Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Syrian prostitution booming

Defying the worldwide economic downturn, prostitutes in Syria are experiencing boom times as more robust economic activity in Syria has created a booming market for their profession due to an inflow of investments in the private sector that have increased the disposable incomes that fund entertainment and indulgence.

Prostitutes in Syria hoping to cash into the economic boom are accordingly raising their prices and improving their highly sought services for better customer satisfaction as the demand for prostitution peaks.

"This is the oldest profession in human history, and it will continue unabated and will evolve in form and style as long as the methods of service keep pace with modernization," remarked a prostitute working at a night club in Damascus.

A prostitute from on of the Arab Maghreb countries who went by the pseudonym Rasha to avoid social stigma, has been in the business for less than a year after quitting her low paying job at a Syrian company.

She said that her fortunes changed for the better and her living standards drastically improved after she gave up her secretarial position for prostitution,.

"Not too long ago I was looking for a small apartment at the outskirts of Damascus. Now, I have a small fortune and can leave," she said.

Abir, another prostitute, said that the emergence of new professional sectors in the labor market such as telecommunications and insurance have compelled prostitutes to improve the quality of their services, especially since prices are peaking.

Rasha's customers initially paid from $100 to $200 for a few hours. However, in the wake of increased capital she decided to fully devote her time to prostitution and charge more since her customers could afford it.

According to the young Syrian Samer, prostitution is like any other profession in which the price depends on supply and demand. "Prostitution is gradually becoming a legitimate profession, considered mainly as part of tourism," he explained.

The impression of prostitutes working in the area was that the most prominent prostitutes working at night clubs were from Iraq and the Arab Maghreb countries.

Well, that's one way to keep the Syrian economy from collapsing.

No word yet on how Iran feels about this....

The trials of a pro-Israel student group at Berkeley

From J, the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California (h/t Tia):

Long a hotbed of anti-Israel activity, U.C. Berkeley has barely had a strong pro-Israel presence on campus. Until now, with Tikvah: Students for Israel, the Zionist student group at U.C. Berkeley.
We are the group that stepped up to protest when academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt visited Cal in October 2007 to hawk their book, a nefarious smear job titled “The Jewish Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”
We were also there last month when the virulently anti-Israel academic Norman Finkelstein came to speak.
Before the lecture, we respectfully distributed our literature outside. Once inside, Finkelstein’s level of anti-Semitic vitriol prompted a walkout of Tikvah students and others not associated with our group. We shouted out our opinions while exiting, as the crowd hurled expletives at us. Finkelstein and his colleague then continued delivering their insulting lies.
As a result, the dean of students is now seeking to discipline Tikvah and individual students for an “offense” which in the past barely warranted mention when undertaken by student groups involved in anti-Israel activities.
For example, when Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes tried to speak on campus several years ago, he was shouted down by members of Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Student Association. At the time the chancellor said, “Uncivil behavior, lamentable as it is, is not a crime, nor is it a violation of the Code of Student Conduct.” No disciplinary action was taken against SJP or its members for that incident, nor when Nonie Darwish was likewise shouted down a year ago.
Only last week, SJP disrupted an innovative Zionist hip-hop concert on campus. Even though no Jewish students were involved in the physical altercation that ensued (contrary to what was reported in the school paper and what SJP claims), we wait to see how the university will deal with the assailants from SJP.
Other violations by SJP of the U.C. code of conduct — such as blocking of pedestrian traffic with demonstrations, the brandishing of fake firearms, physical harassment and intimidation of Jewish students — were presented to the dean of students but have been ignored.
What we see here is a double standard, one for the rest of campus and another for the Jews and those who actively support Israel.
Our tax dollars support the U.C. system, and Jewish donors are very prominent in supporting the U.C. campuses. It’s time for the Jewish community to become aware of what is happening at our university.
Meanwhile, Tikvah has a consistent record of positive, pro-Israel programming on campus. Until our inception a year ago, there was no substantive pro-Israel voice on campus. We changed that, attracting students of various religious and cultural backgrounds to our cause. We have collaborated with many off-campus groups, including the Israeli Consulate, Israel Peace Initiative, S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, U.C. Berkeley Chabad, CAMERA, StandWithUs, JIMENA and more. Once again Jews walk with pride across Sproul Plaza.
We have also sponsored many successful events. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we took out ads in the student newspaper highlighting the civil rights leader’s strong support of the Jewish state. We have hosted lectures by Dennis Prager, Stanley Urman, Israeli Vice Consul Ishmael Khaldi (who spoke about being the highest-ranking Muslim in the Israeli foreign service) and others.
Last year we held two weeklong programs brimming with pro-Israel activities: Israel Peace and Diversity Week and Israel@60 Week (which included a widely attended on-campus Holocaust memorial on Yom HaShoah). We just finished our latest effort, Israel Liberation Week, and we have also been a positive influence on student government, with John Moghtader, a current senator in the Associated Students of the University of California, leading our group.
We are a grassroots student group. Our goal is to make sure Jewish students do not have to be subjected to a hostile anti-Israel, anti-Semitic environment on campus. That’s our bottom line.

