Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 21, 2009

Clan clash!

A clan clash in Tubas caused the death of a young man and incineration of five houses Thursday night.

Palestinian Authority police arrested five in connection with the death of the 23-year-old Husny Ziad Abed Sawafta. An additional 38 were injured. Sawafta was shot point blank with a 9mm.

The police said Sawafta’s family set fire to the homes to avenge the death of their son, and the fires lead to street-side brawls.

There was another clan clash in Bethlehem this week. More than 30 were hospitalized.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is at 168.

How bad are things in Gaza?

The Free Gaza movement just released a Ramadan message begging for funds.

Dear Friends of Palestine,

Inshallah, this appeal finds you and your families in the very best of circumstances. Sadly, not all of our brothers and sisters in the world share this good fortune. The Palestinian people continue to live under a cruel occupation regime, subjected to merciless Israeli policies designed to ethnically cleanse Palestine of her people. The situation is especially dire in Gaza, where Israel has imposed a brutal siege that is denying 1.5 million Palestinians basic food, medicine, and the freedoms that we take for granted.

So how has Gaza been doing while under this brutal siege designed to mercilessly ethnically cleanse all of Palestine?

The current blockade began in June 2007, although the military blockade started at the outset of the intifada. One would expect that things must have gotten progressively worse for Gazans over the years from reading propaganda from Free Gaza as well as the media.

The data show differently.

The most obvious metric is life expectancy. After two years of supposedly restricting food and medicine into Gaza, one would think that it must be effecting the demographics of Gaza by now.

The truth may surprise you (all figures from CIA World Factbook, historical data from IndexMundi)

Year	Life expectancy at birth	Rank	Percent Change	Date of Information
2003	71.4	106		2003 est.
2004	71.79	111	0.55 %	2004 est.
2005	71.79	113	0.00 %	2005 est.
2006	71.97	116	0.25 %	2006 est.
2007	72.16	114	0.26 %	2007 est.
2008	73.16	105	1.39 %	2008 est.
2009	73.42	107	0.36 %	2009 est.

During the blockade, the life expectancy increased at a faster rate than beforehand!

Not only that, but Gaza's life expectancy ranks solidly in the middle compared to all world countries and areas, higher than many Arab countries like Egypt and Morocco (as well as Syria), and nearly seven years above the world average.

How about infant mortality? With the lack of medicines, Gaza must have been doing very badly in that area under this horrendous siege, right?

Wrong:

Year	Infant mortality rate	Rank	Percent Change	Date of Information
2003	24.15	109		2003 est.
2004	22.93	107	-5.05 %	2004 est.
2005	22.93	107	0.00 %	2005 est.
2006	22.4	107	-2.31 %	2006 est.
2007	21.88	105	-2.32 %	2007 est.
2008	19	113	-13.16 %	2008 est.
2009	18.35	114	-3.54 %	2009 est.

Those numbers have also gotten much better since the "siege." And the world average is 40.85, more than double Gaza's rate. Gaza has better numbers than Mexico and the Philippines, not to mention Egypt and Turkey.

Comparing Gaza with sub-Saharan nations is even more striking. The infant mortality rates in Angola are nearly ten times worse than in Gaza, and the life expectancy in most African nations ranges from 31 to 60.

Zakat money would be better spent in other parts of the world.

Egypt restoring historic synagogue to appear tolerant

From the Daily News Egypt:

The Supreme Council of Antiquities is working on renovating the Moses Bin Maimon’s Synagogue in El-Gamaliya, Zahi Hawass, head of the SCA announced in a press conference Thursday.
The restoration of the synagogue is part of a key plan by the SCA to restore all the major religious sites in Egypt including 10 Jewish temples.
The council is expected to spend LE 700 million every year on the renovations.
Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue’s expenses alone amounted to approximately LE 8.5 million, restoring about 60 percent so far.
Renovations started in June 15, 2008 and are expected to be completed by March 30, 2010, coinciding with the birthday of its founder.
“The Jewish temples belong to the Egyptian people,” said Hawass, “that’s why the Supreme Council of Antiquities strives to reestablish this Egyptian heritage. There are 10 other Jewish temples across Egypt in the restoration plan.”
The synagogue, which was declared an antiquity in 1986, dates back to the 19th century.

