Tuesday, August 04, 2009

  • Tuesday, August 04, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Anne Bayefsky puts together a strong case that Obama has already resigned himself to a nuclear Iran, as he gives the mullahs all the time they need without any repercussions.

Barry Rubin explains why a settlement freeze makes no sense to Israel, even among Israelis who aren't pro-settler.

A British regulator announced the shocking news that George Galloway's broadcasts on Iran's English-language PressTV violated impartiality rules. Who woulda thunk it? (h/t Suzanne)

Daled Amos emails the US Consulate in Jerusalem, and receives a response that the "Consulate General in Jerusalem is the principal representation to the Palestinian Authority." Putting together the facts that the consulate is in both east and west Jerusalem and not in the West Bank, this indicates that US State Department policy is not that Jerusalem is disputed, or even meant to be an international city, but it is entirely Arab. (Daled Amos has a different take.)

Monday, August 03, 2009

  • Monday, August 03, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
One dead, two injured, three missing in a new tunnel collapse under the Rafah border on Monday night.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 133.
  • Monday, August 03, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
This story's got it all: a fence, a border, water, an impotent UN, and, of course, Zionist cows:
United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is in the process of erecting a fence in the southern Kfar Shuba area with the aim of preventing cows from Israeli flocks crossing the Blue Line and using Lebanese water supplies, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday.

The fence, which will be erected by the Spanish contingent of the UN peacekeeping force, will be two meters high and surround the Baathaiil Lake once finished in the next ten days.

A UNIFIL spokesperson told The Daily Star that they are assisting the Lebanese authorities by creating the fence “in order to prevent cattle crossing around the Kfar Shuba region.”

Media reports on Monday suggested that the fence, once erected, will allow Lebanese shepherds to pass over to the opposite side of the lake.

This comes a month after a UNIFIL meeting, in which municipality members urged peacekeepers to keep Israeli cows out of Lebanon by any means necessary.
The Lebanese claimed last month that the thirsty Zionist cows are being protected by Merkava tanks.

UPDATE: According to the LA Times Babylon and Beyond blog, the Blue Line extends through the "lake" (really a pond.) So if UNIFIL places the fence south of the pond it is actually depriving the Zionist cows of their rightful water! (h/t Global Freezing)
  • Monday, August 03, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
I've been distracted by Real Life® issues lately, but that doesn't mean you have to be....feel free to paste any interesting links you've seen.
  • Monday, August 03, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
From the Zionism-Israel website:
What George Mitchell is asking Israel to do is to give up its capital city. What are friends for after all, if not to oblige other friends with little favors like that? This is an even handed policy. The Saudis are asked to allow Israeli overflights (and refuse) and Israel is asked to renounce sovereignty over its capital city. Everybody is asked to do something for the cause, and to please smile while doing it.

The heart of the disagreement is that the US insists that Jerusalem is just another "settlement," that the US does not recognize Israeli sovereignty in any part of Jerusalem, and that they can and should dictate to Israel what policies to adopt in Jerusalem and when and where to build. The most recent "misunderstanding" was a public and ugly US protest against removal of illegal Palestinian occupants squatting in propery owned by Jews. It may not be wise for Israel to build in areas that might be subject to future negotiations, but it certainly understandable that Israel will enforce Israeli law, backed by a supreme court decision, in an area that is declared by Israel to be under its sovereignty. There is no misunderstanding. The problem is not that the United States wants Israel to negotiate, but rather that the US is telling Israel and the world that there is nothing to negotiate about in Jerusalem, since the city does not belong to Israel according to them, but to a hypothetical international administration or Palestinian state. This is not a disagreement among friends. It is a hostile diplomatic act. In the 19 years of illegal Jordanian occupation of East Jerusalem, the United States did not once protest any Jordanian action, including the building of King Hussein's summer house, or the wrecking of the last remnants of the Jewish quarter and the Jewish cemetery in the Mount of Olives.
Read the whole thing.
  • Monday, August 03, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Fatah admitted its failure at getting the international community to pressure Hamas to allow Fatah members to go to the Fatah conference in Bethlehem that starts tomorrow. Hundreds of members are being kept in Gaza by Hamas, who also threatened to arrest any who manage to sneak out upon their return. (Egypt is opening the Rafah crossing today.)

