Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Free Gaza supports terrorism in petition

The FGM has announced the utterly absurd aim to gain one million signatures - all from Gazans - on a petition to give to the UN. Since nearly 50% of Gazans are under 15 years old, and there are 1.4 million Gazans (according to probably inflated estimates), this should be an interesting exercise in wishful thinking and/or outright forgery.

And what will the petition say? Well, among other things, it "affirms that the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have the right to resist occupation" - which is the code-word used by Palestinian Arabs for "terrorism." Every terror group calls themselves "resistance groups." The petition pointedly doesn't say "peaceful resistance," so the meaning is clear to everyone.

Yet the Freaks of Gaza still style themselves as "peace activists."

In other FGM news, 6 of the members stuck in Gaza because of their own stupidity announced that they are fasting during Ramadan, thus telling the world that they consider Islam to be superior to their own belief systems. They say that their fasting is in solidarity with the "Palestinian people," which means that they don't consider Christians to be Palestinian.

Somehow, I missed their petition against Palestinian Muslim abuse of Christians.

The FGM website has a short film that describes the situation of Gazans with lovingly narrated lies. The video says that all of Gaza's land borders are controlled by Israel (tell that to the FGM members who tried to leave through Rafah), that basic food and water supplies are being restricted by Israel, and that Gazans are starving to death. (I have been looking for a single victim of starvation wince that meme started years ago and still have come up empty.)

Peaceful PalArab weekend

There are ten days fo the year that Muslims can have exclusive access to the second-holiest Jewish site in the world, the Cave of the Patriarchs. They used one of those days last Friday to urinate in the area of where the Torah scrolls usually are and to place Hamas flags throughout the synagogue. (Nothing about this in even the mainstream Israeli papers, only Arutz-7.)

Israel informed the UK that five British "charity" organizations are fronts for Hamas and will be banned in Israel.

Hamas keeps arresting doctors in Gaza.

Three more smuggling tunnels found and destroyed by Egypt.

Hamas claims that Israel killed 2 PalArabs in August. They are lying. The PCHR, which leaves no stone unturned looking for supposed Israeli abuses, reported zero killings. Hamas didn't provide any names nor circumstances.

The Al Aqsa Brigades of Fatah claimed to have exploded a bomb near the town of Itamar on Saturday.

Some questions are being raised about a Hamas member who died in late August, supposedly of a heart attack during training. Some people think that he may have been killed. He was responsible for an assassination attaempt against Mahmoud Abbas.

There is a controversy in Egypt over whether actors and actresses are permitted to kiss on-screen during Ramadan.

Hamas complains that Jews aren't saving terrorist lives

The Al Qassam website of Hamas is always a fun place to see the twisted logic of a sick, perverted people, and today is no exception.

A Hamas member died of cancer today. Hamas' announcement of this event is filled with fascinating tidbits:

Military Communiqué

Al Qassam Brigades mourns Mohammed Hassuna, martyred by cancer

As Al Aqsa Intifada against the occupation assault on the Gaza Strip continues, Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades has its best men to be in the playground of death to defend their people from any attack by the enemy ... Today, Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the death of the Mujahed:

Mohammed Rawhi Mahmoud Hassouna 25-year-old

Sheikh Redwan Neighborhood - Gaza Strip

The Mujahed was martyred from cancer; the martyr didn’t manage to travel for medical treatment, because of the Zionist siege on Gaza strip. Al Qassam Brigades mourn the death of the Mujahed, reaffirms the commitment and determination to continue the resistance against the belligerent occupation forces.

First we have the interesting use of the word "martyr." A martyr is someone who sacrifices his or her life for a cause; dying of cancer is hardly "martyrdom." Hamas is purposefully cheapening the term to include pretty much anyone they feel like (on their web page they also have a "martyr" who died in a car accident.)

If someone is designated a "martyr" their families get more honor and in many cases extra money, so Hamas is apparently trying to inflate their own importance by designating every dead member as a shaheed.

Hamas loves using the term "playground of death" and it is perhaps more apt than they realize; after all, they seem to do a lot of their terror training in playgrounds.

