Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

BTFA: Break the Format Adar

Since this is the Jewish month of Adar, where weird and counter-intuitive things tend to happen, I will be occasionally posting clearly unElder-like posts for the next few weeks when time allows. I hope to make them...eclectic.

The posts will be labeled BTFA.

Another wacko Arab theory about ancient Israel

Al-Quds (Arabic) has a lengthy report on Kamal Salibi, a Lebanese professor who has been pushing a theory for decades now that Biblical stories all took place in Arabia, not Israel. Even the Jordan River, he argues, was really the Sarawat Mountains (since he says the word "river" is never used in the Bible) and all Biblical placenames are really names in Arabia, including Jerusalem - in 'Asir, southern Arabia. According to this theory, those crafty Jews renamed Palestinian cities after the Biblical cities during the time of the Hasmonean Kingdom, in the second century BCE, but there were no Jews in Israel beforehand.

The Arabs would use this, of course, to delegitimize any Jewish claim on Israel.

Debunking this is easy, if only from a single archaeological find that was announced yesterday:

The Israel Antiquities Authority on Monday announced the discovery of a large building dating to the time of the First and Second Temples during an excavation in the village of Umm Tuba in southern Jerusalem.

The excavation was conducted by Zubair Adawi on behalf of the antiquities authority, prior to the start of construction there by a private contractor.

The archaeological remains include several rooms arranged around a courtyard, in which researchers found a potter's kiln and pottery vessels. The pottery remains seem to date from the eighth century B.C.E. (First Temple period).

The excavators also found royal seal impressions on some of the pottery fragments that date to the era of Hezekiah, King of Judah (end of the eighth century B.C.E.).

Four "LMLK" impressions (which indicate the items belonged to the king) were discovered on handles of large jars used to store wine and oil. Seals of two high-ranking officials named Ahimelekh ben Amadyahu and Yehokhil ben Shahar, who served in the government, were also found.

The Yehokhil seal was stamped on one of the LMLK impressions before the jar was fired in a kiln and this is a rare example of two such impressions appearing together on a single handle.

Biblical characters from the First Temple period hanging around in Jerusalem in the 8th century BCE writing in Hebrew sort of demolishes Kamal Salibi's theory.

"Issues, action, power, self-interest."

I read this passage over the shoulder of someone in a train today:

The day after the rally, Marty decided it was time for me to do some real work, and he handed me a long list of people to interview.Find out their self-interest, he said. That’s why people become involved in organizing -because they think they’ll get something out of it. Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power.

Issues, action, power, self-interest. I liked these concepts.

I know that these words are out of context, but it was still a little bit of a shock to see that they were written by Barack Obama in his Dreams From My Father autobiography.

The Israeli Left attacks co-existence

To give an idea of how far left the Left in Israel has become, check out this NYT article:

Achinoam Nini, a singer and peace activist, has long stirred controversy here. Known abroad by her stage name, Noa, she has recorded with Arab artists, refused to perform in the occupied West Bank, condemned Israeli settlements there and had concerts canceled because of bomb threats from the extreme right.

But lately it is the left that has been angry with Ms. Nini. Chosen by Israel to represent the country at the Eurovision Song Contest — this year being held in Moscow in May with an expected television audience of 100 million — Ms. Nini asked if she could bring along her current artistic collaborator, an Israeli Arab singer, Mira Awad.

The selection committee liked the idea of having both Arab and Jewish citizens in the contest for the first time. But coinciding as it did with Israel’s Gaza war and the rise of Avigdor Lieberman, the ultranationalist politician who threatens Israeli Arabs with a loyalty oath, the committee’s choice was labeled by many on the left and in the Arab community as an effort to prettify an ugly situation.

A petition went around demanding that the duo withdraw, saying they were giving the false impression of coexistence in Israel and trying to shield the nation from the criticism it deserved. It added, “Every brick in the wall of this phony image allows the Israeli Army to throw 10 more tons of explosives and more phosphorus bombs.”

Neither Ms. Nini, 39, nor Ms. Awad, 33, has been deterred. But since they consider themselves peace advocates, they are a bit surprised. The antiwar movement, they say, seems to have turned into a Hamas apology force. That, together with the political turn rightward in Israel, means that while the two are being sent to represent this mixed and complex society, they also feel a bit orphaned by it.

