Sunday, September 21, 2008

  • Sunday, September 21, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
In recent weeks there has been an increase in reported attacks in Judea and Samaria, both from Jews who live there as well as from Arabs. A perfect case in point is last week's attack by an Arab in Yitzhar, where a nine-year old boy was injured and the Jews responded with violence against the village that sheltered the attacker.

Why are these attacks increasing now?

There are certainly a number of possible reasons: the tearing down of some checkpoints and the defeatist statements made by the Israeli government as it tries to come up with more and more concessions to please President Bush and Condoleeza Rice by the end of the year can surely be considered contributing factors.

But something else might also be a more direct reason.

In 2007, Palestinian Arab rights group B'Tselem started distributing cameras to PalArabs in the territories in order to enable them to take pictures and videos of any Israeli abuses they could find. This year some of the footage got a degree of publicity and the program has expanded.

Last week, Yochanan Visser of Efrat wrote a letter where he decried the attack on IDF soldiers by some settlers. But in that same letter came some details about the Jewish/Arab attacksthat were not publicized anywhere else:
This Shabbat a Palestinian stabbed a 9-year old boy in Yitzhar in his home, after which Jewish inhabitants of Yitzhar went on a rampage in the neighboring Arab village in which 8 Palestinians were wounded.

It is obvious that the situation in some areas in the West Bank is deteriorating. On the website of Israel -Facts Dutch monitor group we have been monitoring events in the West Bank for some time now. From the data we are collecting there evolves a picture of some very problematic areas, one of them Yitzhar. From these data we also learn that most of the reported incidents do not make it to mainstream media. In fact only the incidents like the one this Shabbat are reported. From our data we also learn that there are more Palestinian incidents against Jews than the other way around.

The same one-sided reporting accounts for the so-called "camera" incidents. From our own investigations we learn that these incidents are filmed at the moment of response to the original provocation. Like the incident on Shabbat also, some six weeks ago in Har Hebron the media reported that "settlers" set on fire a Palestinian field and also abused an arrested Palestinian in the presence of IDF soldiers. From further investigation we learned that it was the Palestinians who set the Jewish orchard on fire (not surprisingly for us because all the Jews living there are observant and would never make a fire on Shabbat) after which the Jews living there took revenge - this part was filmed.

We also learned that activists from leftist organizations like B'Tselem and Peace Now are fanning the flames in the West Bank. Their goal seems to be to provoke as many possible incidents in very sensitive areas like Hebron and Ni'ilin. They also publish mostly biased reports about events in the West Bank, apparently with the goal of further de-legitimating Jewish settlements there. The focus seems to have shifted from demonstrations to violent acts against IDF forces and Jews living in the West Bank.
I cannot say with certainty that the leftists are provoking these Arab attacks in order to video the responses, but it certainly seems that the Arabs themselves have started to do so.

Not that random rampages through Arab villages are justified, but there are great political gains to be made by provoking Jewish settlers into violence where cameras are waiting to catch them in the act. And while sometimes the Israelis have photographic evidence to show that attacks originated by Arabs (as in this weekend, when a 15-year old Palestinian Arab was caught on video lighting a Molotov cocktail outside Yitzhar) the grainy thermal security-camera video is not as dramatic as color video of enraged settlers attacking. (And even the clear evidence that the boy was lighting an incendiary device doesn't stop the Arab media from saying that the IDF murdered him "in cold blood.")

So we have a situation where the world media is seeing an apparent increase of Jewish violence towards Arabs, fanned by the existence of video, while in fact it is the other way around - and the number of unreported incidents of Arab violence are increasing dramatically.

(Even the Israeli media ignores much of the Arab violence. Early last year when I visited Israel I was doubly shocked by the desecration of a synagogue at a major Jewish shrine and theft of at least one Torah - and the fact that this incident was almost ignored even in the right-wing Israeli newspapers. One of my commenters mentioned that this is simply a "dog bites man" story and incidents like that happen with alarming frequency. So part of the fault has to lie with the Israeli media for ignoring stories that might bore some Israeli readers but open the eyes of the world.)
  • Sunday, September 21, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
A "mysterious explosion" Deir al-Balah in Gaza injured 3. Those words are the usual euphemism for "premature terror bomb explosion."

Hamas' leader promised that Gaza will never go back to the way it was before Hamas' coup, bragging about how much better it is now. The few dozen Christians left in Gaza and the doctors who are still on strike had no comment.

