Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Freedom of the press, PA-style

The Palestinian Authority has decided to ban a number of journalists from entering the presidential Mukata compound in Ramallah.

The decision is aimed at punishing the journalists because of their criticism of the PA leadership or for reporting about the activities of Hamas leaders.

Al-Jazeera reporters and TV crews are among those who now appear on the PA's blacklist. They have been denied access to the Mukata for the past two weeks.

Other journalists working for Arab and Western media outlets have also been told that they are no longer welcome to visit the compound.

The decision to ban Al-Jazeera came after the popular TV station failed to carry a live broadcast of a speech given by PA President Mahmoud Abbas in front of the PLO Central Council in Ramallah.

Instead, the station broadcast live from Damascus, where Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal was addressing a conference of radical groups.

Al-Jazeera has thus far refrained from reporting about the PA's decision to boycott the station. A source in the station said that the decision not to report about the ban was taken after the PA warned Al-Jazeera that publicizing the issue would only cause more damage to its reporters.

PA officials accused Al-Jazeera of being biased in favor of Hamas, noting that this was not the first time that the station had served as a platform for Hamas and other radical Islamic groups.

Some PA officials even went as far as demanding the closure of the Al-Jazeera offices in the West Bank. The homes and vehicles of some Al-Jazeera reporters have been either torched or stoned by Fatah activists in the West Bank in the past two years.

Earlier this week, the largest Palestinian news agency, Ramattan, decided to suspend its work in the West Bank after the PA leadership also banned its reporters from entering the Mukata.

The agency also accused the PA security forces of raiding its Ramallah offices, arresting its workers and confiscating a mobile broadcast truck.

Another journalist who has been denied access to the Mukata is Nael Nakhleh, a resident of Al-Bireh who writes from newspapers in the Gulf. Nakhleh was arrested by the PA's General Intelligence for allegedly publishing reports that reflect negatively on the PA leaders.

The PA has, over the past few years, become less tolerant toward "unfriendly" journalists, especially Palestinian newsmen who report about financial corruption and abuse of human rights in PA-controlled areas.

Seven Palestinian reporters have been arrested by Abbas's security forces in the past few months for allegedly expressing sympathy with Hamas. Most were released after being warned against publishing material that reflects negatively on Abbas and the PA leadership.

This is exactly how things were under Arafat.

As far as I can tell, Al Jazeerah has still not reported on its being blacklisted, thus buckling under to the PA's demands.

By the way, here is a picture of an al-Jazeera reporter - reporting from Jaffa in a typically anti-Israel article. He doesn't seem to have been kicked out.

Lull?

From AP:

Israel has reopened its crossings with Gaza to shipments of humanitarian aid and fuel. International journalists are also being allowed in.

The Israeli military says 45 trucks of food and medical supplies are to pass through on Tuesday, along with shipments of cooking gas and fuel for Gaza's power plant.

The military says cargo and passenger crossings were reopened because of a lull Monday in attacks by Gaza militants on Israel.

The reopening of the crossings also means international journalists can again enter Gaza. This is just the second time reporters have been allowed in since fighting erupted on Nov. 5. The violence has left a 6-month-old truce in doubt.

Actually, yesterday Gazan terrorists did shoot a rocket towards Israel, but it landed short.

I suppose that deserves an award.

All Hamas has to do is shoot dozens of rockets at Israel whenever they want, as they did this past weekend, and then slow down for a day to get their "humanitarian aid."

Husband defects to the West? Blame Zionists!

From Infolive.tv:

The wife of Iran's former deputy defense minister Ali Reza Asghari protested in front of the Turkish embassy in Tehran on Monday, claiming her husband was kidnapped by Israelis while in Turkey two years ago, Iranian news agency Faras reported. Asghari denied rumors that her husband had defected to the west and claimed that he "was in the Zionist prison." She vowed to protest again next year.

Of course, Asghari did defect, and may have even provided intelligence to Israel about the secret Syrian nuclear reactor that Israel bombed.

Doesn't look like he misses his wife too much, either.

Respect for women!