Notice that the Times cannot find a single voice on the Right that is upset at the idea of an Arab co-representing Israel in the Eurovision contest. Even though the article gratuitously refers to Avigdor Lieberman as being "ultranationalist" there are no smug labels for the pro-Hamas, anti-co-existence "left." Yet once one takes out that adjective, one would see that the Israeli Left is far more extreme than the Right that always gets tagged with that label.

Later in the article we find out

But recent politics have also clearly taken their toll. During the war, Ms. Nini sent out a letter on her blog condemning the Islamists of Hamas, and calling on her “Palestinian brothers” to join together to eliminate what she called the ugly monster of Hamas. It was widely interpreted as an endorsement of Israel’s war in Gaza, although she said it was not.
“What I wrote was based on what my Palestinian friends in Gaza told me, that they are threatened by Hamas,” she said.

The common-sense left is being drowned out by the pro-terror pretend-left, even in Israel.

Ahmadinejad the Monkey

From YNet:

During a recent live broadcast of a popular children' show on Iranian television, one young girl surprised viewers when she related how her father called her stuffed monkey 'Ahmadinejad', the name of the Islamic Republic's president.

An Iranian news agency reported on Tuesday that, during a telephone call that took place on the show 'Uncle Fornaj', the show's host asked a young female caller whether she was good girl who obeyed her parents.

"I'm a good girl and my father bought me a doll," the girl responded, adding that the doll was stuffed monkey. "My father calls it Ahmadinejad," she said in response to the host's follow-up question.

'Uncle Fornaj' is one of the most highly-watched shows in Iran, broadcast on the country's premier state-run channel and hosted by a local children's celebrity.

Well, the resemblance is pretty uncanny.

Yesterday, the Islamic Jihad terror movement held a large meeting to praise the behavior of Palestinian Arab "journalists" in Gaza during the Israeli operation.

As usual in meetings like these, all pretense of objectivite news gathering goes out the window - the speeches make clear that the purpose of the media in Gaza is to further the "resistance" and to "expose Zionist crimes." Certainly the so-called journalists are not expected to report on Hamas stealing aid, on people killed in Islamic Jihad crossfire, or on Hamas kneecapping Fatah members in public.

Notice how hungry these Islamic Jihad members and their propagandists appear to be, after years of the Zionist siege that they keep talking about.

Confirmation that Hamas has unexploded ordnance

The UN reported last week a large amount of unexploded ordnance from the Gaza operation had disappeared before it could be safely disposed of. I had exclusively reported that Hamas had claimed to taken those explosives with the intent of using them in new weapons, saying that they were "a gift from the sky."

Today, we have further confirmation, from Palestine Today:

Private sources confirmed that the Palestinian resistance obtained the Israeli missiles which did not explode during the aggression on Gaza, saying that resistance experts were able to dismantle the missiles and extract the the explosive material inside.

The same sources pointed out that they will be able to manufacture hundreds of improvised explosive anti-tank devices, after the dismantling of dozens of huge rockets that did not explode during the Israeli war.

The sources added that the experts were able to extract the detonators of the missiles as well.

The sources said the explosive article by Israeli missiles, located in one of the finest and most powerful species in bringing about breakthroughs in the explosions and the place where he received meant that the Palestinian resistance and put her hand on the precious treasure of the Israeli explosives.

Palestinian factions would use quantities of explosive materials from remnants of the wars that took place in Egypt's Sinai for the manufacture of missiles against the Israeli occupation forces, but they were of poor quality.

The last sentence is interesting, because it seems to confirm that some Hamas collaborators are in Egypt, scouring the Sinai for old mines to smuggle to Gaza.

Today's must-reads

While I'm stuck in meetings, here's some good stuff:

Hamas' challenge to the PLO (elaborating on a story I broke over three weeks ago)

In a Palestinian Arab unity government, Hamas wins (JPost)

The Path of Realism or the Path of Failure (Elliot Abrams)

Backspin's Responding to Amnesty

Treppenwitz: Why am I nervous?

Banned by YouTube

Unfortunately, I received my third strike from YouTube, and it was from one of the "good guys."

My first strike was my Rachel Corrie video, which someone complained about but which clearly did not violate any of the Community Guidelines.

The second one was for my "Just Like Us" video, which indeed showed some violence - but whose footage I took directly from another YouTube video. That got me banned from YouTube for two weeks.