It is good to hear, even if the synagogue itself will hardly be used. Egypt has less than a hundred Jews left, down from 75,000 in 1948. Many were forcibly expelled (or what would be called "ethnically cleansed" nowadays.)

Somehow, I imagine that Muslims would find it very upsetting if they heard someone say "Israel's mosques belong to the Zionist people."

To paraphrase something I wrote last year, about the news that Kuwait was going to build a synagogue that would be unusable by any Jews: It is easy to show respect for a religion after you make sure that most of its adherents aren't polluting your country.

The pro-terror Arab European League

The Arab European League is a group that says it wants to work for the rights of Arabs in Europe. But when you look at their website, you see that they go a bit beyond that.

Their front page has a photo of a pro-Hamas poster.

Their English section has a rotating banner that includes this quote from Nasser: "What was taken by force will be liberated by force."

They support Nasserite Arab nationalism, along with members of the Arab National Congress Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Above all, they hate Israel and advocate for it to be destroyed.

In their Dutch section, you can see this cartoon implying that Jews exaggerated the number killed in the Holocaust:

They published this cartoon, as well as a much more offensive one showing Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler (with Hitler saying "you can put this in your diary") as a protest to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed a couple of years ago.

On Tuesday the public prosecutor’s office ruled that AEL was liable to prosecution for publishing the cartoon, but no charges would be brought if the campaign group permanently removed the image from its website. Initially AEL appeared to have complied with this demand.
However, at the same time the public prosecutor’s office also ruled that there was nothing illegal about the publication of the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad on the website of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders in 2006. Likewise, it decided that the TV programme Nova, which also showed the cartoons, had not broken the law.

The public prosecutor’s office concluded that the Danish drawings were not offensive to Muslims as a group and were not an incitement to discrimination or violence against them. However, it said the cartoon on the AEL website was indeed offensive to Jews as a group.
In response to this ruling, AEL decided to republish the cartoon.

There was a debate about the cartoons on Dutch TV, where a representative of the Arab European League and a Dutch Zionist leader argued about it.

At the end of the debate, the AEL representative refused to shake the hand of the Zionist, shocking the hosts. On his website he justified his insult, saying that he would refuse to shake hands with Arabs who support the existence of Israel as well.

This is the mainstream of Arab opinion in Europe.
(h/t Suzanne)

Today's "peace" dividend

From Ma'an:

The Israeli mayor of Jerusalem drew criticism on Thursday with an announcement that he will personally fire the traditional Ramadan cannon early in the Muslim holy month.

Ramadan, a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting and prayer, is expected to begin at sundown on Friday, pending a declaration from Islamic officials. The firing of the cannon on Sunday will mark the end of the day's fast.

Ekrima Sabri, the orator of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the chief of the Islamic Supreme Committee, said Mayor Nir Barkat is attempting to provide political cover for his administration’s evictions of Palestinian residents and destruction of Palestinian houses.

Mayor Barkat heads the Jerusalem Municipality, an institution not recognized by Palestinians as legitimate because it administers areas east of the Green Line, which were occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. The international community also does not recognize Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem.

Then at the end of the article....

Past Israeli mayors have also fired the cannon. Former Mayor Uri Lupolianski fired the cannon in 2007 and 2008.

So why the stink this year?

One answer is because this year the US administration has changed the status of Jerusalem from a final status issue to a presumed Palestinian Arab capital. Palestinian Arabs, instead of doing what all good liberals expect them to do (thankfully accepting this gift and reciprocating with confidence building measures,) instead act as any sane observer of them knew they would - by becoming more intransigent.

