Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Random stuff

Just because I don't have time for proper blogging today:

An article today by Barry Rubin reminded me of one I wrote last year and one that I quoted a year before.

Ha'aretz caught onto my Monday scoop, picked up and expanded upon by Backspin yesterday.

Terror museum in Lebanon a smash hit

You can tell a lot about a culture from their museums. America has museums dedicated to science, natural history, rock and roll and even sex. Israel has museums for archaeology, art (including Islamic art), the Bible and Jewish history.

And Hezbollah's Southern Lebanon has a museum for terror.

From NYT (h/t EBoZ)

The children crowd forward around the glass case, eager for a glimpse of the martyr’s bloodstained clothes. His belt is here, and the shoes he died in, scarred with shrapnel. The battered desk where he planned military operations still has his box of pencils on it, his in-box, his cellphone.

An exhibit in Nabatiye celebrates the life of Imad Mugniyah, the shadowy Hezbollah commander suspected in the West of masterminding devastating bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in the 1980s and ’90s. Busloads of schoolchildren have flocked to the exhibit, which includes bloodstained clothes and, at night, light and laser shows.

“May God kill the one who killed him,” an old woman says, wiping tears from her eyes as she stares through the glass.

The dead man being shown such veneration is Imad Mugniyah, the shadowy Hezbollah commander. Until his death in a car bombing in Syria in February he was virtually unknown here, his role in the militant Shiite group clothed in secrecy. But since then Hezbollah has hailed him as one of its great military leaders in the struggle against Israel.

Now, the group has opened an exhibit in this southern town in honor of Mr. Mugniyah, who is widely accused in the West of masterminding devastating bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in the 1980s and ’90s.

At first glance, the exhibit could almost be taken for an outdoor children’s museum. A fake skeleton stands upright in a torn uniform and helmet beneath the legend, “The invincible Israeli soldier.” There are captured Israeli tanks jutting up from the ground at odd angles, their hatches burned and broken. As visitors crowd from one display to another, a soundtrack blares overhead, mixing the sounds of bombs and machine-gun fire with mournful operatic voices and warlike speeches.

But the eerie heart of the exhibit is the glass-encased room displaying Mr. Mugniyah’s possessions. His prayer mat is here, his slippers, even his hairbrush, as if they were a saint’s relics.

On a recent afternoon, a crowd of onlookers stared through the glass in awe, some of them weeping openly.

In addition to an extraordinary array of weaponry and martyrs’ paraphernalia, it includes a large indoor room that was remodeled to resemble “what we believe the martyrs’ heaven is like,” according to one of the guides on duty. In the darkened room, a figure representing a dead Hezbollah fighter lies on his back on a large sloping bank of white flowers. A sound of exploding bombs gives way to patriotic anthems as a screen shows a brilliant sunset and a coffin being carried through a dark forest. Later, a laser show illuminates the darkness.

On a recent afternoon, busloads of schoolchildren were arriving to see the exhibit, with a group of Boy Scouts.

“I came here to teach my kids the culture of resistance,” said a visitor who gave his name only as Ahmed, as he stood with his wife and two children. “I want them to see what the enemy is doing to us, and what we can do to fight them, because this enemy is not merciful.”

A society is truly twisted when it sends hundreds of children to venerate - and emulate - a bloodthirsty killer.

Human rights orgs still silent over latest Hamas outrages

Hamas continues to arrest and beat striking health workers in Gaza:

Speaking from Ramallah, Zakarnah told Ma’an, “De facto government police on Tuesday arrested Maysarah Fayyad, a nurse who works at Mubarak Hospital, Dr Kamal An-Namlah, head of surgeons at Nasser Hospital, Dr Abdul-Halim Al-Masri, from Ash-Shifa Hospital, Wisam Karim, administration employee at Muhammad Ad-Durrah Hospital, Usamah As-Sa’idi and Muhammad Lafi from Muhammad Ad-Durrah Hospital.

He added that de facto government security assaulted the arrestees, beating them while in detention at Al-Mashtal prison in order to pressure them to end strike.

Hamas is also harassing the doctors' families:

The Hamas movement on Tuesday called for demonstrations in front of the homes of doctors who are on strike in the Gaza Strip, beginning with with three doctors in the city of Khan Younis.

There was also a bomb outside a pharmacy that closed for the strike.

And "human rights" organizations still remain silent. Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have nothing about these actions on their pages.

