can look at the immense blocks of stone in that wall without being convinced that he has before him, in its original state, a portion of the Temple enclosure.

It is from thirty to forty feet in height, built with large stones, some of which are nearly twenty feet in length. The Jews have purchased from the Government the privilege of resorting to this place ; and on every Friday many of both sexes are to be seen sitting in the court, reading the Scripture and their prayer- books, and weeping over the ruin of their temple and nation

Some of them rock their bodies about, rattling over their prayers at the same time with a tremendous rapidity. Others go up to the wall, and putting their mouths to the openings between the stones, pray in that attitude, because tiiey imagine that their prayers are more sure to reach Jehovah's ear when breathed through the foundation walls of what was once his holy and beautiful house. It is a most touching sight to see these mourners weeping over the fallen Jerusalem.

The account which Dr. Robinson gives of this spot is as follows : — " I went with Mr. Lanneau to the place where the Jews are permitted to purchase the right of approaching the site of their Temple, and of paying and wailing over its ruins and the downfall of their nation. ...Two old men, Jews, sat there upon the ground, reading together in a book of Hebrew prayers. On Fridays they assemble here in greater numbers. It is the nearest point in which they can venture to approach their ancient Temple... Here, bowed in the dust, they may at least weep undisturbed over the fallen glory of their race, and bedew with their tears the soil which so many thousands of their forefathers once moistened with their blood. This touching custom of the Jew is not of modern origin. Benjamin of Tudela mentions it, as apparently connected with the same spot, in the twelfth century ; and very probably the custom has come down from still earlier ages.

The Jew who was our guide, on approaching the many stones, took off his shoes, and kissed the wall." Speaking of the large stones, they tell us " some of them are worn smooth with the tears and kisses of the men of Israel."

The Land and the Book, William McClure Thomson, 1870:

No sight meets the eye in Jerusalem more sadly suggestive than this wailing place of the Jews over the ruins of their Temple. It is a very old custom, and in past ages they have paid immense sums to their oppressors for the miserable satisfaction of kissing the stones and pouring out lamentations at the foot of their ancient sanctuary. With trembling lips and tearful eyes they sing, " Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever : behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste."

My Trip to the Orient, John Collinsworth Simmons, 1902:

I went down to what is known as the "Wailing-place of the Jews." Here were scores of Jews, from lads of a few summers to old men who had grown gray and stooped in waiting. Stretching for a hundred yards or more was a part of the old wall of their city. These stones were there in the days when their Temple stood on Mount Moriah, when their altars smoked with their sacrifices, and they were the people of God, known and recognized among all men. And now they were strangers in their own city, and here they, and their fathers for generations, have assembled every day, and, with their faces to these unsympathizing stones, are wailing out their sorrows, and waiting for the coming of their Messiah. I saw nothing in Jerusalem that touched me so deeply as the scene at this wall. I heard their murmur all along the line as they stood with their backs to the light, and their faces to the hard, senseless stones....

It is said that these Jews at their wailing-place use the Lamentations of Jeremiah as their texts. Among those there the day I saw them, my guide told me were some of the richest Jews in Jerusalem. 1 could not but mark the earnestness and the seriousness that characterized old and young. When I knew of the oppression to which they are subjected in this the land of their fathers, I could not wonder so much that they never wearied in crying for help. And one generation is taught by another that here they are to find relief.

Zionist Death Dung

The ridiculous IMEMC "reports:"

The Israeli army dispersed the weekly nonviolent protest located in Bil'in village north of the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday midday with gas, guns and grenades.local sources reported.

A number of civilians reported suffering from gas inhalation and for the first time Israeli troops threw smelly manure at the protestors.

I couldn't find any wire service photos from today's Bil'in protest, but yesterday's Naalin protest which the IMEMC also described as "non-violent" was captured by this AP photographer, showing a non-violent protester punching an aggressively violent IDF soldier in the face. (Also a picture of some non-violent rock hurling with slingshots.)

