Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Islamic Jihad training pictures!

Palestine Today is the voice of Islamic Jihad and as such it often has exclusive photos of Islamic Jihad training sessions.

Here are some of the latest:

I haven't quite figured out why hanging upside down from a rope is such a necessary skill for the brave mujahadeen of PIJ, but perhaps it is the Gaza equivalent of the Blue Angels.

Remember how Gaza is always described as "one of the most densely populated areas on Earth"? Maybe it is because large swaths of Gaza are off limits to civilians as terrorists need lots of space to test their rockets.

This is perhaps one of the better camouflage outfits I've seen. You can hardly see his ski mask and automatic weapon peeking out from all that foliage.

Always a favorite, the Flaming Jump is all the more impressive when you realize that it is over 100 degrees F in Gaza and these guys are flying through a ring of fire - while wearing ski masks. If nothing else, their stench would be a great asset in any hand to hand combat.

Latest PalArab news

Hard to understand this article, but apparently one of the original Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Gaza was arrested by Hamas internal security for incest with his son and, I think, with Muslim Boy Scouts in a mosque in Gaza. Looks like the pervert also videotaped either his own escapades or the boy/girl scouts who met in the mosque.

Hamas continues to abduct and torture prominent Fatah leaders in Gaza including the governor of Khan Younis.

The Gaza Federation of Teachers claims that over 80% of its members in Gaza plan to strike at the beginning of the school year. Hamas is doing everything it can to intimidate them into going to work, including breaking into their homes, beating them and in one case stealing a union leader's car.

Time magazine shills for terror-supporters

Time magazine's coverage of the "Free Gaza" PR stunt betrays its biases:

The Palestinians in Gaza don't get many visitors. That's because the Israelis have imposed an air, land and sea blockade since 2007 when Islamic militants seized control of the coastal strip on the Mediterranean, making it impossible for friends to just drop by. So when two vessels loaded with 46 peace activists arrived on Saturday, thousands of Palestinians lined the harbor in a party mood. Fishing scows honked their foghorns and swarms of kids swam out to the arriving boats just as the sun was turning the water to molten reds and gold.

Time takes pains to talk about Gaza's "friends" dropping by. How many of the "friends" that want to go in and out of Gaza are terrorists? One only needs to go back to February and December and October to find out.

Notice also how Time waxes poetic about the scene surrounding these purported "peace activists" who support Hamas terror against innocent Jews.

It was a remarkable odyssey for the two battered ships of the "Free Gaza" movement, a U.S.-based pro-Palestinian group, which set out from Cyprus on Friday morning with few hopes of reaching Gaza. The activists, who hail from 14 countries, said that before they even set sail, they faced anonymous death threats, the mysterious drowning of one potential sponsor, and constant badgering by Israeli spies badly disguised as guitar-strumming hippies. "They kept popping up, everywhere," said Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, an organizer. "They were really annoying."

Fact check, anyone? Time just lets slide the implication that Israel is assassinating pro-peace patrons.

Once at sea, the activists — who include an 81-year old nun, a Greek leftist parliamentarian and the sister-in law of ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair — braved a squall and a bizarre communications blackout, which they say was caused by lsraeli electronic jamming, and which thwarted a rendezvous in heaving seas between peace activists and a ship of journalists.

The biggest danger they faced was possible arrest by the Israelis. Earlier, Israel had declared Gaza's waters to be a "designated maritime zone" and warned the peace activists to steer clear or face arrest. At one point, says Palestinian-American law professor Huwaida Arraf who joined the activists, the radar picked up three vessels which were shadowing them from just over the horizon. The "Free Gaza" crew presumes the ships were Israeli.

But Israel chose to play nice, letting the peaceniks into Gaza on a once-only pass instead of acting the part of a high seas ogre. "They wanted a provocation at sea, but they won't get it," explained Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron. Now, Israel has to contend with a barrage of international media coverage of the two peace vessels sailing into Gaza harbor — and the publicity boon this will give to the Hamas militants who have ruled Gaza since June 2007 when they split with Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who governs from the Palestinian inland enclave in the West Bank. Hamas' leader in Gaza, Ismael Haniyeh, personally welcomed the activists. Israel and Hamas are sworn enemies (the Islamic militants say they want to destroy the Jewish state) but nonetheless they agreed to a cease-fire in June that has largely held firm.

