Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 16, 2009

Guess who is building a wall now?

From AKNews (h/t sshender):

A senior Kurdish official confirms Iran’s start on the building of a wall separating the Islamic Republic with Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, meant to prevent separatists from crossing the mountainous border.

According to the official, the Iranians already started with building the wall. “The Iranian government has already built more than 5 km of the wall, near the Iraqi-Kurdish border town of Haji Omaran, in Erbil Province,” reveals Brigadier General Jabbar Yawar, the Spokesman for the Kurdistan Guards (Peshmarga) Command, to Kurdistan News Agency (AKnews).

Earlier this week, the Arabic Al-Arabiya website reported that Iran is planning to build a wall on its lands alongside the Kurdish Region of Iraq, extending 506 km.

Iran has been concentrating on building a concrete wall on its border with Iraqi Kurdistan for a long time. The wall is aimed at controlling its borders, as well as preventing the infiltration and cross-border attacks from the The Party of Free Life of Iranian Kurdistan (PEJAK) fighters into the country.

Apartheid! Walls are against peace! Artificial separation!

And it is not even a fence, but a real wall. Just like Berlin!

Another human rights organization attacked in Gaza

Over the past month, Hamas briefly shut down a human rights organization in Gaza, shut down a meeting on behalf of the International Federation of Journalists, attacked a news agency, stole construction materials, prevented kids from getting medical treatment, stopped a soccer player from leaving Gaza, attacked a charity organization (and a wedding,) and took over the Gaza Dental Association.

In general, Hamas has been very confident that it could throw its weight around in the wake of being let off pretty much scot-free in the Goldstone Report.

Well, we can probably add this incident to the list. While Hamas didn't take credit for this raid, they are the most obvious perpetrators - since they are the ones who stand to lose the most by independent human rights groups operating freely in Gaza.

On Sunday morning, 15 November 2009, offices of the al-Dameer Association for Human Rights were burgled by unknown persons who stole computers, and electronic files. According to a statement issued by al-Dameer on Sunday, its offices were raided and some of its contents were seized in a manner that raises doubts as to the nature and motivation of the offence, it is not believed that this was a straightforward case of burglary. Al-Dameer staff members, according to the official statement, were surprised that one of the doors into the office was opened. When they started to check their offices and computers they discovered that the offices were searched and documents were checked. They also found that computers had been operated and navigated, the memory of a digital camera documenting al-Dameer's activities was cleaned, and two out of 10 computers were taken.

First Israeli and first Orthodox Jewish boxing champion

From Ha'aretz:

Yuri Foreman late Saturday night became the first Israeli to claim a professional boxing crown when he defeated Daniel Santos of Puerto Rico to take the WBA junior middleweight (under-70 kilogram) title on points.

Foreman, a Belarus-born Israeli who has lived in Brooklyn for 10 years and is studying to be an Orthodox rabbi, won the 12-round bout by unanimous decision - 116-110, 117-109 and 117-10.

Foreman told his father how he prayed and said Psalms until he had his rival on the ropes, losing his balance. "I saw him wobbling," he said. "I knew another blow or two and I would send him to the floor and win with a knockout, but then the bell sounded, ending the round and saving him."

Foreman is a rare combination of power and smarts. He comes from a poor family that immigrated to Israel after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His father works in Haifa as a mechanic, but Yuri moved to New York nearly a decade ago. A few years later, he began studying in a Brooklyn yeshiva to become an ordained Orthodox rabbi.

He has a very strict schedule, studying Torah in the morning and doing intense physical training both inside and out of the ring in the afternoon. He does a lot of weight lifting, running and fitness training.

The transplanted Brooklynite took a 27-0 record into the title fight, while Santos boasted a record of 32 wins - 23 by knockout, three losses and one draw. Going into the fight, Santos was considered a boxer with vision, power and great stamina.

