Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 12, 2009

A case study in replacing facts with wishful thinking

There are many people, including many Jews, who wish no harm to Israel and really want peace. Their problem is that they will ignore facts that make peace unlikely and will vastly exaggerate any shreds of hope they come across that support their hopes.

Clearly, the number one obstacle of the many obstacles to real peace is Hamas. Hamas is an unrepentant terror organization, that separated itself from the PA, that controls a good portion of the hoped-for Palestinian Arab state, that not only will not but cannot recognize Israel by its very existence. Their words and actions have been consistent, explicit and undeniable in their desire to destroy Israel and murder all Jews who want self-determination in the Middle East. To say that Hamas' existence is antithetical to any real chance of peace would be an understatement.

Yet, Joe Klein finds a way to ignore terror bombings, Qassam rockets, calls to genocide against Jews, daily incitement to hate and terror - and grasp a silver lining in his interview with Khaled Meshal:

Halfway through my interview with Khaled Mashaal, about an hour after Barack Obama's Cairo speech, I realized that the leader of Hamas was calling the Israeli people, and their leaders, Israelis. That seemed new. The usual term of art used by Islamic militants is "Zionists" or worse. A few days later in Iran, for example, I watched Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say in a debate, "I don't like to call them Israelis. Their leaders are so unclean that they could wash themselves in the cleanest waters and still be dirty."

A Hamas leader used a word that Klein had never heard! Could this indicate a sea-change in Hamas' attitudes? Is this the beginning of a new era where Hamas embraces peace? Please? Pretty please?

Um...no:

I asked Mashaal if his language implied that he accepted, de facto, a Jewish state called Israel. "Don't conclude this," he said. "These are the names they call themselves ... Once the Palestinians are enabled to have a sovereign state, then they can be asked whom they recognize."

But Klein noticed it, and, dammit, if he is as smart as he thinks he is, then it must be more significant than even his interview subject would admit:

And yet, calling Israelis by the name they call themselves seemed a different sort of body language. The meaning of this new tone can be debated. Part of it may be attributable to the terrible military defeat Hamas suffered in Gaza, a recognition, finally, that Israel is simply not going away. Or Mashaal may be trying to present a more sympathetic face to contrast with Benjamin Netanyahu's recalcitrant Likud government in Israel. Whatever the reason, it certainly seems time to reassess the West's unwillingness to deal with Hamas.

So Klein noticed something that he thought was new. He had zero evidence that it had any meaning. The interview subject explicitly denied that it meant anything. Yet he goes on not only to ascribe meaning to it, he uses his own personal fantasy as a reason that the United States should change its policy towards Hamas!

Klein is hardly the only person to do this. In fact, most Western politicians and journalists do this routinely, although not usually so obviously. They "know" that peace will cause a domino effect of goodwill through the Arab world, they "know" that Israel must make concessions that would inevitably be followed by Palestinian Arab concessions as well, they "know" that Hamas will inevitably be part of the solution - so they will fine-tune their ears and eyes to find moderation among terrorists even as they routinely find extremism among the Israelis who truly want real peace.

But Klein's attempt at sleigh-of-hand in the paragraph above shows in detail what others do more subtly, day in and day out, when looking at Israel and her Arab neighbors.

Followup: Bin Laden is a moderate!

Dem Jews, dem Jews, dem - "Zionists"

A couple of days ago the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, President Obama's old mentor, made a statement that made headlines by highlighting his anti-semitism:

In an exclusive interview at the 95th annual Hampton University Ministers' Conference, Wright told the Daily Press that he has not spoken to his former church member since Obama became president, and he implied that the White House won't allow Obama to talk to him.

"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me," Wright said. "I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. ...

He has since "apologized," and his apology proves the point - by saying that he likes some Jews:

MARK THOMPSON: Of course people are keying in, Dr. Wright, on the statements you made regarding Jews.

REV. WRIGHT: Well let me say…I misspoke. Let me just say, Zionists.

And I quote Jews when I say that… I quoted Jews before the Society of Christian Ethics. I quote Mark Ellis a Jewish rabbi…and I quote Ilan Poppe [sic], a Jewish historian who wrote the book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine…and when I quote Jewish authors… persons who are Zionists call them “self-hating Jews” …. I am not talking about all Jews, all people of the Jewish faith. I’m talking about Zionists.

In fact Mark Ellis’ book is entitled Judaism Is Not Israel, and he talks about in his book the ethnic cleansing – Mark Ellis, a Jewish rabbi, the guy who wrote The Jewish Liberation Theology of the Palestinians and refers to Ilan Poppe’s book which details the ethnic cleansing that started in 1947 and 1948 and continues to 2009.