But by far the most ironic part of this death notice is where they blame Israel's partial blockade for his death.

Forget the fact that thousands of Gazans have traveled to Israel to get medical treatment during the "siege." We have a case here of Hamas bitterly railing against the Zionist entity for the "occupation" and promising to murder every Zionist Jew in the Middle East, and then complaining that these same Zionists who they want dead aren't saving their members' lives. (Notice again that they do not blame Egypt for refusing to treat their terrorists; only Israel is blamed. I guess because evil Zionist medicine is better to treat Hamas martyrdom-seekers.)

The bizarre case of Hala Kaware

Last week, a woman was discovered to have been killed by her father and four brothers in an "honor killing":

At approximately 09:00 on Saturday, 30 August 2008, Hussein Mustafa Kaware’, 67, from Jourat al-Lout area in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, went to a police station in the town and confessed murdering his 24-year-old daughter, Hala, and burying her in land belonging to the family. Immediately, the police moved to the area and took the body out. The girl’s hands and feet were tied and her mouth was muzzled. The body was evacuated to Nasser Hospital in the town and from their to the forensic medicine department at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. According to police sources, the father confessed murdering his daughter “to maintain the honor of his family.” The police also arrested 4 of his sons.

This is not a very atypical story in the Palestinian Arab territories - 28 PalArab women were killed in "honor killings" last year - but a strange detail just emerged.

According to the UN, Halas had been caught with a suicide bomb belt two weeks earlier.

Hamas caught her and jailed her until August 30th, and when they released her she was murdered immediately by her family.

Why would a young woman in today's Gaza want to become a suicide bomber? There are no Jews around to blow up, and if her target was Hamas then you can be sure that they would not have let her go after only two weeks.

It would appear that Hala must have done something to disgrace her family earlier, and the family must have decided that the best way to deal with it would be to force her to blow herself up - perhaps at a checkpoint - as a pretense of martyrdom and to regain some family honor. Possibly Fatah or Islamic Jihad provided the belt.

Hala reluctantly agreed, knowing she was going to die no matter what happens, but she got caught by Hamas, which is trying to maintain the "calm" with Israel and knows that an attack at a checkpoint - even a halfhearted one - would cause Israel to close the Gaza crossings for a few days and increase pressure on Hamas.

Once Hamas was convinced that they were not her intended target, they had no reason to keep holding onto her.

The UN report says she was released on August 30th. The PCHR says that her father turned himself in at 9:00 AM on the same day - indicating (if the UN report is correct) that Hala was murdered immediately after her release.

We have seen before where disgraced girls were encouraged to become "martyrs" and this seems to fit the pattern. Just the double disgrace of not only being a "tainted" woman plus failing at becoming a shahada is way too much to even consider leaving her alive an hour more than necessary.

Links from our commenters 2: 1925 Waqf pamphlet

Lynne T as well as Brian mentioned a pamphlet, created by the Waqf in Jerusalem in 1925, as a guidebook to the Temple Mount.

The reason the pamphlet is interesting can be seen in this Arutz-7 article:

In 1997, the chief Moslem cleric of the Palestinian Authority, Mufti Ikrama Sabri, stated, "The claim of the Jews to the right over [Jerusalem] is false, and we recognize nothing but an entirely Islamic Jerusalem under Islamic supervision..."

Thus began a campaign to convince the world that the millennia-old natural association between Jerusalem and Jews was untrue. As Islamic Movement chief Raed Salah stated in 2006, "We remind, for the 1,000th time, that the entire Al-Aqsa mosque [on the Temple Mount], including all of its area and alleys above the ground and under it, is exclusive and absolute Moslem property, and no one else has any rights to even one grain of earth in it."

However, it is now known that this "absolute" Moslem claim is actually not as absolute as claimed. In fact, back in 1925, the Supreme Moslem Council - also known as the Waqf, which has overseen Temple Mount activities on behalf of the Moslem religion for hundreds of years - boasted proudly that the site was none other than that of Solomon's Temple.