"Siege" includes giving Gazans swimming pools

Israel's Foreign Ministry website continues to document how much aid Israel sends to Gazans. Here are some of the goods shipped at the beginning of the summer:

Weekly summary of the Gaza crossings: 7-13 June 2009
- 431 truckloads (10,756 tons) of food, medicines, hygiene products, tools and raw materials for essential infrastructures, blankets and mattresses, and grains - wheat, barley, corn, chickpeas, soy beans, carob, sesame seeds, and animal feed - were transferred to the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal and the Karni conveyor belt.

- The Kerem Shalom terminal was closed June 9-11 for construction work on the new fuel pipeline from Israel to the Gaza Strip.
- 1.699 million liters of heavy-duty diesel for the Gaza power station and 475 tons of gas for domestic use were delivered via Nahal Oz fuel depot.
- 305 Gaza residents entered Israel for medical and humanitarian reasons via Erez Crossing.

Weekly summary of the Gaza crossings: 14-19 June 2009
- 674 truckloads (16,323 tons) of humanitarian aid were transferred to the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal and the Karni conveyor belt. In addition to food, medicine and hygiene products, the following were delivered under the auspices of international organizations such as UNRWA: games, basketballs and balloons, trampolines and swimming pools, generators, air-conditioning accessories, clothing, shoes and hats, chairs, mattresses and styrofoam cups; and raw materials for paper production.

- 1.780 million liters of heavy-duty diesel for the Gaza power station and 680 tons of gas for domestic use were delivered via Nahal Oz fuel depot.
- 226 Gaza residents entered Israel for medical and humanitarian reasons via Erez Crossing.

Meanwhile, it looks like Gazans have figured out how to construct buildings without cement that goes towards weapons bunkers: they are making bricks out of clay. The results are admirable.

Of course, this is a Hamas police station being built, which means that Hamas is also using these bricks to build their bunkers. It is unclear whether regular people who lost their homes have easy access to these materials.

Blood libel accusation spreads to Lebanon

Now that a Swedish newspaper has made naked Jew-hatred respectable, the Arabs are gleefully coming out of the woodwork, even in English.

As I mentioned, today's Arab News headlined an article reporting the lie that Israel steals Palestinian Arabs' organs as fact, although it mentioned far down in the article that people were upset at the accusation. Now Lebanon's Tayyar.org reports the story as entirely factual, along with self-righteous indignation like this:

A Horrible, revolting crime done by the Zionist against the Palestinians... I call upon the entire word and specifically the Arabs organizations that work to preserve "human rights", to read the article and call for an inquiry...
Maybe will they be able to save those young Palestinians who deserve to live... As if it is not bad enough for them to be living in their own land, humiliated by the occupation, no it is not enough… They should also die and get their organs ripped away from their bodies for the Zionist to make money and live..what a bad irony!!

This is "news" according to Google News.

Al Qaeda accuses Hamas of being stooges of the Jews

Too funny:

Media sources linked to Al-Qaeda criticized Hamas’ operation against the Salafi group Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers for God) in Rafah on Friday, accusing the de facto government of “abdicating from Islam,” CNN Arabic reported Wednesday night.

The statement called Moussa a “martyr,” saying he was killed by “the bullets and the rockets of Hamas government.”

The statement linked the Hamas action, termed a “massacre” against Jund Ansar Allah, with clashes that took place last summer between Hamas police and Army of Islam affiliates in the Ash-Shyjayyiah area of Gaza City.

Hamas was further accused of working against Islamic groups and “Serving the Jews who occupy Palestine, and the Christians who fight against Iraq, Afghanistan Somalia and Chechnya.”

This is not the first time Al Qaeda insulted Hamas. Last year we saw the strange phenomenon of Al Qaeda scolding Hamas for attacking women and children, and Hamas answering back that they really don't.