Ah, but that's not the half of it. The Arabic media is reporting that the nefarious IDF did much, much worse things in Bil'in, calling this "field testing" new weapons (autotranslated):

The march started from the village centre and headed towards the wall, where participants tried to cross into their confiscated land , but the occupying soldiers fought them with fire hoses (using) contaminated wastewater cow dung and chicken (dung) with some chemicals, thus leading to the injury of dozens of cases Altakiu , Where demonstrators surprised color green and fragrant water stinking, and that became his clothes for several hours.

Just imagine the infrastructure necessary to weaponize cow dung and wastewater. You gave to fill out the necessary paperwork, requisitioning the manure for the purposes of stopping non violent protests; you have to establish a relationship with the manure bendor, you have to test the manure to make sure that it has the correct consistency for flinging at the optimum distances (you don't want blowback!) which means having farms dedicated to creating consistent diets for cows and chickens in order to ensure quality dung; you need a good mechanism for dung delivery which means that weapons need to be created for each type and size of manure bullets or cannons (as the case might be), you have to have a way of loading the weapons without getting dirty or smelly, meaning special gloves and clothing....and that's just the dung. For the wastewater you need to transport it in special trucks just for the purpose of putting down protesters....

Wow, my respect for the IDF's logistics personnel just went up a hundredfold!

The three star general of wishful thinking

Ha'aretz has a wide-ranging interview with General Keith Dayton, who is tasked with building up the PA security forces so that they can effectively defend against terror groups as well as give the IDF enough confidence to be able to leave security tasks to them.

The challenge facing him is very complicated. He must convince the Palestinians that if they manage to organize their security forces, they will be bringing statehood closer. He must show the Israelis that if they loosen their restrictions a bit, the Palestinians will prove they are a responsible neighbor, and that it is worth the Israelis' while to support the Palestinians and not focus only on Iran and the Hezbollah. He must also explain to the Congress in Washington that American taxpayers' money is not being wasted on another futile attempt at reform in the Arab world.

"We're trying to build their capacity to govern themselves, in such a way that their territory does not become a launchpad for attacks against Israel."

The question troubling Israelis is whether that force will ever be able to take responsibility, to allow us to live without fearing rockets and without the Israel Defense Forces having to maintain a presence among the Palestinians all the time.

Dayton: "I'll give you a one-word answer, which is yes, but it is going to take time. I work with your defense forces. I understand very clearly the challenges they face. But I take great inspiration from something I heard, and I've heard more than once, from [IDF chief of staff] Gabi Ashkenazi. He says: As they do more, we will do less. My goal is to give them the capability to do more, so that the IDF will do less. And I have to assume logically that, eventually, the IDF will feel comfortable that it can leave altogether. I think they can do it."

Dayton is not stupid. He is doing everything he can and in many ways he is making sure that mistakes from the past aren't repeated.

But this initiative, like all others, is doomed.

Even if we accept the premise that the PA truly wants peace - a dubious assumption at best, given their continued incitement in their media and canonization of terrorists - the fact is that the days of Fatah having a true leadership role are numbered, if not already expired.

The current PA leaders have no charisma and no message. While corruption has decreased since the heyday of Arafat, so has the PA's ability to lead the people. The simplistic Islamist and terrorist message of "destroy Israel" resonates much more deeply with the average PalArab then "say we'll destroy Israel and continue to demonize it while we work together with it to help its security and meanwhile fight against the extremists who are our fellow Muslims and Arabs whom we profess solidarity with." The PA tries to appeal to the base - which consistently supports terror attacks against Israel.

A real leader, by definition, leads. He would use his leadership abilities to convince the people to agree with him. In the Arab world, it is much easier to sway public opinion: in the late 1970s Anwar Sadat managed to convince an entire nation who were weaned on unremitting hatred towards Israel to support Camp David - and then a short time after Egypt reclaimed the Sinai, the entire nation swung almost entirely back to hatred.

The PA does not only need a real leader, but an exceptionally skilled leader who can convincingly say to his people that if they are ever going to have a chance for a state it will involve real compromise and no more sloganeering for "right of return" and "100% of the territories" which are never, ever going to happen. The choice is clear - a real state or a continuation of 60 years of limbo. The Arab world is already getting sick of the Palestinian issue in part because the PA leadership keeps on being wishy-washy.