Without irony, Time calls them "peace activists" (and even Yiddishizes them as "peaceniks") even as it mentions that Hamas' terror leader "personally welcomed" the terror supporters. And as the picture shows, these "peace activists" have no compunction whatsoever about hugging a master terrorist who works tirelessly on ways to kill as many Jewish civilians as possible.

For Time to repeatedly refer to these wretched moonbats who consistently oppose any and everything that Israel does to defend its women and children from being blown up by Palestinian Arab terrorists as "peace activists" is the height of absurdity, and it shows how low the media has sunk in recent years in its inability to tell right from wrong.

Let's hope that Israel allows these "friends" of Gazans to stay and visit for a long, long time.

Peaceful PalArab weekend

Hamas stormed Al Azhar University in Gaza and the ensuing riots saw many injuries, including professors and a vice president of the university.

A teachers' union in Gaza decided to go on strike to protest these sorts of attacks against teachers by Hamas. Hamas responded by abducting a Rafah school principal, one of the leaders of the union.

Palestinian Arab welfare recipients in the West Bank again closed the UNRWA offices there in protest of not getting enough free stuff from the world. It is unclear how closing the offices will help them. As always whenever Palestinian Arabs act violently against UNRWA, the UNRWA is completely silent about it, with no mentions of these problems in its press releases.

Hamas called on Arab states to stop giving money to the PA.

The PalArab media is reporting on an article in Debka that claims that an 11-point joint Saudi-Egyptian plan for Palestinian Arab unity includes the introduction of Egyptian forces in Gaza. The plan, according to Debka, includes:

1. The rival Palestinian Hamas and Fatah must end their vendetta.
2. They will both release prisoners.
3. Fatah fugitives from the Gaza Strip will be allowed to return home.
4. The tit-for-tat bans on Fatah and Hamas institutions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank must be lifted.
5. Hamas must hand Gaza’s ruling institutions back seized two years ago to the Palestinian Authority.
6. Hamas must suspend the operations of its militia and police forces.
7. Inter-Arab monitors, headed by Egyptian officers, will supervise the Gaza police force.
8. Another panel headed by Egyptian officers will compile a reform program for the Palestinian security bodies in Gaza, effectively removing them from Hamas’ hands.
9. In the interim, until the reform program is implemented, an inter-Arab force of 3,000, commanded by Egyptian security officers, will be in charge of security matters.
10. A provisional Palestinian government will be installed in Ramallah in place of the Salam Fayad administration. It will consist of nonpartisan technocrats acceptable to Fatah and Hamas alike.
11. The PLO’s governing institutions will be overhauled to make room for Hamas representation for the first time.

Egypt bans cross-religious organ donation

From Egypt's Daily News, August 18:

Head of the Doctors’ Syndicate Hamdy El Sayed refuted claims made by human rights activists that the proposed organ transplant law discriminates between Muslims and Christians.
The draft law that would regulate organ donations and transplants limits the practice to family members and bans it between people of different religions or different nationalities. This would restrict trade in human organs, the syndicate had said in previous statements.
Without any regulation, Egypt has struggled with the problem of organ trafficking for years. Poverty and desperation have led many to be manipulated into selling their organs with little knowledge of the consequences.
“It’s a racist law that calls for discrimination and it discriminates between the Coptic Christians and the Muslim donors and made it less likely for sick patients to get their organ transplants,” Naguib Gabriel, head of the Egyptian Human Rights Union, told Daily News Egypt.
Gabriel added that they filed a suit against the Doctor’s syndicate.
On his part El Sayed denied any sectarianism in the law saying that “if some Copts are angered by the law then why is it that Muslims aren’t.”
El Sayed added that under the draft law, it’s not possible for a Copt to donate organs to a Muslim and vice versa simply because donations have been restricted to family members up to the fourth degree.
“For starters, it is degrading for both religions if lets say, a poor Christian has to sell his kidney to a rich Muslim, or a poor Muslim has to sell his kidney to a rich Christian. It is not right for either religions and that is why we made this law so we can stop organ trafficking.”

