Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Peace is not the Arab goal

"There is no escaping the fact that the day will come when we will free the Golan, through peace or through war," Syrian President Bashar Assad said Thursday.

He added: "We have our principles, and whoever abides by them will not constitute a problem for us."

According to Assad, "From the war of Palestine (in 1948) to the occupation of the Golan (in the Six Day War – R.N.) people are becoming more hostile towards Israel. There may come a generation that is unwilling to talk peace.

"There is now a resurgence of the idea of resistance. Israel is advancing in a direction that goes against its interests, and eventually all people are moving towards resistance, which is certainly in the interest of the Arabs."

This points to a fundamental difference between Israel and most of its neighbors. To Israel, the major goal is peace. The means to get to that goal is negotiations, concessions, and sometimes through shows of strength, but the ultimate goal is to live in peace with her neighbors.

To Arabs, though, peace is not the goal. The goal is land, concessions, "Palestinian rights," apologies, compensation, and a whole host of other demands - but the end-goal is not to have peace.

For Israel, concessions are a way to bring peace. For the Arabs, the pretense of "peace" is a way to wrangle a never-ending stream of concessions.

Which is, as Assad implies, exactly how they view war and terrorism ("resistance.")

What kind of a peace can be expected when one side views it as a tactic and not as a goal?

Bahais attacked in Egypt

From al-Arabiya:

In the latest outburst of religious tensions in Egypt, dozens of villagers set fire to Bahai homes after hearing on television that the village was "full of Bahais," reports said Thursday.

Angry villagers rampaged through Sharoniyah, in southern Egypt, on Monday and Tuesday, setting fire to and damaging four Bahai homes, a security official told AFP, asking not to be named.

The fires spread to two Muslim homes which were also damaged, the official said. The villagers also threatened the village's roughly 30 Bahais with death, the official said, after which all of them fled.

The arson attacks were the culmination of unrest that began with stone throwing immediately after a Bahai named Ahmed called a television talk show that was discussing the religious minority on Saturday night.

Ahmed, who now lives in Cairo after fleeing persecution in Sharoniyah, described the village as ‘full of Bahais,’ which showed that Egypt's around 2,000 Bahais are not just a minority in Cairo.

A column in the state-owned al-Gomhuriyah newspaper said on Tuesday that the Bahais, whose world headquarters are in Haifa, Israel, are connected to "world Zionism."

Columnist Gamal Abdel Rahim described the Bahai as "a deviant group which seeks to harm Islam to serve the interests of the enemies of the Muslim religion, in particular world Zionism."

Hamas declares obscenity to be "natural"

After today's terror attack of a Palestinian Arab literally butchering a 13-year old boy with an axe, Hamas announced:

"This attack was committed in the framework of the resistance," Ayman Taha said. "This is a reaction to the continuing occupation and the continued building of settlements."

"This is a natural reaction," he said, "especially against the backdrop of Israel attacks. We are a people occupied, and it is our right to defend ourselves and to act in every way and with every means at our disposal in order to defend ourselves."

This is not the first time that Hamas labeled terror attacks against innocent civilians to be "natural." They said it after an 86-year old Jewish man was murdered in Gilo, they said it after a Jewish woman was murdered with a bulldozer, they said it after many teens were massacred in their school.

In fact, Hamas believes that any attack against Jews is natural. When terrorists bragged about raping Jewish women as "revenge" against the Jews, Hamas didn't say a word against it. It is literally impossible to imagine a scenario where Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terror groups would condemn any attack that can possibly be claimed to be against Zionists worldwide.

Hamas has redefined any obscenity to be natural - if it is done by Arabs.

The labeling of heinous, disgusting crimes as "natural" is, in many ways, worse than the terror itself. It creates a mentality, already embraced by many in the West, that terrorism (disguised as "defense" or "resistance") is a human right, and that there is nothing that could be remotely considered immoral if the victims happen to be Jews who live in the Middle East. It is enshrining hate and it needs to be deplored, not with mealy mouthed official condemnations, but as an indictment of the entire Palestinian Arab mindset that glorifies obscenity. Israel should pronounce Hamas and their supporters not just to be "terrorists" but to be a vile, sickening bunch of animals who do not deserve any consideration, let alone respect, and who have - with their own words - dehumanized themselves.

