Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Israeli to buy 50% of Al Jazeera?

Arabic media are reporting that Israeli media mogul Haim Saban is negotiating with the government of Qatar to purchase 50% of the Al Jazeera channel.

Negotiations are reportedly going through and Egyptian intermediary.

Similar rumors occurred in 2006. According to the article, Saban withdrew from the 2006 offer in the wake of a Price Waterhouse audit of the channel, but is now offering double what he offered then.

It seems equally likely that someone wants to make Al Jazeera or Qatar look bad in the Arab world.

"Honor killing" novel dropped due to fear of Muslims

From Reuters:

A German publisher said Tuesday it had canceled the printing of a murder mystery about an honor killing because it contained passages insulting Islam and may have prompted Islamist retaliation.
Droste publishers dropped the book by author Gabriele Brinkmann entitled "To Whom Honor is Due" after she refused to change several passages, including one where a fictional character is portrayed making abusive remarks about the Koran.

"After the Mohammad cartoons, one knows that one can't publish sentences or drawings that defame Islam without expecting a security risk," said Felix Droste, head of Droste publishers.

In 2006, violent protests broke out in several Islamic countries after cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper sparked outrage among Muslims.

The publisher's decision has prompted criticism that it is bowing to Islamist intimidation and curtailing freedom of speech. The firm has also received threats from far-right groups against its employees for being "friends of Islamists."

German newspapers ran headlines: "Publisher self censors" and "Fear of Islamist attacks."

The atmosphere of fear that Islamists have instilled in the West is so pervasive that they don't even have to threaten violence any more - scared Westerners will do the censoring pre-emptively.

Niqab controversy in Egypt

A fascinating article in The Daily News Egypt about dueling clerics and women covering their faces:

Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mohamed Sayed Tantawy says he plans to ban the full face veil (niqab) at Al-Azhar schools, educational institutions and universities.
According to a statement he made in Al-Ahram Sunday, he was upset to see many preparatory school students (aged 11-12) wearing the niqab inside the classroom.
In an interview with a local news channel on Sunday, Tantawy said that “the niqab is not obligatory and there is no need for those young girls to wear it inside the classroom.”
Commenting on Tantawy’s statement, Sheikh Mahmoud Ashour, member of the Islamic research Center said that the Sheikh’s decision is not a fatwa, but a move aimed at preserving security among students.
“Muslim women are allowed to show their faces and hands,” Ashour said.
Allowing the niqab in academic institutions can cause problems, he added, since anyone can use it as a disguise to enter the university, even terrorists.
Muslim Brotherhood MP Hamdy Hassan couldn’t disagree more. He told Daily News Egypt Monday that he denounces Tantawy’s anti-niqab statement.
According to Dar El-Iftaa, the official authority charged with issuing religious edicts, the niqab is not obligatory but is “allowed and accepted according to the interpretations of some Islamic scholars.”
In a related note, on Monday the Minister of Higher Education Hani Helal banned the niqab inside Cairo University dorms.
However neither Ain Shames University nor Helwan University issued similar decrees.
In 2007 Helwan University was the subject of a huge controversy when university security guards prohibited the entry of some female students wearing the niqab into the university dorms, even though they agreed to reveal their face to the female security guards for an identity check.
In the same year, Minister of Religious Endowments Hamdy Zaqzuq dismissed an employee from a meeting for refusing to remove her niqab.
Zaqzuq publicly maintains his denouncement of the niqab stressing that “it is a tradition, not an Islamic practice.”
In 2004 the American University in Cairo (AUC) caused a similar stir after a decree prohibiting the entry of students wearing the niqab into the university campus.
A year later some of these students won a court case against the university allowing them to enter provided they show their face to security guards to check their identity.
As a reaction, the university issued a new internal regulation prohibiting the niqab.