And if the minority Copts now can no longer use 90% of the organs on the market, well, it is to protect them from being "degraded."

It is amazing that a head of a doctor's union can think that these arguments "refute" the fact that he is supporting a purely bigoted law.

Arab hate for the West - not just for Islamists

It is seductive to believe that the Arab hatred for America (and Israel) is a purely religious phenomenon; that while the Islamic fanatics hate the United States there are a large number of modern, moderate, practical Arabs who wear Western clothing and who understand concepts like economics and the media who are more flexible and pragmatic in their thinking.

It is not true.

For a tiny example of the hatred that "progressive" Arabs have for the West, check out this MEMRI TV clip of an Egyptian actor being interviewed on a Lebanese talk show:

First Woman: What if you fell in love with an American woman?
Khaled Saleh: Impossible. Impossible. That would never happen. [Applause.]

Second Woman: What about a French woman? Is that any better?

Saleh: No.

First Woman: What about a Lebanese woman?

Saleh: She must be Arab, of course.

First Woman: Why is it impossible for you to fall in love with an American?

Saleh: Let me tell you something. I traveled there once and lived among this people. The great problem that happened in America – September 11 – was not a good thing, but the panic I saw in the eyes of the Americans that day... I hoped it would make these people a little more focused – just a little – so that they would feel that there is such a thing as fear in the world, things like terror, oppression, and so on. I am against anything that is American nowadays, because I feel they are phony. When I talk to an Arab, I feel I am talking to someone who knows what is going on in the world. With an American, I feel I'm talking to a Nazi, who sees nothing but himself.

First Woman: But you are making a generalization with regard to them.

Saleh: By God, they generalize themselves. All of them.

The irony is that here is a talk show with hostesses wearing low-cut dresses, with modern graphics and production values - consciously imitating Western TV as much as possible. It is a sluttier Arab version of "The View." There is nothing remotely Islamic about this show. Yet the hatred shown there is palpable, as the audience wildly cheers a popular actor saying how he considers all Westerners to be beneath contempt and how he sees a silver lining in 9/11.

Saudi women against colored abayas

From Arab News:

It is eight o’clock in the evening at Sahara Mall in Riyadh and Um Abdul Aziz is distributing booklets to shoppers titled “To where are you going?” She is completely covered except for one small hole in her veil over her right eye.
“Fear God,” she whispers to women whom she attempts to give her pamphlets. “May He guide you!”
Some show interest, others just ignore her as they walk past. The booklet was written by Muhammed Alarify, an Islamic scholar, who decries the “odd phenomenon” of women wearing the hair covering of their abayas down on their shoulders, and finds it strange that women choose not to wear long black gloves that cover their hands and arms and stockings to ensure their ankles are not exposed inadvertently from the hemline of their robes.
Um Abdul Aziz, who is an Arabic language arts instructor at a girls’ secondary school in Riyadh, agrees and considers her shopping mall proselytizing important. She laments the way Saudi women dress these days.
“I seek God’s satisfaction,” she said. “Have a look around! Colored and tight abayas... today’s veil needs to be covered by another veil.”
Majeedah Al-Rashid, a mother of four girls, supports women preachers in public places and she even started to do it herself, targeting girls wearing abayas in ways she considers improper.
“The way some women look troubles me because my 16-year-old daughter is now insisting on not covering her face because this is what she sees everywhere,” she said.
She also said that some women’s appearance annoyed other women, who, as she put it, “can’t close their husband’s eyes in public.”
In recent years, abayas that reveal the shape of the body has become popular among Saudi women, especially the young. They are made of thin material with colored designs. This has raised the ire of many Islamic scholars, who say that they are not the kind of abayas prescribed in the Shariah as they understand it. They believe that the Shariah dictates that an abaya should be black, wide and cover the entire body from head to toe.
Thahab Alotaibi, a translation student at King Saud University, disagrees with the way some preachers approach girls. The 21-year-old recounted an incident when a woman threw a hand-written leaflet into her trolley in a supermarket that said her face would be burned in hell because she did not cover it.
She added: “I do wear black abayas and cover my hair so I am not violating Islamic teachings. But whether my abaya has blue or white stripe is a very personal choice.”