Bravo to Tikvah!

LA Times cannot read a map

From AFP:

Egypt's northern Sinai is running low on fuel supplies because of the amount of smuggling across the border to the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, Egyptian officials said on Saturday.
"Smuggling to Gaza through tunnels has led to a drastic reduction in fuel supplies at petrol stations" in the northern Sinai, said Mohammed Hussein, a senior official of the Sinai governorate.
Other local officials said work with agricultural equipment was having to cease because of the shortage of fuel.
Other parts of the Sinai are also being affected as trucks from the north loaded with jerry cans ferry fuel supplies to the north, according to workers at petrol stations.
The authorities in northern Sinai have over the past month imposed a ban on the sale of fuel in jerry cans except for agricultural purposes, and ordered all petrol stations to close overnight.
Almost 170,000 litres (about 40,000 gallons) of fuel being readied for shipment to Gaza on the black market was seized last week, officials said.

But why aren't human rights organizations and left-wing newspapers blaming Egypt for confiscating fuel that is meant for those poor, poor Gazans? No, only Israel has the responsibility for feeding and clothing and fueling Gaza, according to such august authorities as the Los Angeles Times:

In the 2 1/2 weeks since its cease-fire with Hamas broke down, Israel has all but sealed crossings along its border with the Gaza Strip and rejected U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's appeal to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclosed territory that houses more than 1.5 million Palestinians. This response to violence directed against it amounts to collective punishment of civilians, which is illegal under international law, unfair and counterproductive. Hunger and scarcity nurture extremism.

The last comment is a cliche that's been proven false numerous times.

Beyond that, the LAT is conflating two issues. Israel is under no legal obligation to help its enemies. If the UN would try to follow the Free Gaza model and bring goods in from overseas, the worst that Israel would do is stop the ships and check them for weapons or other materials that could be used to hurt Israeli civilians. If the UNRWA would try to bring goods in from Egypt, Israel wouldn't say a word. So when Israel stops goods from crossing through its own territory, it is not engaging in collective punishment - it is exercising its own autonomy, something that the LAT doesn't seem to recognize.

... As the military power surrounding Gaza, Israel has a duty to ensure that civilians receive sufficient food, fuel and medicine.

The LA Times needs to look at a map again and see if Gaza is surrounded by Israel.

Syrian economist: Jews killed JFK!

MEMRI keeps finding these gems....

Following are excerpts from an interview with Syrian economist Muhammad Sharif Mazloum, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on October 10, 2008.
Muhammad Sharif Mazloum: The economic crisis began on August 15, 1971, when President Nixon canceled the Bretton Woods agreement, which linked the old gold dollar to the Jewish gold. Thus, the dollar was severed from gold, and became subjected to the whims and schemes of the Zionist lobby, whose goal was, and still is, to take control of the world's gold, which is deposited in Swiss banks or in the central banks of countries as gold reserves for their banknotes, as well as to enslave the peoples and then to impoverish them. With the American political and economic pressure on governments around the world to sever their currencies from the gold standard, the crisis – or the Zionist economic war against the peoples of the world – began.

That is when the purchasing power of the banknotes collapsed vis-à-vis gold, and with it collapsed the purchasing power of the salaries and earning of all classes, including the unemployed in America, as well as the salaries of the workers and the profits of the industrialists and farmers. The collapse reached its lowest point in 1986, when the dollar lost 90% of its gold value prior to 1971, before the gold dollar was severed from the Jewish gold. In 1971, the gold value of $1,000,000 was 1,000 kg – i.e., one ton of gold. In 1986, the gold value of $1,000,000 was reduced to only 100 kg. In other words, 900 kg were lost from every 1,000 kg of gold.