Israel needs to emphasize that the most loathesome people are heroes in the twisted Palestinian Arab culture and that to even entertain the idea of negotiating with people like that is beyond absurd.

Brave Palestinian Arab axes Jewish boy to death

A Palestinian Arab man attacked Jews with an axe in Bat Ayin, killing a 13 year old boy and injuring a 7-year old. The terrorist escaped to a neighboring Arab village, where the peace-loving residents will hide their latest hero. Israel Matzav is liveblogging it.

There is zero chance that any Palestinian Arab will publicly show disgust at this act of deliberately attacking and murdering children. There is zero chance that the Arab village will hand this murderous scum over to any authorities. There is a 100% chance that this attack will be praised or, at the least, justified by the mainstream Palestinian Arab society and media. There is a 100% chance that multiple terror groups will vie for the honor of taking credit for this attack - in fact, that has already happened, with both Fatah and Islamic Jihad claiming responsibility.

As horrible as Qassam rockets aimed at civilians are, and as disgusting and deadly as suicide bombers are, there is something even more viscerally reprehensible at the thought of a man taking an axe and deliberately attacking children with it. Given the history of the Arab world celebrating Samir Kuntar, who similarly murdered a four year old girl by bashing her head in after murdering her father, this depravity is considered heroic and worthy of emulation. If the murderer gets caught, there will be summer camps in Ramallah named after him next year.

At this time, only Palestine Today is reporting this story in Arabic, referring to the dead boy as a "settler." And the entire world considers "settlers" to be subhuman already.

The Elder of Ziyon Haggadah

The Elder of Ziyon Haggadah for 5769/2009 is ready and available for download.

It contains the full Haggadah text, including English (except for Nirtzah.) It includes dozens of commentaries that I found on the Internet, almost all from a religious-Zionist perspective. Many of the commentaries assume that the audience is religious, so there are many transliterations of Hebrew words that I did not translate. I did not write anything original; I just compiled and edited it, pretty quickly.

The Haggadah is in PDF format, suitable for printing. It is 61 pages long and looks pretty decent when printed two-sided on a color printer.

To download it, click here and then click on the Download button.

חג שמח!

Hamas, Fatah fight over "Al Quds" celebrations

From Ma'an:

Palestinian division has overshadowed events celebrating Al-Quds Capital of Arab Culture 2009; celebrations are disparate, scattered and above all dominated by the factions hosting them.

Nowhere is this more apparent these days than in the two launches of Al-Quds Cultural events; on 17 March in Gaza, and on the 21st in the West Bank.

While only a few days separate the festivities the impact of the division spreads far beyond the immediate audiences and on to the viewers in other Arab nations who wish to share in the celebration of a great Arab Capital.

Each side has a multi-million dollar budget, allocated to figures close to the Palestinian Authority and de facto government offices. In the West Bank Dr Rafiq Al-Husseini, advisor to the President, controls a five million US dollar budget, while in Gaza member of the de facto government’s minister’s council Dr Atallah Abu Al-Sabeh controls the close to two million dollars allocated to the Al-Quds events.

For his part Abu As-Sabeh in Gaza described local events as “strong and successful,” but said that the internal division was palpable at each show.

“It looks like the shows in Gaza and the West Bank are competing with each other,” he said, “and that does no good for the audiences at home and abroad.”

“I just hope this does not reflect badly on Jerusalem,” he added.

Don't worry, Abu. Jerusalem will remain the most beautiful city in the world under Jewish control no matter how many Arabs fight each other over their claims.

Notice that millions of dollars of Western aid is going into these purely political events to make Jerusalem, Judenrein.

By the way, a good indication of the violence-loving psychology of Palestinian Arabs can be seen by the what they name their terrorist rockets after: Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Fatah's rocket is called the Al-Aqsa and Islamic Jihad calls theirs the Al-Quds.

Can you imagine, say, Spanish bombs called "Vaticans" or Italian rockets called "Bethlehems"? For normal people, their holy sites stand for peace, not war; for Palestinian Arabs, holiness is war.

April Islamic Fools open thread

There are no shortage of Muslim myths that are appropriate on April Fool's Day, like
"Yasser Arafat was poisoned by evil Joooz" or "Palestinians are suffering from a genocide."