The third was from my copy of the MEMRI video showing the death of Assud the Jew-Eating Bunny. MEMRI contacted me asking me to remove it, and I told them I would be happy to, but I was suspended from YouTube and wouldn't be able to edit my channel until February 26th. MEMRI couldn't wait and complained to YouTube, and now my video channel - and all my YouTube videos - are gone.

I am trying to find an acceptable place to move the videos I can recover (I fear I have lost some early ones.) I spent much of last night trying to place some of them on NMA-TV, a "conservative" alternative to YouTube that allows me to create my own group, but it seems very buggy and my group video page has been going into an infinite loop. I don't know if that site has staying power, wither, as it begs for money and hasn't yet reached anything close to critical mass.

I don't like LiveLeak too much because for some reason not all my videos show up consistently on my page there. I also looked at QubeTV, another conservative video site, but they are having technical problems, so they are flaky as well.

So for now, I'm done with YouTube. I am still looking for an alternative where I can create and preferably customize my own channel that will not disappear in a few months.

Seven Jewish Children - the poster (Adar edition)

I was sent this via email from commenter LW about the anti-semitic play that's running in London:

Click to enlarge.

A billion dollars for Gaza terror

The United States is pledging nearly one billion dollars to help rebuild Gaza, in a classic example of good money following bad.

Let's put aside the fact that this money will allow Hamas to spend 100% of their Iranian funding directly on weapons and terror, and it will give them a position of strength as they negotiate with the PA take over the Palestinian Arab cause, and let's not think about the fact that the large percentage that will go to UNRWA is going to an organization that has little oversight and known ties to terror.

Besides all of that, here we have a significant chunk of change being paid by the US - in a struggling economy - to Gaza. And so far we have not heard a single complaint from the crowd that claims that US aid to Israel is a huge burden on the US taxpayer!

If you add up the aid that Arabs get from the US this year, your total will be just about the same as what Israel is getting in foreign aid. Yet the WRMEA and "If Americans Knew" and similar organizations that gleefully add up real and imagined aid to Israel are strangely silent about billions going towards entities that, to be frank, hate and despise the US.

Perhaps they don't care about your tax dollars as much as they pretend to?

Bahrain's Crown Prince - pro-settlements?

Perhaps nowhere on Earth are sentences parsed for hidden messages as carefully they are in the Middle East. So the interview that Bahrain's Crown Prince gave to Sky News is curious indeed.

It starts off as one would expect - with the prince, Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa, trying to pressure Great Britain to be even more pro-Arab than it already is:

The crown prince of Bahrain said on Monday Britain was too pro-Israel in its outlook, but its contribution to the Middle East peace process was still needed.
"If we are to solve the Arab-Israeli issue then you cannot approach it as a friend of one side at the expense of another," Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa told Sky television.

When asked if he felt Britain had been too pro-Israeli he replied: "I think we all feel that."
"But that doesn't mean we don't want Britain's involvement, we need Britain's involvement and we need Britain to be more impartial, sure."

Isn't it funny that third-party Arab nations are not expected to be "impartial," but they complain if the West isn't (in their estimation?)

But the interesting part comes later:

To settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "you give up land for peace," he said. "Land that you haven't already built on. It can't be simpler."

Does this mean that Bahrain believes that Israel can hold onto the settlements that have already been "built on?" How about Greater Jerusalem?

I have a feeling that we will see some backtracking real fast.

2002: A socialist site bemoans leftist anti-semitism

An article at the socialist Worker's Liberty site, reprinted today, is harshly critical of the Left's tendency even then towards naked anti-semitism. It correctly points out that real socialists would never support Islamists nor the destruction of Israel.

As we see today, their complaints fell on deaf ears.

This was their report at the very first public appearance by the Muslim Association of Britain - in 2002:

ON 13 APRIL [2002] there was a big London march "for Palestine". What happened was shocking from a socialist standpoint, and harmful to the Palestinian cause.
The core organising group — "The Muslim Association" — has strong Islamic-fundamentalist links. For example, its web site links to the Pakistani fundamentalist party Jamaat-e-Islami.

The Trafalgar Square rally started with long readings from the Koran. Although speakers such as Labour left MP Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Benn were on the platform, their speeches were punctuated by chants — led by an Imam who used the stage microphone — of "Allah-o-Akbar" ("God is great").