"It's a fact we had 12 tough rounds, but thank God every time I got back into the ring for more I said prayers in my heart, and it worked," he said after the fight. "If you ask me what my strength is, I'll tell you it's in my brain. I run around the ring and keep thinking. I think I need to prove to everyone, not just myself, to the whole world that Jews know how to fight, that Jews know how to give a good fight and not surrender. I said it right after the fight, when they pushed the microphones at me and the cameras clicked. I said I wanted to prove that Jews are not a weak people that can be made to bend down and surrender, that Jews know how to fight and win. Actually, there are a lot of Jewish champions in the history of sports."

Algerian and Egyptian soccer fans turn violent

From the Daily News Egypt:

A roar of delight erupted here Saturday as Egypt beat Algeria, setting up a World Cup play-off with their bitter rivals after a tense encounter just days after a violent attack on the visiting team's bus.
However, 32 people, including 20 Algerians, were injured in clashes in and around Cairo after the match, the health ministry said on Sunday.
Ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman Shahin, quoted by Egypt's state news agency MENA, said 12 Egyptians and 20 Algerians were injured in central Cairo and in Giza, near the capital, on Saturday night.
Twenty-nine of them have been discharged while the three others are in "stable condition," said Shahin.
Trouble flared after the game when a group of Egyptian fans stoned buses ferrying Algerian fans away from the stadium, an AFP journalist said. Three Algerian players were injured when stones were also hurled at their bus.

Today, the Algerian fans took revenge:

Thousands of Algerians held a spontaneous rally Sunday in the capital Algiers in support of their national football team, which degenerated into attacks on Egyptian businesses.

But it later descended into violence when fans broke through the metal shutters to smash the window and ransack the offices of EgyptAir, an AFP journalist said.

The offices of mobile telephone company Djeezy, part of the Egyptian telecommunications group Orascom, was also ransacked, the website of al-Watan daily reported.

The company also said one of its employees was assaulted at Algiers airport.

Which just goes to prove that the root of all Middle East violence is Israel.

UPDATE: An Egyptian man asked his parents for $9 to buy an Egyptian flag so he could celebrate Egypt's victory. They refused. So he burned down their house.

Also, there was rioting in France after the match, causing much damage.

Bill Clinton storms the Temple Mount

From Ma'an:

Former US President Bill Clinton visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock on Sunday, sources said.

The visit surprised officials, however, as neither media nor the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Endowments were informed in advance.

"It seems it was a special visit," said Jerusalem endowments director Azzam Al-Khatib.

Israeli forces suddenly imposed a number of strict security measures, and then half an hour later, Clinton entered from the Moroccan Gate, Al-Khatib added.

The US Consulate opted not to inform officials of the visit ahead of time as they usually do, he said.

A spokeswoman for the consulate told Ma'an that Clinton's visit to Jerusalem was personal and thus not coordinated with the Americans.

When Jews visit the Temple Mount, the Palestinian Arab media routinely regard it as "storming" or "raiding" or even "raping." And the Jews are usually called "extremist settlers."

Anti-semitic hate crimes soar in California

From AP:

The California Attorney General's office says that more gay and Jewish people were the victims of hate crimes last year even though the overall number of bias-related crimes declined slightly.

A report released Friday showed that in 2008 there were 1,397 crimes motivated by racial, religious and other forms of bias, a 2% drop from a year earlier.

More than half were based on a victim's race or ethnicity and of these, the vast majority were directed against black people.

Hate crimes based on religious bias were the second most common.

In 2008, there were 184 assaults, threats, and other crimes directed at Jews, a 37% increase from the year before.

Here is a breakdown of the reported anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes in California over the past four years based on the annual reports from California's Attorney General:

	Total anti-Religious	Anti-Jewish	Anti-Muslim
2005	205	141	12
2006	205	129	14
2007	203	134	13
2008	294	184	11

And graphically:

The ratio of anti-Jewish to anti-Muslim hate crimes increased from 10:1 to nearly 17:1 over the past year. While anti-Muslim hate crimes decreased by 15%, anti-semitic hate crime increased 37%.