Tantawi has been in hot water before, for shaking hands with Shimon Peres. But before you think of him as some sort of moderate, keep in mind that he also supports terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

Israel's economic miracle

Fantastic article in The City Journal. Here's only a small part:

In under 25 years—starting from those first modest tax reforms of the mid-1980s—Israel has accomplished the most overwhelming transformation in the history of economics, from a nondescript laggard in the industrial world to a luminous first. Today, on a per-capita basis, Israel far leads the world in research and technological creativity. Between 1991 and 2000, even before the big reform of 2005, Israel’s annual venture-capital outlays, nearly all private, rose nearly 60-fold, from $58 million to $3.3 billion; companies launched by Israeli venture funds rose from 100 to 800; and Israel’s information-technology revenues rose from $1.6 billion to $12.5 billion. By 1999, Israel ranked second only to the United States in invested private-equity capital as a share of GDP. And it led the world in the share of its growth attributable to high-tech ventures: 70 percent.

Even a year or two later—while the rest of the world slumped after the millennial telecom and dot-com crash and Israel suffered an acute recession—its venture capitalists strengthened its lead in technological enterprise. During the first five years of the twenty-first century, venture-capital outlays in Israel rivaled venture-capital outlays in all of the United States outside California, long the world’s paramount source of entrepreneurial activity in high technology.

Today, Israel’s tech supremacy is even greater. A 2008 survey of the world’s venture capitalists by Deloitte & Touche showed that in six key fields—telecom, microchips, software, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, and clean energy—Israel ranked second only to the United States in technological innovation.

Venture capital is the most catalytic force in the world economy. In the United States, venture-backed companies produced nearly one-fifth of GDP in 2007. At a time when American venture capital is flagging under the financial crisis, the emergence of a comparable venture scene in Israel, linked closely to Silicon Valley, is providential for both the American economy and its military defense.

This development makes Israel one of America’s most important economic allies. Israel’s creativity now pervades many of the most powerful and popular new technologies, from personal computers to iPods, from the Internet to the medical center.

Hamas forbids women as motorcycle passengers

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas is forbidding (presumably male) motorcyclists from allowing women passengers sitting behind them.

The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip is forbidding motorcyclists from carrying women behind the driver of the bike "based on the requirements of public interest."

The government said, "This decision is to preserve the safety of citizens and the stability of customs and traditions in Palestinian society."

The phenomenon of carrying women and children behind the motorcycle driver has spread in the Gaza Strip recently, as this is a common sight on Egyptian streets.

Clearly, safety is not the reason for this rule, or Hamas would forbid any back-of-seat passengers, not only women. The problem is evidently that the women have to hold on to the male driver, in public, and this is a violation of "customs and traditions in Palestinian society."

The creeping Sharia-zation of Gaza continues....

Daily Goldstone 9/6

A doubleheader.

Moshe Arens:

While the Goldstone report is being eagerly read in Israel and in capitals around the world, it is also being intensively studied by terrorists bent on destroying the State of Israel - and they must be breathing a sigh of relief.

This is not only because the Hamas terrorists in Gaza are in effect getting off scot-free in the report - they, in any case, did not have to be concerned about being brought before the International Court of Justice.

They can also interpret the report as international approbation for carrying out military operations from civilian population centers - schools, hospitals, refugee camps, etc. - as they did in the years when they were launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages in the south of Israel, and as they continued to do during the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.

The report is in effect a license to kill - for Hamas, for Hezbollah, and for terrorists all over the world. No less.

And Ami Isseroff:

Beyond all its irregularities, the Goldstone report made one claim that cannot be refuted: That Israeli policy and war tactics were deliberately designed to kill civilians. It can't be refuted because it is not logical or based on any facts. Like medieval accusations of well poisoning or the blood libel, it is obvious that the persons making the accusation already have all the information needed to refute it, and simply ignore it because of malevolent mendaciousness. The man claims your sister is a lady of easy virtue. But you have no sister, and he knows it!

Goldstone's report claimed:

1211. Statements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy.593

In a real report, one might expect that reference 593 would include the statements by political and military leaders that left no doubt etc. Instead, the footnote (like much of the Goldstone report) simply references a report by an anti-Israel NGO:

Highlighting the pattern of military actions targeting civilian shelters and shelter seekers, the Habitat International Coalition concludes: “The official statements that accompany these actions […] seem to reflect a presumption that any source of brutality against the indigenous inhabitants would convert the victims into agents of the attackers’ preferred outcome: defeat of resistance” (submission, cited, p. 40).