"Allah-o-Akbar" was also one of the main chants on the march. Although the phrase "Allah-o-Akbar" is used by many non-fundamentalist Muslims in other contexts, to promote it as a political slogan on this march was a mark of fundamentalist politics, not Muslim culture or religion.

The organisers, marshalling the crowd at the start of the march, attempted to segregate the march along male-female lines. If the march had not been so large, and consequently so difficult for those stewards to organise, the demonstration might well have set off with men at the front, and women at the back. A smaller Hyde Park march on 9 December 2001 did that — and the segregation was obeyed by the SWP and RCG, who marched that day.

Leafleters freely gave out Islamist literature which called for "Putting the Jews to the sword". Other leaflets called for a boycott of "Israeli goods" while, in fact, demanding the boycott of businesses such as Marks and Spencers which have historically been owned by Jews.

Dominant on the march were banners equating Sharon to Hitler, Zionism to Nazism, and the Star of David to the swastika. Specific political demands such as "Israel out of the Occupied Territories" did not appear on the leaflet for the march, or prominently on the march itself. The dominant tone was simply hostility to Israel: "Death to Israel" and "From the river to the sea" (fundamentalists); "No compromise with Zionism" and "Two states, no solution" (from the SWP).

What did the left do? Workers' Liberty contacted the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) the day before the march to find out a little more about the organisers. We were told that the PSC did not know much about them, but they had been reassured that the march would not be "too Islamic". Despite not having been asked for their support or help, the PSC was backing it anyway.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) were energetic in winning Socialist Alliance support for this demonstration. Rather than supporting slogans which would contrast with the general march themes, they won agreement from the SA to carry placards saying, "Victory to the intifada! Free Palestine!". At the Socialist Alliance Executive, SWP leader John Rees argued, "It is most important that our slogans do not appear in any way antagonistic to this march".

On the march the SWP presented themselves as the most militant advocates of "smashing Israel": using megaphones to announce, "No compromise with Zionism" and "Two states is no solution!" After the march a prominent SWPer wrote to the Socialist Alliance email list that this was "one of the best and most uplifting marches I've ever been on".

Workers Liberty believes that the left has made a big mistake in blending itself into such a march. The Islamists are our enemies, not our allies, and we should not back their protests and campaigning. We should see our role in intervening into such a movement and winning to socialist politics those influenced by the fundamentalists.

We also believe that the left's blending into the 13 April march was a step backwards from where it stood before this march took place.

Groups like the SWP stand for 'smashing Israel' and replacing the existing state with a single, Arab, "democratic secular state".

The Israeli Jews are surrounded by hostile Arab states. They will not freely allow themselves to become an unarmed minority in an Arab state. That could only come about after the forcible subjugation of the Israeli Jews. A merging of different nations into multinational states is very desirable, but must be done only on the basis of free consent.

The reasonable-sounding democratic secular state programme could only be completed against the wishes of the Israeli Jewish people. This "solution" is, in fact, not democratic. Such an outcome would replace the oppression of the Palestinians with the oppression (the murder or expulsion) of the Israeli Jews.

The left's programme is — in reality, and against the intentions of some of its advocates — for a war against the Jews of Israel.

The fundamentalist march organisers make hostility to the Jews of Israel quite explicit and aim to replace the Israeli state with a totalitarian, clerical state which would not only purge the Jews, but force women into "gender apartheid" and smash the left and the unions. That is the lesson from Iran, 1979.

Against the demand for "a Islamic theocracy without democracy", even calling "for a democratic secular state" would be positive! Yet even that slogan was not raised by the SWP on the march. Nothing like it. Their priority was not to be "antagonistic".
Why did the left disgrace itself in such a way? For two reasons: first the left, to its shame, shares some of the politics and ideas of the Islamists; second were opportunistic reasons — wanting to go with the flow, wanting to recruit a few Arab and Asian people without confronting prejudice.

The left's use of such language [equating Zionists with Nazis] is calculated to offend every Jewish person — even those many Jews who hate Sharon and who are sympathetic to the Palestinians. Very many will have lost family in the Holocaust. All know very well the difference between the Nazis and Likud.
The parallels with the Nazis are more or less reserved for Israel. The implication is that there is something special about Jews which makes them parallel to Nazis. This is both deliberately offensive and aimed to obliterate the fact that the Holocaust is unique in history.