And if you think that the reason that there are so few anti-Muslim hate crimes is because there are so many fewer Muslims, think again. There are about a million Muslims in California, and about 1.2 million Jews.

In other words, anti-semitism is increasing at alarming rates in what is regarded as the nation's most liberal state, and "Islamophobia" is virtually non-existent. Just like it is in New York.

A post I wish I'd written

From the Treppenwitz blog:

Let's look at a recent statement Bill Clinton made in an interview regarding the middle east peace process to see if we can spot anything that fits the definition of fallacy:

"...[not] a single week's gone by [since Yitzhak Rabin's assassination] in which I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East."

In his last speech to the Knesset before his assassination (presumably his last verifiable policy statement), Rabin categorically rejected the idea of a full fledged Palestinian State... rejected the idea of dividing Jerusalem... and rejected the idea of Israel returning to the pre-Six Day War borders.

But don't take my word for it... here is the quote directly from the Israeli Government's web site (with my emphasis in bold):

"We view the permanent solution in the framework of [the] State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:

A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma'ale Adumim and Givat Ze'ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.

B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.

C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the "Green Line," prior to the Six Day War.

D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif."

[emphasis mine]

If I had read that speech without knowing who spoke the words, I would have to guess Benjamin Netanyahu or Maybe Ariel Sharon (pre-disengagement). But this was Yitzhak Rabin at the height of his push for peace!

Rabin is often being remembered as a dove like Peres or Livni, and it simply was not true.

Read the whole thing.

Notable

Barry Rubin:

How do we know that the attack at Fort Hood was an act of Islamist terrorism? Simple, Major Nidal Hassan told us so. You’ve seen reports of a long list of things he did and said along these lines. But what’s most amazing of all is this: Hassan is the first terrorist in history to give an academic lecture explaining why he was about to attack.

Media Backspin 15Nov09:

Tomorrow night, UK viewers will be treated to what Channel 4's "Dispatches" program bills as Inside Britain's Israel Lobby.
Here are three reasons why HonestReporting's expecting the worst.

Israellycool:

Rutgers University has voted to sponsor the University Chapter of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) for its semi-annual Meal Sign-Away program. While the PCRF now makes a point of stating it’s adherence to the US Treasury Anti Terrorist Financing Guidelines, terrorism seems to be a recurring theme with the PCRF and it’s personnel. According to this site (but provided with supporting links from other sites I found), there are many troubling links between PCRF personnel and terrorism...

Speaking of Rutgers, Professor Richard Landes of The Augean Stables blog will be speaking there this week.

Daily Goldstone 11/15

From the Washington Post:

IN ORDER to eliminate the Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, the United States launched at least 15 missile strikes in Pakistan this year and killed, besides Mr. Mehsud, somewhere between 200 and 300 people, according to a study by the New America Foundation. At least a quarter of those who died were civilians.

Was that toll "disproportionate" to the threat posed by a single terrorist and therefore a war crime? How about the recent NATO bombing of hijacked fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan, in which a mix of 80 to 120 Taliban militants and civilians died? Justified strike, accident or war crime?

This is the sort of fraught question that the United Nations and its Human Rights Council, in theory, ought to be focused on. Asymmetrical wars, in which terrorists and insurgents deliberately mix among civilians, are the story of the 21st century so far -- and there are no clear norms for managing the moral dilemmas they pose. Can a drone's targeter knowingly expose civilians to injury if a terrorist leader is in range? How should a civilized army respond when its soldiers are mortared, or its own civilians exposed to rocket fire, from a position inside a schoolyard?

A commission appointed by the Human Rights Council to investigate Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza last winter could have set an example of serious treatment of such issues. Headed by the respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone, the panel altered the one-sided mandate it received, so as to examine abuses by both Israel and Hamas during the three-week conflict.