I’m talking about fact, historical fact. I’m not talking about emotionally charged words or the fact that like Jimmy Carter’s book, because he used the word that Jews themselves use – “apartheid”– and he gets labeled as anti-Semitic. Now they can jump on that one phrase if they want to, but they can’t undo history, and they can’t undo the facts of Jewish historians and Jewish theologians who write about what’s going on. .

MARK THOMPSON: …I want everybody to be clear that when you say… “them Jews won’t let him talk to me” you were specifically referring to Zionists.

REV. WRIGHT: Exactly.

This ridiculous and offensive non-apology, where he embraces self-hating and publicity-seeking Jews who are beyond the pale, is still being called an "apology" in the press.

This is exactly like how Arabs will never say they hate Jews in English but the truth comes out in Arabic. Wright's real feelings about Jews are clear, and he is resorting to the same "anti-Zionist" fig leaf that we've seen become fashionable in the past decade or two.

The "improbability" of victory (Barry Rubin)

A sober observation by Barry Rubin:

President Barack Obama says the most shocking things and then is protected by the media. He also says profoundly revealing things that are allowed to pass by.

Here's one I can't get out of my head. In the commemoration of the anniversary of the D-Day landings in France, Obama remarked on "the sheer improbability of this victory."

To me, this screams out something profoundly important about Obama. He doesn't believe in victory. Either he assumes that the battle is not worth fighting given the cost or that it won't be won any way.

Defeat radical Islamists? Force Iran to stop developing nuclear weapons? Win the ideological battle with anti-American forces by confronting their arguments with a strong defense of the United States.

And wasn't that, in a sense, what happened in his Cairo speech: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, as the expression goes.

So, yes, Obama is amazed that the Allies won in Normandy in June 1944.

Here's the implication of that: suppose he had been around in the late 1930s ,given his world view. He would have assumed the "improbability" of victory over Germany and taken the appropriate action in that case of avoiding any confrontation.

Referring to the "improbability of this victory" is revealing of a defeatist attitude.

This makes him the perfect person to preside over the abandonment of America's superpower status and world leadership.

Perhaps he believes in "Yes we can!" domestically, but internationally he believes, "No, we can't."

Unfortunately, the enemies of America, democracy, and liberty have the opposite standpoint. They believe in the certainty of their victory.

As bad as this is, Rubin might not be going far enough.

The impression I get from some liberals is not so much the inadvisability of any sort of war - it is the immorality of winning a war.

Winning a war implies that you are going to impose your own vision on someone else by force. This ends up sounding like what imperialists and colonialists do, and there is little more evil than coloniaism. It seems impossible for the West to wage and win a moral war according to this thinking. The best you can do is to repel an attack to maintain the status quo - to go even a little beyond that is, simply, evil, according to this thinking.

Does Obama subscribe to such a worldview?

Open thread question

I have a number of valued pro-Israel liberal readers and this question just popped in my mind for them:

Is there any substantive difference between Obama's viewpoints on the Middle East and Jimmy Carter's?

Reference material: Carter: U.S. must 'find a way' to include Hamas in peace process

Hamas attacks and confiscates Gaza charity

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas attacked and took over a charity in Beit Hanoun.

Quoting the Mezan Center for Human Rights, it says that medical aid given by international organizations to the charity (possibly called the Society for the Rehabilitation of Disabled People) were meant to be distributed to some 2000 needy Gazans. Hamas gunmen took over the aid and its distribution.

Since Hamas took over Gaza, it has been methodically taking over institutions - medical, political, educational and charitable - and installing its own people to run them, with ideology being more important than competence.

A new type of "honor killing" - and an old one

Usually so-called "honor killings" are against women whose actions embarrass their families by spending too much time with unrelated men.

Now there's a new twist: families who kill their own flesh and blood because they allegedly spend too much time with Zionists:

Fifteen- year-old Ra’ed Sawalha was tortured and hung by his family members who accused him of collaborating with Israeli forces, the Palestinian police reported Thursday.

Brigadier General with the police forces Adnan Ad-Damiri said several arrests were made, all of them family members of the slain boy. The men and women apparently admitted their crimes under questioning, but justified their acts by explaining that Ra’ed was a “spy” for Israel.

And as with "honor killings," any prison time will no doubt be vastly reduced because their crime is quite justifiable by their community's standards.

Meanwhile, another women was found killed outside Hebron, very possibly another "honor killing." Together with the "honor killing" of a woman yesterday in Gaza, the 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 101, with 20 of them being women or children.

UPDATE: We also have another Gaza smuggler tunnel death, this one where a man accidentally strangled himself with the rope he was using to drag his booty - weapons? motorcycles? TNT? - into Rafah. I count tunnel deaths in my self-death count, so the 2009 tally is now at 102.