Arab News reports blood libel as fact

Headline in Saudi Arabia's Arab News:

Israelis killed Palestinians for organs

No qualifications whatsoever until you read well into the article that Israel disputes the claims.

Another interesting part about the story, noticed by commenter Suzanne, is that the "stone thrower" Bilal Ghanem mentioned in the story actually was a suspected kidnapper and a fugitive when he was shot while the IDF was trying to arrest him in 1992:

Soldiers yesterday shot and killed Bilal Ghanem, 20, a fugitive since July 1991, after cornering him in the village of Imatin, near Nablus. Ghanem had been suspected of kidnapping and violently interrogating alleged informers, the IDF announcement said.

Amnesty International caves to Israel boycotters

Leonard Cohen is planning to play a concert in Israel on September 24th. The 47,000 tickets, ranging in price from $90 to $315, sold out in a day.

Cohen turned the concert into a fundraiser for pro-peace groups. He worked together with Amnesty International to create a special fund that would hand out the proceeds to places like a peace group made up of the parents of Israelis and Palestinians killed called the Parents Circle-Family Forum, a children's health program run by the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv, an organization that brings together Israeli army veterans and former Palestinian fighters and a center for special needs children in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Cohen tried to also schedule a concert in Ramallah, but this was rejected by the Palestinian Arabs.

The Israeli concert is not in Jerusalem, but in Tel Aviv. In no way can it be considered controversial to anyone who thinks that Israel has the right to exist.

However, the "peace" organizations who do not share that belief immediately started pressuring Amnesty International to withdraw its involvement in a charity that would give literally millions of dollars to groups that are dedicated to Arab-Israeli coexistence. These groups sent an open letter to Amnesty insisting that they stop all involvement with the concert. The signed groups include:

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
Adalah-NY
The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East,
American Jews for a Just Peace (US)
Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within (Israel)
British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP)
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network www.ijsn.net
Jews Against the Occupation-NYC
New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (NYCBI)
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK)
US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel

So Amnesty, that paragon of morality, caved to the Israeli boycotters.

Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) was approached by representatives of Leonard Cohen for advice on setting up a fund (the Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace) to receive and distribute proceeds from a planned concert in Tel Aviv to benefit the Parents Forum: Bereaved Parents for Peace and Reconciliation and other Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. AIUSA was pleased to offer what help it could. Given the different requirements of AI's work and that of the Fund both have agreed that at this point AIUSA will withdraw from active involvement with the Fund. AIUSA will not be part of the Fund nor benefit financially from the proceeds of the concert in Tel Aviv.

AIUSA is impressed by Leonard Cohen's commitment to use his talent to benefit directly those working for human rights and continues to hope that this wish will be realized.

Amnesty International has taken no position on boycotts anywhere in the world. AIUSA's participation in discussions related to this project was based firmly on the belief that setting up such a fund could be beneficial to Israeli and Palestinian efforts on behalf of human rights."

Even though they claim it has nothing to do with the boycott, that is clearly not true, or else they would not have agreed to help out in the first place. And the boycotters are crowing over their victory:

Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) commented, “We welcome Amnesty International’s withdrawal from this ill-conceived project which is clearly intended to whitewash Israel’s violations of international law and human rights. By abandoning the Leonard Cohen project in Tel Aviv, Amnesty International has dealt Cohen and his public relations team a severe blow, denying them the cover of the organization’s prestige and respectability.”

This effectively means that Amnesty International supports the boycott of Israel, notwithstanding its denials. If it could not participate in this event - as pro-peace an event as could be imaginable - that means that it will refuse to do anything with Israel that could possibly be construed as anything other than abject condemnation of Israel's existence. And that is exactly what this is - Amnesty happily doing the bidding of groups that want to see Israel destroyed.

Somehow, this is not a problem for AI.

The limited facade of objectivity that Amnesty International claimed concerning Israel has been demolished.