I'm sorry for mentioning the unthinkable of Saudi women wearing abayas with a blue stripe; it is a family blog, after all....

Egypt: Where courts sentence and sheikhs punish

Even "moderate" Egypt doesn't distinguish between secular and Islamic jurisprudence. From MEMRI Blog:

Attorney Nabih Al-Wahsh has filed a lawsuit against Al-Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi demanding that he be removed from his position, banned, and fined 20 million Egyptian pounds for refusing to implement a sentence of 80 lashes handed down by an Egyptian court to film director Inas Al-Daghidi.
Al-Daghidi, director of "Diary of a Teenager," was accused of slandering Egyptian girls, harming their good name, and spreading licentiousness via his film.

Source: Al-Masryoon, Egypt, August 21, 2008

The main point of the story is, of course, that Egypt uses lashes to suppress freedom of expression.

But notice the sequence of events: An Egyptian court (secular?) sentenced a film director to lashes (Islamic) for "slandering Egyptian girls and harming their good name" (Islamic.)

The sentence was to be carried out by a cleric (Islamic) but he refused. Therefore the lawyer sues in a (secular) court to punish the sheikh, using secular methods (fine and demotion) for not carrying out a religious punishment imposed by the secular court.

No one that I'm aware of refers to modern Egypt as a theocracy. Although its constitution explicitly says that "Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia)."

Desecration

There are articles literally daily in the Arab press about Israeli "schemes" to do various evil things to the Temple Mount, like dig tunnels under it or to build a synagogue on top. The very presence of Jews in the area is regarded as a serious crime and every tiny gesture that Jews make asserting the holiness and centrality of the site to Jews is regarded as an illegal encroachment on the entire religion of Islam.

The religious dimension of the Temple Mount has thus been almost entirely hijacked by Muslims. The world generally regards the Western Wall as Judaism's holiest site, not realizing that it is not even close in holiness to the Temple Mount itself, and indeed gets its own holiness only because of its proximity to the Mount.

What is sorely lacking, from a public relations perspective, is the Jewish counterpart to the Muslim claims. I'm not talking about the merit of the idea that Mohammed magically transported himself to a city that is not mentioned in the Koran; I am talking about the fact that from a Jewish perspective, the very presence of multiple mosques on the holiest site on Earth is a daily and hourly desecration of that site.

Why do we hardly ever see this Jewish point of view publicized? Why are there not daily articles in the Jewish press that state clearly: Muslims are desecrating the Temple Mount by deliberately placing their own religious sites on top of hallowed ground. Every visitor to the area where the Kodesh K'dashim once stood is insulting Judaism. Every Muslim prayer said there is spitting in the face of Jews worldwide. Their presence and actions are hugely offensive to Judaism and violates Jewish law. It would be infinitely better to have the entire Mount stand empty than to allow this profanity to continue for one more day.

The Muslims are not embarrassed to make these sorts of statements regarding non-Muslims; why are so many Jews willing to cede the rhetorical battle of the Temple Mount?

PalArab kids try to get arrested - for the money

An article in Firas Press today mentions that Israel released a 15-year old who was caught with what appeared to be explosives at the Hawara checkpoint.

The story says that 15-year old Ra'fat Obeid from the Askar refugee camp south of Nablus had been carrying a number of small pipes filled with white flour. A friend convinced him to take this fake bomb and surrender himself at the checkpoint, allowing himself to get arrested and to go to prison.

The reason is that the moderate Palestinian Authority gives a monthly financial stipend to all detainees, no matter what crimes they might have done, and the boy was from a poor family and wanted to get a piece of the action.

Which means that the world is funding the PA which takes a significant amount of its budget to effectively pay salaries to anyone who gets arrested, from terrorists to kids who want a free education in Israeli prison. (A WashPo article from 2006 says that the amount is $220 a month per prisoner, so families with lots of sons in prison can stand to make a pretty penny.)