One group that has acknowledged what is going on is the UN news agency, IRIN, but it frames it (and the teachers' strike) as simply "political strikes", barely alluding to any violence and making it sound like both sides are equally guilty in the next to last paragraph:

A senior UN political official told IRIN he was concerned by the "transfers and replacements" by Hamas of health and teaching professionals and the subsequent strikes called by unions, which he said "threaten the provision of health and education services to the people of Gaza who already face considerable hardship."

In various reports released by local and international rights groups both the Ramallah government and the de facto rulers of Gaza have been accused of politically motivated attacks and arrests in the areas under their respective control.

Here we have the UN considering the arrests of Hamas terrorists in the West Bank to be the same as Hamas arrests and torture of teachers and doctors.

This is a vindication of Hamas' terror. The facts are plain, but the UN and other NGOs are so afraid of Hamas attacking them that they refuse to condemn these heinous acts, making a tacit deal with terrorists and justifying it to themselves as saying that things would be worse if they were forced to leave or close down. The net result is that Hamas is emboldened to increase their attacks on civilians in Gaza, and the only people blamed for the poor shape of medicine in the territory are Israelis.

(Also silent in all this are groups like British teachers' unions, who are quick to condemn Israel but never said a word about Hamas replacing 2000 union teachers with unqualified Hamas workers.)

Anti-semitic cartoon on Hamas TV

I wrote recently about the increasing amounts of incitement in the Palestinian Arab media with bizarre allegations that Jews are digging under the Temple Mount.

Now, the ante has been upped even more, as Hamas' Al Aqsa TV is running a cartoon showing stereotypical religious Jews, straight out of the Nazi cartoon playbook, scheming as they dig under the foundations of "Al Aqsa" while the Arab world sleeps. From Palestinian Media Watch, via YNet:

Who is dumping bad food on Palestinian Arabs?

There have been a number of stories in the PalArab press in recent weeks of the PA authorities discovering that some shipments of food to the West bank were bad. For example:

Palestinian Preventive security system seized quantities of inedible flour from a warehouse of a charity in the West Bank city of Jenin city on Monday evening (8/25).

Palestinian customs agents seized 500 kilograms of expired and inedible meat in a village near Qalqilia on Tuesday (8/19).

The Customs department told Ma’an that the confiscation took place after tests determined that the food was unfit for consumption. The meat was destroyed.

The Palestinian Consumer Protection Department confiscated 150 tons of expired food products on Wednesday (8/20) which were intended to be sold during Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, sources in the Ministry of National Economy said.

Palestinian customs and consumer protection agents seized huge amounts of inedible foods and poisonous cleaning materials across the West Bank on Sunday (8/31), the evening before the first day of fasting in the holy month of Ramadan.

In Bethlehem, customs agent seized 6 tons of expired biscuits that were manufactured in Israeli settlements.

In Ramallah, one ton of inedible dates and 300 kilograms of inedible meats were seized.

In Hebron, the Ministry of Economics seized one ton of cheddar cheese that did not conform to Palestinian safety standards.

In Nablus, consumer protection and customs agent seized 2000 liters of expired and poisonous cleaning materials as well as large amounts of juices manufactured in Israel that include high levels of toxic gases and bacteria.

While Ma'an is quick to mention that these foods were manufactured in Israel, one fact in one of the stories seem to indicate that it is Palestinian Arab greed that is driving these events:

He explained that all the seized food products were bought from Israeli settlements with validity date already expired. Merchants usually forge new expiration dates. Amongst seized products were dates, nuts, peppers, rice, candies, grains, raisins and other products.

So while the press reports try to blame Israelis, especially "settlers," it looks like Arabs are picking up expired food out of the trash in Israel and trying to resell them in the West Bank.

Today's story adds another wrinkle:

The Palestinian Preventive Security forces on Tuesday afternoon seized 46 tons of dates and pickled olives with expired validity dates. The goods were confiscated from a warehouse in the eastern neighborhood of Nablus.

The director of the Preventive Security’s operations, Yasser Al-Bulbul, told Ma’an, “The economic department of the Preventive Security service received information about a truckload of pickled olives coming from Egypt. After inspections, we knew where the truck was unloaded and we stormed the place accompanied with representatives of the Ministry of Health.”

A Ministry of Health employee told Ma’an’s reporter that 16 tons of dates and 30 tons of pickled olives were seized.

Apparently, Egyptians are also keen on unloading bad food on Palestinian Arabs for profit.

Arabic Wikipedia entry on "Jewish"

The autotranslated Arabic Wikipedia article on the word "Jewish" contains lots of incomprehensible things, and clearly it has been used as an outlet for anti-semitism, as the header states:

As a result of sabotage on this page, disabled the ability to edit this page for new users or anonymous temporarily.

