Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 23, 2009

Work accident!

Hamas' Al Qassam website reports that two commanders were killed in an explosion while performing a "jihad mission" in eastern Gaza.

Palestine Press Agency mentions a huge explosion that also wounded four. One of the commenters who says he witnessed the blast said that one of the bodies was hurled 200 meters from the blast, headless.

A toast to "martyrs" who turn to toast!

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is at 215.

Israel offered to mediate between Egypt and Algeria?

From Al-Arabiya:

The Arab League is currently mulling several proposals after it was forced to step in, rebuffing a provocative Israeli offer, to end a bitter tit-for-tat spat between Egypt and Algeria following their 2010 World Cup qualifier playoff match in Sudan.

An Arab League spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that since the tension has been rising Secretary General Amr Moussa h+as been receiving several phone calls from member states calling on the league to solve the crisis.

Arab initiatives to solve the problem intensified in the wake of a provocative statement made by Israel in which it offered to mediate between Egypt and Algeria.

Did Israel really offer to mediate between Egypt and Algeria? The idea is preposterous, as Israel and Algeria do not have any diplomatic relations themselves. Not to mention that Egypt and Algeria would probably prefer all-out war to the indignity of being counseled by Israel.

My guess is that some Israeli pundit or politician made that suggestion as a joke to tweak the Arabs on their internal international football crisis, and that the super-sensitive Arab League took it as a real offer, one which would of course cause add to the embarrassment they feel for the actual kerfuffle itself.

This brings up an entirely new avenue for world diplomacy: whenever Westerners have a problem with an Arab country, or when Arabs have their own internal disputes, the UN should threaten to send Israeli mediators to resolve the issues. They can justify it by saying that Jewish lawyers are well-known to be sly and smart. The thought is so scary to Arabs that they would redouble their efforts to solve their problems peacefully.

Let's try it with the Saudis and the Houthis!

A "metal foundry" in Gaza

On Saturday night, Israel struck a number of targets in Gaza in retaliation for a rocket attack. Wire services described the target in Jabalya as "a metal foundry" which Israel claimed was a weapons factory.

Pictures from Palestine Today might shed light on the matter. First they show the usual staged pictures of dejected people sitting in the rubble for no reason except to look dejected for the photographer:

That wasn't sad enough, so the photographer had to move to a new angle and repose his subject:

Then we get to the inside of the poor, destroyed metal foundry.

Hold on...what is that poster above the door?

Sure looks like a "martyr" poster, complete with a photo of heroic fighters aiming their guns from the top of a building!

Just the sort of decoration one would expect in a regular metal foundry!

I'd say that Israeli intelligence did a fine job in this case.

Hamas rocket deal a myth

As I reported yesterday, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP denied that they signed onto any Hamas deal to stop rocket attacks into Israel.

Palestine Press Agency reports that the DFLP and Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades have also said that they have not agreed to any deal that stops them from firing rockets towards Israel.

The Hamas Al Qassam website itself is also strenuously denying that any such agreement was made, quoting Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida as saying that no such deal is in the works in context of a rumored prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit, that rocket fire is a "strong card" in the hands of the Palestinian Arab people that Hamas will not give up, and that the Al Qassam Brigades does not make any official statements that are not mentioned on its website.

Media outlets around the world jumped on this story: The Guardian, the Times of London, al-Arabiya, AFP.

The original story seems to have come from the Xinhua news agency, quoting Hamas' interior minister Fathi Hammad.

Insomnia open thread - TV spinoff edition

I woke up wondering what American prime-time scripted TV show was the most successful in history, if you include not only the number of seasons it ran but also the number of seasons its spinoffs ran.

My initial guess was Law and Order, but I figured that someone on the Internet must have done the research already.

So far, I have not found it.

Looking at the Wikipedia entry for TV spinoffs, which includes many non-American and non-prime time shows, my guess may be right, but I didn't go through the entire list. Also I am counting partial seasons as whole. To be accurate, the list should really be of the number of episodes.

Notable ones (I am including spin offs of spin offs as well, and my counts might be off):

Law and Order: 42 seasons (not including non-US spinoffs)
All in the Family: 38 seasons (lots of aborted spin-offs, not sure how long they lasted)
Love, American Style : 34 seasons (includes Happy Days)
Dallas: 27 seasons
CSI: 24 seasons

UPDATE: Jonah mentions Star Trek, for which I count 28 seasons. (He says 30, but I find it easiest to just use Wikipedia's dates for the series' beginning and end.)