And apparently this is acceptable to the European and American auditors of the PA budget.

"Mosques are political"

A major reason that criticizing Islam is considered to be such a taboo in the West is because most people consider Islam to be a religion, and criticizing religions and some other belief systems is thought to be tantamount to outright bigotry. There is a good reason for this: religions are deeply personal and emotional and as a result it is insulting and rude for adherents of religion to be subject to such attacks.

The problem is that Islam is not a religion in the sense that other religions today are. On a personal level, certainly Islam is a religion, but on a global level it is a political movement (or, more precisely, a group of political movements.) Islam does not distinguish between the political and the personal; it has global ambitions and a global worldview, and more than any other religion nowadays its members are willing to take action based on its politics.

And those actions affect us all.

One may be squeamish to criticize Islam as a purely personal belief system ("micro-Islam") but to criticize it as a political movement ("macro-Islam") is not only acceptable but mandatory, as it was for Communism or fascism.

The best evidence for the use of Islam for political purposes comes from none other than Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who gave one of his usual anti-Israel speeches yesterday that included a section that should be required reading for those who think that criticizing macro-Islam is criticizing a religion only:

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad here on Wednesday advised the leaders of European countries and the U.S. not to yield to the Zionists' demands and never count on their support because ""We will witness dismantling of the corrupt regime in a very near future.""

President Ahmadinejad made the remarks in the sixth conference held on the occasion of "World Mosque Week" in Tehran.

Mosques and Friday prayers sermons are all aimed at organizing political and social developments in Islam, he said.

Mosques play pivotal role in connecting man with his Creator and no organization in the world can play such a significant role, he said.

The 9th government pays due attention to the significant role of mosques in the society, said President Ahmadinejad.

Referring to the Zionist regime, President Ahmadinejad described it as the main cause of all corruption and wickedness in the contemporary era...

This is not news to anyone who ever watched or listened to the many Friday sermons given weekly in the Muslim world and translated by MEMRI, that speak about political topics. The difference here is that a purely political figure is encouraging this, which implies that at least in Iran the institutionalized Islamic system is tightly tied to the Iranian government itself.

And for those who think that mad 'Nejad is only concerned with the destruction of Israel, think again:

I've long been fond of the Blue Mosque because it is where, many years ago, I attended my first Friday prayers. Last Friday, though, I felt uncomfortable in the prayer hall, where I found myself in front of God but next to Ahmadinejad, who turned the ritual into a political show.

Departing from established practice of having visiting Muslim heads of state pray in a smaller mosque in Istanbul, the government allowed Ahmadinejad to pray in the Blue Mosque, Turkey's symbol of tolerant Ottoman Islam. With permission from Turkish authorities, he also allowed Iranian television to videotape him during the entire prayer, in violation of Islamic tradition, which requires quiet and intimate communion between God and the faithful. There was so much commotion around Ahmadinejad that the imam had to chide the congregants. Then, as he left the mosque, Ahmadinejad got out of his car to encourage a crowd of about 300 to chant, "Death to Israel! Death to America!"

Interesting stat

By my count, comparing my numbers with those of the PCHR, more Palestinian Arabs have been killed by each other than by Israel for 9 weeks in a row.

The other side of "the Shmegege Vote"

The Huffington Post just posted a piece by Susan Isaacs, punctuated with lots of Yiddish for authenticity, fearful that the majority of Jews will refuse to vote for Obama because of their deep-seated prejudice against blacks:

shmegege [shmeh∙geh'∙geh], noun: Yiddish word meaning buffoon, idiot, ignoramus
A whispering campaign might be better because that would connote shame, or at least discomfort. Instead, anti-Obama e-mails -- by Jews, for Jews -- continue to make the rounds:

Don't believe the Christian business because he really is a Muslim;

No, he actually is a Christian, but no matter what he says, don't believe he's with Israel because at heart he's a radical and, trust me, he has a pro-Palestinian agenda.

Oprah left that church but Obama stayed because he truly buys into what that antisemite minister is selling, so don't get taken in by all that denunciation business.

This would have a bit more bite if she could actually quote these purported e-mails in context and not just interpret them so the dumb gentiles can understand the true Jewish bigotry that underlines them.