But Israel refused to cooperate -- and the Goldstone commission proceeded to make a mockery of impartiality with its judgment of facts. It concluded, on scant evidence, that "disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy" by Israel. At the same time it pronounced itself unable to confirm that Hamas hid its fighters among civilians, used human shields, fired mortars and rockets from outside schools, stored weapons in mosques, and used a hospital for its headquarters, despite abundant available evidence.

By pretending it did not know whether Hamas employed such tactics and by claiming that Israel's actions were driven by a motivation to kill civilians on purpose, rather than to defeat Hamas, the panel dodged the hard issues it should have tackled. It did not seriously attempt to balance civilian deaths against the threats Israel was targeting or to understand the real motivations for the destruction in areas from which rockets were launched at Israeli cities.

As it happens, Israel is ahead of most other nations in managing these issues. In Gaza its forces used thousands of e-mails, phone calls and even non-lethal explosives to warn civilians away from airstrike targets. Its army's criminal division is investigating 45 complaints of abuses.

A broader, government-sanctioned independent investigation is called for: a number of specific allegations in the Goldstone report, one-sided though they are, deserve a full answer. Not just Israel but the United States and many other nations ought to face more pressure to justify the means they use to fight insurgents and terrorists. Sadly, the only thing proved by the Goldstone commission is that the United Nations is incapable of performing that service.

Followup: NTNU votes against boycott

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) decided against supporting a boycott of Israei academic institutions, as it was considering.

As CAMERA reports:

The board of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) unanimously voted to reject a proposal by staff members to boycott Israel. The Board stressed the need to maintain open communication between scientists at NTNU and those at academic institutions in Israel. This comes after a counterpetition of professors at the same university (which drew three times as many signatories as did the original boycott proposal ) and an international counter-boycott petition (which drew over 3,500 signatories — i.e. more than 1.000 times as many as the original proposal) became public.

One win for the good guys.

Of course, this always puts advocates for Israel in a defensive mode. And it wouldn't do to push for academic boycotts of other countries because the entire idea of an academic boycott is bad. So the only real offense would be to strengthen ties between world universities and Israeli universities, as NTNU already has ties to Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.

I'm part of the anti-NGO conspiracy!

The Guardian reports on HRW's whining about being criticized by people like me:

America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza. Iain Levine, HRW's programme director, said that while the organisation had long attracted criticism, in recent months there had been significant attempts to intimidate and discredit it. "I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organised campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be co-ordinated attacks ... from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," he said."We are having to spend a lot of time repudiating the lies, the falsehoods, the misinformation."

Isn't it a shame that HRW has to spend time defending its positions rather than being believed uncritically? All together now....Awwww! Although I was tragically not mentioned by name, I am an integral part of the nefarious anti-NGO conspiracy. After all, I was the one who noticed Marc Garlasco's interesting hobby of collecting Nazi memorabilia, information that I shared with other bloggers in an illegal secret Zionist underground information channel known as "email." I didn't have the time to exhaustively research it all, and Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric took the story and ran with it (with my full support.) My later contributions to the story included the sock-puppets that HRW sent out to defend themselves and the picture of Garlasco wearing the Iron Cross sweatshirt (which I believe someone else found first and alerted me to.) [And now Omri has a radio show, where such information can be shared with even more people! See how deep our Zio-connections are?] Notably, even then the Guardian quoted HRW implying some sort of blog conspiracy when the story broke. One has to wonder if, say, HRW and Amnesty and the UNHRC and the PCHR and Al Mezan and Al Addameer share information with each other - and whether this is a terrible conspiracy as well? (The answer to the first question is, of course, "yes.") The difference is that the NGOs have multi-million dollar budgets, and will often repeat the claims of other NGOs - even clearly biased ones - without any of their own fact checking. For example, Al Addameer's absurd claim of 750,000 Palestinian Arab prisoners since 1967 has been accepted as fact. Would HRW say that this story is above criticism as well? In interests of full disclosure, a Zio Blog conspiracy member list has been published. You can see us in the About Us page on the Understanding the Goldstone Report site. It includes NGO Monitor, CAMERA and Honest Reporting as well as some well-known writers and bloggers. We share information and build on other posts and articles. We do this precisely because it is more effective and focused. In fact, I'm going to now link to another, far more detailed critique of the Guardian article, from Richard Landes and Augean Stables. See how we all conspire together? Booga booga!