One paragraph stands out both for its bizarreness as well as for its evident hatred:

The resistance has Almachihanih [I think this means "Messiah" - EoZ]

Resistance in the Jewish concept is the Christ who would take another decade to fight Alammyin or non-Jews is a prophet in their concept and fighters deny them this is a prophecy of Jesus Christ and the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) because the Prophet came unlike Jewish and racist tendencies that were Imagine that the resistance of the Jews who avenged of everything they have on one hand and the fact that the Messenger of Jesus and Mohammed opened the door for all the faith in God unlike the Jewish religion and closed Almachihanih orientation is now among some extremists affected by some American Christians and Biblical concepts that will ensure the return of Christ to Earth And waged a global war against everyone on behalf of Armageddon battle

Not sure what it means, but it doesn't strike me as being quite up the standards one would expect from an encyclopedia!

Some "Free Gaza" freaks are stuck in Gaza!

When the "Free Gaza" farce unfolded last week, a few of the members stayed behind. But they didn't plan to stay quite this long.

On Sunday, some of them tried to enter Israel via the Erez crossing, claiming that they needed to accompany the many sick patients who do leave Gaza to be treated in Israel. They were denied.

So they decided to try to leave to Egypt via Rafah, along with the thousands of people who crossed over the past two days. They were denied.

It is curious why the people who wanted to show their support for Gazans are so eager to get out of there. Fortunately, they might have the opportunity to spend weeks or maybe even years to get much friendlier with the locals as their official pleas to leave Gaza are ignored.

Today's PalArab press roundup

Work accident gone awry: A 19 year old youth and his 14-year old sister were injured in Jabalya, Gaza after a mortar fired from a terrorist training camp nearby landed on their house.

We are family: A clan clash east of Nablus resulted in one death and two injuries.

Terrorist chic but capitalist bomb: Another article about how the Chinese have taken over the keffiyeh market, and the Chinese versions are even being imported to the territories. The article stresses that the keffiyeh is a symbol of "resistance," popularized by Arafat, and they bemoan the fact that even Palestinian Arabs aren't buying locally-produced scarves.

Abbas' obsequience: Samir Kuntar insisted that Mahmoud Abbas wanted to meet with him.

Calm weapons: Egypt found yet another cache of weapons in the Sinai meant for Gaza, including hundreds of anti-tank missiles, grenades and mortars.

Mama's boys: Apparently, some Arabs are marrying much older women just so they can be taken care of but without cohabitation. Some Muslim scholars are decrying the practice.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 157.

Hypocritical Anis

I wasn[t going to bore my readers with any more about Anis Hamadeh, the self-righteous German-Palestinian Arab "peace activist" who took such umbrage at my spoof of his "Free Gaza" song that he told threatened to sue me for copyright infringement, but this is too funny.

The aptly-named Anis has a page on his website where he links to 350 YouTube videos of the Beatles! These include entire Beatles movies as well as songs, most of which are clearly under copyright. I somehow doubt that Anis ever contacted Capitol or Apple or EMI or Paul McCartney about whether these videos are legally up on YouTube. (He also has an Elvis video page.)

Even better, after my little episode he added this text on his Free Gaza Song Contest page:

Copyright note: Songs, lyrics, videos and images are the copyright of their respective owners. As this is a public event fair use is appreciated. For commercial and media use please contact Anis

As my use of his song was by any definition "fair use," this means that Anis only defines "fair use" as "whatever fits my political opinions."

Ya gotta love these leftists for their consistent hypocrisy.

(I wonder if he is looking at the pictures I used in my Rachel Corrie video to see if one of them was perhaps copyrighted, so he can threaten me again.)

The paradox that Obama might be better for Israel

I believe that Obama is strongly pro-Palestinian Arab, and that he will pressure Israel to make extraordinarily dangerous concessions for an illusory "peace."

Paradoxically, this may make him a better president from Israel's perspective.

In the past forty years, only one Israeli territorial concession has paid off - the Camp David accords with Egypt. Even though that peace agreement did not bring anything approaching real peace, and Egypt got by far the better end of the deal (tens of billions in aid to prop it up plus the Sinai without having to normalize relations with Israel) it did result in a pretty quiet, long border and much less pressure on Israel's defense force.

But every other territorial concession for "peace" has brought more bloodshed: the withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Oslo, Gaza.

What did these events have in common?

They all occurred with American backing while a president was in the White House who was emotionally pro-Israel.