For its part, Hamas continues to arrest Fatah leaders and members in Gaza.

A Christian gold dealer in Gaza was murdered and his body dumped at the beach. These murders always send shockwaves through Gaza's tiny Christian community.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is at 132.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

  • Sunday, August 02, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
This week's breathless news of new Hamas flexibility came from The Economist:
“HAMAS is very close on recognition of Israel,” says Ahmed Yousef, the Islamist movement’s deputy foreign minister, speaking from the top floor of a high-rise building in Gaza City. “We show all sorts of ideological flexibility on this.”
And for the umpteenth time, Hamas immediately denies ever saying any such thing, in much more blunt language:
Senior Hamas official Ahmad Yousef said on Sunday that the Islamic movement will never recognize Israel, backtracking on remarks printed by the British magazine The Economist.

Yousef said that the magazine misunderstood him when it quoted him saying that Hamas is close to recognizing Israel. He characterized the report as “totally untrue.”

In a statement to Ma’an, Yousef, who is the deputy foreign minister in the de facto government of Gaza, said that “no law” can force Palestinians to recognize Israel. “We can’t admit the existence of the state and the nation that is occupying us. They are the ones that should recognize Palestinian rights,” he said.
Hamas continues to play the Western wishful thinkers like a violin, saying purposefully ambiguous comments that they know will be interpreted as relatively moderate and then insisting that they are just as radical as ever, explicitly, in Arabic.

A page from the Fatah playbook.
  • Sunday, August 02, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
From YNet:
An Iranian plane crash two weeks ago – which left 168 people dead – was caused by the explosion of sophisticated fuses slated to be delivered to Hezbollah, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported Saturday, quoting sources in the Middle East.

According to the report, the pilot of the Tupolev plane, which was making its way from Tehran to Armenia, sent an emergency warning 16 minutes after takeoff. Shortly afterwards, the plane crashed in northwest Iran.

According to the sources, the aircraft was carrying a large number of modern fuses composed of 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of explosives and electrical instrumentation.

The report is in line with testimonies on explosion sounds heard before the crash. According to the sources, the plane was meant to transfer the fuses from Iran to Armenia, and from there to Syria through Turkey, and then on the ground to Lebanon. This route was chosen, according to exiled opposition sources, so as not to draw attention.

According to the report, the transfer of arms was a special operation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and some of its members were among the crash victims. It was also reported that the presence of security forces at the site of the crash was not a coincidence.
This story, released yesterday, has barely made a ripple in the media. I've only seen it mentioned in Israeli media and Al-Arabiya. Even in the immediate post-election Iran, the media is treating the Islamic Republic with kid gloves.

No matter how many people die because of its support of terror.
  • Sunday, August 02, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
If you thought that the video I posted yesterday wasn't proof enough that Saudis really like Jews, then you need to see this YouTube video that proves that Saudis really are Jews!

Because their noses are so similar!



Can't argue with that logic! I guess it is time to convert all Mecca mosques into synagogues...
The Gulf Daily News had an article by someone named Paul Balles about the fictional disease "Islamophobia." The entire article made no sense, but the upshot is that it is Zionists who are keeping the idea of Islamophobia alive:
Have you ever been short of breath, shaking, nauseated and light-headed in elevators, closed rooms or crowded places? Experienced a panic attack in a high-rise? Do you have an irrational fear of germs? Of strangers or foreigners? Of shadows? Of thunder or lightning? Of spiders? Of public speaking? Afraid of flying?
If you've experienced any of these, you're suffering from a type of irrational fear called a phobia. These are some of the most common phobias. People suffer from literally hundreds of phobias.
A relatively recent irrational phobia that hasn't even appeared on all the lists is Islamophobia - fear of Islam.

Why, after more than a decade, do Westerners still believe these false assumptions about Islam? What are the sources of the baseless fears feeding these perceptions?
Many of the distorted impressions come from Zionist propaganda:
Now look at the examples he gives from "Zionist propaganda:"

Israel's use of words like "disputed territory" rather than occupied, "redeeming" for stealing land, "terrorists" rather than resistance fighters for Palestinians, "anti-Semites" for critics of Israel (or "self-hating Jews" if the critics are Jewish).
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) bulletins and lobbying - AIPAC's only purpose is to ensure American support for Israel. No matter what Israel does, it cannot do any wrong.
American Jewish Committee newsletters - despite efforts by Jewish organisations to stifle criticism of Israel and objections to Zionism, anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Not all Jews are Semites. Most Arabs are.
So, according to Balles, Israeli nomenclature of calling terrorists "terrorists" and of calling disputed territory "disputed territory" are obvious manifestations of Islamophobia. He goes on from there down an irrelevant path that shows his complete misunderatdning of basic English, and from there to conflating Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter with Zionist propaganda.