One unsupported conclusion is used to support another and the Hamas terrorists, who seized power illegally, are elevated to the dignity of "resistance."

The Goldstone report further states:

The operations were carefully planned in all their phases. Legal opinions and advice were given throughout the planning stages and at certain operational levels during the campaign...[T]he Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.

Goldstone's "proof" is that the operation was planned. Planning and asking of legal opinions in any military operation are evidently valid evidence that civilian casualties resulting from that operation must have been planned. Goldstone evidently believes that nothing can even go wrong in any military operation and everything always occurs exactly according to plan. Presumably, legal advice was asked before soldiers left obnoxious graffiti and vandalized Palestinian property. Before each little girl was killed, the lawyers were called in to certify that killing the little girl was not against international law.

The death of Israeli soldiers by friendly fire was also presumably part of the plan according to Goldstone, , also approved by IDF legal counsel, as was the constant rain of rockets on Israeli towns and cities - civilian targets - by the Hamas "resistance." One wonders what book of military history Judge Goldstone and his fellow committee members read.

...The claim that the IDF or the Israeli government had a deliberate policy of harming civilians is therefore malicious nonsense. There are no additional facts that any Israeli investigation or any other investigation could unearth that would "disprove" it, because the claim doesn't depend on any facts. In the same way, those who made the blood libel accusation knew that Jews are forbidden to consume any sort of blood and especially human blood. They knew the accusation had to be false, and Goldstone knows this accusation is false. Those who believe this claim do so because they are evil and uninterested in truth. Proving that this or that incident described by the Goldstone mission did or did not occur, or that this or that officer was or was not guilty of war crimes, could never erase the terrible false accusation that Israel deliberately set out to kill civilians.

The diplomacy of fear, 2009

Ha'aretz publishes facts that you just won't see the mainstream media mention:

Palestinian clashes with Israeli police on Sunday and on the day before Yom Kippur near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City have made foreign diplomats wonder whether Israel is enacting a new policy on the Temple Mount, which is serving to exacerbate tensions.

Media outlets and senior Palestinian Authority officials have contributed significantly to this perception after repeatedly claiming that Israel is planning to allow a group of "extremist settlers" to pray at the mosque. Even the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, has blamed Israel for implementing a dangerous policy on the Temple Mount that is liable to lead to a conflagration.

Yet, reality, as always, is a bit more complicated. The status quo in the plaza surrounding the Al-Aqsa Mosque has in fact not changed since 2003. The entry of Jews and tourists is permitted on the Temple Mount from 7:30 to 10 A.M., and from 12:30 to 1:30 P.M. These visits do not have to be coordinated with officials of the Waqf (Muslim trust) and take place without any interference. Indeed, last Thursday, for example, the area was totally calm. At 1 P.M., dozens of tourists could be seen wandering around the plaza.

The advent of the holiday season in Israel, combined with the desire of Palestinian politicians to win a few minutes of fame, has recently led, however, to various violent incidents.

At present, the PA is not doing enough to ease tensions, while the Islamic Movement's northern faction is apparently working in concert with a number of Palestinian figures in an effort to spark an escalation of hostilities on the mount.

Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, the head of the Waqf, said that just before Yom Kippur, a number of Jewish groups distributed notices announcing that they planned to visit the Temple Mount on the eve of the holiday. In response, the former mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, called on Muslim worshipers to gather at Al-Aqsa Mosque last Sunday, to defend it against the Jews. His call was also taken up by Hatem Abdel Khader, the Fatah official who holds the Jerusalem portfolio, and other factions belonging to the Islamic Movement.

After morning prayers that day, some 200 people gathered at the square waiting for the Jews to enter.

"The police knew about this," Al-Khatib said. "One of the officers who is responsible for police coordination with the Waqf, called me and I warned him not to open the Temple Mount to Jewish worshipers."