Morocco’s Rajaa Houlla, 29, reacts after discovering that she had been divorced by her Saudi husband. She only learnt of the divorce when police came to her house to deport her in Jeddah on Friday.

I guess the husband doesn't have to worry about lengthy court proceedings - he just got his local police to get rid of his wife, literally.

Don't move the embassy - yet

JTA has an op-ed by the orthodox Union's Steven Savitsky imploring the incoming US administration to move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

I cannot argue with his goal:

At this crucial time for Jews throughout the world, the Orthodox Union proclaims loud and clear that Jerusalem must be off the table. Any peace negotiations must be predicated upon the fact that Jerusalem will remain Israel’s undivided capital. We pray for it, yearn for it, fast because of its destruction, and remember it at our most joyous times under the chupah.

And the article makes it clear that the entire purpose of moving the embassy is to be a part of a declaration by the US that Jerusalem is Israel's undivided capital.

Last night, I heard Israel's former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau speak. He mentioned that in 1987 he spoke with a high-ranking US official, who told him that the reason that the United States didn't bother bringing up the question of Jerusalem because everyone knew that the Knesset was against dividing Jerusalem by roughly 116-4 seats. Against such a consensus, the US wouldn't bother wasting its time to pressure Israel to make concessions.

However, if there is a cleavage in Israeli society, the US will be happy to use leverage to exact concessions from the state.

Rabbi Lau went on to say that in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, all Israelis - religious or not - stood together as one. The unity is there in the face of terror, but not so much at any other time lately. And it is this lack of unity that gives the world a toehold into trying to shrink Israel.

The US is not going to be more Zionist than Israel itself is. The most left-wing Israeli governments will continue to move their "red lines" back while negotiating away Israel's strategic interests, and as soon as something new is on the table, it is difficult to remove it.

In this environment, if American Zionists insist on making the embassy a slogan, it is entirely conceivable that a US administration will say that they will be happy to move the embassy to western Jerusalem but insist that Jerusalem be divided as part of the deal. Emphasizing the embassy - a purely symbolic gesture - could end up facilitating the loss of much of Jerusalem on the ground.

The embassy is not the issue. Jerusalem as a unified capital of the Jewish state is the real issue. This is far more important than the symbolism - and likely resultant pressure - that would accompany any US move of its embassy.

Israel's iniquitous Koranic plots

Firas Press breathlessly reports on the latest nefarious Israeli plot to debase and twist the Holy Koran:

A report of the Monitoring Committee of the Islamic Research Academy in Egypt warned that Israel is expanding in the perversion of the Koran and issued editions distributed to many African countries including Kenya and Niger.

The recent report says that 'The Israelis were distorting the Koran and deleted verses that talk about Jews and signs calling for Jihad'.

Brilliant! All the miscreant Jews need to do to solve the problems of Islamic terror is to change the Koran itself!

That's not the only thing that Israelis are doing with the Koran. They are now making money from it:

For Muslims who just can't fit the five-times-a-day Salah prayer routine into their busy schedules, an Israeli mobile phone provider has a new solution: Mobile Koran.

Pelephone has begun offering a Koran text service that enables users to tap into verses of choice from the Muslim Holy Book at will.

For the modest sum of $1.50 per month, subscribers can download what appears onscreen as an actual book of Koran, and scroll through chapter and verse.

"We are providing something to subscribers who want to be connected to these texts any time and any place," said Pelephone Product Content Director Moti Cohen. "So naturally we are targeting a population that would use this type of service. Our Arab sector customers are very enthusiastic."

And we mustn't forget the other Israeli Koran project, Quranet, which has just gone on-line although all of its features are not available yet.

A new Web site launched by an Israeli university professor and his Bedouin students aims to address life's everyday quandaries from the perspective of an ancient sacred text: the Quran.

Organizers of the site, Quranet.net, say they hope it will serve as a "bridge between Islam and the West" by applying the wisdom of Islam's holiest book to modern-day problems.