The Stockholm Syndrome of Hebron, 1929

We are almost at the 80th anniversary of the bloodthirsty Arab massacre of the Jews of Hebron that took place on August 23, 1929.

A recent book about the Jews of Hebron by Jerold Auerbach goes into detail of not only that horrible day but the entire history of Hebron Jews. The details of the slaughter itself are chilling to the point of disbelief, and are summarized in this Tablet column today by Seth Lipsky.

By August, trouble was sensed by the one British police officer in the town, Raymond Cafferata. He was told by both Arabs and Jews in Hebron that “any trouble” was “out of the question.”
Yet that same week a Jewish teacher named Haim Bagayo was warned, “This time we are going to butcher you all.” Earlier that day, there had been clashes in Jerusalem, in which three Arabs and three Jews died. The Jews of Hebron, Auerbach writes, “refused to believe that their Arab neighbors, with whom they had lived in relatively peaceful coexistence for four centuries, meant them harm.” Cafferata noted that in Hebron “everything appeared normal.” But before the day was out, Arabs began to attack Jews with clubs, and Jewish shops were quickly shuttered.
The first to die was a student, Shmuel Rosenhaltz, who was set upon as he studied, alone, in the main yeshiva. The Jews were warned to stay inside their homes. Early the next morning, Arabs, screaming “Allah akbar” and “Itbach al Yahud,” or “kill the Jews,” began surging through the streets. Two Jewish youths were stoned to death outside the house of the Heichel family. Some 70 Jews sought refuge inside a relatively large house, owned by Eliezer Dan Slonim. Almost the whole family of Slonim—his wife, Hannah, and their son, his father-in-law, who was the chief rabbi of Zichron Yaakov, and his wife—were among 22 persons who were clubbed or stabbed to death and, in some cases, disemboweled. The Slonim’s one-year son survived, having been hidden under dying Jews.
Rabbi Hanoch Hasson was murdered, along with his family. A pharmacist, Ben-Zion Gershon, who’d served both Arabs and Jews, “had his eyes gouged out before he was stabbed to death,” Auerbach relates. His wife’s hands were cut off before she and their daughter were killed. Mr. Goldshmidt was tortured, his head held over a kerosene flame, before he, his wife, and one of their daughters were killed. Twenty-three corpses were discovered in the Anglo Palestine Bank, where women were raped on a floor covered with thick pools of congealing blood. Rabbis Meir Kastel and Tzvi Dabkin and five of their students were tortured and castrated before being murdered. The killings went on for two hours, and the final death toll reached 67.

Were the Arabs of Hebron as tolerant of Jews before the massacre as the Jews there claimed? Or was this a psychological defense mechanism that the Jews employed to shut their eyes to the truth?

The truth may very well be the latter. A book written in 1905 called The Jews of Many Lands, by Elkan Nathan Adler, describes Hebron Arabs as being the most intolerant of all:

Hebron, or Khalil, the "City of Friendship," is perhaps the oldest city of the Holy Land, and in interest it vies with Jerusalem itself. Among us Jews it is reverently described as " the Burial Ground of our Fathers," and a pilgrimage thither is highly esteemed. The Mohammedans regard it with even more reverence as a sacred place than Jerusalem, for is it not the last resting-place of Abraham—el Khalil Allah—the friend of God and His great prophet? Their regard, although flattering to the founder of our race, carries with it the disadvantage that it makes the Hebronites the most fanatical of the followers of Islam, and the most intolerant. Christians cannot live at Hebron, and Jews there are treated as dogs. Curses both loud and deep greeted us as we walked round the Great Mosque, which encloses the Cave of Machpelah; but, as we did not understand the meaning of the imprecations or appreciate the delicacy or appropriateness of the choice epithets applied to us, and, as the missiles thrown at us were not well aimed, we could afford to treat our reception with amused nonchalance. Nowhere in the East did I meet with such bigotry as at Hebron, and it did not surprise me to learn that Dr. Stein, the medical man whom we sent out there some time ago, has no Mohammedans among his clientele, because the Hebronites, unlike the Mohammedans who live in Jerusalem and elsewhere are too utter fatalists to believe that medicine can arrest the progress of disease or the angel of death.