This may be called the period of the first death of the dollar. The world governments and their economic advisors at the time should have stopped using the American dollar, which lost, as I said, 90% of its gold value. If only the governments of the world at that time had awakened, and had saved their peoples from the rule of the dollar, and from the consequences of the Zionist economic war, which ripped apart the peoples of the world, and continues to do so.

The economic research that we conducted in 1989 revealed the economic war planned by the Zionists even before 1944, when they promised the US government to back the US dollar with their gold. Since the America government does not have its own federal banks, it agreed to sign the Bretton Woods agreement, which gave an ounce of gold for every $35 that reached the Federal Reserve Bank, and its branches throughout America, which are owned by the Ashkenazi Jews.

[...]

In the 1960s, President John Kennedy decided to establish governmental banks to protect the dollar, in which the gold that was pouring into America would be deposited. What became of Kennedy? He was killed by the Zionist lobby. This is a fact that nobody is aware of – but a fact it is. That was the reason Kennedy was killed.

[...]

Global Jewry is trying to prepare the ground for a strong currency. What would that strong currency be? People have no confidence in the euro, and they don't keep gold. This strong currency is what [Israel] is preparing now, and even issued in Gaza – the gold Jewish shekel.

Kudos to my counterparts in the Financial Section of the Jewish Lobby; great job, guys!

The celebrity murderer visits Syria

From Ma'an Arabic:

The dean of Israeli prisoners Samir Kuntar arrived this evening to the Syrian capital Damascus, in a week-long visit that will include a series of activities in several provinces of Syria.

Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal welcomed him, saying: "You are now between your family and your people, and we're proud of you and all the resistance heroes."

Kuntar said, "I carry to the Syrian people and the rule of President Bashar al-Assad a salute to the mujahedeen in the glorious Islamic Resistance, and salute the Lebanese people to Syria, which harbors all feelings of loyalty, and love the supervisory positions, especially in the war in July 2006. "

He is due to meet Syrian President Bashar al Assad. He will also participate in the opening ceremony of the Arab International Forum on the right of return on 23-24/11/2008 in Damascus.

It is utterly beyond belief that Israel wants to negotiate with people who pay homage to the most disgusting, notorious terrorist/murderer in Israeli history.

And I am not only referring to Syria.

Double-dipping AP photographer?

Yesterday, AP published this photo:

A Palestinian man cooks chicken using a wood-fuelled stove due to a shortage in cooking gas, in an outdoor kitchen in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008. He said he is cooking for poor families and hospital patients in Gaza. Israel's tightening Gaza blockade, a response to Palestinian militant rocket fire, has led to frequent blackouts throughout Gaza and resulted in shortages of food, supplies and even cash. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

I had seen that same photo, along with many others, in the Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today newspaper. Palestine Today did not attribute the photographers.

Does this mean that Adel Hana gets paid twice for the same photos? Does it mean that AP employs Islamic Jihad sympathizers? Does AP know that these photographs are being published in another newspaper without attribution?

Friday Links

Israeli envoy: The UN filled with "hostility and hypocrisy" (YNet)

Hezbollah seeks to marshal the piety of the young (NYT) (h/t EBoZ)

The new anti-Semitism? (Christopher Hitchens at Times Online)

Denmark to ban circumcision? (YNet)

"Starvation"

Open thread

It's been a busy week. Let's talk about something else.

Speaking of weeks, on August 1, 1971, Richard Nixon declared that week to be National Clown Week.

Palestinian Arabs fleeing West Bank

Firas Press reports on a huge number of young Palestinian Arab men who have been emigrating from the West Bank.

According to a new report by the Palestinian Economic Policy Research Institute in cooperation with the Central Bureau of Statistics,

There are surprising statistics about emigration in the Palestinian territories, which have been exacerbated in recent years, causing a "brain drain" to other countries.

The studies agreed that emigration, both domestic and abroad, has had negative effects on Palestinian society, in social, economic and political arenas.