At 7:30 A.M., the Mughrabim Gate was opened and a group of tourists entered the compound. Muslims began hurling stones at them and at the police officers who tried to hurry the tourists away from the scene.

Sunday, however, it seemed as if the appropriate conclusions had been drawn: After learning that dozens of Muslims planned to await the arrival of "extremist Jews" at the Temple Mount, the police decided that the entire area would remain closed to non-Muslim visitors.

Meaning that the time-honored method of threatening and instigating violence has allowed Muslims to support their bigoted goal of keeping the holiest Jewish site free of Jews.

Back in 2006, I called this Islamic method of using threats of violence to get their way "the diplomacy of fear" and it hasn't changed one bit. (I even found an example from 1877.)

Goldstone and diplomacy

Richard Goldstone was interviewed in Tikkun magazine last week:

Q: What are the specific steps that Israel could have taken to stop the shelling of southern Israel before commencing an attack on Gaza?
RG: Well, it could have used greater pressure by diplomatic means. They could have used the security council for that purpose. Israel could have put the security council on notice and said "if you don't stop this, if you don't do something to stop it, we will have to resort as a last resort to military means." But in our report we didn't question the right of Israel to use military force.

Q: Do you think Israel could have succeeded in stopping the bombing of Sderot had it gone to the Security Council?

RG: Well, I don't know. If it didn't work, then I have got no doubt that Israel was entitled to take a strong action to put a stop to the firing of rockets and mortars and has a duty to its own population to protect them.

Military force should be the very last resort. I think it is arguable here that other diplomatic means could have worked. If they didn't work then the last resort is to use force, and whether it is military or policing action force, Israel was entitled to take active steps.

In a previous interview Goldstone also said that he felt that Israel should have gone to the Security Council to stop the rockets.

As Yaacov Lazowick points out, Israel did do exactly that.

Since September of 2000 Israel has written dozens upon dozens of official letters to the UN complaining about incessant terror attacks including rocket attacks. The earliest mention I see of specific Qassam attacks is from 2003, although I'm sure there are earlier ones; in the context of the suicide bombing campaigns (that the UN did nothing to stop) the Qassam references are a bit harder to find. But from 2005 and on, Israel has brought Qassam attacks to the attention of the Security Council and these letters are available in the UN archives. For example, from 2006:

Identical letters dated 3 October 2006 from the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council

I write to inform you of the continued firing of Qassam rockets into Israel by Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip over the weekend.
On the eve of 30 September 2006, three civilians were moderately injured after a Qassam rocket was fired by Palestinian terrorists at the southern Israeli city of Sderot. Another 10 civilians were treated for shock in the aftermath of the terrorist attack. Reports of this attack were conveyed orally to the Department of Political Affairs, as well as to the presidency of the Security Council, on Sunday, 1 October 2006.

Nonetheless, the firing of Qassam rockets continued into the holiday of Yom Kippur, which was observed in Israel yesterday. Synagogue services in the Sderot area were rudely interrupted by the blare of sirens, as Qassam rockets launched from inside Gaza pierced Israel’s southern skies. Fortunately, no one was hurt during the attacks.

The unceasing terrorist attacks, and in particular the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in the Jewish calendar, are an affront to the sovereignty of the State of Israel. Furthermore, the continuation of Palestinian terror and violence deteriorates the prospects for peace in the region. If such terrorist attacks continue, Israel will be forced to exercise its right of self-defence.

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the text of this letter circulated as a document of the General Assembly under agenda items 13 and 14, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Dan Gillerman
Ambassador
Permanent Representative

I count over 20 such letters since 2005. This doesn't count the many other mentions that Israel made of rocket attacks in various UN sessions, nor the official letters written about other terror attacks that also mentioned rockets and mortars.

In short, Israel has used every diplomatic means at its disposal to stop Qassam rocket attacks...for years. Goldstone's ignorance of that fact is, unfortunately, typical.