The SWP have also helped to picket M&S. That exposes the nakedly anti-Jewish drive in much "left" campaigning.

Generally the far-left avoids calling for consumer boycotts, instead advocating international workers' unity. The left knows that boycotts can alienate the very workers it is attempting to help (by making them unemployed). In this case, however, the left adopts the boycott campaign because it does not give a damn what the Israeli workers think; the left see the Israeli workers as "not real workers" and as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
They are not just for the Palestinians — as we are — but against the Israel too. They are not just against the actions of the Israeli government, but against the very existence of Israel.
This is not just speculation. This was the character, for example, of the Stop the War march on Palestine held in London on 26 January. It had no Islamists on it. This was a march of the left — organised by the same groups which will be marching with the PSC on 18 May. But the chants were similar — they sang: "Sharon, Hitler, you're the same/All that's different is the name." These are the reasons which we cannot back such protests. We have two choices: either to go with the flow of the left (and no-so-left) on this issue, or aggressively to assert the need for consistently democratic and socialist politics. We will take the second course.

And, seven years later, we see that the tiny bit of consistency within leftist/socialist circles that this article pushed has almost completely disappeared. The far Left, driven by an insane hatred of Jews, have embraced values from Islamists that would be anathema to orthodox socialists.

Yemen Jews desperate to go to Israel

From that Zionist paper, The National (UAE):

AMRAN, YEMEN // Jewish community members in Amran who have been living in fear following a wave of threats and hate attacks have stepped up their efforts to migrate to Israel.

“We are all fed up. All of the Jews are willing now to migrate to Israel but some prefer not to speak up their desire,” said Yahia bin Yaish, the rabbi of the Jewish community in the northern governorate of Amran, about 60km north of the capital Sana’a.

“We have faced intimidation, attacks and threats. Some have even faced hand-grenade attacks. I myself have received SMS threats on my mobile.

“We are no longer secured. We are afraid to go to the market and even at home. We have reported this to the local authorities but they are lenient with the people behind the threats,” said Mr bin Yaish.

Last week, a Jewish Yemeni family was taken to Israel in a secret airlift organised by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel.

Said bin Yisrael, the head of the Jewish community in Rydah, and his eight children and wife arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv last Thursday following attacks and death threats.

“Said went crazy after an attack on his house with a hand grenade last December,” a Jewish Yemeni, who is believed to have orchestrated Mr bin Yisrael’s migration, said on condition of anonymity.

“He was scared for his family. He will be back for his father and brothers who are still here.”

Mr bin Yaish said his family did not want to leave Yemen.

“This is our home and we prefer to live here, even on mountains if there is security. Life here is better because we can make sure that our kids are brought up well in line with our religious teachings.”

For those who do want to leave, Mr bin Yaish said about 150 of their passport applications have been held up in Sana’a for over two months.

“Whenever we go to them, they keep telling us the computers are not working,” he said.

Moshe Yaish al Nahari, a Jewish teacher and father of nine, was shot in Rydah’s market in Amran in December.

Abdulaziz Hamud al Abdi, a former military pilot whose family claims he is mentally ill, admitted in a hearing in December that he killed al Nahari following a warning that Jews should either leave the area or convert to Islam.

Attacks and threats against Yemeni Jews in Amran governorate flared up again following Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

“The offensive was in Gaza and we were blamed. Some used to threaten me, telling me to stop the war. These attacks are meant to force us to leave our houses which tribesmen want for themselves,” Mr bin Yaish said.

After al Nahari’s murder, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president, discussed with Jewish community leaders a plan to relocate Jews from Amran to Sana’a, where each Jewish family would receive a plot of land.

The Jewish community, however, said the government has taken no action.

Government officials declined to comment.

Mahmud Taha, an Amran-based journalist who has been following the issue of Yemeni Jews, said the migration of the Jewish family to Israel was not unexpected.

“There is no option for the Yemeni Jews but to migrate. The local authorities have failed to protect them and the promises of relocation have not been serious. The Jews are fed up and have reached intolerable situation,” Taha said.

Taha said the verdict against al Abdi, which the court has set for March 2, will likely absolve the defendant on mental health grounds.

“This will drive the Jews crazy and will be a driving force for their migration,” he said.

But I thought that dhimmi Jews were honored members of Arab society, that there was no discrimination, and that Arabs aren't anti-semitic but only anti-Zionist!