The Jerusalem-based Temple Institute (http://www.templeinstitute.org) reports that it has acquired a copy of the official 1925 Supreme Moslem Council Guide Book to Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Moslem name for the Temple Mount). On page 4, the Waqf states, "Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which 'David built there an altar unto the L-rd...', citing the source in 2 Samuel XXIV,25.

The Temple Institute's Rabbi Chaim Richman writes that the pamphlet provides proof that the Waqf's current position is a departure from traditional Muslim belief. "In recent years," he writes, "the Moslem Waqf has come to deny the historic existence of the Holy Temple, claiming that the Temple Mount belongs solely to the Moslem nation, and that there exists no connection between the Jewish nation and the Temple Mount. It is clear from this pamphlet that the revised Waqf position strays from traditional Moslem acknowledgment of the Mount's Jewish antecedents."

"The current denial of historical reality is merely one tool in the war being waged by Moslems against the G-d of Israel and the entire 'infidel' world," Richman declares.

The pamphlet itself includes pictures of the Temple Mount - this time without weeds, although still in a state of disrepair (the reproduction is poor, though.)

Links from our commenters 1: New book by Sharansky

Lynne T. links to a fascinating review of a new book by Natan Sharansky called "Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy" in which he makes what seems like the counterintuitive claim that democracy without nationalism is a weaker democracy. I'd probably need to read it to understand it fully but some of the tidbits mentioned are most interesting. I especially like this paragraph:

By clouding the differences between democracy and tyranny, the cultural relativism of post-identity doctrines have had the poisonous effect of making human rights standards more difficult to apply universally. Sharansky exposes the double standards and hypocrisy of those who argue that while nationalism must be eliminated in the West, it is perfectly justified in weaker societies. He is particularly critical of international human rights groups that fail to distinguish between rights violations in open and closed societies, as if the abuses characteristic of authoritarian regimes are indistinguishable from deviations from democratic practices in democracies that are brought to light precisely because of their transparency. And he is scathing in his condemnation of post-Zionists who argue that Israel must be transformed into a secular state while at the same time preaching a self-determination for the Palestinians that would preserve their Arab identity 'as part of the surrounding Arab and Islamic world.'

I imagine that Sharansky is distinguishing as well between nationalism in democratic and repressive societies, because clearly nationalism can be used in a most negative way (which would explain Europe's skittishness about nationalism today.) It is possible that the United States is unique in its trans-ethnic nationalism (the "melting pot") based on principles of equality and democracy, rather than US-style nationalism being the reason for the relative success of US democracy. Still, Sharansky always brings up very good points, and it is probably a good read.

It is a shame that the White House seems to have fundamentally misunderstood his book "The Case for Democracy," something that might have helped Hamas gain Gaza.

Gaza, 1971

Just saw these two articles in the Time magazine archives, from August 9, 1971:

Robert Aroyo, his wife Preeti, and their children Marc-Daniel, 7, and Abigail, 4, had lived in Israel only eight months. Born on Malta, raised in England, Aroyo abandoned an advertising job in London to bring his family to the land of promise, where he felt they all belonged. Settled in the Tel Aviv suburb of Kiron, the Aroyos often spent Sabbaths touring their new country. One bright Saturday they set out south to visit a seaside nahal, or fortified camp, in the Sinai below El Arish.
Mahmoud Slieman Zak, 15, sat in the shade of an old building beside the highway that bisects the strip and gossiped idly with a friend. He was an indifferent pupil in school and wanted only to become a fulltime member of the Palestinian guerrillas for whom he had already been on eleven grenade-tossing missions. That morning Mahmoud fondled a grenade, wondering whether a target would present itself.
Carefully, the Aroyos checked with Kiron police before setting out on their trip to the nahal called Yam. The police saw no danger in their driving back to Tel Aviv by way of Gaza. Aroyo, therefore, was unconcerned as he reached the town of Gaza. The only thing he noticed on the road ahead of him was an old abandoned Seven-Up bottling plant.
Mahmoud's heart leaped. From the orange license plate on the slowly approaching car, he knew it was an Israeli and not a silver-tagged Gaza vehicle. Mahmoud' s friend, Wasfi Mussa Masharawi, 16, sauntered out into the middle of the street, forcing the car to slow to a crawl. Mahmoud tossed his grenade into a rolled-down window. The grenade had a four-second fuse, and he was gone before the explosion.
Aroyo braked his car to keep from hitting the boy who had walked out into the road in front of him. He never saw the missile that flew through the open window of his Cortina and landed on the back seat beside the children. All he heard was a muffled explosion and Abigail's cry, "Daddy, Daddy!" The back seat was bloody when he looked. Beside him Preeti moaned, "My back is broken."
Wasfi Mussa Masharawi watched indifferently as the man staggered out of the car, cradling a bleeding girl in his arms. He ran away when the man pleaded with him for help.
Abigail was dead by the time the Israeli military helicopter arrived. Marc-Daniel died soon after. Aroyo buried them on the Mount of Olives, smoothing the dirt over their graves with his own hands. Then he hurried back to the Beersheba hospital where his wife was being treated for injuries to the spine and pelvis that took six months to heal.
...After the tragedy Aroyo was a crushed man, hut he strained to be compassionate. "I do not hate the people who did this," he said.