Today, the Arabic press is reporting that Hamas is actively trying to stop Qassam rockets from being fired from Gaza.

From Ma'an:

The Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip has actively prevented armed groups from launching shells from into Israel over the past few days, according the London-based newspaper Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday.

Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat’s Arabic website quoted sources in the resistance groups in Gaza saying, “Hamas security services have detained two militants while they were preparing to fire homemade projectiles towards Israel. They were questioned and released after a couple of hours.”

Hamas security confiscated the projectiles and warned the militants of carrying out new attempts, the sources added. Hamas has also prevented major factions like the Islamic Jihad from launching attacks, according to the sources.

“Hamas wants a de facto ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and fears that the ceasefire will collapse if militant groups resume attacks against Israeli towns,” the sources added.

Hamas government official Ahmad Yousef confirmed in a recent interview with Ma’an that authorities are actively maintaining a ceasefire.

So, what was more effective in protecting Israeli citizens from incessant and constant Qassam rocket attacks...diplomacy or military action? Even as Goldstone claims that Israel would have been entitled to take military action had it done what he wasn't aware it had done, he has no clue on how it could have been done effectively:

Q: So once deciding to attack, the question gets raised: Is there any way to fight a war against terrorists that would not result in deaths and casualties of civilians, assuming that urban terrorists have located themselves in the midst of the population?
RG: You know, commando actions could have been taken.

This is what happens when you send someone to investigate military actions who knows nothing about the military. Commando actions? Against Qassam rockets?

In the minds of some wishful thinkers, it is possible to have a surgically clean war, where infinite intelligence and infinite technology can pick out the bad guys (only the bad guys who are actually in the process of shooting at you, of course) and not damage any property that belongs to civilians.

Israel, the one nation that spends a higher percentage of its military budget (and solders' time) on protecting enemy civilians than any other nation in history, gets slammed for not doing it better. The fact that no one can come up with any way to actually do it better is apparently not relevant.

Daily Goldstone 10/5

CAMERA finds many problems with the Goldstone Report.

REPORT:	There is no evidence of Palestinian fighters using civilian clothes.
FACT:	Journalists and eyewitnesses repeatedly noted the use of civilian clothes by Hamas fighters.

REPORT:	There is no evidence of armed groups directing civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forcing them to remain in the vicinity of attacks.
FACT:	Palestinian witnesses and video evidence reveal that fighters did direct civilians to areas where attacks were being launched.

REPORT:	There is no evidence that hospitals or ambulances were used for military activities.
FACT:	Eyewitnesses describe Palestinian firing from hospitals and use of ambulances.

REPORT:	The mission could not determine whether mosques were used for military purposes.
FACT:	There is video evidence of weaponry stored in a mosque, and of secondary explosions of mosques consistent with the storage of explosives.

REPORT:	The amount of aid allowed into Gaza by Israel decreased after the end of the fighting.
FACT:	If not false, the assertion is at best disingenuous. The average weekly number of humanitarian shipments increased in the months after the war ended.

TESTIMONY:	The Zeitoun area is pacifist and had no militant groups or rocket fire.
REPORT:	This witness is credible and reliable, and there is no reason to doubt his testimony.
FACT:	There are many documented cases of Palestinian militants being killed in armed clashes in the neighborhood.

TESTIMONY:	The al Fakhoura area was not used to fire at Israel, and no combatants were killed in the Fakhoura incident.
REPORT:	The Report was based in part on three interviews with the Hamas official who made the above claim, and did not cast doubt on his testimony.
FACT:	Palestinian eyewitnesses and Israel note that the area was used to fire at Israel, and that combatants were killed in the Israeli strike.

Lots more, check it out.

It was an "honor" crime

I mentioned last week that an Arab woman had strangled her sleeping 16-year old daughter in Hebron, but I wasn't sure if it was an "honor killing."

It turns out that, the Palestinian Independent Commission of Human Rights has determined that mom did indeed kill her daughter for reasons of "family honor."

The monthly report also mentions that on September 18, a homemade rocket exploded in Rafah, injuring two people.