Saudi envoys walks out of terror conference

From The Hindu:

The former Union Law Minister and senior lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, caused a flutter at an international conference on terrorism here on Saturday by alleging that Wahabism was responsible for terrorism, provoking a walkout by Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to India Faisal-al-Trad.
In his address, Mr. Jethmalani, who is president of the All-India Senior Advocates Association, said: “Unfortunately in the 17th century, they produced an evil man in Saudi Arabia by the name of Wahab, who was concerned about the decline of the Muslim world, but he hit upon a wrong remedy.”

He alleged that the Wahabi terrorism instilled rubbish in the minds of young people to carry out terrorist attacks. When he said “India had friendly relations with a country that supported Wahabi terrorism,” Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador Faisal-al-Trad was seen walking out of the conference held at Vigyan Bhavan.

Adish C. Aggarwala, chairman, All-India Bar Association and joint organiser of the conference, said the Ambassador returned after Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily clarified that Mr. Jethmalani’s views were not those of the government.

Interestingly, Mr. Jethmalani also said this:

“It was unfortunate that entire Islam as a religion was being blamed for terrorism. There are also Hindu terrorists and Buddhist terrorists.” He said he was a student of all religions, including Islam, and had the highest respect for the Prophet, who he said was a man of peace.

So he didn't insult Islam, just Wahhabism.

Zionist human rights activist barred from UN

From Fox News:

The United Nations detained an outspoken critic and booted her from its New York headquarters in what the woman, a human rights watchdog, is calling an effort to silence her opposition to the world body.

Anne Bayefsky claims that as retaliation for giving a two-minute impromptu speech defending Israel, her 25-year career of monitoring the U.N. is now in jeopardy — likely to be placed in the hands of a committee chaired by the genocidal regime in Sudan.

Bayefsky gets special access to U.N. meetings in her capacity as the director of a non-governmental organization, the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at New York's Touro College.

But the longtime U.N. observer has found herself in what she calls a "Kafkaesque" gray zone, where the U.N. confiscated her credentials, then denied to reporters that her access had been blocked.

"This is no accident," she told FoxNews.com, arguing that she is being denied access to vital meetings concerning her prime focus: defending Israel. "This is keeping [the U.N.'s] major critic absent during the heart of the year."

Following a vote Nov. 5 at the U.N. General Assembly, a microphone was set up outside the UNGA chamber for delegates to tout their endorsement of the controversial Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes during its invasion of Gaza last winter.
Without an invitation, Bayefsky approached the empty podium to offer what she thought would be a counter-balance to speeches from the Libyan president of the UNGA and the Palestinian observer, who both supported the resolution.

"I didn't expect that there would be a problem at all," said Bayefsky, who noted that she and other NGOs have spoken there in the past without incident. (Archived U.N. video shows an official from the NGO Human Rights Watch speaking in praise of the U.N. at the same podium in May 2007.)

Bayefsky blasted the Goldstone Report and called the U.N. a "laughingstock" for singling out Israel and ignoring human rights violations committed by the terrorist organization Hamas against Israeli and Palestinian civilians during the three-week campaign in December and January.

"This is a resolution that purports to be evenhanded; it is anything but," she said of the document approved by the UNGA. "It is a travesty — it calls for accountability, and in fact what we see instead is impunity for the Palestinian side."

Soon after she finished speaking, Bayefsky was swarmed by four U.N. security guards, who brought her to their security office, confiscated her NGO pass and kicked her out of the building, she said.

But the U.N. told reporters a different story at a press conference Tuesday — claiming that there has been no change in status for Bayefsky, even as she continues to sit in limbo.

After this article was printed on Wednesday, the UN then admitted that it did revoke her pass, and said that the reason was because she misused it by allegedly lending it to someone else. I guess that the fact that they happened to kick her out of the building right when she was giving a speech criticizing the UN was simply an amazing coincidence.

More from WSJ:

Yet the U.N. continues to bar Ms. Bayefsky from the premises, despite calls on her behalf by the U.S. mission and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Best-case scenario, one U.N. insider tells us, is that "they'll put her on probation." We hear the U.N.'s NGO accreditation committee, chaired by Sudan, will likely make the final decision.

The full details, including text of the UN denials and then reversal can be seen at Inner City Press, which has followed this story from the beginning and concludes that "The UN likes to expel its critics, then deny doing so."

Did Gaza terror groups agree to stop rockets?