The PA, meanwhile, continues to indirectly bankroll Hamas in Gaza, today offering $500 to the families of every Gaza prisoner.

Ma'an (English) reports that Israel confiscated "vast areas of Palestinian lands" in the Jordan Valley. What exactly is a "vast amount of land"? 140 dunams, which is about 0.05 square miles.

In protest of Israel's restrictions of concrete to Gaza (which Hamas uses to build Hezbollah-style military bunkers and weapons tunnels) a Palestinian Arab in Rafah decided to build a sturdy house out of mud, straw, wood and garbage, to symbolize to the world Palestinian Arab suffering. A picture of the house shows that he included at least one other essential item to prove how bad things are in Gaza - a satellite dish.

UPDATE: 2 dead in a new tunnel collapse. The 2008 PalArab self-death count rises to 187.
  • Sunday, September 21, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Here is a section of a video shown on Israel's Channel 2 news, showing how Hamas treats doctors who went on strike in Gaza.

Dozens were blindfolded, brought into a mosque (!) and forced to chant and clap their hands to humiliating songs.

As of today, the Doctors Without Borders website still has no condemnations of the arrests, torture and humiliation that Gaza doctors, nurses, pharmacists and lab techs have been forced to undergo for the past month.

Friday, September 19, 2008

  • Friday, September 19, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
From The Arab news, a Saudi newspaper:


It is interesting to see Saudis make fun of anyone as being greedy devils.

For example, in an article in that same newspaper this week:
THE presence of a housemaid in a Saudi house has become inevitable. If this inevitability is not because of her services, then it is because of the need to imitate others. This is a fact that everybody knows. The need for housemaids is connected to the ways Saudis live — women go to work, responsibilities for the social and educational welfare of children, men failing to help with house duties, few day-care facilities for children, large and spacious homes, extended families and increasing numbers of children. The net result is that the majority of families need to have housemaids. The truth of the matter is that some of us need more than one housemaid.
Saudi families are not only expected to have at least one maid, but also a driver, as this article on the disparity between rich and poor Saudis shows.

Of course, super-rich Saudis will spend exorbitant amounts of money on whatever they fancy. Greed is hardly an American trait, and Saudi Arabia along with the other Gulf countries are Exhibit A.

One only needs to recall the sheikh who shipped his car from the Gulf to Great Britain last summer - for an oil change.
  • Friday, September 19, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
It is easy to ignore the hateful rhetoric that regularly comes from Iran, but it seems to me that Iran's religious/Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has just upped the ante:
Iran can not become reconciled with the Israeli people, Ali Khamenei, supreme religious leader of Iran said. During Friday prayers, Khamenei sharply criticized statement by the assistant to the Iranian President Isfandiyar Rahim Meshai on friendship between Iranian and Israeli people. “The statement about Iranian and Israeli peoples being friends is nonsense”.

Supreme Leader of Iran said Israeli people are invaders who occupied trade facilities, sown areas in Palestine and its territory. “They are army of Zionist regime. Muslims can not show friendly relations toward those who fulfill order of enemies of Islam”.

“We do not have any problems with Jewish, Christians and other religious confessions, but we can not become reconciled with those who occupied Palestine’s lands,” he said.

The use of the word "army," I believe, is significant. Officially, Islam says that it is against killing innocent women and children, but if Khamenei is classifying every single Israeli as being effectively military, he has just given the Islamic justification for, let's say, exploding a nuclear device in Israel.

This is similar to the justifications for terror given in the past by various terror groups against Israel, but they would say that all citizens are legitimate targets by the virtue of the military service they are presumed to be doing, have done or will do. That "logic" was always a stretch. Now, in Iranian eyes, the very existence of Zionist Jews living on land in the Middle East is considered an aggressive act, no matter who they are - and by implication, it would be mandated to get rid of them.

This might sound silly, but in the end all terrorists strain to find religious justifications for their actions. Last April we saw al-Qaeda chide Hamas - using sharia - for indiscriminate rocket attacks, and Hamas defend itself by saying that children aren't the targets.

Khamenei might have just given the sharia-compliant green light for Iran's politicians and generals.

UPDATE: Although he is not a cleric, Ahmadinejad just said something else that would justify genocide against all Jews in Israel:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that the Zionists are not Jews but infidel.
Islam treats Jews and Christians better than infidels, like Hindus, who should all be killed rather than just subjugated.

These two statements happening on the same day - both escalations of already extreme rhetoric - may not be coincidental.