Other human rights violations include Hamas still refusing to issue proper travel documents to Gazans who would otherwise be able to travel to the West Bank.

Those peaceful Muslim worshippers were planning to riot today in the third holiest site in Islam, as JPost explains:

Jerusalem police explained their decision to allow only worshipers over the age of 50 into the Temple Mount on Monday, revealing that wheelbarrows filled with rocks had been discovered throughout the Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday.

Palestinians filled the wheelbarrows with stones in preparation for riots in the Old City, police assessed. The wheelbarrows, in addition to intelligence information and the call on Palestinian to "come and defend" Al-Aqsa, led the police to restrict entrance to the Temple Mount.

I have yet to see a single Muslim leader ask Palestinian Arabs to respect the sanctity of Al Aqsa by not rioting or throwing rocks at Jews who visit. On the contrary, I have only seen praise for those "defending" the mosque from being defiled by Jews.

UNRWA now says it will teach Holocaust to Gazans

Last month, rumors that UNRWA was planning to teach about the Holocaust in its schools in Gaza was met with strenuous denials by UNRWA chief John Ging. He was quoted in a Palestinian Arab newspaper as saying that "it is not acceptable that Palestinians student are taught the about the Holocaust at a time when Israel is writing off everything related to Palestine in the school curriculum for Palestinian students in Israel" and that "there is no intention to integrate materials and topics that are inconsistent with the desire of Palestinian society."

Today, John Ging is saying something quite different:

The United Nations' refugee agency is planning to include the Holocaust in a new human-rights curriculum for pupils in its Gaza secondary schools despite strident opposition to the idea from within Hamas.

John Ging, the UN Relief and Works Agency's (UNRWA) director of operations in Gaza, told The Independent that he was "confident and determined" that the Holocaust would feature for the first time in a wide-ranging curriculum that is being drafted.
Mr Ging, a passionate advocate for Palestinian civilians in Gaza who has recently faced increasingly personal criticism and even threats by elements in the Islamic faction, added: "No human-rights curriculum is complete without the inclusion of the facts of the Holocaust, and its lessons."

The draft, to be completed within weeks and then put out for consultation with parents and the public, is built on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was agreed by the UN General Assembly in 1948 in the shadow of what it called the "barbarous acts" committed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

What could explain this turnabout? Perhaps it is this:

[Ging] pointed out that the UN General Assembly in 2005 unanimously urged "all countries to teach the lessons of the Holocaust to children so that we learn from history, so that we don't repeat history".

I guess that it would look pretty bad if the UNRWA would blatantly speak out against something the UN supports.

The question is...has anyone seen Ging's comments to Palestine Today? Clearly the reporters at the Independent didn't...

UPDATE: UNRWA's Chris Gunness emailed me that the Palestine Today quote is "totally wrong."

Looks like Ahmadinejew story is not true

From Karmel Melamed at the (LA) Jewish Journal blog:

This reporter and blog were bombarded with e-mails and questions since last night from readers of this blog asking me whether the story published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph’s that Ahmadinejad was born a Jew had any validity. After reading the Telegraph’s original story published yesterday and consulting with a number of local Iranian Jewish scholars with regards to the story’s claims of Ahmadinejad’s supposed Jewish identity, as an Iranian Jewish journalist I cannot verify a single shred of evidence that would suggest this story is accurate in any way. The article lacks any real or credible sources cited that can unequivocally prove that Ahmadinejad had any Jewish roots and it seems as if the story was just leaked to the Telegraph by “reformist” leaders in Iran as a part of a larger smear campaign against the newly “re-elected” hardliner president of Iran.