Now, a nonsensical op-ed in a Bahraini newspaper isn't that noteworthy, until you look up Balles' bio:
Dr. Paul Balles has lived and worked in the Middle East for 40 years - first as an English professor (Universities of Kuwait and Bahrain), and for the past ten years as a writer, editor and editorial consultant.
So this is not some Arab writing gibberish, but a Western Arabist professor.

You know - an intellectual.

Slight research shows how rigorous his research methods are. From another article of his, published in The Radical Press:

Israeli educators, scholars and politicians openly advocate the annihilation of all Palestinians. Dr Nachum Rakover, a legal scholar, opined: “They voted for killers and sent them to kill us. To call them [civilians] innocent is a tragic comedy… [C]ivilians are partners of the killers.”
Many other politicians called for the need for “wiping off Gaza from the face of earth”, and “annihilating of every moving thing there”. The right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman proposed nuking Gaza following the US example when it dropped the atomic bomb on Japan during World War II.
“All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants and even their beasts,” cries the religious opinion of Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, the director of the long-established Tsomet Religious Institute.
According to the Pakistan Daily, “Israeli spokeswoman Tzipora Menache stated that she was not worried about negative ramifications the Israeli onslaught on Gaza might have on the way the Obama administration would view Israel. She said ‘You know very well, and the stupid Americans know equally well, that we control their government, irrespective of who sits in the White House.”
Adding to her own boasts, Tzipora Menache said:
You see, I know it and you know it that no American president can be in a position to challenge us even if we do the unthinkable. What can they [Americans] do to us? We control Congress, we control the media, we control show biz, and we control everything in America. In America, you can criticize God, but you can’t criticize Israel. [all bold is mine. ed.]
As we have previously discussed the Rabbi Yisrael Rosen quote is wholly fictitious, and as far as I can tell, made up by Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper.

The Lieberman quote is similarly a lie. Lieberman called for Israel to force Hamas to surrender the way that the US forced Japan to surrender, and anti-Israel pundits immediately changed that into "Lieberman calls on Israel to nuke Gaza."

How about the quote by "Tzipora Menache"? Here, the scholar Balles goes one better - not only is the quote made up, so is she! Even rabidly anti-semitic websites acknowledge that "Tziporah Menache" does not exist, and they blame this quote on Zionist propagandists (who, they bizarrely claim, are trying to get people to click on Google links with her name to place a virus on their computers.) See this Google search for "Tzipora Menache hoax".

And Balles believes a website with zero credibility, the Pakistan Daily, which regularly publishes anti-semitic articles.

The upshot is that Professor Paul Balles is dumber than the average Rense or Stormfront anti-semite.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

  • Saturday, August 01, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon

You have got to see this YouTube video. Even if you don't understand a word of Arabic, you'll get the idea. And the music is just so great.

It is entitled "Wahhabi Saudi Arabia's largest tribute to the land of the Jewish symbol of the Hijaz."



If you want to find this on Google Maps, look for the road that leads from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain; it is just north of that.

From the ground, it is a fairly attractive promenade:
  • Saturday, August 01, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Today reports that Fatah official and former PA minister Hatem Abdel Qader has called on Fatah to forge a strategic alliance with Iran.

He recalled that even though most Arab and Muslim leaders were critical of Arafat's rejection of the Clinton proposal at Camp David, only former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami supported Arafat in his rejection of peace.

Qader also decried how Hamas has taken the initiative in having closer relations with Iran, saying that Iran could help bridge the gap between Hamas and Fatah.

At the very moment when Iran's reputation on the world stage is at an historic low is when Fatah decides this would be a good time to choose to get closer with that regime.

These "moderates" keep getting less and less moderate.