"We try to transform the Quran into a modern and useful tool, so that every person can find a Quranic answer to modern psychological and educational queries," said Ofer Grosbard, professor at the Academic Arab College for Education, affiliated with Haifa University.

Quranet divides chapters of the Quran into topics such as "Loss, Illness and Tragedy," and provides answers to such questions as, "Is loss an excuse for aggression?" and "What can we say to someone who refuses to accept a gesture of peace?"

The questions are answered with a relevant Quranic verse, followed by an educational-psychological explanation of the issue.

Quranet seeks to illustrate "the beauty of the Quran," said Grosbard, who believes the book's positive messages have been overshadowed by Islamic fundamentalists who've manipulated the text as a justification for terrorism.

We spoke about Quranet a few months ago, with many Muslims freaking out that Israelis could dare publicly claim that he Koran teaches love and respect.

Obviously, Israel is trying to destroy the Holy Quran/Koran with a multi-pronged attack.

What chutzpah!

Qatar should call Israel's bluff

From Dion Nissenbaum of McClatchy Newspapers:

Israel is taking unusual new steps to discourage Arab and Muslim nations from challenging its prolonged economic siege of the Hamas-led Gaza Strip by sending aid ships to ease the desperate circumstances of the 1.5 million Gaza Palestinians.
In recent days, Israel prodded Qatar, a friendly Persian Gulf nation, into calling off a delegation preparing to transport aid from Cyprus to Gaza, according to officials briefed on what they said were high-level talks.
Hours before a Qatar aid group was scheduled to board a boat Thursday with $2 million in cancer medication, they abruptly canceled the trip.
The Qatar charity would have been the first such Arab aid group to challenge Israel's ban on international boats traveling to Gaza.
Instead, Israel urged Qatar officials to send any Gaza-bound aid via Israel, Israeli government officials said.
"The message was delivered, not only to them, but to anybody else that wanted to transfer aid to Gaza, that there is a mechanism on how to do it," said Andy David, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry. "We will not change our policy, which gives us the option on how to do it, while not allowing unauthorized boats to reach Gaza."

If everyone really cared about helping Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, here's what would happen:

Qatar would avail themselves of Israel's offer. They would transfer their aid, perhaps through Jordan, with the following conditions:

* Israel has the right to inspect the aid and stop anything that could be dangerous to Israeli citizens

* A small Qatari delegation would travel with the aid convoy to ensure that it gets distributed directly to qualified aid agencies and not to terrorists

Here, everyone wins: Israel can maintain its security; Qatar can become a bigger player in helping Palestinian Arabs, Israeli relations improves with the Arab world, and Gazans get the aid they need. (Tzipi Livni visited Qatar earlier this year, there is no reason that Qataris cannot go through Israel to reach Gaza.)

Of course, this only works if we assume that the Arab world really cares about helping Gazans.

Odds and ends

Christians detained and beaten in Muslim Indian Ocean nations

This year's gruesome Eid al Adha photos from Gaza. Let's play in the blood!

Desertification conference - Israel saving the world again:

This is a crisis that has actually been defined by the United Nations and World Bank "Millennium Assessment" as the environmental problem which affects more people than any other worldwide.

Israel's climate is of course largely a desiccated one. Indeed 93 percent of its lands are defined as drylands. In 1948, the country's soils showed dramatic deterioration, and conditions were growing worse quickly. The causes involved overgrazing, deforestation and agriculture that was not sustainable. The notion of a 'desolate,' 'neglected' homeland - was not just Zionist propaganda. It was born out by aerial photographs and reports by international soil scientists.

Since that time, however, a combination of grazing regulations, agricultural innovations, ambitious water management projects, aggressive afforestation efforts and a national commitment to making the Negev a productive region produced impressive results. Entire regions have been transformed and for the better.

Swing your partner ‘round and ‘round,

And turn your corner upside down.

And turn your corner like swingin’ on a gate,

And meet your partner for a grand chain eight,

And hurry up boys and don’t be late.

Chew your tobacco and rub your snuff,

And meet your honey and strut your stuff.

Right foot up and a left foot down,

And make that big foot jar the ground,

And promenade your partner around.