Notice Isaacs' smug assumption: of course Obama is not pro-Palestinian, of course he didn't identify with Wright; because all of the evidence to the contrary is by definition suspect and everything he says on a particular day is the Truth.

Offline, too, there are those "just between us" declarations. My eighty five-year-old cousin tried to deck a guy at his senior citizen center who announced "I'm never going to vote for a shvartzer," though unfortunately he was slowed by his emphysema and held back by his wife. Yesterday, at lunch, a friend confided how shaken she'd been at a recent wedding when she discovered everyone at her table -- all Jews who had voted for Clinton, Gore and Kerry -- felt compelled to explain they were going for McCain because he when push comes to shove, you just cannot trust a black to do right by us. Saddest of all, another pal -- successful, lively, chic, overtly Jewish three days a year -- announced, "I wish I could bring myself to vote for him, but I can't." Her brow would have furrowed in distress but for the Botox.

Someone explain to me why a Jew who makes gross stereotypes about Jews - that they are all racist, that they routinely refer to blacks as "shvartzes" [indeed true for the 80+ age group] - is any less offensive than the people she is upset about for stereotyping.

Yes, there is racism among Jews as well as among the general population. But Isaacs assumption that Jews are somehow more bigoted than the general US population is so way off base as to be itself borderline libelous. Did 90% of the Jews vote Hillary?

My 2008 concern has nothing to do with the thousands of American Jews who will vote for McCain because they sincerely believe in him and the Republican agenda. It has to do with the nature of the case against Barack Obama. Too many Jews are buying into the same sort of blood libel and belligerent ignorance that has tormented our people throughout our history.

Sorry, Susan, but a sizable number of Jews are uncomfortable with Obama because of Obama's actual positions, his actual statements, and his actual actions, not because of his race. To say otherwise shows that there is a bit of projection in your arguments: the only one showing provable bigotry here is you against most of your co-religionists, the ones you lovingly refer to as filled with Botox.

Isaacs ends with a hilarious attempt to establish her own Jewish bona-fides - to use Yiddish words in ways practically never used in Jewish conversation:

When that curtain is drawn in the voting booth, are some Jews going to abandon their remembrance of cruelties large and small and pull a lever because of the heady power rush of having permission to believe lies because they are Jewish lies ? Are we going to let our neshumas, our souls, shrivel in fear of the new ? Will we accept any dreck we read in an e-mail, any falsehood we hear, just because it comes from a fellow Jew?
November fourth is an important test for us. We will get to see if we are mensches or if have turned into the people we most despise.

I haven't read any other pieces of Isaac's "dreck", but from this article one can get the impression that she will vote for Obama because he is black and that is the progressive thing to do - a position at least as vacuous as the one she is ascribing to her co-religionists.

"Sublime" shoes

A weird article in Firas Press is nothing but a bunch of pictures of men's shoes, with the autotranslated title "Photo shoes male sublime."

Some of them were spectacularly ugly.

I'm certainly no expert on shoes, and I buy based on comfort more than style. But, come on!

This one clearly shows JRR Tolkien's influence on Palestinian Arab culture.

This is for those times you want to run as fast as possible from the office.

Ah, I remember the 70s fondly.

Great for blinding your enemies with the reflection from the hot MidEast sun against your shoes.

An Israeli production company is creating a reality TV series where eight single English-speaking people will compete to win a pimped-out Tel Aviv apartment by going through a series of challenges unique to immigrants (olim.)

As JPost reports (in an article I missed from June):

The cameras will follow a group of eight immigrants in their twenties, four men and four women. During the course of the season, the group will face different challenges that Highlight Films has yet to finalize.
The participants will travel through Israel, but their base will likely be Tel Aviv or another urban setting. At the end of the season, one of the eight will be crowned the Ultimate Oleh and get a "Golden Ticket" into Israeli society: an apartment facing Tel Aviv's waterfront, a new car, lucrative job, and more.
Highlight Productions has not chosen the olim yet, and will soon be holding auditions around the world. Applicants must be Jewish, 20-29 years old and speak English.

Sounds intriguing!