The people who depend on the PA payroll - really welfare - go with the flow but have no enthusiasm. (The welfare component also hits at Arab pride, a factor that cannot be discounted.) Gaza showed this problem starkly; Fatah simply didn't put up a fight, even with all its support from world leaders. It doesn't matter; no matter how well trained a security force is, and no matter how good its weapons are, its members need to believe that what they are doing is right.

That belief in the cause simply does not exist among the PA security forces that General Dayton is trying so hard to shore up. He can teach them discipline and he can teach them tactics, but he cannot teach them to believe in their cause enough to die for it. This is the fundamental difference between the Islamist terror groups and today's Fatah, and that hasn't changed since Hamas' Gaza coup. Even the polls that seem to show more support for Fatah in the West Bank don't say the whole story, because the passion is overwhelmingly on the side of the Muslim extremists, and passion is what wins in the end.

Today's peaceful PalArab news

An Islamic Jihad leader says that there are a large number of "human bombs" waiting for the "calm" to end so they can be sent into Israel for what Arabs refer to as "quality attacks." In this case, "quality" means "lots of women and children murdered."

The Arab media is upset over a story that a delegation of Arab students, as part of a young leadership program sponsored by the US government, went to the Israel embassy for a briefing - and then had the gall to take souvenirs and pose for photos with the Israeli speaker, saying that he is the first Israeli they have ever met.

Palestinian Arabs are starting a new lobbying and PR organization in the US today that is meant to battle the Israel lobby. Does this mean that they will try to influence American policy towards a foreign entity? I thought that was immoral!

A Sharia question was asked about whether it is permissible to drink soda daily. The fatwa in response was complex, but the gist seems to be that while carbonated drinks are not forbidden per se, one has to be mindful not to support Zionist soda companies. The question gets a little muddled, though, because the fatwa author realizes that one cannot boycott every Western company or else the Arab world would go back to living in tents in the desert (my phrase, not his!), so one needs to be wise as to when to avoid American and Zionist products and when to embrace them until the Arab world is strong enough to reject them and dictate its own terms to the West.

UPDATE (8/9): Clan clash in Hebron, one dead. The 2008 PalArab self-death count is at 142.

UPDATE(8/10): Another member of the Helles family succumbed to his injuries from Hamas' attack last week. 143.

Six dead in Gaza tunnel collapse. I'm including it in the death count unless there is any reason to think that Egypt caused the collapse. 149.

Tegart's Wall

As my four year blogoversary is coming up, I'm hoping to find interesting old postings of mine from when my readership was much smaller.

One such posting was from going through old Palestine Post archives, about how the British tried to stop terror attacks in 1938 - by building a fence:

Nowadays, of course, building a fence is considered a terrible crime by many of the descendants of these British. Funny how one's perspective gets changed when one is the target of the terror.

Notice the last line in the first column: in 1925 and 1926, there was a problem of Arab troublemakers moving from Syria into Palestine and Jordan. These people's progeny, today, are called "Palestinian."

Similarly, a Time magazine article at the time stated:

Britain's most ingenious solution for handling terrorism in Palestine was revealed in Geneva last week to the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission by His Majesty's Government's Deputy Permanent Under-Secretary for Colonies, Sir John Shuckburgh. Following a suggestion of mail-fisted Sir Charles Tegart, now adviser to the Palestine Government on the suppression of terrorism, a barbed wire barrier to keep out terrorists is being strung along the entire Palestine frontier at a cost of $450,000. This includes a nine-foot barbed wire fence between Palestine and French-mandated Lebanon and Syria, which border Palestine on the north and northeast. A lot of Palestine's tougher Arabs come from those two mandates. The fence will be completed in August, announced Sir John. Almost as he spoke, a band of Arab terrorists swooped down on a section of the fence, dubbed Tegart's Wall, ripped it up and carted it across the frontier into Lebanon.