Israel connected Gaza to its electric grid, drummed up potential business and even encouraged tourism to aid the territory. But Gaza's 390,000 residents were—and still are—unremittingly hostile. So far this year seven Israelis and 206 Arabs have been killed in the Strip. Last week alone seven Arab guerrillas were shot to death, two of them killed in a fight at the Shati camp, one of eight United Nations refugee camps in the Strip.
One reason for Israel's failure to pacify Gaza is the nature of the land. It is an elongated, desperately poor 25-mile finger of desert, which has little more than citrus groves in the way of resources. Some 11,000 Gazans have found work in Jordan's occupied West Bank and 5,500 others in Israel itself. But the Palestinian who "collaborates" with the Israelis is a marked man. Last February, 61 Arabs were wounded when guerrillas blew up the main post office in the town of Gaza where they were cashing their Israeli paychecks.

Friday links

Thanks to Joshuapundit for nominating my Rachel Corrie video to the weekly Watcher of Weasels Council Nominations.

Check out Soccer Dad and Israellycool on more stupidity from the Freaks of Gaza movement.

The peaceful PA is getting 1000 rifles from Jordan, with Israel's approval.

A report on Palestinian Arab crimes against Christians.

Red Hat buys an Israeli company for $107 million.

AP notices that Saudis clerics are against birthday parties.

UPDATE: Family feud near Hebron, one dead. The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 158.

11 weeks in a row

According to my and PCHR's statistics, this is the 11th week in a row that more Palestinian Arabs were violently killed by each other than by Israel. This week's score (Thursday-Wednesday, the PCHR's weekly report timeframe) was 2-0.

It also marks the fifth consecutive week where the genocidal Zionist occupying forces didn't manage to kill a single person.

During the 2006-2007 one-sided "cease fire" there were 23 weeks in a row where PalArabs were outkilled by their own people.

"Free Gaza" rescue mission

The next "Free Gaza" boat is set to sail on September 22nd, and it has one main goal: to get the nine stranded Freaks of Gaza the hell out of there:

International human rights advocates plan to stage another siege-breaking voyage to the Gaza Strip on 22 September after two boats challenged an Israeli military blockade in August.
...
The Boat will also pick up nine international activists who are stranded in Gaza following the first voyage of the Free Gaza Movement. Among the stranded foreigners is British journalist Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The Free Gaza movement also announced on Thursday that it would deliver mail to Palestinians in Gaza.

Apparently, even the Freakazoids of Gaza don't really think there is a "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza if they think that delivering "mail" (are the Zionists censoring their Victoria's Secret catalogs?) and ferrying moonbats is more important than food and medicine that is supposedly in such short supply.

The Freaks of Gaza movement better be careful - PalArabs have a tendency to attack "humanitarian aid" groups that don't deliver enough free stuff to them. One well-placed rumor that FGM is bringing over a huge ship filled with consumer goods like TVs and motorcycles could end up killing the poor peace activists when the Gazans are disappointed again.