Al Arabiya, AFP and others have reported that Hamas announced that it reached an agreement with other armed groups in Gaza to stop rocket attacks on Israel:

"The agreement between (Ezzedine) Al-Qassam (Brigades) and other factions to stop rocket (fire) is not a sign of weakness," the group said in a statement.
The agreement is "aimed at keeping together the internal front and the supreme national interest of the Palestinian people."
It warned, however, that the groups would respond in the case of Israeli strikes on the territory.
"Al-Qassam Brigades will not stand idly by in case of a Zionist escalation and will defend ourselves with all our force."

The Al-Qassam website, which publishes all of the Al Qassam Brigades press releases, has nothing on this purported agreement.

Not only that, but Islamic Jihad and the PFLP have both denied that any such agreement took place, according to Palestine Press Agency.

At least 4 Qassams have been fired at Israel this month.

Book review: "Fromms: How Julius Fromm's Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis"

(I was sent this book for review.)

Julius Fromm was Germany's condom king between the two world wars. He innovated the manufacture and quality control of the product and became fabulously successful.

But, he was Jewish.

The book, "Fromms: How Julius Fromm's Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis" is an English translation of a book published two years ago in Germany. It is a quick read, less than 200 pages of actual text. Even at this short length, it feels as if the authors padded it as much as they could.

It is a story of an eastern European Jewish family, headed by a brilliant businessman, who tried to assimilate into German society and failed.

It is difficult to know what the aim of the book is. In the beginning, it is a description of the burgeoning sexualization of Germany in the 1920s; it then turns into a short biography of Julius Fromm and how he built his business, and then finally into a relatively detailed review of how his business was systematically dismantled by the Nazis (and, to an extent, by the Germans and Russians after the war, refusing to compensate the family.)

This last part is the most interesting. Fromm was forced to sell the company to Herman Göring's godmother at a fraction of its value in 1938. It also describes the "Jew auctions" that would be held regularly in Berlin to sell off the possessions of the expelled, the doomed and the dead. The finest objects would be confiscated by the Nazi elite; only the second and third tier possessions made it to these auctions, and a majority of Berliners took advantage of them.

Another interesting chapter deals with one of Fromm's brothers who was shipped to Australia from England on the Dunera along with many other Jewish refugees and prisoners of war.

Julius Fromm himself managed to escape Germany before the war with most of his family and a small part of his fortune. Although he died only days after the war ended, reportedly of excitement at the chance to start his business anew, it is hard to feel empathy for him as he rode out the war in relative luxury in England.

For serious Holocaust historians, the book adds a bit of detail that has been so far unexplored about the fate of Jewish-owned businesses before, during and after the war. Otherwise, the main parts of the book can be gleaned from the Wikipedia article on Fromm.

German leftists scream "Jewish pigs!"

From JPost:

Prominent French Jewish filmmaker Claude Lanzmann expressed "shock" last week that German leftists in Hamburg had violently prevented the showing of his debut documentary film, Why Israel, about the role of the Jewish state as a homeland for refugees.

In late October, the 1973-produced film was scheduled to be shown at the B-Movie cinema, but roughly 50 left-wing activists from diverse anti-Israel groups affiliated with the anti-Zionist International Center B5 barred visitors from entering the movie house.

In Why Israel, Lanzmann - perhaps best known for his groundbreaking documentary Shoah - depicts Israelis who found refuge in Israel after the Holocaust.

The movie house said in a statement that it had been compelled to cancel the film screening and a podium discussion because "we were threatened with violence."

According to eyewitness reports in the German media, left-wing protesters ranging in age from 16 to 70 shouted "Jewish pigs" and "faggots" to the cinema attendees. A pro-Israel left-of-center group, Kritikmaximierung, cosponsored the showing of the film.

Werner Pomrehn, a radio host for the Hamburg-based station FSK, told the The Jerusalem Post on Friday that an anti-Israel activist had struck him in the face at the screening event. Asked about the International Center B5 demonstrators, Pomrehn, who reports on anti-Semitism in Hamburg, termed the group the "Pol-Pot Left."

This happened last month, and it took three weeks for Der Spiegel to report it.

The organizers plan to try to show the film again in December.

Saturday night open thread

Not in the mood to post, so I leave it to you to find interesting items to share.

Iran admits ties to anti-semitism

From the Tehran Times:

French actor and political activist Dieudonné M’bala M’bala met with Deputy Culture Minister for Cinematic Affairs Javad Shamaqdari here on Thursday.