Again, the grandchildren of these Syrians and Lebanese Arabs who came to Palestine in 1938 to join the "great revolt" are now known as..."Palestinians."

The Jericho plot

From JTA:

A music CD with a provocative title triggered Israeli suspicions that nuclear secrets were being leaked.
Yasmin Sabah, a 22-year-old Israeli nurse, became the target of an undercover security probe last month after a passer-by saw a music CD in her car with the handwritten title "Jericho IV -- Nuclear Upgrade."

Israel is widely believed to have developed ballistic missiles known as Jerichos, though it is a state secret.

According to Sabah, who came forward with her account this week, two secret service agents posing as car buyers voiced interest in her vehicle and, having arranged a rendezvous, listened to every song on the CD before confiscating it.

Sabah said she was given the CD by a friend and she did not know the origins of the title. Israel's Defense Ministry confirmed that Sabah had been investigated.

"Honor killings" are different when a dhimmi is involved

Usually, a woman who is found to have an "improper" relationship is the one who gets killed in "honor killings."

But what if the person she is having the relationship with happens to not be a Muslim?

Things turn out slightly differently:

Local Pakistani police declared the death of a young Christian man in May to be a suicide requiring no investigation, but a high inspector has reopened the case and taken two Muslim suspects into custody.

Adeel Masih, 19, was found dead on May 4 in Hafizabad, Pakistan. His family and human rights lawyers believe the relatives of a 19-year-old Muslim woman, Kiran Irfan, with whom Masih had a one-year relationship, tortured and killed him. His family has dubbed his death an “honor killing.”

Marriage between Christian men and Muslim women is forbidden according to a strict interpretation of sharia (Islamic Law), and even social contacts such as these can incite violent reactions in Pakistan, a majority-Muslim nation of 170 million.

Local police in Gujranwala, in Punjab province, did not charge Irfan’s family with any crimes and effectively declared them innocent when Masih’s family first came to the station in May, according to the Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), a Lahore-based Christian legal advocacy group.

CLAAS then presented the case to the office of inspector general of Punjab province, who reopened it on July 18. Afterwards the young woman’s father and one uncle, Muhammad Riasat, were taken into custody. The district police office is currently leading the investigation.

Members of the Masih family said that when they first tried to register the case with local police three months ago, officers did not cooperate in launching an investigation because the suspects were Muslim and the victim was a Christian, according to CLAAS.

“The police said, ‘We will first inquire whether Adeel has committed suicide,’ because the culprits told the police about the fact that their daughter wanted to embrace Christianity because of Adeel,” said Aneeqa Maria, a case worker for CLAAS. “[In] this way the police were biased and lingered on the matter, because if there is a long delay in the lodging of a first incidence report, the case becomes weak.”

On July 4 the Masih family brought the case to CLAAS, which applied to the district police in Gujranwala. The case moved up the police chain of command and went all the way to the office of the inspector general of Punjab. It was reopened two weeks later.

Masih’s friendship with Irfan began about one year ago. His mother learned of their contact six months later and warned his son to end it due to the dangers. She then told Irfan’s family about their relationship, which both families considered culturally inappropriate.

Irfan’s family began to harass Masih’s parents and threatened to kill him if they ever again heard that their son was contacting their daughter. They said they “would not allow a Christian man to disgrace Islam this way,” according to CLAAS.

Masih disappeared on May 1 while en route by motorbike to visit Irfan. Her father, Mohammed Irfan, and her two uncles, Muhammad Amjad and Muhammad Riasat, reportedly followed him. They then abducted him and threw his motorbike into a nearby canal, a local resident told CLAAS.

Two hours after Masih disappeared, Irfan’s family called his relatives, claiming he had committed suicide near a canal 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Gujranwala. The family searched for two days with the assistance of divers but failed to find him. Police found Masih’s body on May 4 in a canal in Hafizabad, 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Gujranwala.

Links!

Another busy day at work, so here are some links to tide you over.