AP takes Hamas' side

From AP:

A walkout of medical staff throughout Gaza has strained services at hospitals and clinics throughout the territory, the latest in a series of crippling strikes that are deepening bitter divisions between Gaza's militant Hamas rulers and loyalists of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The strike has forced non-complying doctors to pull double shifts and left residents struggling for treatment, adding to the hardships in a territory suffering from international isolation since Hamas wrested control of Gaza from Fatah-allied security forces in June 2007.
The Medical Workers' Union, dominated by Abbas' Fatah movement, called the strike last week to demand Hamas reinstate workers Fatah says have been fired for their political loyalties. The union said Hamas police have forced some essential staff to report to duty under the threat of arrest.
Hamas has accused Fatah of calling the walkout at state-run hospitals and clinics as a political ploy — but has aggravated the crisis by shutting down private clinics run by striking doctors.

I am no fan of Fatah, but this strike (unlike the teachers' and public sector workers' strike) is not simply a power play by Fatah but a fairly reasonable reaction to Hamas' meddling in - and politicizing - medical issues.

AP even admits that the striking doctors opened up clinics and tried to maintain health care in Gaza during the strike, but it gives Hamas a pass on its crude attempts to end the strike - by arresting, threatening and beating striking doctors and supporting medical staff. Today alone there were numerous examples brought up by Palestine Press Agency, with specific names of victims.

Why are striking doctors being vilified but Hamas not taken to task for these threats and arrests? AP's Ibrahim Barzak is showing yet again where his loyalties lie.

There have been some cool discussions in the threads, which is always fun. Plus I'm too busy to blog much today.

This is also always a great place to talk American politics as well....I thought Palin's speech was extremely well written, and fairly well delivered (I didn't get the impression that these were her words at all, unlike Guiliani.) I had only seen the end of Guiliani's, which was excellent, and the end of Thompson's the day before, which was even better. But I didn't watch any of the DNC so I have no good points of comparison.

Nothing illuminating at the RNC but some great rhetoric. Looking forward to the acceptance speech tonight.

Syria and Hamas: an analysis (updated and gutted)

A few days ago, a Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai reported that exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal had been asked by Syria to move from Damascus to Sudan. Hamas denied it, and there has been no independent confirmation of that rumor.

Today, a different Kuwaiti newspaper is reporting that Jordan rejected a request by some Hamas leaders to move their offices to Amman. This gives a bit more credence to the earlier story that Syria is pressuring Hamas to leave.

The Western press makes the assumption that this must be the result of the indirect Israeli-Syrian talks; that Syria wants to push their "peace process" forward. This assumption is worth examining.

Syria has been remarkably consistent over the past thirty years. Its primary concern has not been Israel, and neither has it been the happiness of its people; the consistency of Syria has been in keeping its leaders in power. Hafez Assad was a master at this game; his son Bashir seems to be learning quickly.

The peace talks with Israel has two potential benefits for Syria. By far the most important one was to blunt Western pressure on Syria as a terrorist state; if it could talk to its implacable foe, how dedicated to terror could it be? Syria could not afford the economic isolation that the West has been putting on Iran and above all it needed to make sure that such pressure never happens to Syria. The net result is that Syria is dodging a bullet yet again.

The secondary result is that if the current Israeli government is so stupid and desperate for "peace" that it is willing to give up the strategically important Golan for a piece of paper, why not? Syria has had a de facto peace with Israel on that border - the quietest border in Israel - for decades; it has literally nothing to lose. The chances that Syria and Israel would normalize relations is nil; they would spin gaining the Golan as a military victory to the hungry-for-victory Arab world, shrug off the criticisms the way Egypt did, and that would be that.

Any moves that Syria makes vis a vis Hamas needs to be looked at through the same prism. If Syria has quietly made Hamas' leaders know that they are no longer as welcome there, there must be more benefot to Syria than simply the desire for peace - it must be that Hamas in Syria has become either irrelevant or a burden.