  • Friday, September 19, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Another Palestinian Arab died in a smuggling tunnel, this one apparently electrocuted.

An Islamic Jihad member who was shot a few days ago died from his wounds. Hamas says it was an internal Islamic Jihad dispute, PIJ says that Hamas militia entered a fight and was responsible for his death. (It is once again notable that Ma'an accepts the Hamas version of the story without question.)

The moderate Al Aqsa Brigades in Gaza says that if things don't improve soon, they will end the "calm" at the end of this month. Part of their demands is the stopping of Israel's "Judaization" of Jerusalem.

Perhaps they will next demand the ending of the wetness of water.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 185.
  • Friday, September 19, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Keep them in cages: Mahmoud Abbas' spokesman denied earlier reports that Abbas was amenable to permanently settling any Palestinian Arabs in Jordan. Because what good are they when they are happy?

Olmert's parting shot at surrender? The PalArab media has reported that Ehud Olmert offered to apologize to Palestinian Arabs for the "naqba" in 1948. I couldn't find this in the English media. The PLO welcomed the move and, in reciprocation, said it was not enough and demanded everything else they always demand as well.

Legacy of fewer checkpoints?: A PalArab woman was detained in Netanya with a "large bag". Reports said that she had told her family that she would be "the headline of a big story." No details in the Israeli press yet about this.

Freedom of the press, Hamas-style: A journalist for the Fatah-based Wafa agency was arrested by Hamas in Gaza.

Egyptians trying to open Rafah: An Egyptian group is going to try to "break the siege" of Gaza on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. This is probably the same ISM- and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group that tried last week.

Meanwhile, Egypt is planning to open Rafah this weekend for patients and students as well as Ramadan pilgrims, plus probably a few terrorists just to mix things up.

That Brazilian Jewish lobby: An article in Firas about how the Jews in Brazil control the media and don't allow any pro-Arab opinions to be publicized.

Stop killing Arabs and go back to killing Jews: Islamic Jihad remains saddened at the internal fighting that happened this week and urges Hamas to get back to doing what it does best, terror.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

  • Thursday, September 18, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ma'an has an interview with US Consul for Public and Media Affairs Micaela Bluhm.
Fluent in Arabic, Bluhm consistently surprises Palestinians who speak to her in English.

Bluhm concluded the interview by summarizing the US attitude on a number of issues.

As the cultural representative to Palestine, Bluhm said she tries “each year, especially during Ramadan, to increase cultural activities and correct ugly rumors about the US bias toward Israel.”

When questioned on upcoming American presidential elections, Bluhm said that whoever wins will not change America’s commitment to Palestine.

“We are all still concerned, and whoever wins will be just as committed to creating a state called Palestine,” she said.

She said that in the next three months America could still lead negotiators to a peace agreement.

Despite numerous complaints about US policy toward Palestine, Bluhm said that America hopes to “encourage the Palestinian people.”
Why would a US bias towards Israel - which is undeniable - be considered an "ugly rumor"? Why is a US official apologizing for US policy?

She has said some eyebrow-raising statements before:
In her speech, Schweitzer-Bluhm applauded the Palestinian journalists for their "dedication to service", "commitment to getting at the truth" and "solidarity and bravery in the face of intimidation."

She particularly expressed her appreciation of the obstacles Palestinian media personnel must overcome to carry out their jobs, mentioning roadblocks, checkpoints, accusations of bias, threats, violence and gunfire. "Despite these obstacles, you do get the news out every day," she congratulated.

She applauded Palestinian journalists for challenging their own government, governments of neighbouring countries and the government of the United States. "Your inquiries and reports are a required part of a democratic Palestinian society," she said. "You are providing your fellow citizens with the information, the tools, to make decisions and be active members of their society. I urge you to continue to question and investigate and report."
As I wrote then, for her to praise the Palestinian Arab media - which is responsible for consistent incitement against Israel, as well as out-and-out lies - is ridiculous. And it has only gotten worse since I wrote that posting, as Ma'an has turned from a somewhat reasonable media outlet into one that is too scared to say anything negative about Hamas.