Worries of rocket attacks against US from offshore boats - 70% of Americans in range

You still can't write stuff about Mohammed - Random House pulls a book even before the first death threat

Good article on Gaza's smuggling tunnels in Der Spiegel.

Soccer Dad's posting on the Gaza Fulbright kerfuffle, which I didn't cover.

Two articles about the failings of UNRWA and the real reason there are so many "refugees":

Palestinians are not the world's first refugee population, but they may be the first to lament their perpetual refugee status while resisting any effort to resolve it.

Today's PalArab news

Al-Jazeera actually apologized to Israel for its coverage of child-killer Samir Kuntar's release, saying that they violated their own code of conduct:

Egypt says that it has found 20 smuggling tunnels this week. AP manages to write the entire story without using the word "weapons" once, and implies that each of the 20 were only to give fuel to poor hungry Gazans.

The PCHR complained that Hamas is not allowing lawyers to see clients in Gaza prisons, and explains that the reason probably has to do with reports of torture in those prisons.

One of the deported terrorists that used the Church of the Nativity as a place to shoot Israelis from was the object of an assassination attempt in Ireland. The shooters were a Palestinian Arab and a Moroccan.

Two rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel last night, no injuries. There were also three fired on Saturday.

Egypt opened the Rafah border briefly. Was it to take sick or injured people to the hospital? Not quite - it was to send Abdul Ghani Yassin across the border into Gaza. If the name sounds familiar, that's because he is the son of the Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin.

Members of the PA's Ministry of Education were arrested for stealing a million shekels from their employers. Nice to see Fatah's finances are so much more transparent. (Then again, there would never have been an arrest under Arafat - he would have been doing the stealing.)

A Palestinian Arab group is accusing Israel of threatening its Arab female prisoners with rape. This pack of lies will spread like wildfire, as usual.

The Nissan ad that riled up the Saudis

Last night I tweeted about a Nissan ad in Israel that upset the Saudis.

As Ha'aretz reported it (and they have their own video report:)

Saudi Arabia's MBC TV began its Sunday night news edition not with Syrian President Bashar Assad's trip to Iran, nor with Palestinian infighting in Gaza - but with an outraged report on an Israeli TV commercial.

The advertisement shows wealthy Arab oil barons enraged that a Nissan car is so fuel efficient.

MBC proceeded to interview a Saudi representative, who was asked why he thought Israel would broadcast the commercial. He warned of a boycott of Nissan by Persian Gulf states, and demanded the company apologize.

Here is a version on YouTube that has Russian subtitles, but it is pretty clear what is going on.

Those genocidal types like to stay tight

From Sudan Vision:

President Omer Al-Bashir, has appreciated the stance of the Palestinian Hamas movement in rejection of the allegations of the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Sudan and its sovereignty. During his meeting Tuesday at the Republican Palace with the delegation of Hamas, led by Khalid Mishaal, President Al-Bashir reiterated Sudan support to the Palestinian people and their right to establish their independent state with Quds as its capital.

In a press statement after the meeting, Mishaal affirmed Hamas solidarity with Sudan and its leadership against the foreign plots, especially the unfair allegations of the International Criminal Court (ICC). He said that the Palestinian people are facing similar imperialist and Zionist targeting.

Sudan is still ahead in their body count, but Hamas manages to endorse genocidal aims and still gain support from a significant number of Westerners. So they have a lot that they can learn from each other.

More on the love story between Sudan, Hamas and Iran can be seen here.

NGOs and lazy reporters

Others have blogged or written about the recent "Physicians for Human Rights- Israel" report that accuses the Shin Bet of forcing Gazans who require medical treatment to act as spies. In particular, check out NGO Monitor's critique of the report.

One of the things that was striking about this episode is that many of the news reports about the accusations made little attempt to give Israel's side of the story. If they contacted any Israeli spokespeople the comments were buried way after the accusations, and often they weren't even mentioned except in very general terms.

What is interesting about this is that the PHR-I report itself, available to anyone over the Internet, includes the Israeli responses to the report, both from the Prime Minister's Office and from the IDF. It would have taken zero effort for any reporter to open the report, look at the table of contents, turn to page 71 and find the Israeli government's (and Defense Ministry's) answers to these and other accusations in the report, often showing PHR-I's facts to be completely wrong and sometimes finding contradictions.