The article’s authors, Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat claim that “Iranian experts” they consulted with have seen the supposed “Jewish name of Sabourjian –meaning cloth weaver” in a photo of Ahmadinejad’s identity papers from March of 2009. My main problem with this claim about the “Sabourjian” name is that the Iranian Jewish experts, scholars and religious leaders in L.A. I have interviewed today, have never heard of any Jewish family in Iran with such a name. Likewise the handful of English to Farsi dictionaries authored by Solomon Haim (a 20th century Iranian Jewish scholar of Persian language) found at UCLA’s library I have research through today do not identify the word “sabour” as “the name for the Jewish tallit shawl” as both McElroy and Vahdat claim in their article! For that matter, none of the English to Farsi dictionaries I came across even had the word “sabour” nor a definition listed for it! Where these journalists came up with this nonsense about the word “sabour” having a Jewish meaning is beyond me! As an Iranian Jewish journalist fluent in the Persian language for the last 31 years, I have never heard of the word “sabour” uttered by members of my community and the Iranian Jewish community has never used this word as a reference to the Jewish prayer shawl. We Iranian Jews refer to the Jewish prayer shawl by it’s Hebrew name of “seat-seat” (the Hebrew word for the fringes of the prayer shawl) or we use the Hebrew word of “tallit” just like the millions of other Jews living on this planet.

Likewise I also have a problem with McElroy and Vahdat’s supposed expert sources they used in their article who are not even Iranian Jews nor credible scholars with any real familiarity with the subject of Iranian Jewry! The authors of the article list “Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies” in London and some Iranian internet blogger “Mehdi Khazali” as their experts who back the unproven claim that Ahmadinejad was supposedly born a Jew. Both Nourizadeh and Khazali are clearly NOT Jewish and my question as a reader of the article (and not as an Iranian Jewish journalist) is a simple one; why would anyone cite non-Jewish experts unfamiliar with Iranian Jewry as supposed accurate sources on a story about the Jewish origins of a country’s leader? You’d think these journalists would go through some effort to find some sort of a Jewish scholar or expert familiar with Iran to substantiate their claims—but no, McElroy and Vahdat instead rely on Iranian Muslims with no real knowledge of Iranian Jewry to prove their allegations of Ahmadinejad supposed Jewish roots. Therefore the articles authors’ use of these non-Jewish experts who lack any real credibility or knowledge of this topic clearly places the entire accuracy of their overall story on Ahmadinejad into question for me. Iranian Jewish experts I consulted with also said they were unable to read the unclear photo of the Ahmadinejad’s identity papers to properly verify the Telegraph’s story.

Another serious question I have with the accuracy of McElroy and Vahdat’s story is their claim that Ahmadinejad’s alleged Jewish name “is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran’s Ministry of the Interior”. Again I am perplexed at why these seasoned journalists would place any kind of credibility on an official Iranian government document when most experts familiar with the current Iranian regime know very well that any time lists of names are “complied by the Iranian government” they are used by different forces in the regime for nothing more than to attack another official, party or faction in the country. The most classic and detrimental way Iranian government officials have attacked one another is to claim that the “such and such official was born a Jew, or was once a Jew who converted to Islam, or his family was Jewish a generation ago and then converted”. The “Jewish identity label” is your classic textbook example of anti-Semitism at its prime that is thrown around as a type of public insult or verbal assault officials in Iran and in most Islamic nations used against one another in smear campaigns. The Iranian Jewish experts I interviewed this morning in L.A. informed me that for one Iranian government official to call or accuse another government official of being Jewish is the equivalent to individuals or groups in the U.S. to accuse an elected official in America of being a child molester or pedophiliac! This is the sad and unfortunately reality that being a Jew in Iran has a very derogatory meaning.