This US consul is sacrificing truth for appeasing her audience.
  • Thursday, September 18, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Lisa Goldman, a left-wing Israeli reporter, exposes Lauren Booth's absurd lies:
In an interview with PJM, Ms. Booth says she has tried three times to leave Gaza — once via Erez Checkpoint, which leads into Israel, and twice via the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. She was turned away by both the Israelis and the Egyptians, but told me she holds Israel solely responsible for her predicament. I pointed out that both a senior IDF spokesman and several well-informed Palestinian journalists confirmed that Israel has “zero control” over who crosses the Rafah border. In other words, perhaps Egypt was at least as responsible as Israel for forcing her to remain in Gaza. This elicited an angrily dismissive response from Ms. Booth, who claimed that “high up sources told her” that Israel is pressuring Egypt into keeping her trapped in Gaza. She would not reveal the source of her information, nor did she explain how it would serve Israel to have her stay indefinitely in Gaza.

...Referring to the interview she gave to Noa Raz, I asked if she had compared Gaza to the Nazi concentration camps. “Yes I did,” answered Ms. Booth. And do you really think the situation in Gaza is comparable to that in Darfur, where 400,000 people have been killed over the past five years? “Well,” she said, “Do we want to wait until 400,000 Gazans are dead?” She added that she had visited a camp in Gaza where 16,000 families had malnourished children, and the rate of unemployment hovered around 90 percent. If accurate, these are shocking figures that should concern all Israelis. But does Ms. Booth really expect to arouse our sympathy by making the grossly inappropriate suggestion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?

“Do you think that Gaza receives less media attention than Darfur?” I asked. “Absolutely!” the British activist answered vehemently. So I did a search on Google news for “Darfur,” where 400,000 people have been killed over the past five years, and received 13,912 results. A search for “Gaza,” where, according to B’tselem, 810 Palestinians were killed in 2006-2007, brought up 17,605 results.

Asked how long she thought she would be stuck in Gaza, Ms. Booth answered tartly, “As long as the Israelis decide I should be here.” Then she added in a passionate tone, “I must see my children! They are 5 and 7 and they are waiting for me in France!” She did not explain why, if she was so concerned about her children, she elected to stay illegally in Gaza when she had the option of leaving on the same boat that brought her there.

But what irritated me the most about Ms. Booth’s long tirade was her description of what happened at Erez Checkpoint, which leads into Israel. I crossed Erez several times before it was closed to Israelis, and remember it vividly.

According to Ms. Booth, she arrived at the checkpoint without a permit to cross, which means that the Palestinians, who coordinate via phone with the Israeli border police on the other side of Erez, would have prevented her from continuing. Ms. Booth: “I tried to coordinate with the Israelis two days in advance, via the British Council, but that didn’t work. So I went with an old lady who did have a permit to cross, although she had been turned back several times.”

Ms. Booth said she was prevented by Israeli soldiers, who threatened to shoot her. “There were Israeli soldiers on the Gazan side of Erez?” I asked. Hearing the incredulity in my tone, she answered with irritated impatience, “Oh, I don’t know what they were. They were uniformed men with guns, alright?”

“Okay, I said.” “They were Palestinian men guarding the checkpoint. So, did they stop you?”

“Oh no!” she answered. “The Palestinians advised me not to cross, but I walked right into the tunnel and started walking. I was nearly at the Israeli side when a Palestinian man came running up behind me, holding a mobile phone and shouting that the Israelis had told him they would shoot me if I took another step.”

Perhaps the Palestinian border guard really did call his Israeli counterpart to tell him that Ms. Booth was trying to cross into Israel against their orders, and to ask him what the Israelis would do to her if she continued. And perhaps the Israeli border guard really did tell his Palestinian counterpart that he would shoot Ms. Booth if she continued another step. But I really doubt the incident occurred as Ms. Booth recounts it. Here’s why:

The entrance to Israel via Erez is practically impenetrable. It is a maze of turnstiles that lock automatically, bulletproof glass, closed circuit cameras and disembodied voices that issue instructions via the public address system. One does not see an Israeli soldier until one has passed through security, which is remotely controlled. During the June 2007 civil war, dozens of Fatah members took shelter from Hamas fighters in the Erez “sleeve.” But none tried to make a dash for Israel, because it is simply not possible — physically — to just push through.

By the way, since I am still upset over the JPost stealing my idea and pretending that they don't steal from bloggers, I was the first blogger to report that members of Free Gaza were stuck in Gaza after being denied permission to cross both the Israeli and Egyptian borders, and the excellent Media Backspin looked at my sources and noticed that Lauren Booth was one of them, before any of her many interviews seeking sympathy.

  • Thursday, September 18, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said Thursday that the recent Kadima election is Israel’s first step in “the next state” of “aggressions against the Palestinian people.”