So without even a phone call, any writers could have seen Israel's response. Of course, the reporters didn't bother to look at the report and only parroted the PHR-I's press release, showing once again that the number of reporters who actually report is diminishingly small.

Arafat the messiah

Firas Press just published a gushing tribute to Yasir Arafat that seeks to elevate him from being merely the symbol of PalArab nationalism into virtual sainthood, together with miracles.

It is a little hard to interpret in autotranslation because the author uses very poetic imagery but some of the more nauseating points he makes include:

The stones and trees are mourning Arafat
His birth was a miracle that highlighted the "cosmic struggle"
He was miraculously born during the Arab riots of 1929, when Arabs wantonly slaughtered dozens of Jews throughout Palestine, and the implication is that he was the reincarnation of some Arab "hero martyrs" who were hung by the British for their terrorist activities
The author tries to relate Arafat to the 1936 Arab riots as well (when he was seven), not sure I follow the logic there
He was friends with all the other "great leaders," like George Habash, and he had an "intimate relationship" with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
"Leader of liberation movements throughout the world"

A couple of days ago there was an article about a new push to name lots of Palestinian Arab boys "Yassir Arafat." It might get confusing when they get to school.

Today's peaceful PalArab news

Masked men attacked a tourist village north of Gaza City, setting fire to the village, stealing property, and handcuffing and beating security guards on Wednesday.

The powerful Dugmoush family, after seeing Hamas massacring the Helles family over the weekend, decided to start a dialogue with Hamas. They started a joint committee to resolve issues between them. (The Dugmoushes are associated with the Army of Islam.)

Hamas started allowing the Al Quds newspaper to be distributed, but it still bans Al Ayyam and Al Hayat al Jadida.

Hamas raided another PA office in Gaza, stealing all its supplies, after "torturing" a Fatah official attached to it.

The summer camp named for terrorist Dalal Mughrabi participated in the opening of a mental health center in Salfit. Sounds like they need it badly.

MEMRI causes Kuwaiti to self-reflect

From the Kuwait Times:

It is funny how it takes a foreign entity to repertoire and sample numerous clips that were aired on public TV here in the Middle East, and to further add subtitles to them; clarifying them for every one's viewing pleasure. Memritv.org, better known as "The Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project," albeit could be claimed to be biased with the explicit aim of pin-pointing the outrageous comments made by certain individuals. This is nothing more than showing actual clips that were aired, nothing more nothing less.

For instance...we can perhaps turn to a Friday sermon made by a Palestinian Sheikh, whereby he claims, "With the establishment of the State of Israel, the entire Islamic nation was lost, because Israel is like cancer that spreads through the body of the Islamic nation. This is because the Jews are viruses that spread like AIDS, the which the entire world suffers from." This is only an excerpt of the sort of rhetoric that is not unfamiliar in our part of the world, and is a rhetoric that only proves our inherent weakness and lack of self-esteem.

When we place our very own miseries in the hands of others, we are externalizing our problems that we are not able to solve, not because we cannot with some will and desire do so. Rather, we put our problems in the hand of foreigners because as such we can allow ourselves to do nothing about it for whatever reason we wish to ascribe to such act.

It is an undeniable fact that we in the region, have a great potential to create an Arab Union, which would mimic the European Union and would ensure that every country gets a chance to prosper and develop. It is unlikely to happen if we are unable to be honest with ourselves. We need to reform our respective countries; we need to stop externalizing our troubles, and to take a deeper look at our malaises, noting that we will not be able to fix them in a year or two. If we start a process of self-examination, in the near future, we would be able to start bringing forward solutions. One solution that has served many Arab States is the external threat, and that will only work for a short period.

It is fascinating that for this Arab writer, the outrageous things said daily on TV in Arabic don't make an impression on him, but seeing them in English - where such rhetoric stands out so much more - allowed him to be more conscious of his own culture and its shortcomings.