The study revealed that the Palestinian territories is third in the Middle East in terms of migration rates and ranks sixth among middle-income countries, in addition to being a major part of the most vital migration corridors in the world.

The study said that the number of Palestinians who fled to Jordan since the beginning of this year exceeded 260,000, but during the same period, only 197,000 returned.

This has been a consistent pattern throughout the short history of Palestinian Arabs. The young, smart and ambitious have always sought to leave. These are the hundreds of thousands who emigrated en masse to Kuwait and Iraq in the latter half of the 20th century, the ones who refused to be stuck in "refugee" camps and fed by UNRWA for their entire lives. These Palestinian Arabs - including a large number in Europe and the Americas - represent the best and the brightest of their people, because they were they refuse to live on handouts and in a dead-end situation. While they are proud of their heritage, they really have little desire to live in a Palestinian state themselves. An additional 63,000 emigrants this year is not to be considered unusual.

Half of younger PalArabs want to emigrate. Apparently they don't care about living in "their" land all that much, and the enforced nationalism has not penetrated their psyches a great deal. They just want to live somewhere without worrying about war or the terrible PalArab economy, where they can get real jobs and support their families in honor. Building up a Palestinian Arab state is not a romantic notion to them - it is a bitter joke, as they have seen better than anyone how corrupt the legacy of Arafat has been, how their leaders are more interested in self-preservation than in real progress and how divided their people really are.

If the Arab world was smart, they would welcome these educated and motivated young men as citizens, rather than risk them going to the West. But unfortunately the Arab world is more fixated on keeping these people stateless - in the name of "Palestinian unity" - because of hatred of Israel as well as fear of the changes that an influx of hardworking, smart men could effect in their dictatorships.

So instead we see them leave whenever and to wherever they can. And the ones they leave behind are the lazy ones, or the ones who are attracted to terror, or the ones who just gave up.

The principles of a Nobel Peace Prize winner

JPost reports:

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire says the United Nations should suspend or revoke Israel's membership.

Maguire says Israel should be punished for ignoring a series of United Nations resolutions over the years. Maguire won the 1976 peace prize for her work with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Maguire told a news conference Thursday that it's time for the international community to take action against Israel.

Such noble words from the laureate! Such high-minded principles she has! Such a wonderful use for her prestige!

It almost seems a shame to point out that she thinks that terrorists are just wonderful people:

The keffiyeh, which Palestinian Arabs consider to be a symbol of "violent resistance" (=terror attacks against Jewish civilians), is an appropriate fashion statement for this clown.

Notice also that the flag on the commemorative plate that Maguire is smilingly accepting from an unrepentant mass murderer shows that Israel doesn't exist.

You can have your own Fatah blog!

Yes, you too can have a blog with a terrorist domain!

Check out this new one, Am Yisrael Chai at http://amyisraelchai.fateh.net/

To add your own Wordpress blog, just go to http://fateh.net/wp-signup.php and have fun!

(Just be careful about your own Internet protection...your IP address will be visible to the hosts.)

Today's PalArab news

A Hamas member was killed in a "work accident", which pro-Hamas Arabs blame on "shrapnel" from an Israeli tank missile but which more objective Arabs note was one of those "mysterious explosions." Hamas noted that the terrorist was in the midst of a jihad task.

Hamas officials in Gaza are now claiming that hundreds of thousands of chicks were euthanized because there was no fuel to keep them warm, and two million more are in danger of being killed. Which makes one wonder how farms managed to work before the 20th century, as well as why aren't the chicks being fed to "starving" Gazans?

Hamas is trying to force a family from Gaza to leave their home. It seems that they live near Hamas leader Haniyeh; maybe it is one of those "land grabs" that Arabs always complain about.

Hamas attacked a wedding on Tuesday night, because the members were singing Fatah tunes. They broke chairs and sound equipment and abducted a number of celebrants.

The Saudi Committee for the Relief of the Palestinian People somehow sent a convoy of trucks filled with rice to Gaza. Last week they brought flour, next week they plan to bring dried milk. In the past they have worked with UNESCO and UNICEF, so apparently this convoy came through Israeli territory, but I cannot find any other story about this.

An Islamic Jihad leader predicts that Hamas will declare a new Palestinian Arab president in January, further pushing the division between Gaza and Ramallah.