Here's one from Iraq:

James Hider, the Middle East correspondent for the London Times and a self-confessed arachnophobe, was covering the U.S. Marines' campaign in Fallujah where he heard reports that the city's preachers would boost the Islamic fighters' morale with tales that Allah had sent in legions of “chair-sized arachnids, whose poisoned hairs could make a human body turn blue and explode in a shower of corrupted blood.” Oh, and the spiders also scream along at 40 kms an hour.

And don't forget Gaza's "Angels from Allah."

See also MEMRI's Top Conspiracy Theories of 2006 and the links there for earlier ones.

Meanwhile, post anything interesting you might have seen while surfing today...

Ain't got no time

...to blog.

Still working on the Elder Haggadah; hope to have that ready soon.

Palestinian "journalist"'s unfair advantage

One of the most prolific - and hateful - Palestinian Arab journalists is Khaled Amayreh, who we've quoted before as calling the PA "Zionist proxy scum!" He breathes bile, often at the "Palestine Think Tank" site.

One recent article compares the Palestinian Arab children's orchestra who played for Holocaust survivors in Israel to Holocaust victims forced to play music for Nazis. The pure hatred he feels for all things Israeli and Jewish is palpable.

Another from today calls the new Israeli government

an extremist coalition of war criminals, pathological liars, racist thugs (both of the Hitlerian and Stalinist styles), and hateful religious maniacs who inhale and exhale hatred 24 hours per day.

...I am, of course, in no way suggesting that the previous Israeli government was less nefarious than the new one. The previous government of the evil trio Olmert, Livni and Barak had all the hallmarks of a Zionist Third Reich.

But from looking at his website, I can see how he knows so much. You see, Khaled Amayreh has an advantage as a journalist that allows him to see the truth and to dismiss any Zionist propaganda.

He can read minds!

Right below where he calls himself a "peace activist" on his "About Us" page, he writes that his interests include "outer space and parapsychology."

People who are interested in astronomy do not refer to their interests as "outer space," which means that Amayreh not only believes in mind reading and telekinesis, but he probably has a direct connection to aliens and flying saucers as well!

This explains his deep knowledge of the facts as well as his devotion to truth. His main source is Zrfgpl from the planet Zyrkle-8, who happens to also be a rabid anti-semite.

Saudi women's advocacy group folds

From the Arab News:

A proposal to establish a first-of-its-kind organization to support women’s rights in Saudi Arabia has been dropped shattering the hopes of Saudi women for an official organization that would fight for their rights.
“We failed to obtain official approval to operate legally,” said Sulaiman Al-Salman, the man who came up with the idea to establish the society, Ansar Al-Mar’ah (Supporters of Women).
Al-Salman said he has been in constant conflict with the Ministry of Social Affairs to gain approval, adding that the ministry’s rejection has frustrated the group’s determination and that group members have, as a result, lost interest.
“I recently called members for a meeting, but no one showed up apart from one member who said he would be willing to join again once the society gets approved,” he said. “I realized that I was the only one working for this goal, all alone. So I decided to break it up,” he said.
He added that Ansar Al-Mar’ah does not enjoy support in some official circles because it includes members of both genders.

Support for women in the sharia state of Saudi Arabia seems to be a bit...lacking.

Iranian logic

One of the most often-used arguments in favor of anti-semitism is that since there is such a long history of persecution of Jews, the Jews must have done something really evil to deserve it.

In normal enlightened societies where racism and bigotry are frowned upon, the haters are the ones who are put on the defensive. But in the twisted world of the bigots, the innocents who are persecuted are the ones who must prove they shouldn't be hated, an impossible task.

In today's world, the two major recent recipient groups of unbridled hate are "Zionists" and Americans. And just like classic anti-semitism, the haters are arguing that their hate is justified because everyone else is doing it.

From the Los Angeles Times, in part of a response by an advisor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Obama's Persian New Year's greetings:

In all corners of the world, it is worth noting, the only flags being set ablaze belong to the U.S. and the occupying Zionist regime.

See? Because Muslims have a love of burning flags, then the nations whose flags are burned must all be evil! QED!