Hillel Levin just wrote an interesting article enumerating how Bush's presidency has been bad for Israel. While I would disagree about some of his points, to an extent what he is saying is true, and he has one paragraph that is critical to understanding why Zionists love Bush - and Bill Clinton:

So why, exactly, do Israelis love Bush so much? Actually, it isn't that difficult to understand. From the perspective of an Israeli, Bush is a true friend. Israelis live in a tough neighborhood, surrounded by states and movements that expressly seek the destruction of Israel. And here we have President Bush, the leader of the strongest country in the world, declaring himself an unabashed ally of Israel. Indeed, there's no reason to question Bush's sincerity on this point: he really does care about Israel's security. So Israelis can be excused for putting aside the content and effects of his policies and for appreciating his steadfast rhetorical and personal support for Israel. (By the way, this explains the paradox of why Israelis love both Clinton and Bush, despite their radically different regional policies: for Israelis, it isn't about the policies.)

Israelis have been so claustrophobic and isolated that a genuine friendship being offered by a world leader is a huge relief. And when these same leaders ask for concessions, Israelis act as friends do - they try to help out.

Even though the State Department has been implacably Arabist since modern Zionism began, Israelis (and, by extension, all Zionists) are willing to overlook threats to their security when a friendly president asks them nicely.

In fact, one of the major reasons that Sharon agreed to withdraw from Gaza was reportedly because he felt sure that Bush would, in exchange, allow Israel to keep much larger parts of the West Bank permanently - a faith in a single person who will be replaced soon, based on a letter that has no worth.

With Obama as President, Israel's leaders would be on guard, and would not be nearly as forthcoming. Any peace plans would be evaluated more on their merits and less on the personal charisma and genuine friendliness of the President. And on the merits alone, any further Israeli concessions for a Palestinian Arab state would require much more from the PalArab side than has ever been forthcoming.

(I hope it is obvious that this is not a reason to vote for Obama. It is a reason to vote for whomever would be better for the country, and for Israeli leaders to not let personal gratitude substitute for Israel's security - or to replace Israel's leaders with people who understand that.)

UPDATE: See Noah Pollak, whose points as far as how Bush has been towards Israel are roughly on target, but whose assumptions of where Levin's head is at seem way off base.

Members of Jaysh al-Ummah pray before training in the Gaza Strip August 29, 2008. Jaysh al-Ummah, or the Army of the Nation, is a Palestinian Islamist group modelled on the ideology of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda. It is training for battle with Israel, according to the group's leader Abu Hafss. Picture taken August 29, 2008.

REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

One might complain that it is unfair to paint all Muslims with such a broad brush, but one would also be hard pressed to find any Muslims who are angered enough by this picture (or others like it) to write an article or letter to the editor or blog post about how this is an affront to Islam.

Hamas attacking doctors, "human rights" groups silent

Hamas seems to have learned that it can do whatever it wants in Gaza without any fear of serious international concern.

Over the past week, hundreds of doctors in Gaza have gone on strike to protest Hamas' taking over their hospitals. Hamas has responded with an unprecedented crackdown, arresting hundreds of doctors, threatening many others and attacking clinics.

The attacks have been expanded into shootings and threats also against ambulance drivers, nurses, lab techs, clerks and other health-care workers.

Although this has been happening for a week now, I can find no mention of these events in the Human Rights Watch or Amnesty sites. Nothing at the Doctors Without Borders website. Not even the PCHR, which normally does a decent job on stories like this. Certainly no words of condemnation from the "Free Gaza" volunteers who stayed behind.

However, Amnesty did manage last week to write yet another report condemning Israel for its "blockade" of Gaza, without once mentioning the increase of goods that Israel has allowed since the "calm" agreement, nor mentioning the continued rocket attacks that still come from Gaza and blaming Israel alone for deaths in Gaza for medical reasons without mentioning Egypt once.

This is the sort of one-sided support that Hamas can expect from supposedly unbiased NGOs. While they will mention some terrorist abuses here or there, one gets the impression that they are doing it more to forestall accusations of bias rather than any real belief that the Arab side does anything wrong when Israel is concerned. Israel has been and remains the major evil in the Middle East if you believe the reports of Amnesty and HRW.

The accusation that Israel has been "starving" Gaza has been around for years now, and I have yet to find a single victim of starvation. Yet even while Israel ships in food and money and medicine and clothing and concrete and dozens of other items, that meme still exists in the thoughts of these supposed "human rights" workers.

We'll see how long it takes for them to grudgingly admit that, yes, Hamas has gutted the entire medical infrastructure in Gaza, perhaps buried in the middle of yet another diatribe against Israel.