Today's PalArab news 11/14/09

Sheikh Salah continues his daily warnings about Jewish ambitions on Al Aqsa, this time saying that a series of "Talmudic" parks will be built around the Temple Mount. Will there be a Rabbi Akiva ride?

Sunday is "Palestine Independence Day!" Yes, the ancient state was declared in 1988, and no one really noticed. Mahmoud Abbas made a speech to mark the occasion, and Hamas relented from its earlier threat to ignore the day and keep schools open.

Meanwhile, Saeb Erekat is threatening to declare independence again, by bringing it to a UN vote. UPI seems to mistranslate the Al Ayyam interview with him, changing his words from "a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital" to "a state that would include all Palestinian areas held prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and that had East Jerusalem as its capital," which is certainly not true. (h/t My Right Word)

The Arab love for Guinness (world records, not the ale) continues, with the world's largest embroidered dress being created in Hebron.

Der Speigel is saying that a Shalit deal is coming Real Soon Now.

Looks like another UNRWA workers' strike is coming this Tuesday in Gaza and the West Bank.

Firas Press has an unusual article about Israeli Muslims in the IDF and how they are proud to serve their country. The author is astonished, especially since all Muslim IDF soldiers are volunteers. The commenters aren't happy.

Early sundown open thread

Fridays sure get hectic after the clocks change.

Here's a spot to relax this Sabbath!

Those "Gaza authorities"

As I have mentioned previously, the Goldstone Report doesn't condemn Hamas, and instead often refers to the "Gaza authorities" as if they were a legitimate government that is separate from "Palestinian armed groups" who shoot the rockets to Israel.

Since the "Gaza authorities" cannot control the "armed groups," in Goldstone's imagination, they cannot be held responsible for the actions of the "armed groups."

Both the "Gaza authorities" and the "armed groups" answer to the name Hamas, but that little detail just doesn't seem to be on Goldstone's radar.

Anyway, today the respected "Gaza authorities" decided that they needed some construction materials, no doubt to rebuild their "civilian infrastructure" and not to work on bunkers.

So they went to the local dealer, along with their police, and beat up the owners of the company that sells these materials. They also shot some bullets in the air, no doubt to ensure that the salespeople would treat them politely. They then proceeded to take what they wanted.

These are the people who Goldstone is asking politely to perform a proper, transparent investigation into possible war crimes.

Top ten reasons to dress as a woman in Saudi Arabia

From Arab News:

Police in this northern city arrested an academic of Arab nationality working in an engineering college for hiding under an abaya, making people think he was really a “she.” According to a recent report in Asharq Al-Awsat, the cross-dressing professor was caught because despite being covered from head to toe he didn’t manage to replicate a woman’s “demeanor,” according to a Saudi shopper who informed the authorities of this clandestine man. Police are unsure of the motive for the professor’s disguise.

Top ten reasons a man might want to dress as a woman in Saudi Arabia:

10. Sheer jealousy at how well Saudi women are treated
9. Wants to hang out at the mall
8. Wanting to catch a glimpse of some serious ankle in the rest room
7. Hoping to get picked up by a handsome man
6. Those abayas are just so cute!
5. Hates driving
4. Embarrassed while practicing ululating
3. Undercover Muttawa agent
2. Wants to sweet talk professors into getting a higher grade
1. Really bad case of acne