It is easy to make the case that Hamas in Syria is irrelevant. Hamas is not monolithic, and the Damascus Hamas has lost all of its influence over Gaza Hamas. After all, there is effectively an Arab state in Gaza run by Hamas - those are the practical leaders of the group, not Khaled Meshaal making speeches from abroad. It is Gaza Hamas that Jordan has spoken to recently in recognition of its growing power, not Meshaal. Meshaal has just become a windbag; the equivalent of Farouk Kaddoumi railing against Israel from his PLO offices in Tunisia. They are good for headlines but they have literally no power over the people they pretend to lead.

As such, Hamas in Syria no longer gives Syria any benefit. And it might be a burden.

Meshaal might not be a leader in any real sense any more but he is smart enough to try to ride Hamas Gaza's coattails as its influence increases. Hamas Gaza's coup has been the greatest practical victory for the Muslim Brotherhood - the first time that al-Ikhwan ever controlled any territory.

Syria has been trying to co-opt and channel internal Islamic fundamentalism to deflect the danger it poses to the regime, and right now the Muslim Brotherhood is a looming - of not immediate - threat. The Assads have not been in the habit of letting potential threats survive very long. While Hamas in Damascus has no political power in Gaza, it is the vanguard of the Ikhwan in Syria, and as such it is a threat to the Syrian regime itself, and not to Israel.

The very moment that Hamas in Syria is perceived to turn from an asset to a liability is the moment that the regime will start trying to use that fact for political advantage, which is precisely what we are seeing.

UPDATE: I emailed this to Barry Rubin, prolific author, analyst and expert on the Middle East, where he disagreed with some of my points and demolished others.

He writes:

Just because Kuwaiti newspapers say something has no necessary relationship to the truth but either is guessing, wishful thinking or misinformation. I think these are planted rumors from Syria. Probably nothing has happened at all.

I'm not so sure, because the second "leak" was from Jordan, not Syria; this is what made me take notice (the first report I ignored.)

Meshaal has just become a windbag; the equivalent of Farouk Kaddoumi railing against Israel from his PLO offices in Tunisia. They are good for headlines but they have literally no power over the people they pretend to lead.
Actually Meshal is the main leader and his supporters just purged the local “moderate” politicians. The reason Jordan talks to the Gaza Hamas is that the Damascus people are enemies of Jordan.

As such, Hamas in Syria no longer gives Syria any benefit. And it might be a burden.
Hamas is the main instrument for Syria to influence (and possibly some day take over) Palestinian politics, a key aim of Syria for almost 50 years.

While Hamas in Damascus has no political power in Gaza, it is the vanguard of the Ikhwan in Syria, and as such it is a threat to the Syrian regime itself, and not to Israel.

Not at all true. Hamas and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood are allies of Syria and oppose the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Everyone in the area knows this.

As the late Emily Litella put it, "Never mind." :)

A convenient fatwa

A Hamas mufti came out with a fatwa that justifies Hamas' arresting striking teachers - and stealing their money:

Marwan Abu Ras, leader of the Hamas-led Palestine Scholars Association Hamas movement and a representative of Hamas in the legislature ruled that Hamas may suppress and punish doctors, teachers and staff who are on strike in the Gaza Strip and allows the seizure of their money to pay for new teachers appointed by Hamas.

Abu Ras said that "The strike by staff at this time is a moral and religious crime of first degree and a betrayal of national interest. The strike is contrary to God's orders, a crime of humanity and religious legitimacy and a national betrayal by all standards."

Abu Ras called on Hamas "to chase strikers legally and legitimately, punish and impose fines on them and hold them to maximum penalties because of their strike, and for the government in Gaza to bring in other non-striking teachers and take appropriate action to pay salaries of new teachers from the pockets of striking teachers."

What an amazing coincidence that a Hamas scholar would study the sources impartially, pray for guidance from Allah and come out with a legal opinion that Hamas is right all along!

September 4, 1938: What a "binational state" would look like

Here is a rundown of how things were in Palestine exactly 70 years ago, when Arabs were a majority:

People who are pushing for a "binational state" (with an Arab majority, of course) don't care that the results of that experiment are far more likely to look like Palestine in 1938 than the utopian vision they espouse.