Another honor killing in Gaza

A young woman was killed in Gaza by her father in an apparent "honor killing."No details on the circumstances yet but it was reported both in Palestine Today and Firas Press.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 99.

Holocaust Museum shooter a real nutcase

Today, a crazed white supremacist, anti-semite and Holocaust denier shot and killed a security guard at the United States Holocaust Museum.

I just glanced at the first six downloadable chapters of a book he wrote, called "Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog - Kill the Best Gentiles" (a fictional quote that he ascribes to the Talmud) and this guy is really crazy, although not obviously crazier than many other people who have many other similar websites.

The book hits all the high points of Jew-hatred. Here's the table of contents:

1. The Conspiracy
2. Khazars Invent Judaism
3. The Illuminati
4. Money
5. Spirochetes of Jew Syphilis
6. The “Holocaust” Hoax
7. Mendelism
8. The Negro
9. The Aryan Force
10. Parasitism USA
11. Pathology and Synthesis
12. Summing Up

Within he thoughtfully includes a summary of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion just to make sure that he has all his bases covered. Not to mention covering the Illuminati and Trilateral Commission. He also consistently capitalizes all the letters of the word "Jew", for example:

President Bill Clinton, with an Ivy League-Rhodes Scholar-Marxist indoctrinated mind, and subject to both blackmail and extortion, appointed many JEWS/CFR/TRI
to sensitive positions in the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, including: SUPREME COURT JUSTICES Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Stephen Breyer, JEWS; SECRETARY
OF STATE, Madeleine K. Albright, JEW; UNDER-SECY STATE, Stuart Eizenstat, JEW; ASST. SECY. STATE, Stanley Roth, JEW; SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, William
Cohen, JEW; SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT, Rahm Emanuel, JEW; WHITE HOUSE ATTORNEY, Bernie Nussbaum, JEW; CEO CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA), John Deutch, JEW (now under investigation for treason); NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, Sandy Berger, JEW; SECRETARY OF
THE TREASURY, Robert Rubin, JEW; HEAD OF THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA), Daniel E. Golden, JEW; SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATOR, Kenneth Apfel, JEW;....

Page after page of similar insanity fills this tome, which no doubt now is getting far more readers than the author ever could have hoped to reach without murdering a man.

Moonbats going after Trader Joe's

A group of anti-Israel radicals are trying to organize a protest against Trader Joe's for selling Israeli products.

Trader Joe's has no interest in changing its policies:

We have received a few letters like this via our customer relations email as well. Our response is that we sell products, and do not use our products as political tools or to make any statements about any political causes. We have no intention of removing any products based on pressure from any group, no matter what they support or don’t support. As always, we believe our customers are smart, and they are capable of making decisions about what they purchase. Let me know if you have any more questions or need more information.

But the moonbats still want to "de-shelve" Trader Joe's on Saturday, June 20th, which sounds like it involves doing some illegal activities like vandalizing Israeli products at the stores.

So the obvious thing to do is to make sure you buy Israeli products from Trader Joe's on the 19th and 20th and let the store managers know that you appreciate the factthat they make such products available.

Bluetruth has been all over this issue, so check there for the latest.

An open letter to President Obama from Brigitte Gabriel

(received via email)

Dear Mr. President,

You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them.

I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are.

I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I’m sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a “student of history,” it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts, however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce.

A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion. With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam.

You began in your speech by asserting that “tensions” exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.

A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.

These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur’an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.

A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed’s death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and India eventually creating an empire larger than Rome’s was at its peak.

The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300 million. What’s more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the “jizya,” a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.

These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.

You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years.

Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.

The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence.

The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews?

What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?

What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only “crime” was allowing her students to name their teddy bears “Mohammed”?

What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund, or provide nurture to, terrorist organizations?

What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels?

What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a Christian church or synagogue?

To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other “root causes,” most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.

Lastly, I must address your statement that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.” Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule.

Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion.

For instance, Christians and Jews became “Dhimmis,” a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad’s Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later.

I witnessed first-hand the “tolerance” of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970’s, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the “proud tradition” of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced in the cause of Islamic jihad.

Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur’an and the Hadith. Who regard “infidels” as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting. Who support “cultural jihad” as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur’an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam by force if necessary and bring it under the rule of Allah.

Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail.

Sincerely,

Brigitte Gabriel

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Today's PalArab self-deaths

An employee of the PA was found shot dead in his house, with a machine gun next to him.

A man was killed in another smuggling tunnel collapse, and four more are missing.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 98.

10,000-year old city blames Israel for sewage problems

From Ma'an:

The West Bank city of Jericho, located near the Dead Sea at the lowest elevation on earth is believed to be one of the oldest cities in the world. The city is preparing to mark its ten-thousandth anniversary, and yet it still lacks a sewage network.