I would add that the major targets of shoe-throwing incidents have been Israelis and Americans as well. The author can feel free to use that argument next time.

Birkat HaChamah, 1897

Via Daled Amos, an article from the April 8, 1897 New York Times:

The mental picture of a European rabbi who barely knows English explaining to an Irish New York cop about Birkat HaChamah is really amusing.

Birkat HaChamah will be observed on April 8 this year.

PalArabs support the "peace process" - and terror

A recent poll of Palestinian Arabs from the PCPSR shows what would appear to be a contradiction.

61.9% say they support the peace process while less than 20% oppose it. Yet 54.2% of Palestinian Arabs also support terror attacks against civilians in Israel, while only 42.7% oppose terror.

In Gaza, the seeming incongruity is even starker: 66.9% support terror attacks and 31.6% oppose - but 73.3% support the peace process, with only 15.5% opposing!

How can the Palestinian Arabs support peace and terror at the same time?

The answer is, of course, that they can't, and don't. They aren't in favor of peace - they are in favor of a "peace process." There is a big difference between the two, a difference that the West refuses to acknowledge.

Peace is the acceptance of the other party's rights and the desire to live and work together.
The "peace process," on the other hand, is a Trojan horse meant to weaken Israel for an ultimate attack to destroy the Jewish state.

The idea of using "peace" as a method of winning land that couldn't be conquered has been part and parcel of Arab thought since 1977, and it remains ingrained among Palestinian Arabs today. They have seen that the combination of terror attacks and fake peace overtures has gotten them effective control of Gaza and much of the West Bank, and this is a formula that they will not give up as long as the West pressures Israel to accept illusory "peace."

The "peace process" and real peace are antithetical.

UNRWA teachers overwhelmingly support Hamas

From JPost:

Hamas supporters scored a victory in elections for the school teachers' union of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that were held in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

The results showed that Hamas won all 11 seats of the teachers' union.

The Hamas victory means that Hamas supporters will continue to control UNRWA-run schools and other academic institutions throughout the Gaza Strip. Hamas has controlled the UNRWA teachers' union for the past 16 years.

Some 10,100 UNRWA workers participated in the election, with the turnout being estimated at more than 97 percent.

The voting was conducted at UNRWA's main headquarters in the Gaza Strip.

Just a small reminder that, no matter what UNRWA says, the people who teach at UNRWA schools support terrorism.

Arabs sick of Palestinian issue

From Ma'an:

The results of the Arab Summit in Doha were unrealistic and lacked any practical measures to ensure goals are met, said Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement Hamas on Tuesday.

A special statement from Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said the summit failed to deal with the Palestinian issue, and neglected the suffering of Gazans following Israel’s three week war on the Strip.

“We were expecting that this summit would be different than the other summits and put practical steps to protect the Palestinian territories, especially Jerusalem and to help Gazans; but it is all the same,” Barhoum’s statement read.

The focus of the Arab summit turned to Sudan's President Omar Al-Beshir, who was strongly supported by Arab states against the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hauge. Al-Beshir stands accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.

Xinhua adds:

For the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, the Arab summit only called on Israel to lift its siege on the territory. Hamas had hoped that the Arabs would do more than calls to overcome the blockade.
"We were hoping the Arab leaders would move to lift the siege by acts, not by words," Barhoum added. "We also hoped they would use their pressure cards against the Zionist occupation."

All together now:

"Awwwwwww!"

In recent years, Arab countries seem to be sick and tired of Palestinian Arabs. While they keep saying that it is their highest priority, in reality they only use the issue to blame their own problems on Israel and shield themselves from criticism. Decades of incessant whining and, worse, demands from the Palestinian Arabs have turned them off, and the Hamas/Fatah infighting has accelerated their anger. They'll tell the world that the Palestinian issue must be fixed before any other unrelated Arab problems, but privately they don't give a damn.

Yet the West has not yet picked up on this, as clueless Europeans and Americans keep insisting that fixing the unfixable Palestinian Arab problem is a magic key to solving all the problems of the Middle East.

Doha, where the only solidarity the Arabs had was to show support for a genocidal dictator, proves otherwise.

UPDATE: This post from last year shows even more conclusively that Arabs do not consider Palestinians to be a good investment.