Friday, July 31, 2009

  • Friday, July 31, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Firas Press quotes an Egyptian official who mentions that the White House is trying to get the Arab world to normalize relations with Israel as part of a peace agreement. Disingenuously, he provides a new reason why the Arab world can never truly be at peace with Israel:

Because it would destabilize the Arab regimes!
The official said that in the view of Egyptian and Arabs said that this pressure has reached the stage of an unacceptable and threatens the security Arab regimes and their stability.The sources mentioned "the beginning of tensions" in the relations between the administration of President Obama with many Arab capitals, including Cairo and Riyadh, on the background of Obama's attempts to convince the Arab world to normalize relations with Israel immediately.

The sources hinted that the "unofficial messages exchanged between Riyadh and Cairo, concluded that the American efforts ...would threaten the stability of the ruling regimes in the Arab region."

An Egyptian official told the newspaper, that "Americans want immediate normalization, which could put many of the Arab rulers in the line of fire in a direct confrontation with their people, and will lead to destabilization. If pressure is put in this direction it will only benefit the Islamic extremists in the region."

In this context, the Secretary-General of the ruling party in Egypt, Safwat al-Sharif, said that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, refused to establish any (US) military bases on Egyptian soil, whatever the reasons, saying that "Egypt has a strong army capable of defending its territory against attacks."
Actually, this is not a new excuse. It is one of the oldest Arab excuses ever made, normally referred to as "the Arab street." The rulers, whenever they are feeling pressured to do something they dislike, say that their people would have a popular revolution and overthrow them if they follow Western advice.

This argument is one of the oldest and most effective in the Arab lexicon, one that never fails to sway the West. The West has a huge fear of large numbers of strange, irrational, kaffieyeh-wearing men whose actions cannot be predicted (by Westerners.) Just as the British acquiesced to Arab demands in the wake of Arab leaders clandestinely fomenting riots in the 1930s, so does the rest of the West want to avoid any appearance of instability - and to reward the threat of it.

Of course, the argument is a joke. These are the same rulers who have no compunction against suppressing these same people violently and ruthlessly whenever they feel like it. Their entire leadership is maintained by force and by the armies under their command, not by popular will. They own their media and they play their people to act in ways they want them to. There are no mass riots against them because the despots don't allow them.

In other words, the people are not independent players in this drama, but pawns.

If the leaders would decide that they want to normalize relations with Israel, they could get their people on board in a matter of months. They could simply say, "The Palestinians have been homeless for sixty years; it is time to allow them to have their own state and to stop the senseless hate." The vast majority of the people only care about Palestinian Arabs because of the endless incitement in the Arab media; if the incitement ended so would the issue. Most Arabs care more about how to feed their own families than about a group of Palestinian Arabs who have said "no" to peace and compromise for over seventy years.

Sure, there would be some who are unhappy, there would be a brief uptick in terror recruiting, but the regimes could ensure that nothing happens - if that is what they want.

A very big "if."
  • Friday, July 31, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Bubbling beneath the surface, the animosity between Fatah and Hamas is increasing every week.

For a while they were holding unification talks in Cairo, but the talks went nowhere and even though they have not been officially called off, recent weeks has seen an uptick of rhetoric and tit-for-tat arrests, with the background of the Fatah conference next week.

Hamas has been systematically arresting Fatah members that want to go to the conference and is refusing any Fatah members from leaving Gaza. (Interestingly, Israel is allowing Fatah members to attend from many Arab countries, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Syria.) The PA offered to release a number of Hamas members to facilitate the coference, although it is unclear if they did.

The rhetoric became more severe today as a Hamas leader said that the coup that happened in Gaza could be repeated in the West Bank. The leader, whose name seems to be al-Raquob, led a rally in Khan Younis accusing the PA of collaborating with Israel and the US. He said repeatedly that Fatah leaders have not "learned the lessons of Gaza" and that Hamas could take over the West Bank if the PA remains set in its ways.

This is, of course, only one of the major obstacles to peace that Americans and Europeans seem not to grasp at all.
  • Friday, July 31, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Commentary points to an article in NRO's Corner noticing that the US Consulate in Jerusalem webpage caters exclusively to Palestinian Arab activities and events, without a word mentioned about Israel.

Something I blogged about over two years ago, and then had a related post last year which generated a lively discussion about whether its two offices, in both the western and eastern portions of the city, cater to Jews (they do.)

Maybe I can get the writers for NRO and Commentary to go through my archives to find a whole bunch of material!

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