Tunnel builders in Rafah are increasing the amount of fuel smuggled into Gaza from Egypt, building new pipelines. They expect to have completed a real pipeline, as opposed to the hoses they use now, in the next week or so, and they hope to be able to transport natural gas as well.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 214.

"Rationality" and Reuters' obscene bias

Reuters looks at the Jewish residents of the West Bank, and doesn't like what it sees:

When God ordered Abraham to slaughter a son, the angel of the Lord stepped in at the last minute to stay his hand. Was it a test of faith, or had Abraham's imagination simply run away with him?
Scholars may differ, but to many Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, the story is as real as the airy heights and rocky slopes where Hebrew and Philistine armies clashed in biblical times, and where they live today.

This makes it hard to discuss rationally a resolution of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel over its occupation of West Bank land since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

I the Reuters universe, there is only one "rational" resolution: to forcibly remove Jews from homes they lived in for decades, and that their ancestors lived in for millenia. It is so obvious to these smug, condescending journalists to look down upon people who live there today, who have a real and undying love of their land that has lasted for thousands of years, and airily declare that their desires and beliefs and lifestyle is "irrational".

Never will you hear Reuters declare Islamic beliefs as being so weird as to make it impossible to speak rationally with a Muslim. For Reuters, peaceful religious Muslims are worthy of praise and will not be questioned; but peaceful religious Jews are inherently irrational and suspect.

Settlers deny their towns are an illegal obstacle to peace. On a tour they organized this week to redress a negative image in foreign media, they cited scripture going back 3,500 years to explain why a land-for-peace swap was out of the question.

Yehudit Tayar talked about what "we" did in ancient times, as if recalling recent family history. "When we were crossing the desert," she says. "When we first came back to Shilo" to worship the Holy Tabernacle "which our families did three times a year" back in the Iron Age.

It's as if the intervening 3,000 years never happened.

No, it is as if they feel a connection to their ancestors.

Would Reuters ever tell Palestinian Arabs, the vast majority who never lived in Palestine, that it is irrational for them to want to live there, or that it would be an obstacle to peace? Or would it trot out another story with somoene pointing to a key that supposedly opens a door to a house that a Jew lives in? Why are Palestinian Arab aspirations to return to land they believe is theirs - and whose return would lead to conflict - any more rational than Jews' desire to do the same?

Visitors to divided Jerusalem, only a half hour drive away, see checkpoints, watchtowers, teenagers with combat rifles and other daily manifestations of the occupation that might be removed almost overnight, if there was a peace deal.

But looking at the reality of the settlements, their tended gardens and schools, and listening to the passions that gave rise to them, makes it plain that persuading -- or even forcing -- Jews to give these up will be a far bigger challenge.

Not "would be" but "will be." Reuters knows how peace will be achieved, and it is by uprooting hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes - where they have been living peacefully, where the vast majority are in communities on land that was completely empty and never inhabited, and where many of them even have good relations with their Arab neighbors until the "peace activists" pour in to incite hate.

The idea of Jews living in land that they feel a deep spiritual connection to is not irrational. On the contrary, the idea that such a land should be Judenrein is what should be setting off alarms in the heads of the Reuters writers.

If they were rational.

(h/t Snapped Shot for the original quote)

YouTube's anti-semitism in Arabic

While YouTube tries to remove offensive videos in languages they understand, it remains a haven for anti-semitic videos in Arabic.

Here are some titles, autotranslated, with links:

Jews cowards

Jewish history and the dream of a false Asif (1-10) - A documentary film about Jews were God's curse

Even camels hate Jews (which is actually pretty funny)

The stormy history of the Jewish dream of a false (4-10) A documentary film about Jews were God's curse

Incest Jewish

Children who humiliated the Jews - Apparently, the Jews wouldn't be humiliated if they fired tanks at young rock throwers

Jewish history and crimes

The film documentary about Jews and their plans

(The Jews God's hands tied) - This is the Brotherhood of apes and pigs Bastards say God's hands tied by a stingy their hands tied, and cursed including

Jews saw terrorism - A sequence of scenes of Jews praying juxtaposed with dead Arabs

Martyrdom operations in Palestine against the Jews - apparently praising killing Jews - not Zionists.