Dieudonné M’bala M’bala was a jury member of the 26th edition of Tehran International Short Film Festival which concluded here last Monday.

They both held talks in Shamaqdari’s office and both agreed to make a joint production with the French actor. The project centers on a storyline that takes place during the reign of King Louis XIV of France and treats the issue of the African slave trade in France.

Dieudonné is famous for his anti-Zionist attitudes. He is also the owner of the Théâtre de la Main d’Or in Paris, which is used for both stand-up comedy and political events by himself and friends and colleagues such as the militant anti-Semitic “Tribu Ka”.

Dieudonné has been convicted multiple times in French courts of anti-semitic remarks.

Tribu Ka is proudly anti-semitic as well.

So Iran, which loudly claims not to be anti-semitic, proudly hosts anti-semites, and even mentions the fact that they are anti-semitic on their government-run news sites!

"Moderate" Fatah showing their peaceful side

From Daylife/AP:

Palestinian supporters of the Fatah movement loyal to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a march in the west bank city of Nablus. Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009.

The "moderate" PA pretended to outlaw public displays of weapons in 2005 outside of their security forces. Apparently, that doesn't apply to Fatah.

These sorts of organized rallies, together with Mahmoud Abbas' latest statements, all indicate a conscious decision on the Palestinian Arab side to abandon negotiations with Israel and to move towards the more traditional Arab model of diplomacy via threats and intimidation.

Good news Friday: Israeli breakthrough in bone repair

From JPost:

A team at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Medical Center has managed for the first time in the world to separate platelets and adult stem cells from the blood and bone marrow of patients with fractures and inject them - causing the bones to meld in a quarter to third of the time it usually takes to repair bones, and repairing some breaks that without the therapy would fail to heal at all.

Prof. Meir Liebergall, chairman of the orthopedics department on the Ein Kerem campus, gene therapy expert Prof. Eithan Galun and colleagues worked for years on the technique, which he said involves a "breakthrough in concept and overcomes major scientific and logistical problems."

All seven of those who received the experimental cell-based therapy have seen the broken tibias in their legs heal, even though the fractured bone in at least one control group patient who received only conventional treatment of screws or bone grafts failed to meld. Instead of taking six to nine months to heal, the fractures treated with adult stem cells and platelets healed in two months.

(h/t Sigmund, Carl and Alfred)

"Moderate" Abbas taunts Hamas as being too peaceful

Mahmoud Abbas was interviewed in Arabic by the BBC last night, and he proved yet again that the oft-used appellation "moderate" is a misnomer.

The Israeli press is reporting on some of his more outrageous statements.

"Those who have to resist are the people, and there are different types of resistance, like in (West Bank villages of) Bilin and Naalin, where people are injured every day"

Protests that happen in Bilin and Na'alin (weekly, not daily) are anything but peaceful, and IDF soldiers often get injured from the violence.

Even more outrageously, Abbas taunts Hamas for stopping rocket attacks against Israel:

"Hamas talks about the importance of resistance, but why aren't they resisting now. There is a truce between them and Israel, and since the war in Gaza Hamas has not carried out any act of resistance."

Abbas went on to accuse Hamas of negotiating with Israel over final status issues, including accepting temporary borders.

The Arabic reports of the interview show that Abbas actually contrasted the two points, first saying that Hamas has abandoned resistance even while talking about it incessantly and then proudly saying that the West Bank Arabs are doing real resistance. He accused Hamas of attempting to deceive Gazans with its slogans of resistance, noting that "you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

When asked why the Netanyahu government was allegedly secretly negotiating with Hamas and not with Abbas' PA, Abbas again placed himself as being more intransigent than Hamas, responding haughtily in third person,

Because Mahmoud Abbas wants the 1967 borders, in full, and wanted to solve the refugee problem on the basis of international resolutions, wants Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, and wants a solution of water, and illegal settlements.

On the other hand, even while Abbas taunted Hamas for stopping rocket fire, he rejected the "militarization" of resistance, acknowledging that such a move is not in the interests of the people.

He claimed that he was a "man of peace" and that he refused to fight Hamas in Gaza because of his supposed pacifism!

Gazans who aren't happy living under Hamas' regime, take note of how Abbas is bragging about abandoning you to the Islamists.

UPDATE: A Nazareth newspaper says that the Fatah Central Committee is calling for a "third intifada" centered around demonstrations (and presumably Bilin-style projectiles,) and that Abbas is supporting it.