The negative connotation of claiming that someone Muslim in Iran is Jewish or has Jewish roots brings me to my final analysis of the true origins of this entire Ahmadinejad-Jewish story. Iran experts here in L.A. I recently interviewed said that even before Ahmadinejad, various “reformist” leaders during the “open era” of the past Iranian President Mohammad Khatami during the 1990s and early 2000s were using “Jewishness” as a verbal assault against other rival officials they hated or against other Iranian officials who presumably had Jewish blood. Frank Nikbakht, an L.A.-based Iranian Jewish activist and director of the Committee for Minority Rights in Iran, said the accusations Iranian officials make of each other being Jewish is nothing new for Iran’s current regime. “I remember in early 2000 when members of Khatami’s reformist party in Iran accused one of their hardliner rivals, a man named Habibollah Ashkaroladi Mosalman, of having Jewish roots,” said Nikbakht in a telephone interview today. “What we are seeing today with this story of Ahmadinejad being supposedly Jewish is the same smear tactics the reformists have used in the past against their hardliner opponents”. It seems as if even the supposed “reformists” in Iran, who Obama administration officials and other Western leaders have long hail as being supposedly “open-minded”, are also now showing their true anti-Semitic tendencies by vilifying Ahmadinejad with disgusting anti-Semitic rhetoric! Why else would Ahmadinejad be such an evil and horrible dictator trying to take over the world and kill people? He must no doubt be a Jew. Sounds like garbage you might read in the classic anti-Semitic book the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”! (By the way, the Persian language copies of the Protocols have long been best sellers in Iran with more than 400 pages added to the original Russian version published in the 1880s).

As an journalist I am shocked at the lack of accurate reporting and very poor journalism in McElroy and Vahdat’s story regarding Ahmadinejad in this instance. Shame on the Daily Telegraph’s editors for publishing such inaccurate claims with no real experts familiar with Iranian Jewry cited. The reporters and editors at this paper are either completely brainless or stooges and mouth-pieces for “reformists” officials in Iran who have begun this smear campaign against Ahmadinejad. It’s poor journalism like this story that fan the fires of anti-Semitism and hate around the world. Readers and bloggers worldwide should condemn this story published by the Telegraph, call for McElroy and Vahdat’s resignation and write letters to the newspaper about their poor journalism in this instance.

Lastly, even if this story is true (which I highly doubt) it is well known in Iran that those who have converted to Islam over the years have done so because of different family disputes including inheritance rights. According to Iran’s radical Shiite Islamic laws, new converts to Islam who came from a non-Muslim family, can automatically inherit all of their dead non-Muslim relative’s assets without the need to go to probate court and their non-Muslim family members are entitled to none of the inheritances. These new Muslim converts from Judaism (also known as “jadid-ol-eslam” or new to Islam) today and in the past have typically been the most anti-Semitic of Muslims living in Iran.

Were journalists always this lazy?

(h/t ahoova)

Latest Haveil Havalim

Even though I never remember to nominate myself to be included in the weekly Jewish/Israeli blog carnival Haveil Havalim, somehow I sometimes find myself included anyway.

Here's the Sukkot edition; illustrated with the coolest Sukkah around. Enjoy!

Happy PalArab bigamist with Jewish wife?

From Al-Arabiya:

Marriage is complicated enough with just one wife so add to the mix a second and things get even more complicated; but what if one wife is Jewish and the other an Arab, for one Palestinian man this rare marital arrangement is nothing but bliss.

Forty-year-old, Sami Abou-Sebaa says despite the obvious political and religious differences he and his two wives and their children all live in the same house with no problems.
Abou-Sebaa, who sells used clothes and electrical appliances, says everyone likes his Jewish wife, Lenor, who is also his business partner.

The couple own two cars, one with a Palestinian license plate and the other with an Israeli license plate.

“We use the Israeli one to go to Israel and bring the goods we need for our trade,” Lenor told Al Arabiya.

Although Lenor lives peacefully with her husband's Arab wife, she still faces problems with the Palestinian community around her.

“Many are afraid of talking to me although and I am the type that prefers dealing informally with people,” she said.

But in all seriousness both Abou-Sebaa and Leonor insist they will never allow their children to join the Israeli army.

“In the future, my children will throw stones at the Israeli occupation forces. Blood ties and the bond with the land are stronger than anything else,” Abou-Sebaa said.

This story might be true - there are unfortunately some Israeli Jewish women with incredibly low self-esteem who would go for such an arrangement.

It is curious, though, that the news story doesn't mention her maiden name, where she is from, or what town they live in. Similarly, why didn't the reporter ask Lenor/Leonor if she agrees with her husband as to the future aspirations of their kids?

Besides the obvious, something here ain't quite kosher.