Perhaps this was one of the contestants in the latest Saudi beauty pageant?

Egypt afraid that Gaza will expand into the Sinai

From Palestine Today:

MPs from the Egyptian Shura Council warned of the seriousness of Israel to harm the Egyptian national security, pointing out that Israel still has ambitions in Sinai with the displacement of Palestinians to Sinai from Gaza.

Isn't it interesting that Palestinian Arabs are considered a national security threat to their fellow Arabs, but the world expects Israel not to treat them as such?

A tiny admission: Amira Hass mentions weapons smuggling

Amira Hass, Ha'aretz' Arab affairs reporter, went into Gaza with the last "Free Gaza" moonbat boat and stayed for three weeks. Today, she spoke to her friends in Ramallah about her experience in Gaza.

Although she predictably slams Israel at every possible opportunity, a couple of salient facts manage to sneak out during her tirade:

On entering Gaza Hass said she was accompanied by Hamas-appointed security personnel at all hours, and was prevented from entering any of the Strip’s refugee camps. She said she had been warned by the security men that there was a chance that she would be abducted by extremists during her time in Gaza. After three weeks, she said, the security officials told her they got wind of a plan by one of the factions to kidnap her, which she called a pretext, and forced her to leave the area.

So this independent journalist happily filed reports that were effectively censored by Hamas, which only allowed her to enter certain parts of Gaza. Hass eagerly accepted the role of propagandist.

During her time in Gaza Hass visited the southern town of Rafah where the hundreds of tunnels to Egypt snake below the earth, and described the full markets and influx of people that the new industry had spurred in the area. Hass described seeing many goods, even weapons, available in the Rafah souq, and remarked at the change in what she called a ‘once very poor town.’

From a quick Google search, I could not find a single Hass report for Ha'aretz where she mentioned seeing weapons in Rafah. In fact, out of the many reports that talk about the goods that get smuggled into Rafah through tunnels, the most obvious - weapons - is not mentioned anywhere. TVs, motorcycles, cattle, zoo animals, candy, shoes - we see them all from Western reports, but never a mention of weapons.

The only way to know that weapons are still being smuggled is because Egypt regularly intercepts weapons and explosives caches on their way to Rafah. Gaza reporters, however, cannot bring themselves to mention that fact.

Hass mentions it here - but to a Palestinian Arab audience, and not as a reporter but as an advocate.

Isn't the presence of weapons for sale in Rafah an important fact? Apparently, not to the Western reporters who love filing tunnel stories, and apparently not to Amira Hass herself.

The MSM meme of starving Gazans is too important. If reporters would mention that weapons are getting smuggled into Gaza and sold (as well as given to terror groups), some stupid readers might start thinking that perhaps food is not the most important thing to Gazans - and we can't have that, can we?

Open Thread!

I went to a wedding this morning and I'm at a dinner to raise money for a Jewish community that most of the world would like to see destroyed this evening, so this is a good time to create an open thread on my Blackberry.

While I overeat.

The Jew Cooties issue is getting more play in the mainstream media, a week after I became perhaps the first English-language blogger to publish the picture of Al Azhar Sheikh Tantawi shaking hands with Shimon Peres.

Ha'aretz says a major Egyptian paper is demanding that Tantawi "ritually purify his hands" after this awful event. I am not clear what that means; Muslims ritually wash their hands numerous times a day, so perhaps it really does mean that the hand should be cut off.

YNet mentions that Tantawi, after initially denying knowing who Peres was, now admits that he shook his hand on purpose and spoke to him for a few minutes, although saying that they didn't speak about anything important. Perhaps sealing Tantawi's fate, YNet adds:

Contrary to Tantawi's claims, Ynet has learned that during the New York conference it was actually the sheikh who approached Peres, and knowing who he was, shook his hand and talked with him for several minutes.

Tantawi reportedly told Peres, "Preachers play a very important role in calming the situation and creating an atmosphere of peace."