Over the past 15 years, mayors of Jericho have been asking donor states for the funds needed to install a modern sewage network which the town, reliant on tourism for much of its economy, badly needs.

“It is funny in 2009 that a historic city like Jericho lacks a sewage network. Israeli occupation played a major role in depriving Jericho along with several other Palestinian cities of many basic needs of modern life,” says the mayor of Jericho Ahmad Salih.

Do you notice the discrepancy between the second and third paragraphs?

An article from the NYT in 1995 sheds more light:

An international aid effort for the Palestinian Authority has been thrown into crisis because donors have not honored pledges to support a fund for the fledgling self-rule administration in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

The fund, administered by the World Bank to help cover the authority's operating expenses, has run out of money, aid officials said. The donors have failed to honor pledges worth about $36 million out of $60 million made at a meeting in Brussels in November.
Odin Knudsen, the World Bank representative in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said donors were less eager to give money for such day-to-day expenses than for development projects.

"This aid is invisible, because it shows up in salaries and not in new roads or sewage systems," he said. "But this kind of money is essential because it keeps the administration going. If it is not paid, it can lead to a political crisis."
While the United States honored its $12 million pledge for the Holst Fund, several European and Persian Gulf nations are among the donors that have not made their payments.

Jericho has been trying to get a sewage system for the past fifteen years. There is no indication that Israel has impeded them at all. On the contrary, between 1967 and 1993 Israel built up the entire West Bank infrastructure - water, electricity, hospitals - that had been ignored by Jordanian occupation.

The mayor's Arab brethren have not paid for the system they specifically promised - a nasty habit they still seem to have. Yet the mayor reflexively blames Israel for "depriving" Jericho of a sewage system, even though Jericho has been under PA rule for 15 years.

It just goes to show that for Arabs, blaming all their problems on Israel is the easiest way to avoid tackling real problems, and publicly blaming the people truly responsible for their problems - their fellow Arabs - is literally unthinkable.

The latest Zionist assault on Arabs: "B'Seder"

Al-Arabiya (Arabic) has an article decrying the fact that many Israeli Arabs have started to integrate Hebrew into their language.

Some 1948 Palestinians [the PalArabic phrase for Israeli Arabs - EoZ] incorporate the Hebrew language, either through talking or ob normal posters visible in Arab towns, or through the messages in some institutions.

According to Dr. Mohamed Amara, lecturer, researcher and head of the governing body of the Center for Studies in the Palestinian territories, "The Israeli establishment is trying to detail the new Arab-Israeli, and it is within the specifications that he speaks the language of Arabic or Hebrew, three quarters of the so-called language Barip."

It is hard to understand this story, but it appears that Dr. Amara is suggesting that Israelis are deliberately trying to erase Arabic culture by imposing their foreign Hebrew tongue on Arabs. "Barip" seems to be the slang term for what we would call Hebrabic (or Arabrew.)

"Barip" means the confusion of Hebrew words with Arabic words in the same sentence. One may ask, for example: Kivk? [I believe that this is a shortnened for of "Kaif halak," meaning "How are you?" in Arabic - EoZ.] The other answers, "B'seder" that is, "OK" The word "B'seder" is used by many, even among many who are trying to avoid confusion between the Arabic and Hebrew.

The article goes on to detail many other examples of Israeli culture seeping into the lives of Israeli Arabs, and how horrible this situation is.

Open thread, Deutsch edition

According to Technorati, a surprisingly large number of my postings are linked to and/or translated into German on German-language blogs. I've seen occasional Spanish or Swedish translations, but the largest percentage of non-English links is definitely German.

At any rate, here's an afternoon open thread dedicated to my international readers!

PalArab news roundup 6-9-09

There are reports that three rockets were shot Gaza on Monday night - into Egypt. The rockets did not explode.

The PA confiscated some two tons of explosives from Hamas members in Qalqilya, in the West Bank. They found out about it from previous arrests of Hamas members. Some of the explosives were in a Jacuzzi.

The PA also found a Hamas member in Nablus with over one million euros. It was apparently meant to build up the Hamas movement in the West Bank to destabilize the PA.

Meanwhile, the PA also arrested three Hamas women planning suicide attacks - against the PA. When Hamas said a few weeks ago that they will treat the PA the way they treat Israel, they weren't kidding!

A leader of Islamic Jihad has again rejected the idea of a two-state solution.

A chain reaction of exploding cooking gas canisters injured 30 people in Khan Younis.

Late last week a Gaza farmer was killed when he apparently came across some unexploded Hamas explosives, putting the 2009 PalArab self-death count at 96.