Moderate peace partner pays homage to child murderer

I reported last week that Mahmoud Abbas planned to visit Samir Kuntar on his visit to Lebanon.

Either I have better intelligence than the Shin Bet, or Israel's leaders chose to ignore this outrage - until after it happened.

Even then, their criticism has been muted, only being mentioned in passing in an Arutz-7 news brief and in the very end of a NYT report yesterday, plus a few other Jewish and Israeli media outlets. (h/t Boker Tov Boulder)

Just to recap: The person that the Western world is pinning their hopes on for being a reliable peace partner, despite his clear weakness and lack of any real following, in fact goes out of his way to honor a known murderer, a vicious and unrepentant child-killer. This man who the world look towards as the most moderate Palestinian Arab leader is enthralled to be in the presence of a murderer of Jewish civilians.

The sad part is, that there is no contradiction there. The most moderate Palestinian Arabs are still thrilled when Jews are murdered in terror attacks and they will go out of their way to pay homage to the murderers, whether through their media or public ceremonies, by naming streets and public squares and summer camps after them. Their "moderation" is in saying that they themselves do not want an immediate genocide of all Zionists in the Middle East, but rather a somewhat slower process that would take decades.

Instead of chiding Abbas, Israel's inept leadership should have immediately announced that all "peace" - really capitulation - talks are to be halted immediately until the Palestinian Arabs can find a leader who actually accepts Israel's existence as a Jewish state and a permanent fixture in the area. Otherwise, the "peace" talks are a farce, and Abbas just proved that yet again.

The saga of Shaymaa Samir Qudeih

Shaymaa Samir Qudeih is a brilliant student attending school in Saudi Arabia. She has received top honors from her high school in Jeddah, and she ranked eighth in all of Saudi Arabia in her science exam, gaining a score of 99.76%. Her dream was to go to the King Abdulaziz University medical school in Jeddah to become a doctor.

But she was rejected - because she is considered a "Palestinian."

Her father, Samir Hassan Qudeih, is a geology engineer who has lived in Saudi Arabia for 42 years. Shaymaa was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. As a devoted Muslim, Samir does not want to send Shaymaa abroad to study, preferring that she go to the local university where she can stay with her family.

The university has other ideas, as it restricts the acceptance of "foreign" students.

Here we again see that a great number of Arabs of Palestinian descent are stateless and discriminated against because of the bigoted and institutionalized discrimination that they face, not from Israel, but from their host Arab countries. Not only are these descendants of PalArabs born in practically every Arab country fated to be stateless, but so are their children and grandchildren, forever.

And the reason is because the Arab world would prefer that the Palestinian Arab problem remain festering forever. Kuwaitis and Egyptians can become naturalized Saudi citizens, but Palestinian Arabs cannot.

The Arabs hate Israel far more than they love their brother - and sister - Arabs.

Palestinian Arab police raid mosque. No one protests!

It turns out the PA police have a website which details many of the major and minor events of the day in the West Bank. One minor story from yesterday was interesting; here is the entire autotranslated article:

Hebron police and security agencies arrested 50 wanted for justice and control the inflammatory material inside the mosque

According to Public Relations and Information Department, the security agencies and police had arrested 50 people wanted for justice through a security campaign launched in the town of Surif governorate of Hebron.

The statement added that persons who were arrested were wanted on criminal cases, custody orders, and issues emanating from the prosecutor and the court,

He pointed out that the security forces attacked the nests of drugs and arms dealers and carried out searches of several houses searched by orders issued by the competent prosecutor, where one citizen was arrested for investigation after it was found at his home on the article 'marijuana'. The Information Office of Police found inflammatory material, in addition to the knives inside a mosque in the town. The police thanked the citizens for their cooperation with security organs to implement the law and establish security and order, stressing that by law will reach all the breakers, and the abusers and spoilers in the community.

There are two notable facts we see in this report.

Firstly, even though the Palestinian Arab press heavily covers Israel's arrests of people here and there in the West Bank (often referring to them as "abductions" or "kidnappings"), here a raid that nets 50 people has received very little coverage.

More importantly, in this case a mosque was clearly being used for illicit purposes, and it was properly raided - and it is regarded as a matter-of-fact daily incident, relegated to paragraph 3 of a minor article in a police bulletin. No agonizing over the sanctity of the mosque, no obligatory phrase that the PA police used the utmost sensitivity in this evil but necessary desecration - nothing. Instead, it is treated as if it is the most normal thing in the world that mosques would be used for criminal (or terrorist) activity and they will be raided by Arab police.

An event that would raise world headlines if Israeli forces do it is considered business as usual for Arabs.