The 1948 war also had many examples of Arabs, considered friendly neighbors of Jews for generations, "suddenly" turning on them and butchering them, or cheering on those who tried.

If there are to be any lessons for Jews from the past hundred years, it is that being slightly paranoid is probably a much more accurate posture than feeling overly secure, and that it may be a fatal mistake to believe otherwise.

Egypt seizes tons of TNT for Gaza

Firas Press reports that Egyptian security forces discovered a warehouse near the Gaza border with bags filled with TNT, in the sizes necessary to transport through Rafah tunnels. Recently they also seized M-16s and missile warheads. Egypt also discovered five tunnels, including one from a house that was over 100 meters from the border.

The smuggling tunnels are still being used for explosives and weapons, but the media only talks about consumer goods.

By the way, Israel's recent delivery of cement to Gaza for humanitarian purposes was partially seized by Hamas to build weapons bunkers. And this delivery was closely coordinated with UNRWA and the World Bank.

Israel's latest "human rights" violation

Palestine Today reports on the latest flagrant Israeli human rights violation: making phone calls offering money.

Israeli intelligence is calling Gazan phone numbers, offering 10 million shekels for any information about the whereabouts of Gilad Shalit.

This is, of course, terrible.

Dr. Salah Abdul-Ati, director of the Independent Commission of Human Rights in Gaza said that these practices of the occupation of voice messages sent to [Gaza] citizens is a flagrant violation of human rights and an infringement of their rights, using pressure or temptation, and this work demonstrates the the viciousness of the occupation and its practices and the exploitation of the people's needs.

Abdul Ati told Al Ayyam that this is a breach of the Geneva Convention and rules of international law imposed on the occupied civilians of respect for their rights, and the exposure to these actions to be forced to do that work is classified as acts of military coercion, saying that it comes within the framework of the media war and psychological warfare against citizens in order to undermine the domestic front, adding that the war is not waged with arms alone.

He called on human rights institutions to document and expose the practices of the Israeli occupation and intelligence of these human rights violations to bring the crimes of the occupation to the international courts.

I can't wait to read HRW's scholarly paper about this crime, and its insistence to have the IDF create a "do not call" list under international law.

Egypt's summer "marriage" trade

Al Arabiya has an article in Arabic about a growing phenomenon of older Arabs vacationing in Egypt in the summer and "marrying" minor girls.

We have seen that Gulf Arabs tend to take vacation brides, usually abandoning them after the trip is over and sometimes leaving them pregnant. This, however, is the first time I have seen reference to child brides as the victims of this "temporary marriage" phenomenon.

The marriages are a legal fiction for underage prostitution. The girls' families are the benefactors of the rich Arab "grooms' " largess.

It is a harder than normal article to translate, but one part seems to say that the "brides" are as young as three years old (the entire paragraph autotranslates to "The figures indicate a large percentage of minors in the province of married October 6 from non-Egyptian people, girls are as young as third-year-old, but some of them become mothers within months.") I do not want to make that accusation yet; perhaps it means third grade or third year of high school.

The clear fact though is that some Egyptian families are pimping out their daughters for cash from rich, probably Gulf, Arabs taking a summer sex vacation.

UPDATE: An English article about this here.

The Elder scoops the world on blood libel

From Ha'aretz:

A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.

"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.

The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israel Defense Forces, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs.

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," writes author Donald Boström in his report.

Boström's article makes a link to the recent exposure of an alleged crime syndicate in New Jersey. The syndicate includes several American rabbis, and one Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who faces charges of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant.

I saw this rumor coming two days ago. I am just surprised that it surfaced in Sweden before it hit the Arab world.

(h/t Mustafa)