Commenting specifically on Wednesday’s election in Israel, Barhoum said that candidates all supported “establishing an extremist Jewish state.

Barhoom added that the vote, which Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appears to have won, “was nothing but a competition between extremists in the Israeli policy institution.”
When Hamas calls you an "extremist"......
  • Thursday, September 18, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
For the thirteenth consecutive week, Palestinian Arabs have managed to kill each other in far greater numbers than the evil IDF has managed to kill them.

The score this week (Thursday-Wednesday) is 20-1, based on my tracking PalArab self-death and the PCHR tracking of those killed by the IDF.

So is Hamas guilty of "genocide"?
  • Thursday, September 18, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
One of the joys of being a blogger is when others recognize your hard work in breaking stories.

One of the disappointments is when so-called "journalists" just steal from you and take credit for your hard work.

Last week, I noted that Lauren Booth compared Gaza to concentration camps and Darfur - on the same day that I saw multiple pictures of a huge Iftar feast being thrown by Islamic Jihad for journalists. These pictures were published on the pro-Islamic Jihad Palestine Press Agency website (to which I gave credit and linked.)

Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post noticed the exact same thing (as well as some details that other bloggers had mentioned, like her shopping in a well-stocked grocery store in Gaza, something you would be a bit hard-pressed to find in Buchenwald.) They even published one of the pictures I found.

Strangely, they didn't give credit to where they found it.

I commented about this fascinating coincidence in their comments section. We'll see if they own up, or if they have fewer journalistic ethics than the Christian Zionist site Israel Today (which did something similar and then apologized and corrected it.)

(Thanks to Israellycool for noticing this!)

UPDATE: The JPost did not print my comment (and this article is currently the most-commented article on the site), so I emailed their editors this letter:
It appears that one of your reporters took some material from my website. See http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2008/09/jerusalem-post-rips-off-elder.html for details.

I mentioned this in the comments of the offending article but my comment wasn't published.

Please acknowledge and comment. I may not be a paid journalist but I work hard discovering and writing original material and I would appreciate having common courtesy extended.

Feel free to peruse my blog and I would be thrilled if my many scoops would be published in JPost, but just give me credit.

Thanks

If I get a reply, I'll print it.
  • Thursday, September 18, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hamas' Al Qassam website, in English, has an article where they detail the adventures of a terror cell based in Nablus that managed to survive for four years before Israel discovered and arrested them.

The heroes of Hamas whine that other terror groups, specifically Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades, took credit for their attacks.

Then, in an aside, they blow up the Western liberal myth of how poverty creates terror, by saying that
The unit consisted of five members from the city of Nablus, they met together and pledged to inflicting the Zionist enemy, they choose the path of resistance despite their families were in a good situation, money.
They then go into details of their attacks, where they claim they managed to kill 3 "Zionists."

For example:
The two mujahedeen who dressed the Zionist military uniforms directed to the place of implementation and put a "Stop" on the side street, a vehicle belonged to the Zionist settlers came towards the fake barrier. The Zionist car eased its speed. One of the Mujahedeen approached from the car and rained it with bullets.
For those who see a moral equivalence between Israel and terrorists, notice how they brag that they dress in the uniforms of the enemy (a violation of Geneva Conventions) and that they shoot at civilians (another violation.) Their goal is, of course, to maximize civilians deaths while the IDF goal is obviously to minimize said deaths. Yet this context and motivation is often lost among those who pretend that both sides are equally culpable.
  • Thursday, September 18, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
As I mentioned last night, there was a fatal tunnel collapse yesterday in Gaza. Now we know that two were killed. It is interesting that Ma'an refers to them as "civilians."

Palestine Press Agency says that there are six missing in a second tunnel collapse.

In addition, a Hamas member was killed while performing a "military maneuver" in Khan Younis.

Our 2008 PalArab self-death count has now risen to 183.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

  • Wednesday, September 17, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Two car bombs were discovered in Gaza, and Hamas is warning that more might be coming. One had 150 kg of explosives, which would have caused many casualties. The Doghmush clan is suspected.

A 31-year old who worked in "military intelligence" in Gaza was kidnapped, tortured and killed.

Another tunnel collapse, this one seems to have had several victims but the details aren't yet known.

Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades called on its members in the West Bank to resist arrest by the PA security forces "by all means," which means we might be seeing more deaths on the other side of Palestan.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 181.

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