Which is of course the very problem - while Egypt has been at "peace" with Israel for thirty years, it never tried to stop the incitement in its media against the Jewish state. The "peace" is paper-thin, and it was represented to Egyptian citizens as merely a ruse to regain the Sinai and erase the shame of losing in 1967.

The Tantawi kerfuffle shows how much loathing Egyptians continue to have for Israel, including Israel's most dovish leaders. From Egypt's perspective, Camp David was not a peace agreement, but merely a long-term cease fire that is a single bullet away from being destroyed.

And the fact that Tantawi caused a similar stir ten years ago by meeting with Israel's chief rabbi shows that old fashioned anti-semitism is also a major factor here.

26 days in a row of rocket fire

Today's Qassams marks 26 consecutive days of rocket or mortar fire from Gaza towards Israel.

There has been fire from Gaza 34 out of the 35 days since November 4.

The previous longest streak, according to my records, is 36 days in a row spanning last April, May and June.

Yet, the media still refers to Israel and Hamas as having a "shaky ceasefire."

Christians not doing too well in Egypt

There are rumors that Barack Obama will make a major foreign policy speech in a Muslim capital during his first hundred days in office, and many think it will be in Cairo.

It would be interesting to see if he goes there as a way to pander to Muslims, or as a proud Christian who is also the US President. Because things have not been too great for Christians in Egypt lately.

I did not see this reported in any English-language press, but according to an article in Al Masry al-Youm:

In the "District of Rain" in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, an ugly scene of Muslim militants burned a church, after prayers Friday (29/11), chanting "God is great ...! God is great!", as if they had infiltrated by Bar-Lev line or regained Jerusalem!

An AP article mentions some other incidents:

Early in the morning two Sundays ago, hundreds of Christian Egyptians quietly slipped into a former underwear factory where they had discreetly set up a church and held their first service. Bells rang and hymns were sung.
A crowd of angry Muslims quickly gathered, threw stones at the building and burned banners that said, “No to the church.” They tried to storm the gates, clashed with police and chanted, “The church has fallen, the priest is dead,” according to witnesses.
In fact, no one died, but 13 people were reported injured. For Egyptians in general, the incident in the blue-collar district of Ain Shams served as a warning that Muslim-Christian clashes, largely confined to the south of the country in recent years, have seeped into the capital.
Two incidents this summer underscore the problem. In one southern city, a Muslim man was killed in clashes over the expansion of a Coptic Orthodox monastery, and Muslims torched Christian villagers’ homes because a priest was seen holding Mass inside a house, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a rights group.
Christians, an estimated 10 percent of Egypt’s 79 million people, long have complained of government restrictions on building new churches.
To build a church or even renovate an existing one, clearance is needed from several security agencies and government bodies, and often is refused.
A church can’t be built near a mosque, but “near” is not defined. And nothing prevents Muslims from building a mosque near a church, even without a permit. As a result, most of Cairo’s churches are surrounded by mosques, often bigger and taller.
Egyptian Christians don’t have enough churches to accommodate their numbers, so they hold informal services in community centers, bookstores or homes.
“There is this psychological terrorism from Islamists that prevents local authorities from demolishing illegally built mosques and complicates permit procedures for Copts,” said Youssef Sidhom, the editor of Watani, a newspaper run by members of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Egypt’s main Christian denomination.
In Ain Shams, where about 4,000 Christian families are vastly outnumbered by Muslims, congregants bought the factory three years ago and quietly began setting up their church.
Muslims bought a parking lot across the street and started building a mosque — one of about five within a few blocks. It was from these mosques that the angry crowd rallied when word spread that the Copts were at prayer.
But at their first service, the Christians announced their presence with bells and hymns — even distributing chocolates outside the building — apparently hoping the church would be accepted as a fait accompli. Instead, the riot erupted.
Anthony ended up being led out of the church protected by police while the mob hurled insults and stones.
The factory building’s doors are chained shut, and the Coptic Church has said that to avoid further trouble it will not seek to hold services there. But Father Anthony still is shocked at the Muslim reaction.
“Would they tear the factory down if it was turned into a theater or a nightclub?” he said.